The Politics of Affect in Confucius Institutes: Re-orienting Foreigners towards the PRC

Article

Heather Schmidt*

The Politics of Affect in ConfuciusInstitutes: Re-orienting Foreignerstowards the PRC

Abstract: This article examines the use of material objects and interactivetechnologies in Confucius Institutes (CIs) as a means of affectively engagingforeign audiences. By asking for an emotional investment in Chinese culture onthe part of foreigners, CIs work to re-orient audiences outside China towards thePeople’s Republic of China (PRC) in positive ways. In particular, I examine amuseum-like exhibit space in CI headquarters titled the China Exploratorium.While the exhibit ostensibly is meant to provide a brief overview of China, itsculture and history, the space is less about cognitive learning and more aboutexperiential learning. The Exploratorium invites bodily engagement with inter-active displays as a means of getting foreign visitors to “feel” Chinese culture.This article explores three techniques used in the exhibit whereby affect ispotentially produced (interactive displays, insertion of the self into the exhibit,and touristic devices). These techniques aim to make Chinese culture fun,entertaining and enjoyable, and the PRC a happy (and thus benign) place byassociation.

Keywords: Confucius Institutes, re-orientality, material culture, affect

DOI 10.1515/ngs-2014-0039

Introduction

Confucius Institutes (CIs), which promote Chinese language and culture outsideChina, are established as educational partnerships between a Chinese institutionand a local host. This relationship, typically between two universities, is

*Corresponding author: Heather Schmidt, Sociology Department, University of Alberta, 5-21 HMTory Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H4, Canada, E-mail: [email protected]

New Global Studies 2014; 8(3): 353–375

Authenticated | [email protected] author's copyDownload Date | 1/22/15 1:21 AM

facilitated and overseen by the Confucius Institute Headquarters (CIHQ orHanban1) in Beijing. At the entrance of Hanban is a sign which reads “热烈欢

迎各国朋友莅临指导 – Welcome friends from all over the world.”2 The foreignfriends welcomed into CIHQ are generally administrators of existing CIs or theirpartner institutions abroad (e.g. a CI Director or university president, respec-tively), potential partners engaged in the proposal of a new CI, or studentsof existing CI programs. In its Chinese version, the sign welcomes “guidance”(指导, zhǐdǎo) or feedback from Hanban’s foreign guests. It is the foreigner,however, who receives guidance – or, as I will argue, re-orientation – throughtwo main-floor exhibits introducing China and the CI project to first-time visi-tors. These exhibits are not open for public viewing, but are closed and privatespaces that one can access only with the accompaniment or express permissionof CIHQ staff. It is therefore not a place to which just anyone can come to learnabout China or the CIs, but a place designed for those who have some interest inChina or those who may be considering investing in a relationship with China,both financially (Hartig 2014) and emotionally. It also effectively serves as aplace to further convince those who remain skeptical of the CI project (auniversity president, for example, who may remain unconvinced that her orhis institution should host a CI). As a means of increasing a visitor’s propensityto look favourably on China and the CI project, the exhibits on the main floor ofHanban work to re-orient foreigners towards selective aspects of China’s pre-modern history and culture and away from possible negative associationsrelated to twentieth-century political histories and cold war mentalities.

The main floor of Hanban is divided into two exhibit spaces. The ChinaExploratorium, where visitors usually begin, is a museum-like space which takesthe visitor through a condensed “tour” of China and its history. It highlights anarrative of China’s pre-twentieth-century greatness. Through interactive exhi-bits, visitors are invited to have “fun” experiencing the advances of earlyChinese civilization, such as pictographic writing, paper-making, and printing.On the other side of the main floor is an exhibit on the CIs themselves. Thisspace creates a narrative of the strength, relevance, and popularity of contem-porary China in a global context as demonstrated through the proliferation of

1 I use Hanban and CIHQ interchangeably as is practice by those who work there. Indeed, ininterviews, staff were themselves unable to articulate any difference between the two terms.2 I include both the Chinese and English versions of any quoted text from the CIHQ space tohighlight the uneasiness of translations and the impossibility of a one-for-one correspondence.Here, the notion of soliciting “guidance” or feedback from an important guest has no conven-tional English equivalent. The concept is not easily translated and is therefore absent in theEnglish version.

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CIs around the world. Here, guests are shown the extent of CIs’ global presenceand success, and the material resources Hanban offers, including print anddigital media. Each space encourages the foreign visitor to understand Chinain particular ways – the technologically and culturally advanced society ofancient China in the Exploratorium and a version of the current “rising China”discourse in the CI Exhibit. Read as a continuous narrative, from antiquity to thepresent, the two exhibits work to demonstrate the contemporary significance ofChina – based on its global dominance historically and the richness of itsculture, China has much to offer the world today. “The world” (or “humancivilization”) appears throughout signage in the Exploratorium, both as basisof comparison for China and as witness to the significance of China historicallyand today.3 The foreign visitor, by his or her presence, acts as general repre-sentative of that “world” and, by simply being there, as proof of China’s currentstrength and global appeal.

This article considers how the foreign body (as a proxy for “the world”) isacted upon in the museum-like space of the China Exploratorium, in particularthe ways that cultural artefacts and interactive displays invite foreign bodiesinto an affective relationship with China. I refer to this embodied engagement asre-orientality – a process that re-orients the foreign body towards China inpositive ways through “affective economies” (Ahmed 2004a). Drawing onMarx, Ahmed’s (2004a) economic model of affect4 understands emotions “as aform of capital” (120) which can be circulated and distributed. Just as, throughits circulation, money accumulates value and is converted into capital, signs,and objects likewise through their circulation accumulate affective value.Ahmed’s argument is similar to Appadurai’s (1986) work on the social life ofthe thing, where he argues that value gets affixed to things in circulation. Butwhereas Appadurai is interested in how those “things-in-motion … illuminatetheir human and social context” (5), Ahmed is more interested in what thoseobjects-of-emotion do. Objects that become “sticky, or saturated with affect”(Ahmed 2004b, 11) through circulation enable a “sociality of emotion” (8)

3 Some examples include: “Chinese language is one of the oldest languages in the world.”(“汉字是世界上历史最悠久的文字之一.”); “The thoughts [Confucius] proposed … are widelyrecognized and accepted throughout the world.” (“孔子 … 提出的 … 思想在全世界广为人知.”);and “As one of the places where human civilization originated, China has fostered splendidancient science and technology … which has … accelerated the advancement of human civiliza-tion” (“中国是人类文明的重要发源地之一, 曾经孕育了灿烂的古代科技文明 … 加速了整个人类

的发展进程.”).4 In “Affective Economies,” Ahmed uses the terms “affect” and “emotion” interchangeably.Other theorists, however, make a clear distinction (Clough 2012; Massumi 2002) which I willaddress further on in the article.

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whereby emotion – which circulates not on its own, but through objects which“appear to ‘contain’ affect” (2004a, 120) – is understood as “a form of culturalpolitics or world making” (2004b, 12). Emotions work to bind individuals tolarger social communities (Ahmed 2004a, 120) and, I would add, particularworldviews. In the Exploratorium, affective objects, objects where emotionappears as the object itself (Ahmed 2004a, 121), such as calligraphy brushesand Peking opera costumes, do the work of binding foreigners to China and to aworldview in which China is a global leader whose authority to be so is based onits historical significance and cultural continuity.

For this work to be effective (and affective), the choice of objects is, of course,paramount. There are particular signs, figures, and objects – such as communism,Mao Zedong, and Tian’anmen Square – which persistently (and problematically,for Hanban) stick to China and produce it as fearful, particularly in Western5

imaginaries. CIs, in part, work to unstick such adverse signs, figures and objectsfrom China and, in their stead, “stick” more affirmative (and thus benign) ones,such as Chinese characters, Confucius, and tea. What is of interest to me is thehistorical nature of that which the Exploratorium and CIs in general attempt tostick to China, neglecting for the most part contemporary China and its recentpast. There is a sense among the CI administrators and teachers I interviewed thatwestern audiences, in general, have formed negative opinions of China due tomisinformation and misunderstanding. Whether this is in fact the case or not isless important than the fact that those invested in the CI project feel compelled toaddress such perceived misunderstandings. The Exploratorium works to re-orientforeign visitors away from any potential negative associations that may arise withreference to the China’s twentieth-century political histories (i.e. communist,dictatorial, backward, under-developed) and towards things and activities thatare fun and make people happy, thereby making the People’s Republic of Chinahappy (i.e. beneficial and good) by association. As Ahmed (2010, 33) writes:

To experience an object as being affective or sensational is to be directed not only towardan object, but to “whatever” is around that object … What is around an object can becomehappy: for instance, if you receive something delightful in a certain place, then the placeitself is invested with happiness, as being “what” good feeling is directed toward. … Ifsomething is close to a happy object then it can become happy by association.

This article explores the ways in which cultural artefacts and interactive displaysin the China Exploratorium work to re-orient foreign visitors towards China in

5 I do not take “the West” to be a geographical concept but rather, as per Hall (1992, 277), ahistorical one which is still widely used to refer to societies imagined as “developed, indus-trialized, urbanized, capitalist, secular, and modern.”

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positive ways. This process of re-orientality takes place, as I shall argue below,through re-orientalist representations of China’s pre-modern history and culture.Re-orientality, however, does not only occur within the walls of theExploratorium. While I focus here primarily on the exhibit, it is important tokeep in mind the ways in which these objects, techniques, and affects rippleoutward from Hanban. Visitors who pass through the Exploratorium take theirexperience home with them and share it with local communities, putting theaffect they experienced in Hanban into circulation. The objects and techniquesused in the Exploratorium also circulate to CIs abroad and, through that circula-tion, attempt to replace affective economies of fear in relation to China withaffective economies of a beneficial and good PRC.

Designed with the first-time visitor in mind, the China Exploratorium ismeant to give those with little-to-no prior knowledge of China or its culture atour of the country since, as was explained to me, those on short trips do nothave the time to experience all of China. The displays are meant as a cursoryintroduction, highlighting what is presumably considered not only the best ofChina and its culture but also the most relatable for foreigners. During my ownpersonal tour of the exhibit, a Hanban official described the content of theExploratorium as “not very deep.” The reason for this, he clarified, is becauseChinese culture is so “complex” that it would be impossible for a short-term,first-time visitor to truly comprehend it. Given the limitations of time and spaceon the foreign visitor, the Exploratorium is intended, he explained, to help one to“feel” Chinese culture. The assumed “complexity” of Chinese culture and sub-sequent assumption that it is beyond the grasp of the non-Chinese body to easilycomprehend (which are common discourses in China) contribute to the produc-tion of an exhibit space which revolves around affect rather than intellectualizednarratives. This notion that CIs enable foreigners to “feel” Chinese culture is aprevalent rhetoric within the broader CI project and has come up time and againacross my interviews and observations in both China and Canada. This “feeling”is both tactile, through hands-on experience with objects and practices markedas “Chinese” (such as calligraphy brushes and tea ceremonies), and affective,through the feelings roused by playing with the objects and practices. Culturalartefacts and the performance of engagement they invite have “affective capa-cities” (Harris and Sørensen 2010, 146), or “the capacity to work as affectiveagents” (148). Put simply, things and the ways we interact with them affect usand, in so doing, affect how we act. Objects themselves do not contain affect,but rather affect arises in our interactions with them (Harris and Sørensen 2010;Ahmed 2004a, 2004b). It is in this subject-object relation that things haveaffective capacities and, as such, become an effective means of re-orientality.Cultural artefacts and interactive technologies invite re-orientality by enabling



moments in which the foreigner can have a bodily engagement with Chineseculture, and thereby potentially develop positive affective ties to China.

My argument in this article draws primarily on my own participation in andobservations of the China Exploratorium. The first time I visited Hanban in 2010,I was given a personal guided tour by senior member of CIHQ staff. Withpermission, I returned the next day to explore the exhibit space on my own inmore detail, taking photos of all the displays, artefacts, and textual explana-tions, specifically following the order I had been walked through the day before.Two years later, I had an unexpected opportunity to walk through theExploratorium again, this time as an observer of a guided tour (by the samestaff member) for the head of a Canadian partner institute who was, in fact, afirst-time visitor to China. This provided an opportunity to watch the “ideal”imagined visitor (i.e. first-time visitor with little prior knowledge of China)engage and interact with the exhibits and items on display, and allowed me tothink about the images and objects in the exhibit not simply in isolation but intheir intended “social context” (Banks 2007, 38). I took further photos ofchanges (such as new exhibits) and listened once again to the explanationsoffered by our guide. It is the photos and my field notes from both visits thatcomprise the majority of my data for this article. I also, however, draw oninterviews with other CI administrators and teachers and observations of otherCI spaces, events, and activities, both in China and Canada, to supplement myunderstandings of how cultural artefacts and interactive techniques are used tofacilitate the process of re-orientality (again, the re-orientation of foreigners’towards China in affectively happy ways).

Re-orientality: embodiment, affect and things

My use of the term re-orientality is meant to foreground the lingering resonanceof orientalism6 (Said 1979) in producing knowledge about China. Even when thatknowledge production is in the hands of those who are categorized as “Oriental”themselves – a phenomenon termed re-orientalism (Lau 2009; Salgado 2011) –uneven power dynamics are likely reproduced, such as the dominance of Han

6 Orientalism, as defined by Said (1979, 6), is “a body of theory and practice … [and] a systemof knowledge about the Orient” which has material consequences. Despite the problematicapplication of a postcolonial lens to China (Jing 1996; Yang 1996), I argue that orientalism hasanalytical value in this context.

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culture7 as representative of all Chinese culture in the CI project. The termre-orientality is also meant to point to a process of embodied affect. I buildthis understanding from Lancefield’s (2004, 41, italics added) definition oforientality as “a noun for ‘what it was’ that many people felt they heard or sawor embodied in moments of orientalist performance.” Lancefield, in examiningearly twentieth-century American musical performances of Asian otherness,discusses how rhetorics of ‘authentic racial difference’ were naturalized throughthese performances. This imagined ‘oriental’ essence was thought to be embo-died by performers in moments of performance, which could then be accessedby the audience. In the China Exploratorium, and in the general CI project, theconditions for this process of embodiment or affect are being created by aChinese self for a foreign other (re-orientalism), rather than by a foreign (orWestern) self about a Chinese other, as in Lancefield’s study. Thus, I choose touse the term re-orientality to describe this process of embodied affect as it issolicited of non-Chinese bodies by the China Exploratorium exhibit and broaderCI project.

In the Chinese title for the Exploratorium (中国文化体验中心), the verb 体验

(tǐyàn) points more precisely than the English root verb ‘explore’ to the nature ofwhat takes place in the exhibit space. Comprised of the characters体 (body) and验(to examine; to check; to test), 体验 refers to a process of experiential learning, aprocess of verifying truths or reality, which takes place specifically through thebody. In the Exploratorium, the foreign body is invited to engagewith this process ofunmediated embodied learning and understand China and Chineseness throughdirect, tactile interactions withmuseum-like cultural artefacts (which are, of course,highly selective), and interactive touch technologies. The China Exploratorium doesnot simply tell the foreign visitor about Chinese culture. It rather invites the visitor toexperience it personally, to feel it, both physically and emotionally, through inter-action with things identified first and foremost as “Chinese.”

Re-orientality is thus a process through which non-Chinese bodies areinvited to embody a moment of affect which contains the possibility of newemotional attachments and orientations towards the PRC. This moment ofaffect, or intensity, is manifest in the body, most directly “in the skin – atthe surface of the body, at its interface with things” (Massumi 2002, 25).Theorizing its distinction from emotion, Massumi (2002, 28) defines affect asan “unqualified” intensity that cannot be labelled according to conventionalmeanings such as “fear” or “joy.” It is a bodily, autonomic response – anincreased heart rate or a fluctuation in breathing, for example. Emotion, on the

7 The PRC officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups. The dominant Han majority comprises over90% of the total population.



other hand, is a “qualified intensity” (28), or an intensity qualified by a linearnarrative indexed by conventional meanings. Emotion labels or fixes experi-ence and creates predictable “action-reaction circuits” (28). If I qualify anintensity (something felt) as fear, for example, then I will react to it inconventional ways – I will shrink back; I will run; I will avoid. This processof qualifying intensity is about the “sticking,” to use Ahmed’s term (Ahmed2004a, 2004b), of signs to objects and our interactions with them. In westernlocations, there are certain predictable emotions and action-reaction circuitswhere the PRC is concerned. Continued non-conformity to western-style formsof governance and market economics, coupled with fear of its imminent “rise”and subsequent “decline” of the West, tend to make the PRC a feared object.Anything associated with the PRC, such as CIs, consequently tend to be treatedwith suspicion. By working at the level of affect, however, the Exploratoriumhas the potential to circumvent such well-worn emotions and action-reactioncircuits. Because affect is not qualified, narrated, or fixed, it suspends action-reaction circuits and linear temporality (Massumi 2002, 28). At the moment ofaffect, the disconnect between intensity and signifying systems “enables adifferent connectivity, a different difference” (Massumi 2002, 25): it becomesa point of possibility, a “turning point at which a physical system paradoxi-cally embodies multiple and normally mutually exclusive potentials, only oneof which is ‘selected’” (32–3). Whereas emotion forecloses new possibilities bysticking conventional meanings and reactions to what is felt, affect is thebeginning of a selection (Massumi 2002, 30), a point of emergence, a pointwhere different and unexpected outcomes are possible.

The Exploratorium uses the affective capacities of material things – culturalartefacts and touch technologies – to invite a process of re-orientality wherenon-Chinese bodies can be made to feel intensities towards China for which theydo not have conventional narratives. Material objects also have what Buchli(2000) refers to as superfluidity or an excess of meaning. Things can have anindefinite number of metonymic associations that allow them to be variablyinterpreted and used (Buchli 2002; Miller 2004; Thomas 1991; Coombes 2001;Nakamura 2005). Keane (2006, 201), referring to this process as “bundling,”notes that:

things always contain properties in excess of those which have been interpreted and madeuse of under any given circumstance. Material things thus retain an unpredictable range oflatent possibilities. They do not only express past acts, intentions and interpretations. Theyalso invite unexpected responses.

It is this “unpredictable range of latent possibilities” in objects that canbe tapped into in moments of affect to elicit “unexpected responses” or “a

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different connectivity, a different difference” (Massumi 2002, 25). In the ChinaExploratorium, cultural artefacts and interactive technologies, objects that canbe touched and generate embodied affect, can invite unexpected responses: theycan make Chinese culture and history fun, entertaining, amusing, and engaging.These affective interactions potentially enable a different connectivity to China,a re-orientation of the foreigner more in keeping with a Chinese worldview: “Ifthe same objects make us happy – or if we invest in the same objects as beingwhat should make us happy – then we would be orientated or directed in thesame way” (Ahmed 2010, 35). The Exploratorium and the CI project more broadlyask foreigners to make this emotional investment in objects of its choosing andthus, invite a shared orientation.

Techniques of re-orientality

At the entrance of the Exploratorium is a guide map, showing visitors witharrows how to proceed through the exhibit. In fact, one has little choice but towalk through in the given order, as each section must be passed in order toreach the next. Given this pre-determined path, I expected on closer exam-ination to find a linear narrative to emerge about China’s history and culturaldevelopment, such as a chronology of civilizational progress reiterating theofficial account of historical continuity over five thousand years. Yet nosequential chronicle is apparent, perhaps because the exhibit does not reallytell the foreign visitor a story about China. Despite the oft-recited declarationof CI administrators and teachers that CIs are meant to teach foreigners aboutthe “real” China – and, of course, putting aside the myriad of questions thisraises about what the real China is and who has the power to define it – CIengagement with foreign audiences seems little concerned with the acquisi-tion of knowledge and more concerned, as I have already noted, with re-orienting the non-Chinese body towards China in particular ways. The ChinaExploratorium is less a space for cognitive learning and more a space forlearning by doing and, more specifically, feeling as a result of that doing. Inwhat follows, I explore what I see as three techniques of re-orientality in usein the Exploratorium: interactive displays; insertion of the self into the exhi-bit; and touristic devices. Each of these techniques makes the foreign visitor’sinteraction with Chinese culture fun, light-hearted, and less reverent thanyour typical museum displays. While I separate out these three techniques foranalytical purposes, it is important to note that displays can combine thesetechniques in various ways.



Interactive displays

The China Exploratorium makes extensive use of hands-on, interactive displaysin its efforts to engage the visitor with selective aspects of China’s history andculture. While much of the exhibit reproduces a pre-twentieth-century narrativeof China, the narration takes place primarily through contemporary digitaltechnologies. Touch-screens, videos, and digital games allow visitors to notonly come into contact with the antiquity of China but, more importantly, tobe playful with it. These are not simply “press start” installations, but highlyinteractive programs which react to cues from the users: they require the visitor’sparticipation to work. Such interactive exhibits, through which visitors canshape their own experience by touching, feeling, and manipulating things,enable an affective engagement with Chinese culture and history. Affect arisesin moments of interaction with these objects which mark Chinese culture, firstand foremost, as rooted in long historical traditions.

The first section of the Exploratorium8 is primarily devoted to the evolutionof Chinese written script, from oracle bone inscriptions to present day. The focalpoint of the room is a larger-than-life replica of a ding, a three-legged cauldron(see Figure 1). While the earliest dings were ceramic and used as cooking vessels,by the Bronze Age they were cast in bronze and became ritual symbols ofauthority and high-status. Dings are common stock among traditional exhibitson Chinese antiquity, and the presence of this one here makes the spacereminiscent of a museum. Yet this replica is not simply an object to be observed.

Standing approximately waist-high, it is big enough that several people cangather around it to peer inside and watch an animated video of a pond withgoldfish swimming amidst water lilies and lily pads. If one waves a hand overthe pond, however, the video changes to show the development of particularwritten words from ancient pictograph to contemporary character. A video forthe character 森 (sēn), meaning “numerous trees,” for example, begins with ananimated picture of a forest, over which a pictograph of the character is super-imposed, showing the viewer how it indeed looked like a series of trees. Thevideo then guides the viewer through the evolution of that pictograph throughseveral historical styles of development,9 finishing with its contemporary form.The character’s use is then demonstrated with a poem or passage from a literary

8 The China Exploratorium is divided into five main sections: Chinese Mood (意境中国);Chinese Scenery (风光中国); Chinese Art (艺术中国); Life in China (生活中国); and ColorfulChina (多彩中国).9 Namely, oracle bone inscription, bronze inscription, small seal script, clerical script, andregular script.

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work. With each wave of the hand over the ding, a new character appears and anew video begins, taking us through the historical development of anotherChinese character. The ding requires the visitor to interact with it in order tofulfil its purpose. It requires an act of doing, which in turn produces a feeling. Itis fun to stand beside this museum-like object – the original of which, in amuseum setting, would invite a sense of reverence at the very weight of itshistoricity – and, in effect, play with it, causing it to change at will and watchinganimated videos as a result. Computer playfulness – the degree to which onecan interact spontaneously, imaginatively, and creatively with computers10 –increases one’s state of involvement with technologies (Agarwal and Karahanna2000) and enhances mood and learning outcomes (Webster and Martocchio1992). In other words, by being fun and playful, the technologies in theExploratorium encourage a deeper engagement and promote positive feelings,which again makes the PRC happy by association. But more important to myargument here is Ahmed’s (2004b) insight that affect resides neither in thesubject nor the object but rather is produced when the two come into contact.As such, by requiring the visitor to interact with it in order to employ its fulleffect, the ding invites an affective response.

Figure 1: The digital ding

10 The full 7-point measure of computer playfulness developed by Webster and Martocchio(1992) includes spontaneous, imaginative, flexible, creative, playful, original, and inventive.



Throughout the Exploratorium, touch technologies continue to invite similarengagements at various points along the way. Through interactive computerprograms and touch-screen technologies, guests can learn about a variety ofsubjects related to China such as: Gong Fu (Kung Fu); calligraphy; philosophy,including animated depictions of Confucius, Chuang-tzu, and Lao-tzu11; PekingOpera; geography; historical scientific and technological innovations (includingTraditional Chinese Medicine and China’s four great inventions – the compass,gunpowder, paper-making, and printing); folk arts; music; cuisine; and thedevelopment of major urban centres in contemporary China. Touch technologiesrouse affective responses not only by inviting the visitor to interact with things –thereby creating affect in the contact between subjects and objects – but also bybringing the unfamiliar “closer quite literally, close to the skin” (Kuntsman2012, 3). Keeping in mind that affect registers as “autonomic reactions mostdirectly manifested in the skin” (Massumi 2002, 25), touch technologies in theExploratorium help facilitate affective responses to Chinese culture and history.Kuntsman refers to this as “cybertouch” and theorizes that such digitizedencounters, in changing the way we experience and remember something,carry the potential to shift “structures of feeling and politics of perception”(4). Cybertouch, by enabling a register of affect at the surface of the body, haspotential to create “a different connectivity” (Massumi 2002, 25), a point ofemergence where unexpected outcomes are possible.

The interactive nature of the Exploratorium’s displays is not confined tocontemporary digital technologies but also makes use of pre-industrial technol-ogies – or what were the “cutting-edge” technologies of their day, such as paper-making and printing. The pre-industrial and the contemporary technologiestogether orient the visitor towards China’s innovations historically and its tech-nological sophistication today. In an area devoted to China’s historical innova-tions, one can play with devices and tools used in paper-making and printing,two of China’s four great inventions (see Figures 2(a) and (b)).12

In the paper-making display, one can stir paper pulp, collect it on a screen,and strain the fibres of water to simulate the process of making paper. Besidethis device is a printing station where one can use paper made through thisprocess to “print” a book page from a carved relief. Though this technology isno longer revolutionary, the point is that it was innovative in its day and

11 These are the romanized spellings provided in the exhibit. Use of the Wade-Giles system here(rather than the PRC’s preferred method of Pinyin) is perhaps guided by an assumption thatforeigners will be more familiar with the names thus transcribed.12 China’s four great inventions being paper-making, printing, the compass, and gunpowder.

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“accelerated the advancement of human civilization”13 (exhibit sign). It is a fun,hands-on activity that is meant to leave one in awe of China’s technologicaladvances historically. After all, where would the world be without paper andprinting today? Equally important is the implication that a country whichcreated such world-changing innovations historically is capable of continuingsuch innovative and world-leading advancements today.

Insertion of the self into the exhibit: making useof the foreigner

Through interactive technologies (both contemporary and historic), visitors canplay with Chinese culture and interact with it in ways that evoke positiveaffective ties to China. There are also points at which the visitor gets insertedinto the very display itself through photography and handwriting capture tech-nology. In a section devoted to Peking Opera, one can explore the 4 maincharacter types of this art form – the male lead; the female lead; the “painted-face” male; and the jester (see Figure 3). Each of the main roles is distinguishedby the costumes, headdress, and make-up worn by performers. While there issome explanation provided as to the role of each character type, the distinctionsmade in the display between each are primarily visual.

The visitor is invited to choose a favourite character and snap a picture ofhim or herself that the computer will superimpose on the character of choice.The image can then be printed as a souvenir to take home. This is also anexample of the “touristic devices” technique of re-orientality I will discuss in the

Figure 2: (a) Paper-making, (b) Printing

13 The Chinese equivalent on the exhibit sign reads: “加速了整个人类的发展进程.”



next section. What is relevant here is that these photos are stored in thecomputer for subsequent visitors to scroll through and view. The visitor literallygets incorporated or inserted into the exhibit and acts as witness for subsequentvisitors to the appeal of Chinese culture to foreigners. In this way, the CI project(not only in this exhibit, but in each location abroad) continues and extends theprocess of “making the foreign serve China” (Brady 2003). By inserting thevisitor into the Exploratorium itself the CI project makes use of the foreigner asan integral component in the work of marking Chineseness.

Figure 3: Becoming a Peking opera character

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Conceptualizations of a quintessential Chineseness in diametrical opposi-tion to a foreign other form the cornerstone of knowledge which informsChina’s foreign affairs system (Brady 2003) and are increasingly assertedmore broadly across government discourse (Horsburgh, Nordin, and Breslin2014). With a desire to offer the world alternative solutions to failing Western-based systems of global governance, China must present itself as essentiallydifferent from the West. Yet, essentialized difference is not simply a politicaldiscourse, it is also a marketable, commodifiable and consumable way ofbranding China for non-Chinese audiences. The Exploratorium, and the CIproject more broadly, invite foreigners to engage with China’s essentializeddifference, to not only see it but to “put it on” and momentarily embody itthemselves. This performative act has the potential to be transformative, toenable a “different connectivity” through affect, but it may also be similar towhat Harold (2009) refers to as “skinning,” a change in the outward appear-ance of things – as a means of marking one’s individuality – without changingany underlying characteristics. The displays, as a consumable good, becomeskinned in a sense, ever changing their outward appearance as new visitorstake photos yet retaining the underlying content. The foreigner, also a con-sumable good, is skinned, undergoing a change of outward appearance – notonly by having her or his image superimposed on an opera character, butthroughout the exhibit by engaging with what are likely unfamiliar objects andpractices. The question here is, is this simply skinning – a change in outwardappearance but staying the same – or can it lead to moments of affect whichenable the emergence of new outcomes?

Touristic devices: costumes and souvenirs

As noted earlier, the China Exploratorium is meant to simulate a “tour” of China forthose on tight schedules who may not have the opportunity for more extensivetravel. Throughout the exhibit, certain techniques are employed to give one a senseof being a tourist. Visitors receive souvenirs at different points along their tour –photos, paper cuttings of their Chinese zodiac signs, a “graduation” certificatewhen they are finished – to take home. The production of these souvenirs requiresthe participation of the visitor and uses techniques similar to those found in touristlocations. Superimposing one’s face onto the image of a Peking opera character, asdescribed above, is reminiscent of face cut-out boards frequently found in touristsites. Directly behind that display is a rack of Peking opera costumes that visitorscan don in order to take pictures of themselves (see Figure 4). Again, this is similar



to many tourist sites where one can “dress up” in period costumes and havephotos taken as souvenirs of the visit.

The souvenirs are personalized, thus making a particular point of connec-tion between the visitor and China. One technological display simulates the folkart of paper-cutting. It requires visitors to input their year of birth in order tomake a paper-cutting of their Chinese zodiac animal (see Figure 5). Visitors areinvited to “make” the paper-cutting themselves, but there is no actual cutting ofpaper involved. Using a mouse, one “cuts” away portions of the on-screen image

Figure 4: Dressing up in Peking opera costumes

Figure 5: Paper-cutting zodiac signs

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to eventually reveal the zodiac sign. Upon successful completion, the visitor isrewarded with an encouraging on-screen “well done!” The staff member leadingthe “tour” then reaches into a series of drawers under the mouse pad to pull outan actual paper-cut of that zodiac sign made from red tissue paper. The visitorperformatively creates his or her own personalized souvenir and learns a littleabout Chinese zodiac signs in the process.

The significance of material culture as a touristic souvenir is not only in theaffect that arises as a result of the subject–object interaction. Equally importantis the potential mobility of the thing. Souvenirs travel easily and are likely to betaken home. As material objects, souvenirs have an afterlife (Haldrup andLarsen 2010, 161) which can encapsulate “the atmosphere of a particular touristplace as well as embodied memories.” In other words, souvenirs can help onerecall the way he or she felt in the place they were obtained; they can help onerecall the affective response of that first interaction between subject and object.Yet when talking of the Exploratorium’s souvenirs, it is useful to employ Harold’s(2009, 614) theoretical framework of combining affect and aura, in which aura isthe “hint that something mystical lies beneath the surface or, better, floats abovethe objects we consume.” Aura allows the possessor of an object to “tap into”the creative powers that created it, to own a trace of the “auratic, mysticalprocess to which most of us do not have access” (Harold 2009, 614). Thesouvenirs from the Exploratorium, then, allow the foreign visitor to tap intothe “auratic, mystical process” that is Chinese culture. Furthermore, souvenirsare not just kept to the self but are generally shared with family and friends,causing a “ripple effect” through which they can reach a wider audience. In thisway, the Exploratorium souvenirs, through circulation, can impact even thosewho have never been nor may ever intend to visit China.

What visitors should not feel

While it is important to consider what specific aspects of Chinese culture andhistory visitors are encouraged to feel, it is equally telling to consider what hasbeen left out. The second section of the Exploratorium is devoted to the multi-ethnic nature of China, or China’s non-Han cultural groups, displaying variousethnic garments and cultural artefacts. Among the ethnicities on display arepolitically sensitive populations within the PRC such as Tibetans and Uyghurs,groups with separatist aspirations. Hopes among some ethnic minorities ofindependence heighten anxieties in China over the possible breakup of thecountry and dissolution of the PRC. Within China’s political and popular



discourses alike, there is a preoccupation with narrating a history of multi-ethnicharmony and unity, a narrative meant to delegitimize aspirations of ethnicindependence. Within the Exploratorium, traditional ethnic dress and artefactsmaterially attest to the discursive claim that “China has always been a unitedmulti-ethnic country14,” as the visitor is told through a placard describing thissection of the exhibit. Objects have the capacity to materialize claims and makenarratives concrete and, when used to such ends, become “a technique of power”(Thomas 1991, 144). Non-Han cultural artefacts in the Exploratorium reveal alarger political agenda by attesting to discursive claims of ethnic harmony andunity in China.

What I find so interesting about this section, however, is less the standardpolitical rhetoric of ethnic unity and more the fact that it is much less inter-active. Tellingly, this section on China’s ethnic minorities is titled “Chinesescenery” (风光中国), making China’s ethnic groups synonymous with spectacle –not unlike how multiculturalism in western countries creates spectacles out ofnon-white populations. Rather than offer an interactive engagement with non-Han cultures, this space uses ethnicity as a scenic backdrop, as scenery tohighlight “Han-ness”15 – the true Chineseness with which foreigners are meantto engage. The ethnic objects are on display only, hung on the wall, or onfaceless mannequins or placed behind glass enclosures. They are not readilyavailable for tactile engagement. The garments are accessible to touch if sodesired but, in contrast to the Peking Opera costumes, the display prohibitstheir manipulation and donning. If the purpose of techniques of re-orientality isto get foreigners to “feel” Chinese culture, then the fact that they are not invitedto engage with non-Han cultural objects in this section is precisely because thisis not the culture they are meant to feel. The Chinese culture in which foreignersare asked to make an emotional investment is decidedly Han culture. Anyinvitation to develop emotional ties to China’s ethnic groups could stray intodangerous affective territory, potentially developing sympathies with groupsthat point to civil unrest rather than harmonious unity. Within this section sitsone digital interactive display, a map of China highlighting the country’s mostfamous scenic spots. For example, by selecting Tibet one can explore a series oftourist locations within the region, including the Potala Palace. Details of thispolitically significant site include the description of its location, architecturaldesign (described as “picturesque disorder”), and the fact that it is a UNESCO

14 The corresponding Chinese sentence reads: 中国自古就是一统一的多民族国家。

15 Here, I am thinking of a passage from bell hooks’ “Eating the Other” in which she discussesthe display of “darker-skinned people” in a catalogue as “background, scenery to highlightwhiteness” (2006:372).

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World Cultural Heritage site. It does not, however, mention the primary purposeor historical significance of this place as former residence of the Dalai Lama.Such reference may encourage a list of undesirable metonymic associations withChina, undoing the work of the Exploratorium in developing happy feelingstowards the PRC. Rather intriguing is the fact that, though this interactive mapidentifies China’s most famous tourist spots, Beijing is not to be found, despitesome of the country’s most well-known tourist sites being located in or aroundthe capital city (the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Great Wall, forexample). Perhaps the curators of the exhibit assume that visitors to Hanban arein Beijing and therefore have the means to explore those spots inperson. However, I would also argue it is perhaps because, in this CCP-definedimaginary of China, Beijing and its predominantly Han culture are the unmarkednorm against which all others are marked as ethnic (or “scenic,” as the casemay be).

Another aspect of China absent from the Exploratorium, and thus unavail-able to engage with, is the PRC’s founding and development since 1949. Thereare very few markers of China’s twentieth-century history perhaps becauseforeigners (in particular westerners) already have – or at least are believed tohave – strongly developed negative affective histories to its politics. To put thishistory on display is, again, to potentially stray into dangerous territory in whichvisitors may have the “wrong” affective response – a negative association withcommunism rather than a positive association with China’s more distant and“exotic” past. It may also be that curators feel there is little of China’s twentieth-century socialist history that foreigners can affectively relate to in a positiveway, in contrast to orientalist depictions to which there are already well-devel-oped and positive affective paths. There is only one small corner of the entireExploratorium in which there is any representation of China’s twentieth-centuryhistory. In a digital exhibit one could easily bypass, visitors can see the devel-opment of major cities throughout the twentieth century. Starting with photosfrom the 1930s (significantly pre-PRC), the visitor can click though a series ofpictures from the 1960s, the 1980s, and today. If the Communist Party of China(CPC) makes any appearance in the Exploratorium, it is here, as the driverbehind China’s development, from underdeveloped cities prior to the PRC totoday’s cosmopolitan metropolises.

Conclusion: (Re)orientations

Emotions lie neither in the subject nor the object, but rather are shaped bycontact between the two, and that contact is mediated by cultural histories and



memories (Ahmed 2004b, 13) which allow the object (and things associated withit) to be apprehended as good or bad. If there is a concern among CI adminis-trators and teachers that China is perceived as perilous, threatening, despotic,backward, or any other number of adverse metonyms, the solution is to re-orientforeigners away from such negative affective responses and towards morepositive ones. The China Exploratorium, in making its displays fun and inter-active, attempts such a re-orientation. It attempts to affect foreign visitors “‘in agood way’” in order to orient them towards Chinese culture and China itself as“being good” (Ahmed 2010, 32). If we are affected in a good way by objects, thenour propensity to come into contact with them increases: “We move toward andaway from objects through how we are affected by them” (Ahmed 2010, 32). Ifvisitors can be oriented away from any perceptions they may harbour of Chinaas “bad” (and thus to be avoided) and towards China as “good” then theirlikelihood of seeking further points of connection with China in the futureincreases (or, the best possible outcome for Hanban, their likelihood of openinga CI in their home institution increases). The exhibits in the Exploratoriumemploy techniques of re-orientality in such efforts, three of which I have dis-cussed here though I would encourage other researchers to consider what othertechniques may be in use. These techniques are not limited to the exhibit inHanban, but are employed in events, classes, and activities in CIs around theworld, where students and members of general publics are invited to engagewith Chinese culture through a hands-on process of learning, a doing which ismeant to elicit a feeling, a happy feeling which makes the PRC happy byassociation. Indeed, some of the very same interactive digital programs ondisplay in the Exploratorium can be found in CIs around the world. It is in thecirculation of these objects of emotion through which new affective economiesare built – affective economies in which China is a “good” and happy and, mostimportantly, benign place.

However, it is important to keep in mind that the ways in which objectsaffect people and the appropriations and uses to which they are put existindependent of a creator’s intentions (Gell 1998; Harris and Sørensen 2010).Since objects have unstable relationships with people and can be easilyrecontextualized (Thomas 1991), they do not necessarily have the impact,effect, or affect that was intended. The China represented in the CI projecttends to rely heavily on historical images, practices, and objects. While thishistoricization is meant to bolster state claims of representing authenticChinese culture, it may in fact work to reproduce Orientalist narratives ofChina as mysterious, exotic, and anachronistic. What “sticks” to dings,Peking Opera, and calligraphy in China may be very different than what sticksto such things in other countries.

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Said (1979) cautions those othered by orientalism against “the dangers andtemptations of employing this structure [of cultural domination] upon them-selves” (25) because there “has never been … something so innocent as an ‘idea’of the Orient” (23). While images in the CI project – women in qipaos playingtraditional Chinese instruments, Peking Opera costumes and make-up, tradi-tional folk arts such as paper cutting and knot tying, paper kites with elaboratedesigns, tea ceremonies, and Chinese characters written in calligraphy – makeChina knowable, marketable and ultimately likeable abroad (Schmidt 2013),they are “dangerous” in that it is extremely difficult to “unstick” orientalistconnotations of exoticism, despotism, backwardness and unbridgeable, essen-tialized difference from such imagery. For Western audiences in particular, re-orientalist tropes are not benign but are deeply entrenched in histories ofracialization in the West. While there may be a desire to impress upon visitorsthe historical dominance of China and the implied importance of China in theworld today, “the comfortability, predictability, and oversimplified nature of [are-orientalist] narrative functions to keep the stability, innocence, and super-iority, of the Western subject intact, and perhaps more problematically, fore-closes (at the level of affect and bodies) a reflective engagement with affectivepolitics of difference” (Nixon and MacDonald forthcoming).16 In other words,attempts at re-orientality in the CI project may simply lead to a kind of “skin-ning,” (Harold 2009) moments of changed outward appearance with little sub-stantive change. Though the Exploratorium and other aspects of the CI projectmay enable positive affective responses to China, I find a cautionary note inBerlant’s (2010, 116) words: “shifts in affective atmosphere are not equal tochanging the world.”

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The Politics of Affect in Confucius Institutes: Re-orienting Foreigners towards the PRC

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