This article is an attempt to sum up the results of many years of interest in the scholarly activity in the Far East of the engineer Kazimierz Grochowski. For thirty years (1906–1937), he carried out geological, archaeological, and ethnographic research in Eastern Siberia, Barga and Manchuria. He was also principal of my high-school in Harbin, where I was born and spent my childhood and youth. He was co-founder of the international Manchuria Research Society and of the museum with its rich range of collections that is now the state Museum of Heilonjiang Province. Here he transferred most of the objects from his excavations, including silver Roman coins (beginning from the rule of the Emperor Hadrian [117–138 AD]). They were discovered by Grochowski on an escarpment in the centre of today’s Harbin, where – he believed – there had been a ford over the river and an inn for merchants. By 1928, Grochowski was convinced that Harbin was located at a spot through which the trade route ran linking the Roman East with Korea and Japan. Today this has been confirmed by the existence of the so-called Grassland Silk Roads leading from Datong inter alia through Harbin to the East and to the lands on the Pacific. I began with an adventurous piece of reportage for a magazine for young readers. This quickly took me onto the track of Grochowski’s forgotten manuscript journals in  the National Library in Warsaw. On the basis of these, I wrote two books about engineer Grochowski. Currently, I am ending this research with an expert assessment of the statue of the Guanyin Goddess excavated by Grochowski. My judgment indicates that it comes from the eleventh century, from the period in these parts of the rule of the non-Chinese Liao dynasty.

Ancient peoples of China considered crimson, blue-green, yellow, white and back to be the five primary colours that gave rise to the universe and Earth. Then, according to the theory of the Five Elements that make up the universe, i.e. Earth (土 – tu), Wood (木 – mu), Fire (火 – huo), Water (水 – shui) and Metal (金 – jin), five directions were set: East,  South, West, North and Centre, to which specific colour combinations were assigned. The colours implied a number of diverse cultural concepts associated with, e.g. the role of power, philosophical theories, rituals and beliefs. Gradually a new colour system came into being and became an important value in traditional Chinese culture. This article  looks at the meaning of blue (蓝 – lan), green (绿 – lu) and purple (紫色 – zise).

The dynamic development of biology, medicine and technology is one of the main reasons behind ethical reflection on interference in the natural processes of life, which has led to the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field – bioethics. This approach combines scientific knowledge and ethical values, and indicates the need to reconcile the achievements of science and humanistic values, as determinants for mutual relations between science and ethics. The originality of Chinese culture inspires us to appreciate Confucian philosophy, which is a cultural repository of knowledge about human life, personal relations and connections between human beings and nature. In this text, I describe some basic problems of bioethics, e.g. euthanasia, suicide, abortion, and the death penalty, from the perspective of Confucian and Western bioethics. Confucius’s ethical thought is based on five regulations: humaneness (ren), righteousness (yi), ritual (li), wisdom (zhi), and faithfulness (xin), which determine the boundaries of human activity. These ideas underlie the cultural richness of modern Chinese bioethics and they can successfully inspire European bioethics; therefore they promote mutual understanding between East and West. 

The article presents the latest amendments to the PRC Constitution and their meaning in a wider context. In the first and second part of the article, the content of the PRC Constitution as worded before the amendment from March 2018 is presented. The third part focuses on the amendments introduced on 11 March 2018. The last part summarizes the most significant changes and points out the meaning of the changes for the Chinese legal system.

Electronic commerce has been developing along with the advancement of the Internet and technology. There have been numerous successes and failures among e-businesses, and one of the main reasons for either scenario is shown to be consumer satisfaction. Data shows that one of the major factors influencing customer experience is related to logistics. Along with the globalization of trade, cross-border e-commerce has brought new challenges that need to be overcome in order to meet the higher requirements of “digital consumers.” In spite of challenges, global e-commerce nowadays plays an essential role in promoting the development of both economy and industries, including logistics. Recently, global electronic commerce was included in the China-led Belt and Road Initiative, in particular with the Digital Silk Road, which emerged as a result of the initiative merging with the digital economy. This paper aims to explain what the Digital Silk Road refers to and what its relation is with international e-trade. Moreover, it presents an analysis of how the Digital Silk Road supports global e-trade and how cross-border e-commerce influences the Road. This paper forms part of a more thorough study of the role of international electronic commerce in facilitating trade along the Digital Silk Road.

In this paper, legal and social aspects of the football transfer market in China are described. Nowadays, a football revolution is taking place in China amid governmental projects intended to improve the state of football in the country. Chinese football clubs have challenged the richest European teams on the transfer market. Football transfers made within recent years have sparked a reaction from the Chinese Football Association, which – in response to those actions – introduced a series of reforms aimed at stopping the practice. In this paper, the legal aspects of the Chinese transfer market are listed, in particular those in the recent period that resulted in a reaction from the Chinese Football Association. It is also emphasised that the actions taken by the Chinese clubs on the transfer market constitute only a fraction of the Chinese football revolution, by also showing other fields in which the country is developing. The situation on the Chinese transfer market has deeply influenced the world football stage and has also significantly contributed to the rise of the Chinese football leagues.

Chinese immigrants are the third-largest, foreign-born group in the United States. This article aims to investigate the second wave of Chinese immigration to the United States, which started in 1882 when the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Since the beginning of their immigration to the USA, the Chinese struggled with the reluctance of white American society and US officials toward them. America had many reservations against foreigners from China crossing their borders. Behind this ideology lay mainly a lack of knowledge about Chinese language, traditions and culture; moreover, the outer appearance of the Chinese made them easily recognizable, which led to  prejudice. Chinese immigrants were perceived as sojourners not willing to settle in America permanently, which increased that aversion. For about 60 years – for that is how long the second wave lasted – the American government looked for any solution to keep the Chinese away from its borders, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act, through its amendments broadening that legislation, up to when it built the immigration center on Angel Island, where the Chinese were interrogated and checked for bacteria and illnesses, and whether they were to be given the right to enter the country. The second wave ended in 1943 after president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Magnusson Bill which repealed the discriminatory laws against the Chinese. The migration policy imposed on the Chinese is believed to have been the only one in the US that prevented migration and naturalization on the basis of race.

My Favorite Things is a song composed by the well-known Broadway duet of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein in 1959. It became a one of most well-known jazz songs of the twentieth century. Its popularity has even spread to Asia in the twenty-first century. Lots of famous musicians like to arrange this piece of music for a variety of instruments.
This article focus on analyses of jazz standards arranged for erhu performed by the erhu master Jia Peng Fang. Following Confucius’s saying that music comes from the heart, the article shows cultural influences in modern times. How are music cultures of the world evolving in a homogenized world?

Bronisław Piłsudski, the elder brother of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, made a long-term home in Sakhalin, where he conducted research on the local population for nearly two decades. He became famous as an advocate of protecting the rights of the aborigines, who fought an unequal battle with the dominant cultures surrounding them from the south and the north. During his research, Piłsudski recorded the unique rites of the disappearing Ainu culture. This article is devoted to a profile of this Polish pioneer of ethnographic and oriental studies.

Hashima Island, also called Gukanjima (Battleship Island), is now known as an abandoned coal mining site. It lies close to the coast of Nagasaki city, in southern Japan. It has been uninhabited since 1974. The Mitsubishi company populated Hashima Island by bringing in workers for coal mining. To provide them with homes, large concrete housing estates were built from the island’s mined minerals and in line with new sustainable technologies.

The reason why people decided to live in such an inaccessible and unfriendly place was purely economic – because of the available carbon resources. At the time, the island was the most populated place in the world – over 5,000 inhabitants lived there – and it was deserted overnight. Today no sign of people or even animals can be found there. Over the decades that followed, Hashima was left alone. The island has been eroded by forces of nature, and the abandoned buildings have disintegrated. This has formed an atmosphere of desolation and eeriness. At its peak, the island drove the industrialisation of modern Japan. The inclusion of the island in the UNESCO World Heritage list and increased media attention have revived the history of Hashima, consequently amplifying its contribution to the industrial and cultural heritage of Japan and the whole world. This article presents the rise and fall of the island as a coal mine and its shift towards its industrial heritage, a UNESCO heritage, which was paid for by the exile and forced labour of people.

The aim of this article is to present events that took place near Guadalcanal Island during the battle that broke out overnight between November 12 and 13, 1942. During this battle, two forces of the US Navy and the Japanese Combined Fleet clashed. Many dramatic events took place that had a clear influence on its course. The first part presents  strategic preparations of the two sides and forces. The second part of the article discusses the course of the overnight clash. The third part discusses the losses on both sides. The result of the clash of November 12–13, 1942, was a tactical victory for Japan, which once again defeated the Americans in an overnight artillery battle. However, strategic victory belonged to the United States as they managed to frustrate all measures and plans of the Combined Fleet.

Shanghai Summer School on Chinese Political & Legal Culture, East China University of Political Science and Law, Szanghaj, 18 czerwca – 13 lipca 2018 r. (Aleksandra Szydzik)

Delegacja Polskiego Związku Karate Tradycyjnego na 1st International Okinawa Karate Tournament, Okinawa, 28 lipca – 10 sierpnia 2018 r. (Tomasz Konieczny)

VI Międzynarodowa Konferencja Akademicka „Spotkanie Polonistyk Trzech Krajów. Chiny – Korea – Japonia”, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Global Campus, Yongin, 30 października – 2 listopada 2018 r. (Joanna Kamień, Kamil Zeidler)