The attempt to realize "Republic of Virtue" by Robespierre was commonly considered to be based on Rousseau's political thoughts and theories from the conventional ideas, while controversial findings could be derived from an essay that Robespierre wrote for Rousseau. This paper is trying to argue that Robespierre had treated Rousseau in a deified and zealous way from his essay for Rousseau, causing his misinterpretation on Rousseau's virtue and the confusion between his own thoughts and those of Rousseau's. Such kind of misinterpretation and confusion could be explained with "Pygmalion" theory in Jean Starobinski's Rousseau studies as a supplement to relevant research on this issue, and also provides an innovative perspective for examining the political-psychological basis of Robespierre, Jacobins' Reign of Terror as well as comparable conditions. For Robespierre had conflated "Civic Virtue" in Rousseau's political theory with the "Personal Virtue" embodied in Rousseau's literary image, the tragedy of Reign of Terror should not be simplistically attributed to Rousseau's theories.

The film The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane Campion and adapted from the novel of the same name, reexamines the myth of masculinity in the Western genre within the contemporary discourse of "toxic masculinity" and deconstructs it within the framework of gender relations. Through the denaturalization of violence and domination in Western films, the movie exposes the gender ideology and historical-cultural roots underlying the romanticization of male power. Campion's adaptation practice goes beyond merely responding to contemporary social issues; instead, it probes the historical mechanisms through which masculinity is produced, presenting gender identity as something constructed and fluid within cultural practice.

The paper examines the Philadelphia Chinatown Friendship archway's transformation from a diplomatic gift to an enduring community symbol, while providing close observations of its architectural details. Constructed in 1984 after Tianjin and Philadelphia announced a sister city tie, the Friendship archway was the first authentic archway built within the United States by Chinese artisans—using Tianjin's Confucian Temple as the reference blueprint. Drawing upon archival records, historical scholarships and recent news documentations, this essay will explore the material biography of the archway and the stories embedded in its physical form. At its core, this study contends that the archway's significance lies not solely on symbolic nor architectural meaning alone, yet in the inseparable union of both. Through its glazed tiles, mineral pigments, and interlocking brackets, the archway narrates the stories of two cultures—confronting and combining. It is a piece of history not told by words, but by the hands that shaped them.

The rise of artificial intelligence constitutes not only a revolution in productive forces but also a profound organizational revolution. AI has exerted a far-reaching impact on the leadership and governance approaches of the Communist Party of China (CPC). As artificial intelligence is embedded in the CPC's governance and government administration, the Party's decision-making approach has undergone a major transformation, namely a revolution in decision-making paradigm: a shift from human decision-making to human-machine collaborative decision-making. Human-machine collaborative decision-making may give rise to the practical dilemmas of intelligentism or ideological colonization, where decisions are made on the basis of artificial intelligence. Mao Zedong's investigation thought is isomorphic with the logical process of AI decision-making, while also bearing heterogeneity distinct from artificial intelligence decision-making. In the intelligent era, Mao Zedong's investigation thought still plays a fundamental guiding role, and artificial intelligence can only serve as an auxiliary tool for decision-making. The CPC must take the initiative and hold the right to develop AI, combat data falsification and intelligent hallucination with the spirit of seeking truth from facts, overcome algorithmic bias and the algorithm black box through the mass line and mass intelligence, and resist data monopoly and data hegemony with an independent and self-reliant stance.

This study examines the "to + omo-u" construction and investigates the co-occurrence conditions among its internal components on the basis of corpus data. Unlike previous studies that focused solely on the formal analysis of case particles or tense forms, this paper approaches the issue from the perspective of the construction as a whole, treating such elements as case particles, predicate types, and verb forms as analytical variables in order to explore their combinatory patterns in actual language use. Through a comparative analysis of the two constructions "Noun + o + V + to + omo-u." and "Noun + o + V + to + omot-ta.", the study finds that the former exhibits a relatively high degree of freedom in verb selection, whereas the latter shows a clear tendency to co-occur with transitive verbs characterized by object orientation and resultativity, displaying a markedly concentrated distribution pattern. Previous studies have shown that "to + omo-u" primarily functions to express the speaker's attitude, while "to + omot-ta" emphasizes the confirmation and narration of past cognitive activity. Based on these findings, this paper argues that the elements within the "to + omo-u" construction do not combine freely; rather, their co-occurrence is constrained by semantic and pragmatic factors. More specifically, a correspondence can be observed among the objectivity marked by "o", the unrealized nature expressed by the volitional form, and the retrospective memory-evoking function represented by "to + omot-ta". This correspondence, in turn, influences verb selection and the naturalness of sentences. From the perspective of the interaction between constructions and lexical items, this study reveals the collocational mechanisms and co-occurrence patterns within the "to + omo-u" construction and provides a new perspective for understanding the usage of cognitive verb constructions in Japanese.

Within human society, games constitute a form of activity that produces no direct practical utility, yet persist continuously, remain difficult to abandon, and possess distinctive significance. However, the essential nature of games and their intrinsic connection to human desire have not been subjected to sufficiently clear theoretical analysis. This study seeks to draw upon relevant theoretical frameworks to illuminate the relationship between games and human desire, as well as the operational logic underlying games themselves. Building upon the definition of games, this paper employs the theory of ideology developed by Slavoj Žižek to examine the relationship between games and human desire. By corresponding this analysis to the three stages of ideology proposed in Žižek's theory—"in-itself", "for-itself", and "in-and-for-itself"—the study traces the process through which games produce and regulate human desire. The study argues that the existence of games originates from unfulfilled human desire; games operate in the form of ideology, serving and manipulating desires that can never be fully satisfied. The historical development of games' production and regulation of desire corresponds closely to the three stages of ideology identified by Žižek. Furthermore, the ideological nature of games enables subjects to experience an accelerated passage through ideology. As an ideological form of existence, the operational logic of games may ultimately assist subjects in breaking through ideological fantasy and confronting the Real.

Contemporary adaptations of Sino-Korean legends in dance drama increasingly shifted from complete storytelling to conceptual expression, making the adjustment of narrative approaches a crucial driver of artistic innovation. Through a comparative case study of The Butterfly Lovers, produced by Beijing Dance Academy and the 2025 dance drama Chunhyang-Dan Jeon by the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, this paper explores the comparability of the two works from the perspective of intertextuality theory. By focusing on their narrative reconstruction strategies, examining how each adapts classic legends to achieve contemporary expression through distinct approaches, and exploring the divergences in reconstruction methods, objectives, and effects analysis, this study adopts text analysis, dance segment analysis, and comparative research. The findings indicate that Beijing Dance Academy's The Butterfly Lovers weakens plot logic, strengthens symbolic imagery, and integrates group dance and spatial scheduling to transform literary narration into an emotion-centered artistic conception. Conversely, the 2025 dance drama Chunhyang-Dan Jeon by the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts restructures narrative perspectives and character relationships. The interaction among multiple viewpoints reveals a narrative framework that intensifies relational dynamics and dramatic tension. The two works demonstrate starkly divergent narrative paths: the former prioritizes the creation of artistic conception, while the latter emphasizes the reorganization of narrative perspectives. Such differences are not only manifested in stage presentation but also reflect culturally distinct approaches to interpreting and reconstructing traditional texts.

With the development of digital media technology, games as the "ninth art" have become a core carrier for the inheritance and communication of excellent traditional Chinese culture. Open-world martial arts games, with their immersive, interactive and narrative advantages, provide a new path for the visual transmission of traditional cultural symbols. Taking the domestic open-world martial arts game Where Winds Meet as the case, this paper adopts literature research, qualitative research (semi-structured interview + netnography) and comparative research methods, based on semiotic theory, encoding and decoding theory, game aesthetics and cultural communication theory. It sorts out four core types of cultural symbols in the game, analyzes their visual presentation mechanism from four dimensions, explores players' perception logic and cultural identity formation path, and constructs a "visual presentation - open world interaction - cultural identity" theoretical model. The study finds that interactivity is the core advantage of open-world games. Only by deeply integrating cultural symbols into gameplay, narrative and space design, rather than superficial "symbol stacking", can players achieve the transformation from visual reception to emotional resonance and cultural identity. This paper enriches the theoretical system of the ninth art cultural communication, and provides practical reference for cultural symbol design in domestic games.

Nonverbal symbols are pretty much the backbone of how we get information across. As the Belt and Road Initiative keeps deepening cooperation between Latin American countries and China, exchanges between Spanish-speaking countries and China in areas like economy, trade, culture, and education are getting more and more frequent. But here's the thing—cultural differences can easily lead to misunderstandings and conflicts in cross-cultural nonverbal communication. This paper zeroes in on a few Spanish-speaking countries. It starts with a quick look at existing studies comparing cross-cultural nonverbal communication between Chinese and Spanish-speaking cultures, then gathers data from people who've actually interacted with folks from Spanish-speaking countries through questionnaire surveys. By analyzing typical cases, it examines manifestations of nonverbal misunderstandings between China and some Spanish-speaking countries, explores the complexities of regional differences encountered in communication research, and identifies targeted coping strategies. The aim is to provide theoretical and practical references for future cross-cultural communication between China and Spanish-speaking countries.

In the 2025 Chinese film market, art films featuring A-list stars suffered dismal box office performance, while marginal art films with no star cast and low capital investment faced even more severe structural squeezing of screening slots. Taking Mr. Pingshi as the core case and comparing it with films such as Cuihu, The Verse of Us and Song of the Phoenix, this paper proposes an analytical framework of "restorative media practice". The research finds that marginal art films achieve audience construction from material reach to emotional resonance through hands-on geographic roadshows and emotional connections driven by moral premises, transforming the "obligation-reciprocity" relationship into ritual interaction. This bottom-up communication pathway reveals the formation mechanism of moral-emotional communities between creators and audiences beyond algorithmic distribution and theater chain logic.