This article attempts to employ the method of ethical literary criticism to study the symbolic ethical dilemma confronted by the protagonist in the Chinese classic drama The Orphan of Chao. In the drama, the character orphan Chao remained oblivious to the tragic extermination of his family, yet was confronted with a painful choice of whether to seek revenge. Following the collapse of an ancient dynasty in Chinese history, there emerged a faction of loyalists to the previous regime who resisted cooperation with the new ruling authority. Their offspring, known as “the second-generation remnants”, also struggled with whether to be loyal to the new regime. The latter lacked emotional recognition for deep hatred and pain towards the previous dynasty and felt a closer emotional affinity towards stability under newly established regime. Without the indoctrination of their predecessors or their unique cultural psychology, they found it difficult to empathize with or develop special feelings towards the overthrowing of the previous dynasty. This psychological predicament bears resemblance to that experienced by the orphan Chao; hence this ethical choice can be called “the Dilemma of Orphan Chao”. Indeed, the so-called “Dilemma of Orphan Chao” is ubiquitous and eternal, manifesting not only as a literary archetype but also as a common ethical dilemma in daily life. When one is alienated from a certain era but passively or actively caught in a dilemma about whether to inherit their identity as “remnants” due to pressure from elders or personal preferences (such as second-generation immigrants), this situation can be referred to as “the Dilemma of Orphan Chao”.

Drawing on trauma studies and memory theories, this paper examines Malaysian Chinese writer Tan Twan Eng's English novels, The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists, analysing how they engage with themes of forgiveness and memory ethics in the context of Malaysia's 1980s Look East policy. Tan's novels powerfully depict the trauma of Japanese occupation in Malaysia while exploring his protagonists' complex struggle between preserving wartime memories and healing from trauma. Rather than advocating for post-war retribution, his works thoughtfully examine the intricate process of restoring justice while preserving traumatic memories.

Tan's novels skillfully balance the duty to remember with an aspiration for peace, proposing a path toward non-violent reconciliation with former perpetrators. Through this lens, Tan's work offers both a novel approach to traumatic narrative and a fresh perspective on justice. While acknowledging that historical memory and justice for victims remain essential moral imperatives, Tan suggests that love, forgiveness, and friendship can serve to promote peace and reconciliation with former adversaries.

This is particularly evident in the meaningful interactions between protagonists and their Japanese visitors, which symbolise an ethics of non-violent reconciliation, whereby collective remembrance facilitates communal healing. Through these encounters, Tan envisions a future where former enemies can forge peaceful relationships, potentially preventing future conflicts. His work demonstrates that while we must maintain our responsibility to remember history and seek justice for victims, these goals can be achieved through paths that emphasise understanding and reconciliation rather than retribution.

Abstract: Numerous discussions of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics have focused on whether and how the two fields interact and overlap with each another. Behind such discussions lies an explicit assumption that aesthetics and ethics are distinct and an implicit supposition that aesthetics is superior to or prior to ethics in literary criticism. This paper argues that aesthetics is neither superior to nor prior to ethics nor is it the so-called “mother of ethics”. Instead, the ethical and the aesthetic are inextricably intertwined with one another, the former being the internalised kernel of the latter, while the latter is an ideal manifestation of the former. Theoretically, aesthetical ethics holds that the aesthetical is ultimately a means to gain access to the ethical and hence the unity of the aesthetical and the ethical. With the increasing development of AI technology, AI Aesthetics has now become a hot topic in the field of ethical literary criticism. This paper attempts to address the issue of subjectivity of AI in aesthetic judgement and its ethical controversies.

This proposal discusses strategies for comparative analysis growing out of the recent joint-authored book, *Modernist Poetics in China: Consumerist Economics and Chinese Literary Modernism* (2022), by the American presenter, Professor Ronald Schleifer and his Chinese colleague, Professor Tiao Wang (of Harbin Institute of Technology). The book is written in English and published by Palgrave Macmillan. Its work pursues comparative analyses on three levels:

• LANGUAGE, which compared linguistic strategies in Chinese and English literature (in terms of laughter in Joyce and Zhongshu; poetics in Mang Ke and Ezra Pound; and ethics in Faulkner and Mo Yan);

• PHILOLOGY, which compared “semantic overlap” and complexity growing out of disciplinary strategies of literary studies across cultures; and

• CULTURE, which examined similarities arising with a “consumerist” culture and differences arising from significantly different cultural assumptions and habits.

These comparative analyses are set forth in the context of bringing together language, thought, and culture in the very discourse of its join enterprise. That is, the very titles of the chapters of their book do so in relation to a “key” Chinese and English term: Preface: qian yan 前言 (“preface [speak before]”); Introduction: gai 改 (“change”); Chapter 1: shi chang jing ji 市场经济 (“market economy”); Chapter 2: xian feng 先锋 (“avant-garde” or “pioneer”); Chapter 3: che dan 扯蛋 (“joking”); Chapter 4: zhou 周 (“completion”); Chapter 5: kun nan 困难 (“difficulty”); and Afterword: fei jian dan 非简单 (“non-simplicity”).

What *Modernist Poetics in China* does not do is examine and analyze the work of its authors shared enterprise, namely a focus on its own “action.” This presentation’s focus examines the particular systematic strategies of linguistic, personal, and cultural interaction which constitutes the particular practical work of intercultural understanding. Such “work” manifests itself in both cross-cultural analyses and in bringing together various strategic focuses such as those noted above – laughter, poetics, and ethics – in day-to-day practical collaboration. In other words, the work of comparative studies creates informative parallels between bringing together literary cultures and human responses focusing upon: community-building (laughter), enhanced experience (poetics), and shared value (ethics).

Professor Ronald Schleifer is George Lynn Cross Research Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, America. His most recent book is *Literary Studies and Well-Being: Structures of Experience in the Worldly Work of Literature and Healthcare* (Bloomsbury, 2023; an open access book). He has recently completed another book, *The Haptic Arts: How Touch Builds Tools, Shapes Our Place in the World, and Informs the Traditional Arts*.

This presentation addresses the relationship between Zen Buddhism and modernist art, focusing on examples of Japanese artists who travelled and stayed in the USA in the early 20th century. Zen Buddhism began to attract attention in Western societies from the 19th century, and since the 1950s, after the WW2, a Zen boom has occurred around the world, starting with USA, and which is known to have had a significant impact on art and thought. However, as this presentation will reveal, the activities and roles of Japanese people who transcended national borders from the early 20th century to the first half of the 20th century are very important.

Particularly central are examples of poetry and religious expression by artists active in the USA, such as Yone Noguchi (1875-1947) and Shigetsu Sasaki (1882-1945). They travelled and lived throughout the USA and provided the essence of Eastern thought, especially in their dialogues with Westerners. They tried to incorporate elements of Zen Buddhism into their poetry and to express Zen ideas in their poetry. These activities were not only an assertion of their own cultural identity as Japanese writers, but also a response to the demands of their Western contemporaries. This presentation will also explain the growing interest in Eastern philosophical ideas such as Zen and Buddhism in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century.

When Hermann Hesse wrote Siddhartha, he oriented his creative process towards symbolic forms. The journey he describes through India is totally unrealized, and reflects an inner journey. Hermann Hesse's dreamlike image of India is based on Romantic sources. It was already towards the end of the 18th century, with the Asiatic Society founded by William Jones in Calcutta in 1784, and later with Sanskrit translations, that knowledge of India was spreading in Europe. But it was the German Romantics who turned Indian wisdom into a model. In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer takes up traditional Indian thought, showing that the truth of the world lies in the one. This idea is at the heart of Hermann Hesse's novel, and the object of the quest of its main character, Buddha. This paper will analyze the relationship between European representations and traditional Indian thought.