Sublime

Hawaiians' authenticity as an autochthonous people was and is often tied to their relationship to land and ocean.

As ambassadors of aloha, Hawaiian women have been susceptible to the eroticization of their bodies and the insistent commodification of their aloha.

Commodified Hawaiian culture—the “luau,” the “hula girl,” and “aloha”—became part of the American vernacular and everyday life.

European fascination with China – however ignorant and ill-informed – had no counterpart in Chinese intellectual circles, a measure perhaps of cultural self-confidence and the prestige of an unbroken classical tradition of exceptional range and subtlety.

On the eve of the close encounter with the West, China’s distinctive political trajectory (still dominated by its symbiotic relationship with Inner Asia) propelled it not towards an all-powerful oriental despotism (imagined by Europeans) – which might have permitted drastic change in the face of external challenge – but instead still further toward

benefited from the soaring global interest in hula.3

Bhupendra might not have been worried, but in 1967, the fact that his competition was all Chinese and Indian was a matter of great concern in the world beyond Iowa City. What had once been a trickle of Third World students into U.S. schools was becoming a tidal wave. That academic year, China and India accounted for about 11 percent, each, of the t