1 Transcultural Studies 2012.2 2012. 2 Editor's NotE Rudolf G. Wagner .04 ArticlEs Neil MacGregor Trajectories of Meaning: the Shifting Power of Things .07 Subrata Mitra Sub-National Movements, Cultural Flow, and the Malleability of Political Space: From Rational Choice to Transcultural Perspective and Back Again .08 themed section: the transcultural travels of trends Xuelei Huang From East Lynne to Konggu Lan: Transcultural Tour, Trans-Medial Translation .48 Petra Thiel Tracking Trends and Brands in the International Children’s Book Market .85 2 Contributors to this Issue Transcultural Studies, No 2, 2012, ISSN: 2191-6411 Editors: Rudolf G. Wagner, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Monica Juneja,Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Managing Editor: Andrea Hacker Editorial Board: Christiane Brosius, Antje Fluechter, Madeleine Herren, Monica Juneja, Birgit Kellner, Joachim Kurtz, Axel Michaels, and Roland Wenzlhuemer. Transcultural Studies is an open-access e-journal published bi-annually by the Cluster of Excellence, “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows“ at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. For more information see: www.transculturalstudies.org CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE: Neil MacGregor is a British art historian and Director of the British Museum since August 2002. He read French and German at New College, Oxford, and studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. For six years he was a lecturer in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading and a part-time lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1981 he became Editor of the arts periodical, The Burlington Magazine, and then in 1987 became Director of the National Gallery. Subrata Mitra is professor and head of the department of political science, board member and former director of the South Asia Institute, and former spokesperson for "Governance and Administration" at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He edits the Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies series and his research interests include comparative politics, rational choice, methods, citizenship, re-use and South Asian Area Studies. Xuelei Huang is an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Her reasearch interest include 3 Transcultural Studies 2012.2 Chinese film history, intellectual history of Republican China, mass media, mass communication studies, and popular culture studies. She currently holds the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship (2013-15)for a research project called “The Cesspool and the Rose Garden: The Social Life of Smell in Modern China, 1840s—1940s.” Petra Thiel is writing her PhD thesis on gender issues within contemporary Chinese adolescent novels. Her research interests include children’s literature, the history of childhood, and modern Chinese literature. In May 2012 she became managing director of the Confucius Institute at the Ruprecht-Karls- Universität Heidelberg. Cover V3_contributors