The Legacy of Daybooks in Late Imperial and Modern China

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the daybook manuscripts found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE) and intended for use in daily life.

Reviewed by: Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China Tina Mai Chen (bio) Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson, editors. Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. x, 343 pp. Paperback $26.95, ISBN 0–7425–3825–7. Gender scholars of late imperial and twentieth-century China have drawn our attention to the prescriptive work of nei and wai in the social, cultural, and political formations of everyday life. Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China further complicates our understanding of nei and wai as the book takes these spatial categories as its collective starting point. The focus of the book is an investigation of how male and female laboring bodies redefine nei and wai while often working within and against the normative but fluid categories. This volume is notable for its coherence and the ongoing conversations across chapters concerning the operation of spatial organization and its differential meanings in various times, locations, and occupations. Because the book presents the work of many of the most prominent scholars currently researching gender issues in late imperial and modern China, readers will not be surprised by the high quality of all the chapters (although depending on the reader's familiarity with the work of specific authors, readers may find themselves in expected territory as some offer continued research and analysis from projects that have been the subject of earlier publications). Regardless of the knowledge one brings to the volume, what is most productive about this book and what distinguishes it from other anthologies is its organizational structure and the ways in which it encourages the reader to move through the book not as separate chapters but as sustained dialogue. My comments focus on this aspect of Gender in Motion because it is in this area that most anthologies fall short. In the case of Gender in Motion, the book is organized in three sections that eschew a chronological order and instead opt for thematic resonance. Section 1 is titled "Patterns of Mobility," and the articles by Matthew Sommer, Susan Mann, Luo Suwen, and Ellen Judd interrogate when, where, and to what end women's subjectivity and social position emerged through prescribed movement. Section 2, "Spatial Transformations," features articles by Joan Judge, Catherine Yeh, Madeline Yue Dong, Wang Zheng, and Wendy Larson. Together these scholars shift attention from the mobility of individuals and groups to focus on how space has been conceptualized in gendered terms. The final section of the book, "Boundaries," includes the research of Kenneth Pomeranz, Bryna Goodman, Deborah Sang, and Gail Hershatter. Here the emphasis is on women who live and work in the interstices of fluid gender categories and the constant redefinition of these categories. [End Page 447] Rather than rehearse the arguments put forward in each article, I would like to highlight the questions that the authors collectively raise. In section 1, each of the essays demonstrates how typical understandings of nei and wai categories as the inner/familial realm versus the outer/public realm are too constraining. That is, if we are to understand the diversity of activities and forms of mobility of women that arise in relation to familial obligations and class standing, we need to consider the expansiveness of nei, as well as its restrictive prescripts. In this regard, Matthew Sommer puts forward two important arguments in his analysis of the practice of "getting a husband to support a husband (zhaofu yangfu)": first, maintaining and respecting the family unit in a moment of economic crisis is often the criteria and impetus for the practice (rather than having the family challenged by the addition of a sexual partner or second husband for the wife); and, second, sex work is not necessarily understood by the women and men involved in the arrangements as the primary defining aspect of their lives. These two points resonate with the analyses presented by Mann, Luo, and Judd in terms of the class dimensions of the practices of nei and wai and the expansive character of the physical space of nei. In her...

Reviewed by: Opera, Society, and Politics in Modern China by Hsiaot'i Li Yizhou Huang OPERA, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS IN MODERN CHINA. By Hsiaot'i Li. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. 376 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Although the model operas produced during China's Cultural Revolution stand out in theatre history for their ability to seamlessly blend traditional forms with contemporary concerns, a number of scholars writing in English have shed light on experiments that preceded these performances. Colin Mackerras, for instance, has pointed out that popular opera played a part in the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (Chinese Theatre: From Its Origins to the Present Day). Later, researchers have discussed politicized performances in the context of subsequent historical moments and specific geographical locations, including the Sino-Japanese War (Chang-tai Hung, War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945), the Yan'an years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (David Holm, Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China), and the CCP's rural revolution (Brian James DeMare, Mao's Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in China's Rural Revolution). Citing Chinese, English, and Japanese sources, Hsiao-t'i Li joins these scholars to think about reformed opera in Opera, Society, and Politics in Modern China, but his project is more ambitious in scope. With an emphasis on intellectual discourses, Li delineates and contextualizes the repurposing of popular opera to serve sociopolitical agendas from the 1900s to the 1940s. He argues that this continuous use of reformed opera for social criticism, enlightenment, and revolutionary propaganda was propelled by the timehonored tradition of jiaohua (moral transformation) in imperial China and its radicalized variations in the twentieth century (p. 1). In a way, this book is a continuation of Li's earlier project, Qingmo de xiaceng shehui qimeng yundong, 1901–1911 [End Page 277] (The Late Qing Popular Enlightenment Movement, 1901–1911) in which he examines the roles of popular forms, including vernacular Chinese newspaper, public speech, and opera, in educating the masses. Lying at the heart of Li's discussion are two in-depth case studies: the Xin Wutai (New Stage) of Shanghai and the Yisushe (the Shaanxi Society to Transform Customs) of Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. Founded, among others, by actors Xia Yueshan, Xia Yuerun, Pan Yueqiao, and merchants Li Pingshu and Shen Manyu, the New Stage (1908–1927) spearheaded experiments that came to be known as haipai jingju (Shanghai-style Beijing Opera). The Yisushe, by contrast, produced reformed qinqiang (the Qin tune opera), the regional form of Shaanxi Province in northwestern China. Established by gentry-literati Li Tongxuan, Sun Renyu, et al. in 1912, this theatre group is still in business today. The helmsmen of both the New Stage and the Yisushe had connections with Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui (the Revolutionary Alliance) and the Xinhai Revolution, which partly explained their shared interest in reformed opera. The critical juxtaposition of the two case studies leads to fruitful comparisons: a national opera versus a regional style, a semi-colonial treaty port versus an inland garrison city, and a market-driven company targeted at urban audiences versus a theatrical society with strong rural connections. Such comparisons highlight the importance of local contexts as well as the various factors at play between opera and society. This comparative framework also distinguishes Li's project from existing scholarship on China's theatre reform. The book consists of an overture, six chapters, and a finale. After laying out the structure, key concepts, and major themes in the overture, Li provides some background information on opera in late imperial China in chapter 1. He documents the rise of jingju over kunqu and huabu (flowery tunes) over yabu (elegant tunes) in the Qing Dynasty. Accounting for a wide array of audience groups of popular opera, including members of the court, the gentry-literati, merchants, and the masses (p. 19), Li specifies the circumstances under which different groups attended opera and the venues they frequented. Here, Li pays special attention to the urban and rural differences that existed in opera performances. Towards the end of the chapter, Li argues that historically religion and theatre were intertwined: not only did rituals and performances take place in proximity with...

Previous articleNext article No AccessPolitics, Policy, and Decision MakingWho Was Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial ChinaMark ElvinMark Elvin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Osiris Volume 13, Number 11998Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia Published for the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649286 Views: 24Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sabine Kink The Explanations of Snow in the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West, 1612) and Their Reception beyond the Ming–Qing Transition, Monumenta Serica 70, no.11 (Jun 2022): 165–207.https://doi.org/10.1080/02549948.2022.2061159Theresa Ventura ‘A Drought so Extraordinary’: The 1911 ENSO and Disaster Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines, (May 2022): 345–376.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98198-3_11Fiona Williamson The “cultural turn” of climate history: An emerging field for studies of China and East Asia, WIREs Climate Change 11, no.33 (May 2020).https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.635Jerry C. Zee Machine Sky: Social and Terrestrial Engineering in a Chinese Weather System, American Anthropologist 122, no.11 (Jan 2020): 9–20.https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13360Lei Sun, A.J. Faas Social production of disasters and disaster social constructs, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 27, no.55 (Nov 2018): 623–635.https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-05-2018-0135Chris Courtney Governing Disasters: A Comparative Analysis of the 1931, 1954 and 1998 Middle-Yangzi Floods in Hubei, (Oct 2016): 67–102.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02285-1_4Norman Harry Rothschild Why is it Necessary for Naked Savages to Drum and Dance? Early Tang Imperial Responses to a Sogdian Hibernal Festival, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 8, no.11 (Feb 2015): 65–80.https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-015-0061-3Kathryn Jean Edgerton-Tarpley From “Nourish the People” to “Sacrifice for the Nation”: Changing Responses to Disaster in Late Imperial and Modern China, The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no.22 (Feb 2014): 447–469.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911813002374 N. Harry Rothschild Sovereignty, Virtue, and Disaster Management: Chief Minister Yao Chong's Proactive Handling of the Locust Plague of 715–16, Environmental History 17, no.44 (Sep 2021): 783–812.https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/ems078Tirthankar Roy ‘THE LAW OF STORMS’: EUROPEAN AND INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN COLONIAL INDIA, c. 1800-1850, Australian Economic History Review 50, no.11 (Mar 2010): 6–22.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8446.2009.00269.x

Reviewed by: Writing and Authority in Early China Lothar von Falkenhausen Writing and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. vii + 544. Hardcover $92.50. Paper $31.95. Writing and Authority in Early China is a forceful and sparklingly original work in which Mark Edward Lewis explores the role of writing and texts in the transformation of political authority during the Warring States, Qin, and Western Han periods. Following in the footsteps of the author's well-received first book1 and his magisterial contribution to the Cambridge History of Ancient China,2Writing and Authority establishes Lewis as the premier Western historian of the crucial centuries surrounding the unification of China under a centrally administered empire in 221 B.C. The book's complex, comprehensive, and coherent argument is informed by a variety of Western theoretical approaches, but it principally emanates from a close reading of the full record of transmitted texts and recently excavated manuscripts on [End Page 127] bamboo or wooden slips. The inclusion of the latter class of sources, beset with treacherous problems of decipherment, is still unusual in mainstream sinological scholarship and indicates the author's supreme confidence in his philological skills. With a firm hand, undaunted by the multifarious nature of his materials, Lewis guides the reader to some fundamental themes in recent sinology, opening manifold novel perspectives along the way. Even when dealing with well-known texts, he often proposes striking reinterpretations. In his Introduction, Lewis enumerates six main functions of writing in ancient China: enforcing state authority; creating text-based communities and "public spheres"; transcending the confines of space, time, and human mortality; fashioning figures of authority in the past; standardizing specialized technical terminology; and encrypting secret meanings. In Lewis' own words, "the culminating role of writing in the period, and the key to its importance in imperial China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire world" (p. 4). This ultimately led to the formation of the Confucian canon as a "textual double of the polity" that could survive cataclysmic changes of regimes. In chapter 1, "Writing the State," Lewis points out that before the Warring States period Chinese writing occurred exclusively in religious contexts. After circa 500 B.C., written documents gradually came to be used in the administration of government and trade. Both in their details of formulation and in the implication that anything committed to writing was thereby supernaturally validated, these new types of documents exhibit pervasive continuity with the earlier kinds of texts used in ritual communication with the ancestral spirits. Such continuity is also reflected in the rise of religious beliefs in a netherworld governed by a bureaucratic hierarchy and administrative processes parallel to those of the world of the living. According to Lewis, "the most important modification in the shift to an administrative polity [in the Warring States] was the extension of writing to new elements of the population. The attributes of the Zhou nobility ... were transferred to the common people in the administrative documents of the new state. This widening range of inscription into the state order altered the social meaning of being recorded from a sign of power to one of subjection" (p. 13). Warring States rulers were cast in the role not of the authors of texts but of the authority behind them. Administrative and legal texts were concerned, ultimately, with the proper naming of phenomena, a process that had to adapt itself continually to the changes of the times. The authority of rulers came to encompass both human society and the natural world. "Whereas local and central administration were largely created through reworking and rewriting the ritual bases of the old Zhou order by means of a rationalizing cosmology, the re-invention of rulership drew on the contemporary religious realm and what is sometimes described as shamanism to provide images of cosmic power" (p. 42). Lewis illustrates the mechanics for applying these universal principles of rulership by a comprehensive analysis of the Zhou li (or Zhou guan), emphasizing the cosmological arrangement of the ideal government described therein and the dual administrative and religious dimensions of...

Reviewed by: The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China Philip Clart (bio) Xiaofei Kang . The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xiii, 269 pp. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 0-231-13338-3. During the last ten years or so the attention of scholars has been shifting toward spirits that do not easily fit into the established tripartite structure of gods, ghosts, and ancestors. The latter categorization has dominated our view of popular religion since the publication in the early 1970s of Arthur Wolf 's and David K. Jordan's classic studies.1 In this perspective, the spirit world of Chinese (or Taiwanese) popular religion breaks down into three major types of beings that correspond to the major categories of experience: gods who are compared to the bureaucrats and government officials of the human world, ancestors who represent familial authority, and ghosts who are seen to parallel the forces of disorder and anomie, such as beggars and bandits. This neat Durkheimian model has much to recommend itself and has inspired valuable research, but it is also rather too neat. What about the many spirits that do not quite fit these categories: goddesses, gods of demonic or ghostly origin, Daoist transcendents, and rogue deities that just won't do as celestial bureaucrats? Where do they fit into the picture? Will an attempt to incorporate them into the model change it and therefore our view of Chinese popular religion in significant ways? Mary Douglas has taught us that we can learn much about a culture's values and sense of identity by looking at the boundaries it draws-boundaries between us and them, between women and men, between humans and animals, and between gods and ghosts. Whatever or whoever crosses these boundaries is a source of danger and power and provides the scholar with unique insights into the cultural dynamic erupting along boundary lines that are less stable than earlier, functionalist interpretations assumed. [End Page 157] Borders of all kinds need to be defended and maintained all the time against the pollution arising from their violation; yet the same border crossings create a power that people try to tap into for the pursuit of their own goals. In this perspective then, the categories of gods, ghosts, and ancestors are not a final picture, but a first sketch of the principal outlines. With this sketch in place we can turn our attention to the always-contested borders between cultural categories, to the gray areas that paradoxically afford us a clearer view of the underlying dynamic of popular religion as a cultural system. It is with this agenda in mind that scholars have been turning their attention to "unruly gods" (thus the felicitous title of an important conference volume), to goddesses such as Mazu and Guanyin, to the place of Daoist transcendents in popular religion, and to various deities that combine divine and demonic elements, such as the Five Fury Spirits, Wutong, and Marshal Wen.2 Xiaofei Kang's book continues this trend by focusing on the place of fox spirits in popular imagination and religious practice. The fox is almost the quintessential border crosser: a member of the canine family with feline characteristics, wild and generally untamable (pace The Little Prince), yet often living and hunting in close proximity to human habitations. As such, foxes have attracted other marks of a "betwixt-and-between" type of identity: they are seen as shape-shifters that can take human form, engage in illicit sexual relationships with men and women, and procure ill-gotten wealth for their devotees. Kang mines Chinese foxlore to present a comprehensive overview of the role and place of this critter in the Chinese religious imagination from ancient times to the present, with a focus on North China in the Late Imperial period. Kang's study also follows another trend in recent scholarship, namely the growing use of traditional literary genres such as anecdotes, novellas, novels, and tales of the supernatural as windows on popular religious practice. The fundamental problem we face in the historical study of popular culture...

<i>Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China</i>. Bryna Goodman , Wendy Larson

Violence is generally taken as a phenomenon which is universally shared. The occasion was enjoyed more as a happy family outing, than an exposition of public violence or a lesson in cruelty. The pragmatic political functions of public execution in China and in many other societies, are reasonably well known as a result of the many outstanding works on the topic. The message to the public is an unambiguous one: the execution of these criminals by the State is not an instance of violence but a graceful act of defending the socio-ethical order. John H. Gray, a perceptive nineteenth-century observer, witnessed and later wrote a detailed account of one public execution in mid-nineteenth-century Canton. The ambiguity of some executioners brings out an important and related dimension of the spectacle of capital punishment: the response of the public.