Xu Zongze’s Translation Theories and Practices in the Jesuit Revue Catholique

Review: <i>Chinese Architecture: A History</i>, by Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt

This text is intended to analyze the theme of the understanding and discussion of the life and death of the adherents during the transition period of Ming and Qing Dynasties. For the adherents remained by the former Dynasty, the most realistic concerns might be their identity, which was the reason to understand and make decision on living style. Questioning about survival as ‘Who am I ?’ was just authentication for the identity of the adherents and also was being testified with their social and moral role in the atmosphere being ruled by an alien race. Therefore, discussion on the identity of private and adherents, survival style and the view of life and death in the period of dynastic transformation between Chinese and alien race, i.e., the change between Ming and Qing Dynasty, become an important issue. The dominant view of the life and death of the adherents in the period of change of Ming and Qing dynasty was the Righteousness of Kings and Ministers which attaches importance to monarch-subject relationship. The central idea is dying for the sake of honor as ‘downfall of the ruler and the downfall of the ministers.’ On the other hand, the phenomenon of adherents fleeing to Zen Buddhism is prevalent in the period of change of Qing and Ming Dynasty, which became one of major survival ways. With reference to ‘downfall of the ruler and the downfall of the ministers’, the adherents who selected to flee to Zen Buddhism became those ‘should die but not died’. Their survival was difficult to receive legal recognition socially. Then, such issues as that, is the Righteousness of Kings and Ministers could be the moral standards and absolute value which could determine the life and death and the living issues with the adherents, how the privates and adherents at the end of Ming dynasty understood the life and death, and how the value of death and living could be assessed, with what standards, and so on, would be subjected. With such understanding, this text will make an analysis on the view of life and death of the adherents in the period of change of Ming and Qing dynasty. The analysis will be made on the development of discussion of life and death, recognition whereof, and the meaning of the view of life and death, with the proposition as ‘Must die’, ‘Not must die and Confucian orthodoxy which were major arguments on life and death at the end of Ming dynasty, and with two axes as Death and Flee to Zen Buddhism set up. Through such analysis, that is to analyze the recognition and meaning on the life and death of the adherents facing the crisis of death, this text is desired to present a balanced understanding on the view of life and death in the period of change of Ming and Qing dynasty.

My essay traces the evolution of one of the most well-known dramas in Chinese history, the legend of Leifeng Pagoda and the White Snake. The Tale of Leifeng Pagoda was shaped in the Ming dynasty. In the original text, Leifeng Pagoda symbolized the power of Buddhism and the protagonist, Maiden White, showed lustful desire. During the Qing period, the story was rewritten. Maiden White was transformed into an ideal Confucian woman, and Leifeng Pagoda represented the bastion of Confucian and Buddhist virtues. The plot of this story still reflected the deep concern among writers from Ming to Qing for moral virtue and the rectification of ethical values. However, during the May Fourth Movement, intellectuals inveighed against feudal society and traditional Confucian morality, and Maiden White was re-written as a modern feminist's quest for true love and freedom. Besides, communist writers re-interpreted the Leifeng Pagoda’s collapse as the breakdown of feudalism and the success of proletarian revolution. My analysis of the different versions and interpretations of the Legend of the White Snake throughout late imperial and modern Chinese history shows how conceptions of morality among readers and writers during the Ming and Qing dynasties and modern Chinese intellectual ideology affected the construction, production, and dissemination of this drama.

This research explores the spatial distribution patterns of water engineering facilities along the Grand Canal during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It employs the entropy method to assess the social development status of prefectures during these periods and uses the Tobit model to examine the primary indicators influencing the distribution of water engineering facilities. The results show that the spatial distribution pattern of water engineering facilities was characterized by aggregation during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In contrast, the Qing dynasty’s distribution was more dispersed, with a shift in the construction focus of water engineering facilities towards the south. The spatial distribution pattern of water engineering facilities in the Ming Dynasty centered around the hotspot areas of Shuntian Prefecture, Yanzhou Prefecture, and Yangzhou Prefecture. During continuous improvements, these facilities exhibited a multi-point-regional aggregation phenomenon.The influence of commercial development indicator on the spatial distribution of water engineering facilities is positively correlated in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, the impacts of the indicator on different types of water engineering facilities vary between the two dynasties. During the Ming Dynasty, the indicators of transportation accessibility and cultural prosperity facilitated the construction of regional water engineering facilities, whereas in the Qing Dynasty, they significantly influenced several types of water engineering facilities. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, neither the agricultural development indicator nor the population size indicator significantly affected the distribution of water engineering facilities. However, there was a negative correlation between the population size indicator and the distribution of water distribution facilities in the Ming Dynasty. This study enhances the importance of environmental protection in historical societies and provides a valuable reference for other international studies of linear cultural and material heritage.

Contributors

Reviewed by: Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China, 1895-1949 Thomas Buoye (bio) Frank Dikötter. Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China, 1895-1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. v, 441 pp. Hardcover $38.00, ISBN 0-231-12508-9. The subject of prison reform in late Qing and republican China has often been overlooked in English-language scholarship. As Frank Dikötter's research demonstrates, the topic of prison reform can serve as a springboard for a multifaceted study of the cultural and intellectual history of this important period in modern Chinese history. According to Dikötter, prison reform combined the "local appropriation of global ideas" with distinctly Chinese "moral and cognitive traditions." Characterizing the history of prison reform as a global history, the author notes that "internationally circulated discourses and practices of punishment intersected locally with concrete ideological and political configurations" and "engendered new varieties of incarceration" (p. 6). The author convincingly argues that prison reform was not simply a case of Chinese reformers imitating the West but also a shared goal of modernizing elites worldwide. In China the abolition of extraterritoriality was an important motivation for reform but the goal of obtaining "moral parity" with advanced nations around the globe was equally important. Similarly, the complete reform of criminals through education resonated with [End Page 136] Chinese tradition, and the use of model prisons as a "dominant pedagogical strategy" had roots in imperial China. The centerpiece of Chinese prison reform that provided the link between Chinese tradition and contemporary prison reform was the concept of ganhua, which "referred to moral reformation by an emotional appeal to the feelings of a criminal" (p. 48). The fact that education was central to the task of moral transformation leads Dikötter to observe that modern prison reform in China was both "radically new and remarkably traditional." Utilizing previously unexploited sources, including the Beijing municipal, Liaoning and Jiangsu provincial, and national archives, the author examines prison rules and administration and reconstructs fascinating tales of life inside Chinese prisons. The tenor of the introduction suggests a theoretical approach to the topic, but ensuing chapters include concrete explorations of prison administration as well as examinations of discursive fields. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 examines the movement for prison reform during the late Qing, in chapter 2, and civilian prisons during the early republic, in chapter 3. An examination of the diaries of Qing officials who traveled abroad and the writings of late-Qing reformers in chapter 2 demonstrates that an interest in prison reform and Western models arose soon after the Opium War. This interest was clearly related to the desire to eliminate one of the pretexts for extraterritoriality, but it was also a goal of modernization and thus represented the desire to achieve "moral parity" with advanced nations. Chapter 3 reconstructs the early history of model prisons in Beijing and in Fengtian and Jiangsu Provinces, relying on archival sources that cover a broad range of topics. Generated by the judicial bureaucracy, these sources are richly descriptive, but an analysis of them is lacking. For example, there is mention of a wide array of religious materials introduced to facilitate ganhua but little discussion of their content, efficacy, or impact. Some of the archival materials consist of rules and regulations. In the case of the Beijing prison the author can corroborate the archival sources using Sidney Gamble's contemporaneous field research, but often the reader is presented a welter of information without means to evaluate it. Part 2 contains a study of penology, in chapter 4, and criminology, in chapter 5, under the Guomindang. In these chapters the author discusses the writings of some of the leading Chinese experts in the fields of criminology and penology in the republican period. Chinese experts were clearly conversant with the latest research on prison reform—although, as the author notes, Chinese experts often held opinions that were at odds with the received wisdom. For example, there was an abiding concern with the reformative power of education in China even when the idea had lost favor among international experts. Part 3 returns to an exploration of prison administration under...

Teaching about Chinese Women's History using Legal Sources Ann Waltner (bio) Some of the drawbacks of using legal sources in teaching about Chinese women's history are doubtless similar to drawbacks in using legal sources for any society—if you read too many legal sources, you and your students will come away convinced that murder and mayhem are the order of the day in a society which was, after all, mostly peaceful. The very different nature of the Chinese legal system from the Anglo-American legal system produces another sort of difficulty—the legal systems of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties were not interested in protecting rights, they were interested in producing order. This is a concept that is worth unpacking with students—if a status senior abused a junior (say if a father-in-law raped a daughter-in-law) the law will intervene because his acts are damaging to social or political order, not because he has violated her rights. Certain aspects of the Chinese legal system, like torture, appall modern sensibilities; it is important to work with students so that they understand that the legal system was highly articulated and committed to notions of fairness. None of these are insurmountable problems; legal sources, especially casebooks, remain one of the most valuable sources on everyday life in China, and there are now substantial materials available for classroom use. Several recent developments in the Anglophone study of Chinese law of the Ming and Qing periods have made it clear just how rich legal sources can be for the study of women and gender in China. The opening of archives and the rediscovery of casebooks has been accompanied by translations of primary sources and increasingly sophisticated analyses of legal cases, which not only contextualize the sources in terms of the operation of the legal system but which look at them as texts which have their own kind of logic. The opening of Chinese legal archives beginning in the mid-1980s has led to a substantial rethinking of the field of Chinese legal history. This new work has led us to understand the complexities of the relationship between codified law and law in practice and has overturned some of the old stereotypes about Chinese law and society. Several of the most important recent monographs based on this new archival research, including Janet Theiss's Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (University of California Press, 2004) and Matthew Sommer's Sex, Law and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press, 2000), make it clear that courts were seen as a recourse for people who believed that they had been wronged. They also make it clear that Qing China was fraught [End Page 141] with sexual tensions and that those tensions had political dimensions. Both of these monographs are lively and provocative, and would work well in upper-division classes. One of the most distinctive aspects of the late imperial Chinese marriage system is that while widows were not prohibited from remarrying, in the Ming and Qing dynasties they were honored by the state (with commemorative arches and tax benefits) if they did not remarry. This, at first glance, seems counterintuitive: there was a net scarcity of women in China, due both to higher female infant and childhood mortality and to upper class polygamy. This phenomenon suggests ways in which the legal system, ethical systems, and daily life were intertwined in ways that are not intuitive to the modern imagination.1 The legal codes of the Ming and Qing dynasties now both exist in reliable and readable English translations; though one would probably not want to set an ordinary undergraduate to reading the entirety of the code.2 But portions of the code that deal with property, or with mourning regulations, or with the status of concubines vis-à-vis the wife can productively be excerpted and used in classroom discussions. More promising for classroom use are translated casebooks. An old stand-by, which still has its uses, though much of the analysis of Qing law in the introduction has come into question, is Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris's Law in Imperial China...

The Little Ice Age (LIA) during the Ming and Qing dynasties was the most abnormal climate event in China for nearly 2,000 years. During this period, the climate was relatively cold and various natural disasters frequently took place. By locating and compiling related historical documents, we aimed to quantitatively and systematically analyze the spatial–temporal variations in the natural disasters in the ancient Huizhou region (hereinafter referred to as Huizhou region or Huizhou) during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911; all dates are in AD, unless otherwise mentioned). The results show that (1) flood and drought disasters, the major types of disasters in this area during the Ming and Qing dynasties, occurred 422 times, accounting for 79.6% of the natural disasters, (2) there was a significant correlation of occurrence frequency of flood plus drought disasters and the total natural disasters on a certain time scale. In addition to flood and drought disasters, other disasters (hailstorms, windstorms, frosts, and earthquakes) occurred more frequently in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) than in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The occurrence frequency of natural disasters had a fluctuant variation pattern over time, with peaks emerging about once a century. The peaks of natural disasters were mainly concentrated at 1471–1490, 1571–1590, 1671–1690, 1751–1770, and 1851–1870, which is supported by the wavelet analysis, (3) the most frequent natural disasters took place in Wuyuan, followed by Jixi, Shexian, Xiuning, Qimen, and Yixian. More droughts occurred in Jixi and Yixian, while more floods occurred in Wuyuan, Shexian, and Qimen, more hailstorms occurred in Wuyuan and Jixi, more frost disasters occurred in Wuyuan, Jixi, and Qimen, and more earthquakes occurred in Wuyuan and Jixi. The occurrence frequency of wind disasters was not high in any of the counties, (4) flood and drought disasters in the Huizhou region exhibited obvious stage characteristics during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and they changed gradually from droughts to floods, among which the transition from slight drought to slight flooding was the most obvious during 1811–1911, and (5) overall, slight flooding and slight drought situations accounted for the largest percentage of drought and flood disasters in this area during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Among these, slight flooding mainly occurred in Shexian and Qimen; severe flooding mainly occurred in Wuyuan; slight drought mainly occurred in Yixian; and severe drought mainly occurred in Jixi.

Many notable works have recorded marine history and the history of cultural exchanges, which highlight the importance of the ocean in Chinese history. However, the interrelation between maritime culture and Chinese literature has been overlooked. I explore the various levels and images of the political order in maritime poetics in the Ming and Qing dynasties in this paper, trying to examine the unexplored issues of the change of political entities in the diversified world order under the tributary system in the Ming dynasty. Due to its hybrid nature, maritime poetics has too many varieties in content to be discussed thoroughly in a paper such as this, which focuses only on the political order reflected in the maritime poetry of Ming and Qing. Three parts constitute this paper: the first part discusses the maritime poetry of those emissaries who crossed the sea in peaceful times, the second analyzes works about sea battles, and the third explicates the voices of the loyalists that faced the sea at the time of the fall of the Ming empire. The varieties of literary works also show that there are countless possibilities in the maritime poetry of Ming and Qing. Also, I examine the mutually illuminating relationship between the self and the other, focusing on the relationship between the change in the world order and literary works in the maritime poetry in the Ming and Qing. A particular achievement of the literature of Ming and Qing, maritime poetry enriches Chinese literature beyond our current knowledge.

“Amorous histories” represent an unofficial historical tradition that once served as a legitimate mechanism for narrating same-sex desire in Chinese culture. This tradition not only celebrated love (qing) but also explored obsession (pi) within the Chinese context. This article reexamines the erotic arts, including notes and erotic fictions, that constituted the narrative mechanism of amorous histories to rethink the intricate stance of both praise and critique towards male love during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The analysis reveals how these texts repeatedly employed a narrative tactic of combining enticement and moral suasion to represent male love. While legitimizing male love, these representations were simultaneously regulated by the moral norms of official histories. However, during the late Qing and early Republican era, the tradition of amorous histories began to wane and eventually gave way to the emergence of pathological narratives under the guise of “sexual histories” in modern China. Within the discourse of sexual histories, the tradition of praising qing and pi was substituted by Western-influenced “the science of sexuality,” which pathologized same-sex desire. This article traces the changes in the meaning of “pi,” which underwent a phase of non-pathologized development in Ming and Qing dynasties, before being pathologized by May 4th literati. Finally, this article analyses the impact of the replacement of amorous histories with pathologized sexual histories on the debates over homosexuality between Hu Qiuyuan and Yang Youtian in modern China. It shows how changes in historical narratives influenced early twentieth century perceptions of same-sex desire.

In the field of the pictorial decoration of Chinese architecture, the decor of the period of the Ming and Qing dynasties is considered the most outstanding since, at that time, the technique was perfect, and the methods of decoration were rich in their diversity, which was not possible in previous eras. The polychrome painting of official buildings during the Ming and Qing dynasties’ reign is quite different from the Song dynasty’s polychrome painting. The transition from the Song dynasty’s polychrome painting to the Ming and Qing dynasties’ polychrome painting was completed during the Yuan dynasty’s reign. Due to the decrease of dougong in size in the Ming dynasty, polychrome painting began to be placed on beams. Xuanzi polychrome painting, which originated from painting beams under the Yuan dynasty, became the primary type. By the Qing dynasty, Hexi polychrome painting and Suzhou polychrome painting, which evolved from the folk polychrome painting of the Jiangnan region of the Ming dynasty, appeared. The Xuanzi type was one of the three main polychrome painting types in the Qing dynasty. It was fully developed compared to the Hexi type as it was used more widely. The article explains the development of the artistic features of the various decorative parts of Xuanzi polychrome painting during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the characteristics of each gradation, and the method of distinguishing it, as well as its place of application.

Sanqi is first recorded in the Compendium of Materia Medica(Ben Cao Gang Mu) in the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Sanqi, as a precious Dao-di herb, was successively spread and introduced for cultivation. This study verified the germplasm resources, production areas, and spread of Sanqi in the Ming and Qing Dynasties by systematically reviewing the historical materials, such as materia medica works and local chronicles, and the modern distribution of production areas. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the original plants of Sanqi included Panax notoginseng, P. japonicus, P. bipinnatifidus, P. zingiberensis, P. stipuleanatus, and Gynura japonica. Among them, the production area of P. notoginseng has changed. From 1578 to 1593, the main production areas of P. notoginseng were Nandan county, Hechi city in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Guangnan county and Funing county, Wenshan prefecture in Yunnan province. From 1683 to 1755, the production areas of P. notoginseng additionally included Yizhou district, Tian'e county, and Huanjiang county in Hechi city, and Tianyang district and Tiandong county in Baise city, Xincheng county and Gongcheng county in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. From 1765 to 1892, the production areas additionally included Youjiang district, Debao county, Napo county, and Jingxi city in Baise city, and Tiandeng county in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and Wenshan city, Malipo county, Yanshan county, Xichou county, and Maguan county in Wenshan prefecture, and Baoshan city, Dali prefecture, Lincang city, Honghe prefecture, Mangshi city, and Lushui city in Yunnan province. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Sanqi was introduced to Zhejiang province. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, it was introduced to Fujian province. During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, it was introduced to Hunan province. By comprehensively reviewing the materia medica works, local chronicles, and novel historical materials, this study restores the development history of the Sanqi industry in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Historical data show that the introduction of Dao-di herbs should consider the biological characteristics of medicinal plants and avoid blind introduction.

Ever since the appearance of woodblock printing in Yangzhou during the Tang Dynasty, the development of Yangzhou woodcut prints has been rapid in Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, which flourished in the Qing Dynasty. Compared with the previous dynasties, the printing industry of Yangzhou woodcut prints in the Qing Dynasty has more variety a larger scale. As people begin to attach more attention to the artistic value of Yangzhou woodcut prints, therefore this paper carried out an analysis and research on Yangzhou woodcut prints in the Qing Dynasty. Yangzhou has been an important cultural and economic town in Ming and Qing dynasties due to its location at the junction of canal and the Yangtze River. With continuous development of Yangzhou woodcut prints printing technology in the Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou woodcut prints also made a very outstanding achievement, forming a very important part of the history of ancient woodcut prints in China. Yangzhou woodblock printing was renowned throughout the country at that time, the current offset printing in Yangzhou has quite a lot of workshop printing, family printing and official printing copies, on account of its high artistic achievement, it also ranks top in the famous engraving books in our country. Yangzhou is one of the center cities of woodblock printing in Ming and Qing dynasties, also the only city reserving the full range of ancient China's woodblock printing technology. Currently, Yangzhou roughly has a collection of three hundred thousand ancient book copies of Ming and Qing dynasties, in which there are many exquisite woodcut prints. The earliest Yangzhou woodcut prints had a comparatively unique style and remaining quantity, with a relatively distinct artistic style and characteristics, which are possible to well reflect indigenous aesthetic taste.

Throughout Chinese history, the power of the emperor has shown a trend of increasing. Eventually, it reached its peak in the Qing Dynasty. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, imperial power during the Qing Dynasty was more powerful and centralized which led to a more stable political situation. The rulers of the Qing dynasty learned an important lesson from the Ming dynasty’s demise that was the struggle between imperial power and bureaucratic groups and effectively avoided a series of problems occurred in the mid-to-late Ming dynasty by several means, including improving the emperor’s personal ability, strengthening the emperor’s power, optimizing the administrative apparatus, and intensifying ideological control. These methods above helped the imperial power grow up to an unprecedented level. This paper discusses the reasons for the measures to strengthen imperial power in the Qing dynasty, based on the historical works such as The History of the Ming Dynasty, The History of the Qing Dynasty, and Reading Notes of Twenty-two Historical Books.

1. Western Perceptions of China from the Late Sixteenth Century to the Present, Jonathan Spence 2. Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How it Became Chinese, David. N. Keightley 3. The Evolution of Government in China, Jack L. Dull 4. Sage Kings and Laws in the Chinese and Greek Traditions, Karen Turner 5. The Confucian Tradition in Chinese History, Tu Wei-ming 6. Religious Traditions in Chinese Civilization, T. H. Barrett 7. Science and Medicine in Chinese History, Nathan Sivin 8. Women, Marriage and the Family in Chinese History, Patricia Ebrey 9. Chinese Economic History in Comparative Perspective, Albert Feuerwerker 10. Modern Chinese Social History in Comparative Perspective, William T. Rowe 11. Chinese Art and its Impact on the West, Michael Sullivan 12. Poetry in the Chinese Tradition, Stephen Owen 13. The Distinctive Art of Chinese Fiction, Paul S. Ropp