As Hangzhou became the capital of the Southern Song Empire, new villas and palaces with parks were built for the imperial family in the city and on the shores of the West Lake. Emperors bestowed the parks and villas on important politicians, some related to the imperial family or to the empresses’ families. When politicians were downgraded or died, the emperors confiscated the parks and retransferred them to members of the imperial family. Apart from this political function, parks were assigned to specific uses, be it recreation and amusement or ceremonial purposes. Some parks came to be neglected or rededicated as nurseries to provide other parks with plants or timber. Yet most were famous not only for their horticultural accessories but also for their rock arrangements and artificial lakes, which imitated in miniature the West Lake scenery, requiring adequate management of their water supply system.

This article investigates the Jingjiao text Zhixuan anle jing, composed by Jingjing (fl. late 8th to early 9th century) under the Tang dynasty. Focusing on the contact between Jingjing and his contemporary Prajña (fl. late 8th to early 9th century), a Buddhist translator, it compares the Zhixuan anle jing and Prajña’s Dasheng bensheng xindi guan jing in terms of their shared imagery, suggesting that Jingjing’s text may have been composed after the production of the Dasheng bensheng xindi guan jing in 811 CE, yet before the suppression of Buddhism started in 843. This article also provides a transcription of the Zhixuan anle jing based on photographs of the manuscripts and the author’s punctuated version. In this way, it offers a new understanding of Jingjing’s obscure life and his contact with Buddhism.

This article describes three concepts of debt that were prominent in the literary world of Tang China – money, merit, and meter – and makes a case for their fungibility in certain contexts. The relationship between the three was more than just metaphoric – all were forms of currency with exchange value within their own spheres. In some cases, debts of money, merit, and meter could be repaid not just in kind, but also with one of the other forms of currency. An understanding of these interconnected systems leads to a deeper understanding of one aspect of Chinese literary history – namely, the importance of Buddhism in the Tang literary world – and prompts questions that shed new light on its dynamics.

Fung Asseng and Fung Ahok are the earliest Chinese ever to stay on the contemporary territory of Germany. All previous research on their biography contains, due to the narrowness of sources, numerous errors. The present article attempts to clarify the situation on the basis of newly discovered materials and is primarily concerned with the visit of the two Chinese to the home of the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1822. In addition, the present article has broadened its horizons to include the other Chinese believed to have been exhibited during the early 19th century in Germany in order to rediscover a forgotten page of history.

This article analyzes concepts of factual narration in the Kongcongzi, a text that thus far has received little scholarly attention. The author argues that the text indicates a pronounced interest in this subject, and presents different points of view. The first ten chapters of the Kongcongzi tend to manifest a lenient attitude towards narrative factuality, whereas in Chapters Twelve to Twenty-one, the distinction between facts and falsehood seems to become increasingly important. Through a comparative analysis of narratives from both groups of chapters, the author attempts to explore the protagonists’ views on the meaning and purpose of factual narration. The author also explores various conclusions that can be drawn from these insights in the context of the textual history of the Kongcongzi and our understanding of early Chinese narrative prose in general.

Timothy Richard spent over forty years in China as a member of the English Baptist Missionary Society. His career has yet to be critically examined as a whole. This article focuses on an interregnum in its long span that Richard called “years of trial and suspense” (1886–1891), during which he clashed with his colleagues in Shanxi province over mission goals and methods. He insisted, for instance, that China’s “complete salvation” must consist of both soul and body. Despite the dual emphasis, however, in practice, he shifted more and more attention to matters of the body, that is, the needs of this life on earth. Herein lay the tensions of his approach. Ever mindful of the evangelical imperative, he distanced himself nonetheless from basic missionary activities like street-chapel preaching and sought to cultivate ties with the “upper classes” and utilize education and literature (translated and original) as tools for China’s “uplifting.” His message, audience, and method intersected a growing Chinese demand for change and rendered him relevant to the late Qing discourse of reform. As a pointer for future research, it is suggested that more Chinese sources are needed to illuminate and corroborate Richard’s account of his China experiences. Also, his cultural role will be better understood in a comparative context alongside the work of other Protestant figures.

This article examines Xu Qian (1871–1940), a prominent figure in the Republican period and the changes in his theological thought. I explain why Xu’s theological thought can be called a germinating version of “liberation theology” in China and argue that a number of factors influenced his theological thought in the context of his time, his understanding of science being a key factor. I analyze how science interacts with his understanding of Christianity in his Christian journey. I find that Xu’s Christian journey is a gradual process of eliminating the supernatural components, culminating in the conclusion that the only function of Christianity is to save the nation, and that this process of change is inseparable from his expanded understanding of “science.” The relevance of Xu’s example for today is that the expanded understanding of “science” still exists. I conclude with a suggestion for a broader exploration of the meaning of science.

Adopting different points of view, this article analyzes a manuscript recently discovered in the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, the Dictionarium Latino Nankinense juxta Materiarum ordinem dispositum, handwritten by the French Jesuit missionary Benjamin Brueyre. It focuses in particular on the discovery’s potential importance for the study of Qing dynasty Nanjing Mandarin, while referencing its implications on the cross-cultural interactions between China and Europe. After an introduction presenting other fundamental texts compiled in Nanjing Mandarin by Western missionaries and scholars, the first section details the most commonly accepted grammatical theoretical framework for distinguishing Beijing Mandarin and Nanjing Mandarin. In the second section, the author presents the manuscript in detail, describing its purpose, its possible sources, and some of its linguistic peculiarities, particularly the lexicological, lexicographical, and grammatical features, as well as some illustrative examples of cross-cultural translations. Finally, in the third section, using the framework presented in the first, the author shows that the Dictionarium is a text mixing linguistic features from different varieties of Mandarin. As highlighted by the approach of missionary linguistics, the manuscript is a rare and important record of lexicological, lexicographical, grammatical, and romanization features of late Qing dynasty Chinese and deserves further research from both historical linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives.

The word ouyu occurs with some frequency in early Chinese literature, signifying “to whisper” or “to murmur.” It is frequently associated with expressing dissatisfaction in a furtive manner and with behaving in an undisciplined or indecorous way. In this article, I cover all significant instances of this word that occur in Song and pre-Song sources and find them to be about whispering for different reasons, in different contexts and with different consequences. According to the Shiji, the First Emperor of the Qin banned ouyu about the Documents and the Odes (ouyu Shi Shu). This is the earliest attested use of the term and the passage is usually interpreted to mean that the First Emperor prohibited people from congregating to criticise his government by reference to past lore as narrated in the Documents and the Odes. This would make it the only instance in the available literature where ouyu is about anything. I argue that the commonly accepted interpretation rests on a misinterpretation of the early commentaries and suggest that the characters Shi Shu may be the result of a corruption in Shiji. What the Qin emperor outlawed was the activity of whispering as such – if people talked conspiratorially in a subdued voice, the regime saw this as proof that they harboured rebellious intentions and therefore deserved public execution, with no further evidence needed. In the last section, I discuss some literary senses of ou. I have previously argued that some of these are helpful to understanding the Qin Burning of the Books; I now dismiss them as irrelevant, since the widely attested use of ouyu as “to whisper” fully explains the Qin regime’s efforts to quell criticism of its rule, as well as all later uses of the word in similar contexts.

This article introduces Yang Enlin, whose scholarly life was dedicated to building and deepening the cultural understanding between China and Germany. Born in Yunnan, China, in 1929, he graduated from the Central University of Governance (Guoli zhongyang zhengzhi daxue 國立中央政治大學) in Nanjing in 1948. To continue his studies, he then moved to Switzerland and later Germany. From the 1950s, he lived in East Berlin, first working as a translator, and then, after doctoral studies at Humboldt University, at the East Asian Art Collection of the Pergamon Museum. During his tenure at this institution from 1959 to 1994, he not only contributed to the museum’s mission in the form of exhibitions and catalogues, but also continued his research in the areas of Chinese art history and German studies. He, moreover, kept working on the translation of Chinese literature into German and was teaching Chinese language, calligraphy, and painting.