Chinese Cultural History Research Articles

Su Shi and Zhao Lingrang: Brush Ideas of Wang Wei

The poet and painter Wang Wei (699-759) of the Tang dynasty (618-907) had poetry in his painting and painting in his poetry. With that claim, Su Shi (1037-1101) linked painting with a prestigious literary genre. Although no one believed that painting held a status equal to poetry, eleventh-century appropriations of literary forms and allusions into painting were an important development in the history of Chinese culture. The literary turn elevated painting to an elite art.Connoisseurs of the eleventh and later centuries saw connections to Wang Wei in the paintings of Zhao Lingrang (active 1070-after 1100). Su Shi and Huang Tingjian (1045-1105) encouraged Zhao's efforts. The connoisseur Dong Qichang (1555-1636) of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), after carefully studying Summer Mist along the Lakeshore (Huzhuang qingxia tu 湖莊清夏圖), wrote in a colophon on the handscroll (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) that Zhao's composition thoroughly followed the brush ideas (bi yi 筆意) of Wang Wei.This essay argues that what Su Shi encouraged, what Zhao Lingrang created in Summer Mist, and what Dong Qichang observed was a relationship that transcended mere imitation of brushwork. Zhao's connection to Wang Wei was not stylistic, but rather was a matter of approach: Zhao was working like a literatus, thinking in poetic structures, and expressing his thoughts by painting literary metaphors. Poetic structure will be analyzed as well as three literary tropes: trees, gurgling stream, and the configuration of eight rocks.

The Emphasis Of Methaphorical Form On Cultural Park

Chinese in Indonesia as one of the diverse ethnicity had a long story in Medan’s development. Even though Chinese has been in Indonesia for a long time, the history of Chinese culture is rarely known by the public. The need for a medium to support this is to preserve the culture and history of Chinese. The inadequate medium for documenting and preserving the cultural history threatens the culture gradually lost in the age so that it needs a museum to document Chinese culture. As one of the local and international tourist destination, it needed a cultural museum with an iconic architectural emphasis of metaphorical form. To achieve the research objectives, the glass box method was used as a research method. With the emphasis form on the museum, it could enriched tourism destination and adding insight of local or international citizen about Chinese culture in Medan.

The theory of the Indian Sanskrit origin of the Chinese drama of Zhuji in the context of the historical studies of the Oriental Culture

The purpose of the article is to illuminate the influence of Sanskrit drama on the process of traditional Chinese drama genesis, to introduce into a Ukrainian- language scientific turn of a series of information on the history of Chinese culture that is only available in modern and ancient Chinese. The research methodology is to use a combination of historical, structural, typological-comparative research methods. This methodological approach allows us to reveal and analyze the influence of the Indian Sanskrit drama on the formation of Chinese drama. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive coverage of the problems of the genesis of the Chinese traditional drama in the context of the Indian influence on the formation of the genre paradigm of Chinese traditional drama, as well as the systematization of material provided by Chinese researchers in Chinese, which has not yet been translated into the Ukrainian language and, in most cases, not entered into a scientific rush within the framework of the English literary criticism and cultural discourse. Conclusions. The idea of a dramatic action originated in India, and later, during the first millennium AD, the Indian Sanskrit drama was exported to the territory of East Turkestan and to the territory of Southeast Asia. Subsequently, the Uighur theater had a direct influence on the formation of the Chinese civilizational and cultural environment, which can be considered proven in the context of the actual material presented in the works of Chinese researchers, systematized and presented above. In the process of forming a genre paradigm of Chinese drama, in particular, the structure of the system of the role of Indian drama had a direct influence, as well as Indian influence was the structure of drama, there is a significant number of Chinese dramas, which present the motives of Chinese Buddhism

Selling Scandal in the Republican Era: Folk Opera in Performance and Print

The publication of vernacular texts in regional languages is a vibrant but relatively little-known niche in the history of Chinese print culture. This study will draw from extant opera texts (tanhu...

A study of history in Chinese scented tea culture during the Tang dynasty and Song dynasty

A study of history in Chinese scented tea culture during the Tang dynasty and Song dynasty

A Sinicised Religion Under Foreign Rule: Buddhism in the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115–1234)

Buddhism in the Jurchen Jin (1115–234) dynasty has been regarded as a peripheral phenomenon; as such, it remains largely overlooked by traditional historiography. When placed into a broader context, however, both Buddhism under Jin rule and the dynasty itself functioned as a significant link in the long chain of Chinese cultural history. The Jin witnessed a crucial time period during which Chan (Zen) Buddhism, later the most popular Buddhist school in China, gained dominance and began its transmission of several major lines. Jin Buddhism also created a large corpus of material culture, thereby providing invaluable primary sources for the study of Buddhism in China. Based on an analysis of historical writings and archaeological evidence, this article examines the development and various characteristics of Buddhism during the Jin, its relationship with the Jurchen rulers and its influence on the Jin society as a whole. To a large extent, the Jin was at least as important to the development of Buddhism as the Southern Song (1127–276). Moreover, knowledge of Jin Buddhism is indispensable to understanding the Jin culture which, in turn, is essential to understanding the general development of the multifaceted cultural traditions in medieval China.

ХАРАКТЕРНЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ОРНАМЕНТОВ КЛУАЗОНЕ ЭПОХ МИН И ЦИН В КОНТЕКСТЕ ПОИСКА ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ КИТАЙСКОГО ДЕКОРАТИВНОГО ИСКУССТВА

The article analyzes the role of cloisonné enamel in the history of Chinese artistic culture. Focusing on the ornamentation of the Ming and Qing epochs enamel the author identifies the key ornamental motifs relying on the hypothesis that their specificity is determined by the Chinese original system of national identity. This viewpoint is especially relevant nowadays when global changes affect even the most traditional societies, and China is not an exception. The author concludes that preservation of cultural traditions and revival of truly national art will serve as a foundation for the coming cultural bloom for the sake of peace and prosperity. Studying the ornament peculiarities on the basis of historical examples contributes to the development of the modern decorative and applied and monumental-decorative art of the People’s Republic of China.

同素反序词辨析

In modern Chinese vocabulary, there is a class of disyllabic compound words. Their morphemes are the same and the order is reversed. Such an alternate form of two-syllable morphemes can be called a Reverse Order Words. This kind of Reverse Order Words, which occupy a certain proportion in modern Chinese vocabulary, is one of the characteristics of Chinese vocabulary. The analysis of anti-preface words can enrich the use of vocabulary, and improve the ability to write words and sentences, help to study the structure and development of Chinese vocabulary. In fact, the Chinese Reverse Order Words are a specific Chinese cultural phenomenon. It is a grammatical rhetorical problem that should not be overlooked in the history of Chinese vocabulary and even Chinese cultural history. It is a special type of morphological lexicalization. In the oral literature. Therefore, such words really need to be analyzed. This article discusses the reverse-order words from four aspects: part of speech, meaning, pronunciation, and word formation. It proves the significant influence of word order, and the difference in the use of context is more complex. Therefore, it is related to the structure and meaning of Chinese vocabulary. As far as the standardization of vocabulary is concerned, the anti-preface word is indeed a question of caution.

The Return of China’s Soft Power in South East Asia: An Analysis of the International Branch Campuses Established by Three Chinese Universities

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between China’s soft power and the international branch campuses (IBCs) established overseas by Chinese universities, and to identify which aspect of China’s soft power has the greatest impact on these campuses. We adopted a qualitative research design that involved interviews with managers, faculty and staff at three Chinese international branch campuses in Laos, Malaysia and Thailand. Our findings suggest that China is leveraging its existing soft power to assist or promote its education export, and China’s soft power is returning to South East Asia. Although each of the three IBCs contributes to disseminating China’s soft power to a certain extent, their effort is still quite limited. The aspect of China’s soft power that has the greatest influence on the Chinese IBCs is the necessity of the Chinese language, as well as Chinese cultural history and heritage. Another important factor is the economic power of China, albeit a type of hard power. It is China’s rapid economic development that is driving students’ desire to take courses delivered in Chinese, and to learn the Chinese language at these branch campuses. The study’s findings have implications for policy makers, educators and researchers with an interest in IBCs.

A Bibliophile & Merchant in Shanghai During Modern Times: Zhang Zhiming

Zhang Zhiming was a famous merchant as Ningbo Gang and bibliophile in Shanghai during modern times. He liked ancient books and collected them, established successively private library named “Gu Huan Room” in Tokyo and Shanghai. This paper introduces Zhang’s life story and circle of friends, analyses the thoughts, characteristic, usage and dissemination of his collecting books. Collections involve ancient and modern ones within or outside China, among which there are some science and technology books that are not collected by ordinary book collectors. This may be related to his experience in sinification of science. His action of searching and collecting books and other related activities are based not only on a batch of Chinese cultural relics flowing to other countries such as Japan during the Late Qing Dynasty and Early Republic of China, but also because of the Chinese traditional culture and his hometown’s culture of collecting books. It is also related to his nature of loving books and the knowledge he has learned in Japan and Shanghai. His practice of collecting books has contributed to the inheritance and protection of Chinese culture to a certain degree, and leaving an indelible impression in the history of modern Chinese culture.

"The Meandering Course of Chinese Political Thought"

"The Meandering Course of Chinese Political Thought" Philip J. Ivanhoe (bio) Youngmin Kim. A History of Chinese Political Thought. Cambridge, UK and Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2017. x, 288 pp. Paperback $24.25, isbn 978-0-7456-5247-4. A History of Chinese Political Thought is a masterful and highly accessible account of the intersecting and often-competing expressions of political philosophy that have flowed through and shaped Chinese history, showing the complex interplay between changes in material conditions and conceptions of what such changes imply, aspire to, or might represent.1 Professor Kim weaves trenchant philosophical analysis together with careful historical detail, drawing upon a wide range of sources and making skillful use of secondary literature from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Western sources. The book bristles with original insights, challenging many traditional ideas not only about Chinese political thinking but also and more basically about what China has been and what it has meant to be Chinese. This is far and away the most interesting and revealing study of the history of Chinese political thought available and is essential reading for anyone seeking to gain an understanding of one of the [End Page 186] world's great civilizations and fully appreciate its protean and ever-evolving character. Kim describes one of his primary goals as providing "a theoretically informed long-term historical narrative" (p. viii) of Chinese political thought. This narrative is theoretically informed in at least the following two ways: (1) it takes seriously the ways in which Chinese intellectuals understood themselves and their political activity (i.e., their theories of self, value, governance, culture, etc.) and deploys these as part of the explanatory apparatus to describe, analyze, and explain what happened in the meandering course of history, and (2) it draws upon and applies a range of contemporary theories about the nature of social, political, and historical phenomena in order to further this goal. I will return to these two features of the work in the course of my comments, but first it is important to make clear some of the ways in which Kim's approach quite dramatically breaks with past attempts to provide a history of Chinese political thought and note some of the implications his approach has for scholarship in other areas of Chinese studies. Kim provides a fair and balanced description of the best classic and contemporary studies of Chinese political history and argues that all of them are "dominated by ahistorical and nationalistic perspectives" (p. viii). While there is no conceptual reason to assume it to be true, it turns out there is a common flawed assumption underlying such work—work that spans a wide range of theoretical approaches and political sensibilities—which is that there is some single, enduring essence to Chinese political thought that establishes some eternal realm of China; constitutes the character of what it is to be Chinese; and unifies the history of Chinese society, culture, and politics. Kim's book is founded on the claim that no such essence exists, and he builds his account of the history of Chinese political thought on the rubble of this foundational claim. Aside from overthrowing widely held essentialist views about the nature of Chinese thought and culture, within both the academic world and the popular imagination, Kim's view poses profound challenges to a number of contemporary thinkers who propose that the world, and particularly the West, should study China in order to understand, appreciate, and learn from the wisdom of its purported enduring essence. An important assumption lying behind this advice is that China presents a system of political governance founded on some timeless political theory that has enabled it to endure intact throughout its long history and weather the kinds of trials and tribulations that have led to the collapse of other great civilizations. The problem is clear: if there is no enduring essence to Chinese political thought, there is no eternal realm of China; no shared sense of what it is to be Chinese; and no unified and homogenous society, culture, and politics. This does not in any way imply that the study of Chinese political thought is not valuable or that the world does not have...

The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China by Christopher Rea

Reviewed by: The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China by Christopher Rea Thomas Moran The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China by Christopher Rea. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 335. $70.00 cloth, $70.00 e-book. This book is both a catalog of amusing things that were written, drawn, photographed, filmed, and performed in China from 1900 to 1937 and a detailed, scholarly account of the Chinese discourse of humor during these years. Christopher Rea’s history is “new” not because it rewrites the standard account of laughter in China—in English-language sources, The Age of Irreverence seems to be only the third book and the first single-author monograph on the general topic of funny stuff in modern China—but because it counters histories that depict late Qing and Republican China as a time of nothing but tears and sorrow (p. 7). Rea grants that the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century were crisis-ridden, but he argues that this period was nevertheless characterized by “an insouciant attitude toward convention and authority” (p. 9) and that there was plenty of “wit, sarcasm, glee, and irreverence” that made the era “bearable and even fun” (p. 14). It is difficult to imagine many Chinese adults looking back at any decade of the twentieth century and saying of their experience, “That was fun,” but Rea presents more than enough evidence to support his fundamental assertion: “Chinese writers and artists responded to . . . social and political convulsions with various forms of laughter” (p. x). Rea’s research—his “treasure hunting” (p. xiii)—was thorough, and his presentation of his findings will influence the way we think about Chinese culture as it was one hundred years ago. Rea’s book draws attention to material that has not been discussed before or that has been noticed but not gathered in one place for sustained examination. The Age of Irreverence is a first-rate contribution to the writing of the social history of Chinese culture in its complexity and heterogeneity. [End Page 273] One of several pleasures of reading the book is encountering lesser-known texts, authors, and facts. I doubt it is widely known that Lu Xun 魯迅 was a fan of an 1878 novel notable for its vulgarity and funny enough to make people “spit out their rice” (p. 89); that a collaborator of progressive dramatist and filmmaker Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋 was the “Artisan of Laughter,” Xu Zhuodai 徐卓呆; or that more than one hundred collections of humor were published in China from 1900 to 1937. Rea’s argument that scholars have paid insufficient attention to the “bantering side of Chinese literary culture” (p. 5) is convincing, and for this reason alone his book is indispensable. The Age of Irreverence was deservingly awarded a Joseph Levenson Book Prize for making “the greatest contribution to increasing understanding of the history, culture, society, politics, or economy” of post-1900 China among all books published in 2015. Rea devotes one chapter to each of what he argues are the five “most important comic trends of the early twentieth century”: xiaohua 笑話 (jokes); youxi 游戲 (play); maren 駡人 (mockery); huaji 滑稽 (farce); and youmo 幽默 (humor) (p. 9). This taxonomic organization, which Rea outlines in his introductory chapter, helps one make synchronic sense of the cornucopia of modern Chinese humor and provides structure for Rea’s diachronic narrative that traces how ideas about what was funny changed as the language of humor changed. Chapter 2 is about the “joke boom” of the late Qing and Republican eras (p. 22). The exponential growth of the Chinese publishing industry meant that hundreds of new periodicals demanded copy, and the supply included many jokes. Rea writes that the joke boom was a global phenomenon, and there was an import-export trade in jokes: China got jokes from England and North America and sent jokes everywhere that there was an audience for Chinese-language newspapers (p. 31). While funny anecdotes were favored in the late Qing, formulaic jokes dominated the Republic (p. 31), when “rare classical jokes” were republished (p. 33). From the 1890s through the 1920s, “jokes were appearing everywhere” (p. 38). “Some proponents...

Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China by Felicity Lufkin

Reviewed by: Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China by Felicity Lufkin Yurou Zhong Felicity Lufkin. Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 217 pp. $95.00 (cloth). Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China is a valuable addition to the studies of folk art, folklorics, and modern Chinese cultural history. Felicity Lufkin, employing the keen sensibility of an art historian, gives shape to the fraught intertwinement of folk art and modern culture in Republican China. Through rich illustrations and strong formal analysis, Lufkin visualizes how Chinese folk art, on the one hand, came to be understood to be primitive, backward, and in need of intellectual intervention and, on the other, held considerable power over the development of modern Chinese culture and politics. In conversation with earlier works by Chang-tai Hung and David Holm and, more recently, Xiaobing Tang and James Flath,1 Lufkin zooms in on folk art—woodcut prints and Chinese New Year pictures (年畫 nianhua) in particular—to ponder the relationship between art and politics in twentieth-century China. In chronological order, Lufkin delineates how the study of folk art in Republican China took its cue from the earlier movement of folklore studies, converged with and diverged from the New Print movement, and eventually was appropriated by both the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Part 1 depicts how the artistic, intellectual, and public discourses shaped, negotiated, and assimilated folk art in the years leading up to the full outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lufkin gives [End Page E-7] full volume to both the attraction to and ambivalence over the concept of folk art: from the abounding joy of Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻 1895-1953) at seeing Niren Zhang (泥人張) clay figures—which he compared to masterpieces of the best European sculptors—to his reluctance to meet folk artists in person (chapter 1); from Lu Xun's endorsement of and the Modern Print Association's embrace of "folkloric prints" to the criticisms that the association received for fixating on images of localized everyday life in Guangzhou without contributing to the buildup of revolutionary ethos (chapters 2 and 3); from the success of the first major Chinese exhibition of folk prints held in Hangzhou in 1937 to the curators' realization that recontextualizing folk art in a modern exhibition hall and in accordance with enlightenment discourse could not guarantee the full exorcizing of feudal remnants (chapter 4). Insofar as folk art was a source for both pride and shame for modern Chinese artists, intellectuals, and educators, "two contradictory views regarding folk and popular prints simply coexisted" (105). On the one hand, the perceived backwardness and primitivism embodied in folk art seemed to beckon elite intervention and top-down reform. On the other, despite efforts to reify the negative connotations of folk art and to fossilize it as an unchanging specimen from the past, the "diversity and cultural richness" of folk art persevered and even "intensified" at a moment of national crisis (106). Part 2 showcases how both the GMD (chapter 5) and the CCP (chapters 6 and 7) utilized folk prints during the Second Sino-Japanese War for wartime mobilization, national salvation, and the promotion of party politics. While, in Nationalist-controlled areas, the GMD narrowed their use of folk-based propaganda mostly to the resistance Door God (chapter 5), the CCP in Yan'an and other Communist base areas explored more extensively the use of folk art such as the new-style New Year pictures and papercuts (chapters 6 and 7). Lufkin is careful to note, however, that while both parties found that the "new wine" of wartime propaganda "fit comfortably and appealingly into the 'old bottles'" (136), such successful appropriation of folk art at a time of national crisis did not dispel anxieties surrounding the old forms, for fear that it would promote "feudal superstition" (164). Such suspicion of and dissatisfaction with the folk prints left room for further reform. Without making explicit the causality between the lingering suspicion of folk art and renewed reform measures in the People's Republic of China, Lufkin ends the book with a compact conclusion highlighting the key events...

Hetu and Luoshu: Retrospect and Prospection

Hetu and Luoshu, the cultural heritages that reflect ancient Chinese wisdom, are the origins of Heluo culture. The paper will focus on the present study of Hetu and Luoshu and give a prospection of the study trend by combing and analyzing related texts and documentaries. Hetu and Luoshu, or the Yellow River trigrams and the Luo River trigrams, also the first mystical images in Chinese graphemic culture, are regarded as the origin of Heluo culture and feature prominently in the history of Chinese culture and Chinese thoughts. The Legend of Hetu and Luoshu, which was included in the fourth group of National Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2014, is the fountainhead of Chinese nation and witness the long history of Chinese civilization.

A New Territory to Chart in History: On the Production of a Cultural History of Imagery in China: A Hundred-Volume Work

The cognitive paradigm of the “homology between writing and imagery” has long existed in China. Such a cultural mode of “homology between writing and imagery” or even “homogeneity between writing and imagery” led to the creation of the grand system of Chinese civilization. Prior to the invention of characters, the civilization of imagery single-handedly undertook the task of recording history and symbolizing the external world. After the maturation of the writing system, it harmoniously coexisted with and complemented the writings. “Imagery is (defined by) its terseness,” while “writing (boasts of) its broadness.” Hence, the rich history and tradition of “images on the left and historical records on the right” came into being in Chinese culture. Only in the modern times did imagery’s social function decline. At present, studies on Chinese cultural history by focusing on writings have abounded. By comparison, those focusing on imagery as the vehicle of Chinese culture are still lacking. I have not seen works on culture of imagery in China with detailed materials and complete structure. There are few research articles in this regard, too. “As (one) intends to know the great Way, (one) must work on history first.” In the process of bringing about a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, it is vital to revive Chinese culture first to present the whole world an unbroken system of civilization with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. Such a visual or graphical historical heritage and cultural mode are different from the phonetic system in Euro-American countries, because they transcend the linguistic cognitive mode and logic and thus contributed to the making of the unique civilizational form, wisdom, and a distinctive cultural lineage of imagery in China.

Yangzhou: A Place in Literature, The Local in Chinese Cultural History

Writing in the mid-seventeenth century, Dong Yining 董以寧 explained how renowned literary figures made a place significant: “The fame of mountains and rivers is mostly due to outstanding people. Befo...

Altenburger, Roland / Wan, Margaret B. / Børdahl, Vibeke: Yangzhou, A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History

Altenburger, Roland / Wan, Margaret B. / Børdahl, Vibeke: Yangzhou, A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History

Translating homosexuality into Chinese: a case study of Pan Guangdan’s translation of Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students (1933)

Before the translation of modern Western works on sexology, China had created its own lexicon for sexuality, which was seen as either a temporary and changeable obsession or an expression of social status and taste, rather than an identity. This understanding was challenged when Western biologically based sexology was introduced. Centred on a case study of Pan Guangdan’s (1946) translation of Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students (1933), in particular Chapter Five “Homosexuality” and Appendices, this paper investigates how Western sexological discourse was translated and deployed in Republican China’s quest for social and cultural modernity. It analyses the strategies that Pan adopted to translate terms and concepts related to homosexuality into Chinese and the evidential approach that he applied to trace and write a history of Chinese homosexual culture in the paratexts of his translation. In addition to shedding new light on global histories of sexuality, it also illustrates the role of translators in the development and interaction of different knowledge and knowledge systems across languages and cultures.

Marco Polo and the Emergence of British Sinology

This article reads William Marsden’s 1818 translation of The Travels of Marco Polo as representative of literary contributions to nineteenth-century British Sinology. Compensating for Britons’ circumscribed Chinese knowledge before the first Opium War, Sinologists reconfigured extant knowledge into ostensibly cohesive accounts of Chinese cultural history, thereby creating the illusion of informational mastery. In his Marco Polo, Marsden relies on anachronistic Chinese scholarship to inform his translation. In particular, his annotations manipulate Britons’ finite knowledge of China into a seemingly comprehensive history that represents China as culturally stagnant. Marsden’s paratexts transform Polo’s travelogue into scholarship that advances both Sinology’s disciplinary maturation and Anglo-Sino relations.

Science: a world without borders.

Science: a world without borders.