Early Qing China Research Articles

Publishing as a Coterie Enterprise: Zhang Chao and the Making of Printed Texts in Early Qing China

This paper explores the meanings of the print medium and making a printed text in the early Qing literati community by reconstructing the production and circulation of printed texts of a literatus-publisher, Zhang Chao (1650-ca.1707). Zhang Chao’s publishing pr 1 actice demonstrates that early Qing literati publishers appropriated print not simply as a technological tool of rapid duplication of texts for wide dissemination. Instead they constituted print as a social means to evoke the conventions and privileges of the manuscript tradition, in which production and circulation of texts promoted the exclusive status and privilege of the elite community.

Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China. Part Two

A database of holy dreams, assembled from Jesuit reports of the 17th century, forms the basis for qualitative and quantitative analyses, the results of which are compared with a second database of holy dreams drawn from Buddhist sources of the 17th and 18th centuries. The comparative analysis of religious images, doctrines, and the social history of dreams allows for some tentative observations on the psychology of Christian conversion and the sociology of Christian community formation in late Ming and early Qing China.

Forgive us our sins. Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China

Forgive us our sins. Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China

The metaphor of illness: Medical culture in the dissemination of Catholicism in early Qing China

During early Qing Dynasty, with the gradual spread of Catholicism among local society, the role of the Catholic Church in treating peoples’ disease became increasingly important. To fulfill the goal of converting Chinese, missionaries not only tried to make a favorable impression by distributing medicine, but also competed with Buddhism, Taoism and other folk religions by constructing a series of romantic images concerning illness in society in order to more successfully disseminate Catholic ideology. The “exorcising” ability of Holy-water, the Cross, the Rosary and other items used in Catholic worship, and the sacramental rituals were exaggerated by missionaries and Chinese Catholics when preaching the Catholic faith in grassroots communities. The dialogue between Catholicism and Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs found in Catholic medical stories from early Qing Dynasty is an important part of Catholic medical culture.

Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China ed. by Nicolas Standaert, Ad Dudink (review)

Book Reviews 193 Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China Edited by NICOLAS STANDAERT & AD DUDINK. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica; Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2006. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, LV. 268 pages. ISSN 0179-261X; ISBN 978-38050-05401 . €40.00 paperback. This volume should go a long way toward moving our understanding of Christian confession in China during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries beyond generalities. Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China, a collection of contributions resulting from an international workshop on “Chinese and Christian Rituality in Late Imperial China,” held in Leuven, Belgium in June of 2004, is made up of an Introduction by the two editors, three articles, and a translation of a confessional manual. The short Introduction places the articles in the context of compilation of the Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One (635-1800) (Leiden, 2000). According to the editors of the Introduction (who were also the editors of the Handbook), they realized while compiling the Handbook that information is scarce on Christian ritual in China. Rather than wait for a study to be written and cause a considerable delay in publication of the Handbook, the editors chose to fill this gap of knowledge by later continuing efforts. The workshop on ritual which resulted in this volume is a first step in efforts to fill the gap. Eugenio Menegon’s “Deliver Us From Evil: Confession and Salvation in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Chinese Catholicism,” explores in rich descriptive detail and example the sacrament of penance (confession) as taught to and practiced by Chinese Christians. Part One of the article discusses confession as a sacramental ritual. According to Menegon, the Jesuits when introducing Christian beliefs and practices to the Chinese focused on developing a sense of sin and an understanding of the importance of baptism and repentance as rituals to control sin. Early oral explanation gave way in later decades to booklets and fliers outlining the steps of the confession rite: examination of conscience, contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Through words, attitude, and action, the penitent expressed both inward contrition and an outward repentance. Part Two of the article examines how confession was experienced in the social and religious life of Christians. The sacrament was important to all Christians, whatever their social or educational level, for some as a means of moral selfcultivation and for others for protection from evil, cleansing from sin, and assurance of salvation. While Christians in urban areas were able to receive the sacrament of penance several times a year, those in isolated rural areas had to wait for whenever a priest came. Many feared dying without confessing and looked to Mary and indulgences for help in obtaining forgiveness. Menegon stresses that it was important for Chinese Christians that the rites worked; the authority the priests had over them was derived from their power to enact efficacious ritual. Five appendices follow the article proper: (1) a comparison of the Tables of Contents from the two texts on confession, Dizui zhenggui 滌罪正規 and Dizui zhenggui lüe 194 Journal of Chinese Religions 滌罪正規略 by Giuliu Aleni; (2) the Confiteor and Act of Contrition in Chinese; (3) Gaojie siyao 告 解 四 要 [The Four Essentials of Confession] translated into English; (4) the Examination of conscience from Dizui zhenggui lüe 滌罪正規略; (5) a preliminary statistical analysis and tables related to the practice of sacramental confession in China. The scope of the second article, “Buddhist chanhui and Christian Confession in Seventeenth Century China” by Erik Zürcher, is broader than the title suggests. While the main focus is chanhui 懺悔 (“confession of guilt and remorse”) compared to Christian confession, he actually examines self-examination and self-accusation in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions. Noting that confession of sin is a part of many Buddhist rituals, Zürcher describes the chanhui rituals, in which Buddhas and bodhisattvas are invoked for help in eliminating sin and asked to transfer merit. A crucial difference with Christian confession is that in chanhui, the sins are generalized categories, never specific misdeeds, and the liturgy is a collective ceremony that produces merit shared by the whole group to help lessen karmic guilt. Zürcher briefly mentions Ledgers of...

Book Review: Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China

Book Review: Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China

Forgive Us Our Sins. Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China (review)

Forgive Us Our Sins. Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China (review)

Western Learning and Imperial Scholarship: The Kangxi Emperor’s Study

[Catherine Jami is Senior Researcher at the French CNRS (REHSEIS, Universite Paris-Diderot). This article was written during her tenure as the French Government Fellow at Churchill College, when she was also a visiting scholar at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, UK. She has published extensively on seventeenthand eighteenth-century Chinese mathematics, as well as on the Jesuits and on the reception of the sciences they introduced in late Ming and early Qing China. She is currently completing a book on the imperial appropriation of mathematics during the Kangxi reign.]

Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature

The frequent appearance of androgyny in Ming and Qing literature has long interested scholars of late imperial Chinese culture. A flourishing economy, widespread education, rising individualism, a prevailing hedonism - all of these had contributed to the gradual disintegration of traditional gender roles in late Ming and early Qing China (1550-1750) and given rise to the phenomenon of androgyny. Now, Zuyan Zhou sheds new light on this important period, offering a highly original and astute look at the concept of androgyny in key works of Chinese fiction and drama from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The work begins with an exploration of androgyny in Chinese philosophy and Ming-Qing culture. Zhou proceeds to examine chronologically the appearance of androgyny in major literary writing of the time, yielding novel interpretations of canonical works from The Plum in the Golden Vase, through the scholar-beauty romances, to The Dream of the Red Chamber. He traces the ascendance of the androgyny craze in the late Ming, its culmination in the Ming-Qing transition, and its gradual phasing out after the mid-Qing. The study probes deviations from engendered codes of behavior both in culture and literature, then focuses on two parallel areas: androgyny in literary characterization and androgyny in literati identity. The author concludes that androgyny in late Ming and early Qing literature is essentially the dissident literati's stance against tyrannical politics, a psychological strategy to relieve anxiety over growing political inferiority.

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China

The Literary Circulation of Actors in Seventeenth-Century China

Actors were luxury goods traded among the elite in late Ming and early Qing China. Not only individual actors but entire troupes were sold, bestowed upon friends, and bequeathed upon relatives. Their circulation served to create and maintain networks of social exchange, in much the same manner as did gifts of fine ceramic ware, calligraphic scrolls, and ancient bronzes. The cultural prestige of the actor as a luxury good, in turn, was predicated on a highly refined discourse of connoisseurship. For example, the theater aficionado Pan Zhiheng's (1556–1622) disquisitions on the art of acting were collected in a volume entitledChongding xinshang pian(Recompiled texts on connoisseurship), published between 1600 and 1640 (Clunas 1991, 36). In this essay, I discuss the social significance of the connoisseurship of the actor, examining the exchange of actors and poems among a rarefied stratum of the mid-seventeenth-century elite.

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China

Modernity and subjectivity in China

Jonathan Hay Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China

Reviews of Books:Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China Jonathan Hay

Reviews of Books:Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China Jonathan Hay

Provenance in Contest: Searching for the Origins of Jesuit Astronomy in Early Qing China, 1664–1705

(2002). Provenance in Contest: Searching for the Origins of Jesuit Astronomy in Early Qing China, 1664–1705. The International History Review: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 1-36.

Shitao: painting and modernity in early Qing China

1. Shitao, Yangzhou, and modernity 2. The conspicuous consumption of time 3. The common claim on dynastic narrative 4. Zhu Ruoji's destinies 5. The acknowledgment of origins 6. The Artis-Entrepreneur 7. Paintings as commodities 8. The painter's craft 9. Painting as praxis 10. The private horizon.

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China (review)

Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China (review)

The Loyalty of Adopted Sons in Ming and Early Qing China

The Loyalty of Adopted Sons in Ming and Early Qing China