Early Qing Research Articles

Feasibility Study on Hyperspectral LiDAR for Ancient Huizhou-Style Architecture Preservation

Huizhou-style ancient architecture was one of the most important genres of architectural heritage in China. The architecture employed bricks, woods, and stones as raw materials, and timber frames were significant structures. Due to the drawback that the timbers were vulnerable to moisture and atmospheric agents, ancient timber buildings needed frequent protective interventions to maintain its good condition. Such interventions unavoidably disrupted the consistency between the original timber components. Besides this, the modifications brought about difficulty in correctly analysing and judging the state of existing ancient buildings, which, in current preservation practices, mainly rely on the expertise of skilled craftsmen to classify wood species and to identify the building-age of the timber components. Therefore, the industry and the research community urgently need a technique to rapidly and accurately classify wood materials and to discriminate building-age. In the paper, we designed an eye-safe 81-channel hyperspectral LiDAR (HSL) to tackle these issues. The HSL used an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) as a spectral bandpass filter, offering the HSL measurements with 5 nm spectral resolution. Based on the HSL measurements, we analysed the relationship between the surface and cross-section spectral profiles of timber components from different ancient architectures built in the early Qing dynasty (~300 years), late Qing dynasty (~100 years), and nowadays, and confirmed the feasibility of using surface spectra of timber components for classification purpose. We classified building-ages and wood species with multiple Naive Bayes (NB) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers by the surface spectra of timber components; this also unveiled the possibility of classifying gnawed timber components from its spectra for the first time. The encouraging experimental results supported that the AOTF-HSL is feasible for historic timber building preservation.

The Evolution of Early Qing Regulations on Fugitive Slaves

The early Qing regulations on fugitive slaves, which originated in pre-1644 Manchu society, aimed to stop banner slaves from escaping. Because very harsh punishments were imposed on both those who harbored fugitive slaves as well as the harborers’ neighbors (both of whom were mainly Han), these regulations led to many tragedies among the Han population and became a key site of Manchu-Han conflict during the Shunzhi and Kangxi reigns. Scholars have thus tended to see them as representative of Manchu alien rule. Unlike previous scholars’ perspectives that emphasize the early Qing rulers’ cruelty toward the Han population in implementing the fugitive regulations, this article demonstrates that Qing rulers, including Dorgon, Shunzhi, and Oboi, protected the interests of the Han population, and that Han legal principles eventually prevailed.

Playing against Type: The Moral Merchant on the Early Qing Stage

Abstract This article explores the changing depiction of the merchant and the mercantile in the early Qing. A figure of much anxiety and mistrust in the late imperial imagination, the traveling merchant moves things out of their proper place—through both his movement of goods across space and his own mobility across social strata. In the early Qing play Shiwu guan 十五貫 (Fifteen Strings of Cash), however, the merchant's facilitation of the circulation of money and man does not trouble the social whole as much as constitute it. The merchant-hero breaks through narrative and economic impasses, directing capital away from the dead ends of hoarding and incest and toward the creation of productive marriages. In recuperating the merchant as a moral subject and his circulation of money as a moral act, Shiwu guan offers new possibilities for the construction of selfhood both onstage and off.

Genre Conflation and Fictional Religiosity in Guilian meng (Returning to the Lotus Dream)

Abstract The early Qing (1644–1911) midlength vernacular novel Guilian meng 歸蓮夢 (Returning to the Lotus Dream, hereafter Lotus Dream), attributed to Su'an zhuren 蘇庵主人 (Master of Su'an, hereafter Su'an), features a triple hybrid narrative: a hagiographic account of the female protagonist's path to Buddhist enlightenment, a scholar-beauty romance, and a heroic military adventure. Although Su'an (himself a lay Buddhist) claims to preach Buddhist teachings through the novel, the text does not represent the exclusive voice of a single religion or belief system. Instead, its hybrid narrative allows Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and the teachings of other popular sects to interact, intertwine, and compete. This essay argues that the novel's narrative amalgamation is a result of the author's conscious adherence to established genre conventions and market tastes, while it quietly subsumes other religious beliefs into its own Buddhism. In its own way, the novel reflects the larger trend of syncretism, found in literary and religious practices alike in the seventeenth century. As such, Lotus Dream offers us a good example of “fictional religiosity,” encompassing both the religious elements scattered throughout vernacular novels and these novels' growing cultural authority. The religiosity of fiction is best understood in light of the notion of xiaoshuo jiao 小說教 (cult/teachings of fiction), denoting the genre's quasi-religious power of persuasion. Lotus Dream thus serves as an excellent starting point for a reconsideration of the spiritual authority that vernacular novels exercised in the Qing dynasty.

타인의 초상 - 明末 淸初 여성 시인의 눈에 비친 여성의 모습

This paper focus on how female poets from the the early Qing and lately Ming saw other female women include “the Beauty Painting[美人圖]” as the process of drawing self-portraits. In the early Qing and lately Ming , female poets, grown bigger in their numbers, mainly covered life-related materials, tried to put their appreciations and opinions in their poems.BR However, in the absence of women

초기 대청 북경사행 기록과 사행 노정 검토

초기 대청 북경사행 기록과 사행 노정 검토

淸初 州縣 行政과 幕友 - 黃六鴻의 『福惠全書』를 중심으로 -

淸初 州縣 行政과 幕友 - 黃六鴻의 『福惠全書』를 중심으로 -

A Foreshadowing in the Strange Tales of Liao-Zhai for Its Implied Political Meaning and Spiritual Sustenance

中国文学史研究，历来有脱离史证形而上的倾向，对蒲松龄与≪聊斋志异≫的研究尤为如此。 文章立足史证，对蒲松龄家世背景与科考历程进行了细致考辨，认为蒲松龄少年科场得志，随性纵情，旁求古道，不务科考，是其屡试不第，仕途中绝的主要原因。 蒲松龄有着强烈的自我意识，率性纯真，全性任情，悠然于田园之间，他有着清醒的自我认知，未尝沉迷于科场。 蒲松龄继承了先秦以来中国文人关注自我、 关注生活的传统，他创作的≪聊斋志异≫，是明末“人”的文学与思想的集大成者，是自我意识发展在清初社会受到压制，而在“他界”的逆向伸展。 书中充满了对人与人世的赞美与肯定、 对真情真爱的歌颂以及朴素的平等观念，意求“有功名教”、 以道济世，以“人”为中心对现实社会提出政治观照。 在清初沉闷的文坛中，闪出了耀眼的人性光辉。The study of the history of Chinese literature has always had the tendency to disregard historical evidence or to be one-sided, especially the study of Pu Songling and his work, Strange Tales of Liao-Zhai. Based on historical evidence, this article makes a detailed textual research analysis of Pu Songling’s family background and the course of the imperial examination. The article holds that Pu Songling’s success in the imperial examination when he was young and his later self-indulgence by seeking the ancient route and deviating from the path and goal of the imperial examination are the main reasons for his ultimate failure in the examination and his complete disconnection from his official career. However, Pu Songling had a strong sense of self, preserved his mind, indulged his feelings, and was satisfied with life in the countryside. Moreover, he had a clear self-cognition and was not addicted to imperial examinations. He inherited the tradition of Chinese literati since the Pre-Qin dynasty, which involved paying attention to themselves and their lives. His Strange Tales of Liao-Zhai is a collection of literature and thoughts based on humanity in the late Ming dynasty, which is a reverse extension of self-consciousness development in other places from the suppression of the early Qing society. The book is full of praise for people in the world and for true love and the simple concept of equality, which is intended to benefit Confucianism and political rule, hoping to use Taoism to help the world, and to put forward political views on the basis of the people. In the dull literary world of the early Qing dynasty, this book was a dazzling brilliance of human nature.

Re-examining the impact of European astronomy in seventeenth-century China: a study of Xue Fengzuo’s system of thought and his integration of Chinese and Western knowledge

ABSTRACTDuring the late Ming and early Qing period, Jesuit missionaries introduced European science into China, and thereby profoundly influenced the later development of Chinese astronomy. Not only did European astronomy become the official system of the Qing dynasty, but the traditional way to ‘attain up above’ by connecting the study of astronomy and Yi learning gradually fell into disuse. However, the astronomers in this period expressed different views on these two processes. As one of the most important early Qing astronomers, Xue Fengzuo’s case presents a distinctive and important example. Firstly, under the influences of both Chinese tradition and European science, Xue Fengzuo rebuilt the way to ‘attain up above’ based on his three-fold ‘calendrical learning’, i.e. calendrical astronomy, astrology and related pragmatic applications, through which he could realize the highest Confucian ideal. Secondly, he integrated Chinese and Western knowledge for all three aspects of his ‘calendrical learning’, instead of ceding the dominant position to Western methods. From Xue Fengzuo’s example, many of the complex effects of the encounter between different cultures and the process of knowledge transfer can be revealed.

The nationalization process and formation of Shuitian Yi ethnicity during Ming and Qing: A case study of the Yi ethnic group in Bailu Ying, Mianning County, Sichuan

This study explores the question of how ethnic groups were assimilated by the Imperial State to be placed under the administration of the central government and how their ethnicity changed during this process of nationalization. This paper studies the case of the Yi ethnic group in Bailu Ying of Mianning county, Sichuan Province in China. The ancestors of Yi people in Bailu Ying lived on Mount Daliang before the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty. In the early period of the Ming Dynasty, the government had set up Ningfan Garrison on the river valley on the west side of Mount Daliang. By the late Wanli Period, the garrison was consistently being attacked by the indigenous people in the area. In order to quell the resistance, the Imperial Court recruited Yi people as soldiers to guard the garrison. Afterwards, a new settlement of the Yi tribe in the Bailu Ying River valley emerged, and in the process the Yi people’s livelihood was transformed from herding and fishing to agriculture. In the early Qing, the Yi people in Bailu Ying were further integrated into the Imperial system with the inclusion of chieftains in the imperial governing body. However, up until the later years of the Qianlong reign, the Yi maintained relative autonomy in terms of its tribal settlement, power structure and cultural integrity. Later, with the arrival of new Han migrants, the introduction of the Baojia system, and the promotion of Han culture and education, the Yi group in Bailu Ying gradually lost its independence and began to be assimilated into the national identity, leading to the formation of Shuitian (rice field) Yi ethnicity. The case of the Shuitian Yi shows that the survival strategy of tribal minorities from the mountains did not necessarily follow the pattern of ‘avoiding becoming part of empires’, as suggested by James C. Scott, nor were these ethnic people always slow and passive in integrating with empires. On the contrary, the acceptance of the imperial rule was a survival strategy that helped to creating new ethnic groups while also consolidating frontiers for the Ming and Qing Empires.

Sheng Ren in the Figurists’ Reinterpretation of the Yijing

Christian missions to China have sought to make their message more acceptable to their Chinese audience by expressing, in translations of Christian texts, Christian terms and concepts in language borrowed from China’s indigenous Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist traditions. The Jesuits were especially renowned for their accommodation policy. Interestingly, when the Jesuit Figurists arrived in China in the early Qing dynasty, they conducted exhaustive studies on the Chinese classics, studies in which they identified Tian and Di of Chinese culture with God or Deus in Latin; their descriptions of Jesus and Adam were decorated with “chinoiserie” through their association with the Yijing and Chinese mystical legends. Each Figurist, in investigating Figurism and interpreting the Yijing, had his own identity, focus, and trajectory. The Figurist use of sheng ren was employed in this paper to distinguish each signature approach and how they explained the image of Jesus and prelapsarian Adam using the ethical emotions and virtues of a sheng ren 聖人 in their reinterpretation of the Yijing and the Dao. This also led to the European people aspiring for a more in-depth understanding and more discussion of the Yijing and the Dao.

Going Beyond the Western Pass: Chinese Folk Models of Danger and Abandonment in Songs of Separation

From the early Qing dynasty (1644–1911) to the beginning of the People’s Republic, men in northern China from drought-prone regions of northwestern Shanxi province and northeastern Shaanxi province would travel beyond the Great Wall to find work in western Inner Mongolia, in a migration known as “going beyond the Western Pass” 走西口. This article analyzes anthologized song lyrics and ethnographic interviews about this migration to explore how songs of separation performed at temple fairs approached danger and abandonment using traditional metaphors and “folk models” similar to those of parents protecting children from life’s hazards and widows and widowers lamenting the loss of loved ones. I argue that these duets between singers embodying the roles of migrant laborers and the women they left behind provided a public language for audiences to reflect upon and contextualize private emotions in a broader social context, offering rhetorical resolutions to ambivalent anxieties.

『一片情』의 婚姻 딜레마

Various paradoxical means of narrative that questions the motivation of writing 『Yipianqing』, which is a sympathy towards women who are dissatisfied with their marriage life under the paradox of the marriage system, the equivocal conclusion on the unfaithful women, the hysterical obsession in defense against women"s adultery and the admittance of women"s lust and justification of affair at the same time, the setting of imputing all responsibilities of women"s affair and destruction of family to the man, and feeling serious fear of losing one"s face and life damage from the wife"s affair are the characteristics of『Yipianqing』 that differ from erotic novels, of the time. Such characteristics have a close correlation with the social atmosphere of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, when the prevalence of commercial economic development and prosperity of the city culture, the almighty dollar principle, and the extravagance are rampant in the overall society, resulting in perturbation of feudalist system and even destruction of ethical senses. Dissipated sex culture derived from the upper class deeply proliferated in the commoner"s life culture, and the Chinese society at the time resembled “an orgy of sexual indulgence”. Nevertheless, obsession with traditional values and orders coexisted as well. Various paradoxical narratives expressed by the author of 『Yipianqing』 are the aspect of Chinese social culture of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties , when the values of abstinence and self-indulgence coexisted to form a complex sex culture, and are reflected as complicated male psychology and marriage dilemma in 『Yipianqing』.

Socio-cultural roots of rural settlement dispersion in Sichuan Basin: The perspective of Chinese lineage

Rural settlement pattern in Sichuan Basin, whatever the terrain, is an extraordinary dispersion, i.e. ‘diffuse and dense in spatial distribution’, and ‘uniform and small in size’. From the perspective of Chinese lineage, a regional comparison was elaborately conducted between Sichuan Basin and a typical area characterized by lineage culture in Southern China, to reveal the socio-cultural roots of the rural settlement dispersion (RSD). Regional differences were articulated by field surveys, including 698 household questionnaires and in-depth investigations on four case villages. Statistical analysis by 431 villages indicated the RSD in Sichuan Basin was positively associated with the lineage diversity and cultivation rate. We deduced that a trigger event of the lineage diversification and high cultivation rate was the rapid immigration into Sichuan Basin in early Qing Dynasty. It is portrayed that Sichuan Basin deviates from the lineage society of traditional China. The settlement dispersal and high cultivation rate represent an aggressive paradigm of land-use strategy. Our findings highlight the role of lineage in determining rural settlement patterns which mirror the socio-cultural fabrics in traditional China. This study would provide new insights into the understanding of rural settlement patterns and offer valuable policy implications for land use transitions in urbanizing China.

Peace and Reason of State in the Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687)

A persistent feature in Jesuit reports about the late Ming and early Qing was the notion that an enduring peace and concord pervaded the Chinese political system. Although the Jesuits did not invent this association, which was rooted in Greco-Roman historiography, the Jesuit encyclopaedist Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) was the first to link the ‘perpetual peace’ (perpetua pax) and ‘supreme concord’ (summa concordia) of the Chinese state to the Confucian intellectual tradition. As the Jesuits’ missionary strategy developed under the tutelage of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), ‘public peace’ (pax publica) and ‘the calm of the Republic’ (Republica quies) came to be perceived as the ultimate purpose of the Confucian precepts and one of the hinges on which the aims of Christianity, Confucianism and natural law can be reconciled. The supreme expression of the link between Confucianism and peace can be found in the Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687), which presented for the first time an accessible translation of three of the four Confucian classics. Yet while retaining the view that pre-Qin Confucianism espoused peace as a central political aim, the Confucius Sinarum philosophus challenged the view that contemporary China could be regarded as a utopic actualization of Confucian peace. This paper will discuss this shift as an attempt to coopt the Chinese political experience as an argument against the pragmatic political philosophy known as ‘reason of state’, which was perceived by Jesuit thinkers as atheistic and immoral.

明末 淸初 여성 시인들의 日常과 趣味의 세계

This paper is focused on daily life and interest of female poets of the early Qing and lately Ming, considered the way female poets find and describe their taste can also be a way of expressing their inner self, so examined about this from various points. First, I examined their social activity in which they exchange their impressions about their various interests, and secondly, examined garden, flower, change of season, picture, music, tea, drinking in order. In this paper, covered 9 poets, XuYuan(徐媛), LuQingZi(陸卿子), ShenYiXiu(沈宜修), WangDuanShu(王端淑), FanKunZhen(范梱贞), GuRuoPo(顾若璞), ShangJingLan(商景兰), HuangYuanJie(黃媛介), LiYin(李因).BR Through this paper, I could figure out how women of the end of Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty lived their everyday life and the fact that they created their own field exchanging opinions about culture and popular interests of those days.

How to Read a Sinographic Text in Eighteenth-Century Chosŏn Korea:Liuxi Waizhuanand Yi Tŏngmu's Compilation ofNoeroe Nangnak Sŏ

This paper examines the transnational literary interactions in the early modern Sinographic sphere by examining the late Chosŏn writer Yi Tŏngmu's reading of an early Qing text,Liuxi Waizhuan,and its resonance in his compilation ofNoeroe Nangnak Sŏ. Reconsidering the unmediated communicability of the Sinographic text, it demonstrates the ways in whichNoeroe Nangnak SŏdecoupledLiuxi Waizhuanfrom its local conditions of production and circulation and relocalized it to fit Chosŏn Korea's agenda of repositioning itself in the changing Sinocentric order after the downfall of the Ming. Between delocalizing and relocalizing the Sinographic text, the compilation ofNoeroe Nangnak Sŏparticipated in the constantly shifting meanings of loyalty to the fallen Ming, thereby diversifying the repertoire of the shared civilization in early modern East Asia.

淸의 北京 遷都와 만주의 北京 移住

淸의 北京 遷都와 만주의 北京 移住

Impacts of Changes in the International Geopolitical Landscape on the Tibetan Tea Trade—From the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the Republican China Period

The sale of Yunnan tea to Tibet began in the late Ming dynasty and the early Qing dynasty, and grew rapidly with many routes of horse caravans entering Tibet. However, for a long period, Tibetan tea produced in Sichuan remained the primary variety sold to Tibet, and it enjoyed irreplaceably important status. In the late Qing dynasty, especially after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, the relationship between Tibet and the central government weakened under British armed intervention. The sales volume of Tibetan tea produced in Sichuan kept dropping due to unsmooth roads leading to Tibet, excessively high prices and especially the dumping of Indian tea. In the meantime, with the opening of marine corridor of Yunnan tea, the cost of marine transport of Yunnan tea to Tibet was reduced greatly, and its sales volume in Tibet kept on rising. In the early Republican China period, Yunnan tea became the main variety of inland tea in place of Tibetan tea produced in Sichuan. The marine corridor rose when Indian tea was dumped in Tibet after the two Britain-Tibet wars, frustrating Britain’s attempt of monopolizing the Tibetan tea market while supplying daily necessities to the Tibetan people, and playing an important role of maintaining connections between Tibet and inland China.

The coastal evacuation of Zhangpu County in early Qing: Borders, shifting zones, and social change as seen in forts and fortified villages

Qianhai, the early Qing order that forced people in southeast coast to evacuate the coast to a distance of ten to eighteen miles inland in order to eliminate anti-Qing activities, is an excellent topic through which to examine the formation of the border in Han local society. The development of regional studies during the past 20 years encourages us to both refine our local case studies and map the wider picture. The story of social transformation in Zhangpu County during the Ming-Qing transition provides a perfect case to discuss how the coastal evacuation policy was implemented in local society. It can also promote our understanding of multiple histories. First, the lineage story of the coastal evacuation can be described in greater detail. Even in a single county, there was no standard evacuation distance. Local officials relied on mountainous terrain and existing forts and fortified villages to form a line of defense that determined the scope of the evacuation. Second, the social landscape in the communities of the county demonstrates the rise and decline of local power structures. Many of the most influential and deep-rooted lineages were badly weakened by the time they returned home after the evacuation order was rescinded. On the basis of the ebb and flow of local elites, the Qing state began to regulate households more closely, and state power thus penetrated to the local level. The household registers of Zhangpu were established based on the specific historical context of the county, but the process shared with the rest of the southeastern coastal region a pattern whereby pacification and local Defense shaped state penetration. Even in a supposedly “traditional” Han region, the empire needed to handle the problems of the border and social complexity, just as it did in “non-Han” areas. This illustrates the process of late imperial state formation in practice.