Liang Qichao Research Articles

Tackling the Translation of an Invaluable Primary Source that No One Person Would Dare Face Alone

Tackling the Translation of an Invaluable Primary Source that No One Person Would Dare Face Alone Joshua A. Fogel (bio) Ding Wenjiang 丁文江 and Zhao Fengtian 趙豐田 , original compilers; translation by Shimada Kenji 島田虔次 et al.Ryō Keichō nenpu chōhen 梁啟超年譜長編 ([annotated Japanese translation of] Liang Qichao nianpu changbian = Chronological biography of Liang Qichao, full edition). Original compiled by Five volumes. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004. 426, 57 pp. ¥8600, ISBN 4000270613 (vol. 1). 477 pp. ¥8600, ISBN 4000270621 (vol. 2). 522 pp. ¥8600, ISBN 400027063x (vol. 3). 541 pp. ¥8600, ISBN 4000270648 (vol. 4). 478, 89 pp. ¥9000, ISBN 4000270656 (vol. 5). I think it would be safe to say that not only is the academic organization of Japanese and Western sinology (as well as numerous other fields in the humanities and social sciences) different but the two are virtually incommensurate. Whereas in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, young academic novices are sent out to find their own topics that have "never been done" (or done poorly) and thus stake their claim to a place in the "field" on the basis of an "original" contribution at such a relatively early age, their counterparts in Japan enter the mainstream usually by joining ongoing multigenerational research or study groups (variously dubbed kenkyūkai 研究会, kenkyūhan 研究班, kyōdōkenkyū 共同研究, and the like)—some of which meet regularly for years—slowly learning their trade through contacts with their peers and elders and subsequently with those younger than they. This latter process, especially in research on premodern Chinese humanities, often involves reading especially difficult texts as a group, possibly annotating and punctuating them for the first time, and then often publishing them also as a group effort in modern Japanese, Chinese with Japanese reading punctuation, or both. This practice has been going on at Kyoto University, for example, for nearly a century. The Japanese system, then, as a rule does not lay primary stress on articulating an independent position at a comparatively early stage in one's career, but delays that gratification until one reaches what those of us in the West would consider mid-career. This system might be crushing to a young person who has something distinctive to say and must constantly defer to his academic superiors, men and women who control the sources to fund research groups and access to participation in them. While such an argument may make some logical sense, in nearly thirty years of contact and involvement with a host of such academic study groups I [End Page 15] have rarely seen it happen. Democracy seldom plays a role in academic dealings anywhere in the world, and in this regard Japan is no exception.1 The academic brokers in Japanese sinology are also the first people approached by publishing houses when the latter wish to put out compilations or collections of one sort or another, and the former usually tap the members of their research groups and the coterie of their past students to fulfill such a task. By the same token, these same brokers tend to be the ones with enough cachet in the academic and publishing worlds to approach publishing houses about various multiauthor projects. In fact, it is the usual practice for a research group to come to an end by publishing at least a collection of selected essays from the ongoing work of its constituents. One does frequently see publication of multivolume compilations of resources on Chinese history and culture, such as series of comprehensive histories (with multiple authors), encyclopedias and dictionaries, source collections often with annotations and reprints of original Chinese materials, and a wealth of annotated translations of primary materials—all far too extensive to list here but nonetheless indispensable to all scholars in the field of Chinese studies. Recent years alone have witnessed exceptionally important collections in all of these areas, often (although by no means always) the end result of group research projects. This is anything but the trend in the West, with a number of notable exceptions, such as the Cambridge History of China (which has been appearing for more than a quarter century and still has at least three more volumes set to materialize) and the Science and Civilisation...

論梁啓超的《王荊公》

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 梁啓超與王安石一直是當代歷史研究的熱門範疇，然而梁氏於1908年爲王安石所寫的傳記——《王荆公》卻鮮有學者作深入研究。雖然研究王安石的專家鄧廣銘認爲此書不足置論，但基於梁氏撰寫是書的動機與其政治活動息息相關，而他在書中亦對當時政治、經濟、教育等方面發表了很多意見，因此深入探研此書實有助加深我們了解梁氏的思想。本文會從寫作動機、取材方法、内容思想入手，以發掘出是書所蘊含的豐富研究資源。由於梁氏的思想“流質多變”，此書正好成爲他在1908年的一道思想碑記。 Liang Qichao and Wang Anshi have long been a hot modem history research topic. However Liang’s study on Wang, called Wang Jinggong (a Biography on Wang Anshi) written in 1908 has seldom been mentioned or discussed. Deng Guangming, an outstanding historian in studying Wang’s life and writings, even said there is not enough reason to put an eye on this book. In fact, Liang wrote it to express his political point of view. In the book, he also touched on politics, economics, and education topics. Thus to have a study on the book will help us to know more about Liang. This article will be an in-depth study in Liang’s writing purposes of Wang Jinggong, methodology used by the author, as well as content of the book, in order to explore those valuable historical resources which have seldom been used before. Liang’s ideas changed from time to time, and this book can serve to highlight his thought in 1908.

Training Scholars not Politicians

Conventional wisdom dictates that Chinese literati in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), like their forerunners in previous dynasties, were politically active. Chinese Marxist historians tend to portray the Qing literati as politicians rather than scholars. Tang Zhiju, a China-based historian and the author of a book with an explicitly political title, Jindai Jingxue yu Zhengzhi (Modern Classical Learning and Politics), argues that the forefather of the Qing Evidential Research School, Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), used classical learning to maintain the Han people's national consciousness, and that the founders of the Gongyang New Text School, Zhuang Cunyu (1719–1788) and Liu Fenglu (1776–1829), applied the ‘sublime words with deep meaning’ in the Gongyang Chunqiu (Gongyang Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals) to justify the Manchu's tianming (mandate of heaven). In late Qing, Tang contends, the New Text scholars Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929) studied the classics with the intention of political reform, while the Old Text scholar Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936) developed the tradition in Confucianism of jingshi (managing the world) for anti-Manchu revolution.

Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928 (review)

Reviewed by: Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928 Chia Ning (bio) Edward J. M. Rhoads . Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928. Studies on Ethnic Groups in China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. x, 404 pp. Paperback $27.50, ISBN 0-295-98040-0. Manchus and Han by Edward J. M. Rhoads is a volume worthy of worldwide celebration. It is the first monograph written in either English or Chinese dedicated to the study of the relationship between the Manchus and the Han Chinese from the middle of the nineteenth century through most of the twentieth (even though the subtitle indicates that the author's research went only as far as 1928). It is also a significant addition to the growing research on the history of the Manchus and the Qing dynasty (1636-1911) by accomplishing the very challenging task of dealing with the Manchu-Han relationship during and after the 2002 Revolution. The awarding of the 2002 Joseph Levenson Book Prize to Rhoads for this volume demonstrates the academic recognition of this remarkable achievement. A recent review by R. Kent Guy praised Rhoads' volume as "an unusual work in a number of respects" and has listed it as one of "the Four Books of Manchu studies."1 In keeping with Guy's topic-selective appraisal of Rhoads' volume together with other Manchu and Qing studies, this review will focus on how Rhoads has addressed, directly or indirectly, the issue of "race" (the 1911 term) or "ethnicity" (the recent term) in the Manchu-Han relationship as it is related to cultural and political representation. Although Rhoads himself does not use the actual term [End Page 40] "representation," his rich discussion and thorough analysis can be seen fully to embrace this representational issue. His study is, therefore, valuable in making a comparison of the Manchu representation of the multiethnic empire during the early Qing and the late Qing. A number of studies have already addressed the successful representation of a diverse population by the Manchus during the early Qing period, but the coverage of this representation during the late Qing is less than adequate, with the exception of a portion of Prasenjit Duara's study of modern Chinese nationalism. Rhoads' new volume thus presents an important contribution to this aspect of Manchu and Qing history. The first half of this review will comment on each chapter by addressing the issue of racial/ethnic, cultural, and political representations. The second half will place Rhoads' study in the context of several topical discussions regarding these representations and comment on the ways in which Rhoads' achievements may guide further efforts in the field. Rhoads' Accomplishment Rhoads' Introduction starts with Liang Qichao's "social Darwinist reading of history," according to which "racial competition" and "racial conflicts" between the superior Han and the inferior Manchus were applied to explain the survival of China's "yellow race" when threatened by the European "white race" (pp. 3-4). To address the critical issues in Liang's understanding of China's crisis at the end of the Qing dynasty, Rhoads argues for a systematic study of the late Qing court in response to the problems in Manchu-Han relations, especially during "the last decade of the dynasty," which has been a neglected period (pp. 4-5). Rhoads thus intends in this book to connect the historical events centering on Manchu-Han relations and to examine how the various ethnic and political groups were motivated by these events. These groups include the leading Manchus at the court, the leading Han officials inside the Qing government, the Manchu commoners outside the court, the Han rebels under Manchu rule, the constitutional reformers, and the 1911 revolutionaries. In his Introduction, Rhoads develops a convincing analysis in which he elaborates on the historical definition of the Manchus, the gap between the Manchus and the Han over several stages of the Qing dynasty, the identity issues before and during the 1911 Revolution, and the question of why the Manchus fell from power. His statement that "the continuing inability of the Qing court ... to...

The Making of a Public: Emotions and Media Sensation in 1930s China

The Making of a Public: Emotions and Media Sensation in 1930s China by Eugenia Lean After assassin Shi Jianqiao killed Sun Chuanfang to avenge the death of Shi Congbin, her father, a national sensation ensued and a sense of justice gladdened the hearts of the.people; theaters in each locale competed to perform the tale of the avenging daughter and the force of the people'ssentiment was truly great.l On 13 November 1935,Shi Jianqiaoentered the Qingxiu lay-Buddhist monastery in Tianjin, positioned herself behind ex-military leader Sun Chuanfang, her sworn enemy, and shot him three times. As the place of worship quickly descended into chaos and terror,· the female assassin maintained her cool and triumphantly declared, "I have avenged the murder of my father. Do not fear, I won't hurt anyone else, nor will I run away." In the days, weeks, and months after the assassination, Shi's. extraordinary act of revenge became the focus of intense media interest. The protracted courtroom trial as well as the eventual Guomindang [GMD] state pardon continued to generate headline-making news for over a year. The affair was so sensational that theaters fought over performing dramatic renditions of the Case of Shi Jianqiao, the media scrambled to publish serialized fiction inspired by the event, and the radio broadcast sung performances about the affair. But what was perhaps most notable about the case was, as the above observer states, its ability to "gladden people's hearts" and give· rise to the great force of the "people's sentiment." In this article, I examine this high-profile case to explore the rise of "public sympathy" (tongqing), an unprecedented political and moral authority in the early twentieth century. The "public sympathy" so evident in the case of Shi Jianqiao was not the first conceptualization of "public" in modem China. Reformers at the end of the Qing dynasty such as Liang Qichao had already begun avidly to promote the notion of "public opinion" (yulun), a concept that was adapted fromWestem political discourses and transferred to China as a neologism from Japan. Liang and others had advocated using the term as the basis. of imperial reform and modemization.2 Like this late Qing conceptualization of a new collective, "public sympathy" was, largue, an "imagined authority," to borrow a term coined by Keith Baker in his discussion of the pre-revolutionary French notion of I'opinion Twentieth ..Century China, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April, 2004): 39-61 40 Twentieth-Century China publique.3 Furthermore, as an "imagined authority," collective sentiment in the 1930s, like its predecessor, was perceived to function as a tribunal of sorts against which the caprices of officialdom were tried. Yet, while similarities exist, the two conceptualizations were fundamentally different in important ways. The earlier notion of "public opinion" embodied reason and progress, and arose in the pages of a new reformist press. Late Qing intellectuals were promoters of the concept and expressed enthusiasm about the possibility that the opinion of the people could serve as an effective antidote to the ebbing power of the Qing state. In contrast, the later concept of "public sympathy" was explicitly grounded in the emotions of the people and was formed through the consumption of media sensation. Further, whereas late Qing intellectuals promoted "public opinion," left-leaning critics of the 1930s, who were highly suspicious of the rise of a mass public, vociferously lamented mass sentiment as feminine, emotional and mired in superstition. The importance of media spectacle and emotions in the making of publics will allow us to rethink some issues about how the modem China field has approached the study of critical urban publics. The earliest debates on the matter narrowly centered on either promoting or refuting the possibility of finding something similar to Jurgen Habermas' s notion of the bourgeois public sphere in the Chinese experience.4 More recently, however, scholars have shifted from the highly charged teleological question of whether an actual "public sphere" existed in modem China toward a more reasoned inquiry into the historically specific configurations of Chinese "publics" in late imperial and twentieth-century China. To this end, they are concerned with understanding how the rise of new urban...

THE BOURGEOIS HOUSEWIFE AS LABORER IN LATE QING AND EARLY REPUBLICAN SHANGHAI

AbstractDuring the late Qing and early Republic, Chinese reformers, such as Liang Qichao, argued that because all women were "consumers" and not "producers," they had weakened the state by posing a financial burden to the family and a collective impediment to economic development. This article examines the diverse responses inspired by this construction of womanhood as they appeared in the burgeoning female press of the period. Deploying this new medium of communication, the women and men who endeavored to define nügong, female labor, embedded in their representations of "women's work" contrary interpretations of what it meant to be a productive citizen, an industrious member of the middle class, and an educated woman who labored in public or private. Thus, nügong discourse not only considered new characterizations of female labor in the context of a society and an economy in transition, but it also acted as a site for negotiating competing and intersecting conceptions of nationalism, class, and gender.

Old Myth into New History: The Building Blocks of Liang Qichao's "New History"

In the first years of the twentieth century, the prominent radical intellectual Liang Qichao argued that China needed a that would constitute a history of the rather than court annals. This history would be evolutionary, and Liang rooted the origins of the Chinese people in the ancient myths of sage-kings. Liang mapped stages of progress (from primitive tribal forms of social organization to feudal-aristocratic to the centralized monarchy) onto Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor), Yao-Shun, and Yu. Both the three ages theory of the New Text school and social Darwinism provided Liang with a universal framework for explaining the course of Chinese history, but he faced difficulties in explaining why Chinese and European history were different. Liang's attitudes toward the Qin unification were particularly ambivalent: on the one hand it represented a progressive step at the time but on the other it prevented later development. Liang's early histories emphasized China's originary moment, based on his reworkings of the sage-king myths. What made China historically distinct, however, was its early shift to centralized monarchy – whether seen in Yu's founding of the Xia dynasty or the later Qin unification – and its to further progress. Liang transferred sacrality from the sage-kings to the nation itself. In this sense the sage-kings were desacralized, demoted from their positions as culture heroes and founders of civilization to representatives of stages of historical development. For Liang, historical development was based on objective factors such as geography and the struggles between competing groups. However, the Chinese nation was defined most clearly through a process of political unification, and this unification in turn partly depended on human decisions. In any case, Liang defined historical progress largely in terms of the development of the polity. China's failure to develop beyond imperial forms and monarchism to the nation-state and democracy could be excused. After all, the nation-state and democracy were new in Europe as well. Liang also emphasized that China's historical success had meant it faced few competitors; without competitors, it could not develop. For Liang, this was a particular worry because it left the Chinese people politically immature. Unchallenged, the monarchy could and did deprive the people of their freedom, their rights, and even their sense of civic duty. Liang's great project of the late Qing years thus became the creation of the citizen. Nonetheless, we cannot conclude that his historiography was simply a coded form of political propaganda. Rather, his historical and political views influenced and reinforced one another. Liang's contributions to modern Chinese historiography have long been acknowledged. His historiographical project, however, was beset with tensions. Liang could reconcile his faith in progress with a reality of stagnation (as he saw it) only with difficulty. Liang also wrestled with the contradictions between determinism and voluntarism. And by turning the into the subject of history, Liang had to wrestle with the problems of defining that nation, of discovering what was new and old about it and what marked its continuity through time, and of determining what properties it held in common with other nations (universal traits) and what properties made it distinct (particular traits). In the end, much of what made China unique, for Liang, was a kind of byproduct of its movement through universal historical stages. He destroyed the myth of a golden age, but valorized the evolution of the Chinese nation. Using many of the building blocks of the old myth-history, Liang provided a new narrative structure for the Chinese nation.

Writing a Modern Chinese Architectural History: Liang Sicheng and Liang Qichao

This paper delineates a broader intellectual agenda in Liang Sicheng's seminal writings on Chinese architectural history in the 1930s and 1940s, by linking them to the historiographical writings of his father Liang Qichao, an insightful and hugely influential figure in early twentieth-century China. This broadening of understanding of Liang Sicheng's work is vital not only to the understanding of his architectural writings themselves, but also to grasping some of the most far-reaching intellectual concerns of Chinese architecture in the twentieth century, to which Liang Sicheng's contributions are most crucial.

Unity vs. Uniformity: Liang Qichao and the Invention of a "New Journalism" for China

When Liang Qichao burst upon the Chinese journalistic scene at the end of the nineteenth century, he allegedly shaped a "new journalism style" and "revolutionized the Chinese press," 2 eventually becoming "the most influential [newspaper journalist] China had ever known." 3 To attain this position Liang had to displace the existing papers on the press market by advancing new arguments to a new public. I will argue that many newspaper historians have taken Liang Qichao's own evaluation of the role played by his forerunners at face value instead of looking at its polemical character. The oft-cited explosion of the press market and dominance of the political press after the short Reform Movement of 1898 was not at all due only to Liang Qichao's refined and convincing rhetoric about the importance of a press in China—as it is often depicted—but rather part of much broader changes in both politics and journalism. Moreover, the "explosion" itself was in fact an outgrowth of a well-established tradition of modern Chinese journalism extending back more than three decades. Instead of sharing the generally held opinion that "Liang Qichao's formative influence on the development of Chinese newspapers as a new forum for social cohesion and political discussion can hardly be overestimated," 4 this study puts the question the other way, by asking whether this influence has not been overestimated for far too long.

Children and the Survival of China: Liang Qichao on Education Before the 1898 Reform

On the eve of the 1898 Reform, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) advocated changes to the traditional Chinese education of children which, he believed, was hindering children’s intellectual development and would, consequently, ruin China’s future. In 1896 Liang began publishing a series of articles entitled On Reforms (Bianfa tongyi) in Current Affairs (Shiwu bao). In this series of articles he touched upon a broad range of issues concerning education (such as schools in general, teachers’ colleges, academic societies, the education of women and children), arguing that education was the key to reform. Liang’s view reflected the intellectual milieu of the second half of the nineteenth century. After the Opium War of the 1840s, many Chinese intellectuals were aware of China’s weak position in the world. Especially in 1895, China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War and the publication of Yan Fu’s translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics stirred cries for reforms in education and institutional systems. Reformers and scholars who were sympathetic to reforms started to question the effectiveness of traditional education and its contribution to China’s future. This intellectual milieu is very similar to that in the early Qing. Educational reformers of that time blamed the collapse of the Ming dynasty on traditional education which only valued Confucian philosophy but overlooked practical crafts. In their opinion, traditional Chinese education only produced literati who might have been excellent in Neo-Confucian moral practice, or had succeeded in the civil service examinations, but they had no practical skills to benefit people in their daily life. When their country was in danger, they could do nothing but kill themselves to show their loyalty.

"Like Kissing through a Handkerchief": Traduttore Traditore

"Like Kissing through a Handkerchief": Traduttore Traditore Joshua A. Fogel (bio) Lydia Liu , editor. Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. 458 pp. Hardcover $64.95, ISBN 0-8223-2401-6. Paperback $21.95, ISBN 0-8223-2424-5. Despite the fact that there is much we could learn from one another, one of the sharpest and most unfortunate divides in the China studies profession is the one separating humanists from historical linguists. Few historians have seen the need to attempt to penetrate the universe of linguistics, and by the same token few historical linguists have made the effort to interact with other humanists. As a result, when historians and literary scholars have broached the theme of translation and the emergence of the modern Chinese lexicon, as they have in recent years, their work as a rule sorely belies this glaring lacuna.1 We are still trapped within a series of vague notions of the Chinese language being ineffably transformed by hundreds and thousands of Japanese coinages of Meiji-era vintage and their overseas Chinese users, but how each of these many terms "became Chinese," to use the currently popular phrase, and helped form the modern Chinese language remains a critical desideratum. Federico Masini's extremely important The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution Toward a National Language (1993)2 should have begun to change all this, but its publication in an obscure place and ignorance of his fascinating findings by most scholars have led to our general understanding not being advanced. Among other things, Masini demonstrated that many of the terms we have long believed to have entered the Chinese language via Meiji neologisms in fact had earlier been coined by Western missionaries—Catholic and Protestant alike—when they translated Western works of importance into Chinese. Because these works did not circulate widely in China but did so more extensively in Japan, these many terms frequently did not catch on in China, but they often did come to the attention of Japanese intellectuals responsible for "coining" new kanji terms to translate Western scientific and humanistic expressions in the Meiji era. Chinese students and publicists in Japan frequently assumed that these terms were Japanese creations and adopted them into Chinese, often uncritically. Even if we focus on the latter half of this process, the transition from Japan to China, we still need numerous micro-studies of how, when, where, and why [End Page 1] each of these terms "made the trip." In recent essays, for example, Mori Tokihiko of Kyoto University looks at Liang Qichao's great reluctance to adopt the term jingji (Jpn: keizai) as a translation for "economy," "economics," or "political economy," even after living in Japan, where it had been widely used for years, because he felt the classical connotations behind the term—its root in the ancient term jingshi jimin, meaning "to manage the realm and save the people"—would confuse his well-educated readers. Because his competitors for readership among the expatriate Chinese community in Japan, the revolutionaries, were considerably less well educated in the classical Chinese heritage, this overlay of meaning in no serious way posed a conflict for them, and they readily adopted jingji. Ultimately, Liang hesitantly and reluctantly, but never consistently, fell in line.3 Tokens of Exchange is comprised of fourteen essays and an introduction by the editor, Lydia Liu. Given this volume's subtitle, one would assume that the essays engage the topic of translation as a linguistic issue. Some in fact do, although reference to the immense body of literature, theoretical and otherwise, in the burgeoning field of translation studies is essentially absent here, and none of the authors demonstrates an empathetic sense of the overall phenomenon of translation from inside the process. There is the equally plausible alternative that Liu and her collaborators are not interested in translation as this term is ordinarily used. Instead, they may be using it metaphorically as a form of exchange in one of many different media. Liu never informs us as to which sense of "translation" is being utilized here, so we must assume both—if only in fairness to...

NAMING THE FIRST NEW WOMAN

AbstractHailed as the first female medical doctor of China, the exemplary new citizen of the burgeoning Chinese nation, and a model of Christian conversion, Kang Aide is a figure to whom others attributed tremendous representational power as well as different meanings. Comparing three versions of her story, one by late Qing reformers represented by Liang Qichao (1873-1929), one by American missionaries, and one by herself, this paper traces the enactment of modernity at a particular historical moment, an enactment fraught with ambiguity and contested at the very moment of its conception.

Wahrheit und Geschichte: Zwei chinesische Historiker auf der Suche nach einer modernen Identitat fur China (review)

Reviewed by: Wahrheit und Geschichte: Zwei chinesische Historiker auf der Suche nach einer modernen Identität für China Thomas Fröhlich (bio) Axel Schneider . Wahrheit und Geschichte: Zwei chinesische Historiker auf der Suche nach einer modernen Identität für China. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997. iv, 352 pp. Paperback, DM 138.00, ISBN 3-447-03898-5. Apart from making a very valuable contribution to the barren field of studies on non-Marxist historiography in Republican China, it is probably one of Axel Schneider's major achievements not to restrict himself to what the main title of this book might initially lead one to expect. Wahrheit und Geschichte (Truth and history) is not a book on the way late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western methods of historical-hermeneutic interpretation were received in China. Schneider does not confine himself to the narrow scope of "reception of Western thought in China," but attempts to understand the specific functions that historiography had to fulfill in relation to conceptions of science, politics, modernization, and cultural identity in the thought of Fu Sinian (1896-1950) and Chen Yinke (1890-1969), two prominent Republican historiographers. As a point of departure, Schneider follows Yves Chevrier in his conviction of the central role played by China's "traditional historiography" (p. 7) in the discourse on the normative order of the world, but particularly in the field of political legitimation: it was in historiography that the "moral-cosmic order of the Tao" (p. 7) was to be represented as well as conveyed. Historiography, in other words, served the [End Page 216] double purpose of finding truth in history and at the same time communicating this truth in the present. In the context of the "conflict with the West" (p. 9), Schneider goes on to tell us that this "characteristic constitution of historiography" (charakteristische Verfassung der Historiographie) (p. 9) had to face three challenges: the one posed by Western theories of historiography and their epistemological implications, the one of reevaluating the social and political role of the historian, and the one of finding a national and/or cultural basis of Chinese identity in a changing world. At this point, one might wonder if "traditional historiography," especially its various modifications up to the Republican period, really played such a dominant role in Chinese thought. In many instances during the discourses on normative order or political legitimation, at least since the late nineteenth century, the field of historiography seems to have been blithely abandoned to make way for heated debates on epistemology, methodology, literary theory, political philosophy, and so forth. At any rate, Schneider's thesis is valid inasmuch as it proves to be the point of departure for a very far-reaching, insightful journey into the thought of Fu Sinian and Chen Yinke. Although he has chosen Fu and Chen mainly because both of them were early members of the Academia Sinica, Republican China's most prominent Western-oriented institution for research in history (p. 12),1 Schneider never reduces their thinking to a mere reflection of the institutional roles they played at various stages in their lives. It is indeed another important merit of Schneider's book to offer careful readings of Chen's and Fu's writings, thus giving their thinking the attention it certainly deserves. Consequently, throughout his study, Schneider resists the temptation to undercut his readings by applying rigid analytical frameworks of generational, regional, local, familial, partisan, or other empirical parameters. The reader, therefore, never gets the uncomfortable feeling that he or she is witnessing a deflation of textual resources of intellectual history through conflation with empirical data. Schneider's approach is clearly reflected in the extensive synopsis of the development of Chinese historiography, from the beginnings of the Qing dynasty to Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, Wang Guowei, Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang, the authors of Xue heng (Critical review), Guo Moruo, Tao Xisheng, and Qian Mu. The author may have been too ambitious in attempting to cover so much ground in approximately sixty pages. Certainly I feel this was the case with the section on the various Qing exponents. At any rate, Schneider succeeds in sketching the broader context and some of its...

Religion and Canon Formation: Buddhism, Vernacular Literature, and the Case of Jin Shengtan (1608-1661)

of power, privilege, and wealth. Such had clearly been the case with the examination curriculum during late imperial times in China. Although the core texts of the curricular canon did not change during this time, a significant number of literati, including the key figure of the current essay, Jin Shengtan ~ ~ ~, entertained doubts as to whether the officially sanctioned genres and styles were the sole or most appropriate for the selection of worthy candidates. The collapse of the established political order in 1911 took such questioning to new levels. Intellectuals and scholars debated over whether textual labor mattered, and if so, which texts furthered political stability or reform. In the wake of Liang Qichao's ~~m claim that fiction could empower the masses, reform-minded critics favored broad-based linguistic and symbolic access. As a result, after having previously been consigned to the margins of literary respectability, traditional vernacular forms such as fiction [xiaoshuo /J\~] and short and long operatic drama [zaju ~ iJU; chuanqi l' ~] were suddenly catapulted into prominence. The precise mechanics and effects of canonization, however, even as they pertain to well-known works such as the novel Shuihu zhuan 7J,im:1$ [Water Margin] or the romantic comedy Xixiang ji gs a§ ~c. [The Story of the Western Wing], remain to be investigated. The ubiquity of religious elements in vernacular materials put reformers in a quandary. They were aware that vernacular novels and dramas were widely read among non-elite

Authority and welfare in China: modern debates in historical perspective

Preface Introduction PART ONE: ANCIENT AUTHORITY AND WELFARE Authority and Welfare in the Ancient Confucian Texts Kang Youwei Liang Qichao PART TWO: REVOLUTIONARY AUTHORITY AND WELFARE Sun Yatsen Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping PART THREE: NEW AUTHORITY AND WELFARE The 'New Authoritarian' Debates of the Late 1980s The Impact of Tiananmen Conclusion Notes and References Bibliography Index

Sun Yat-sen (review)

Reviewed by: Sun Yat-sen Parks M. Coble (bio) Marie-Claire Bergére. Sun Yat-sen. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. viii, 480 pp. Hardcover $49.50, ISBN 0-8047-3170-5. Among Chinese communities worldwide, perhaps no modern figure is more universally admired than Sun Yat-sen. Already the subject of a voluminous literature (much of it hagiographic) from outside the People's Republic of China, Sun's life has produced an outpouring of writing on the Chinese mainland since 1978. Yet, as this torrent of Chinese scholarship has appeared, Marie-Claire Bergére tells us, serious study of Sun among Western scholars has almost vanished. Perhaps the diminished interest in biography and narrative history in general among Western scholars has led us away from study of the enigmatic Sun. Bergére suggests another factor for this disjuncture: Sun was clearly a product of the "Western impact" on China. Marginalized in late-Qing Confucian society, Sun represented the Cantonese, Western-oriented, fringe—the intermediary between China and the West. Drawing on the imagery of the famous TV series He shang (River elegy), Bergére identifies Sun with the modern "blue," ocean, current, in contradistinction to the "yellow" of the conservative interior of China. [End Page 382] Indeed, such an identification sparked the renewed interest in Sun in the era of Deng Xiaoping. It is still the coastal China of the south that is most drawn to the outside world, most involved in trade and modernization, and perhaps most threatening to central political control. Yet Western scholarship of late has become more China-centered, less interested in the Western impact on China. Sun Yat-sen, a figure at the intersection of those two worlds, is thus bypassed by Western scholars. This masterful biography by one of the preeminent Western historians of Republican China remedies the dearth of recent scholarship. Though more sympathetic to Sun than many previous studies by Westerners, Bergére's book does not present a teleological view of the great revolutionary. His life was full of fits and starts, of accidents and missed opportunities. Bergére reveals how any number of changed circumstances might have left him a forgotten figure. Perhaps the greatest strength of this biography is Bergére's ability to place Sun's life in context. Already an accomplished historian of the era, she deals with Sun's life against the broader backdrop of changes in China itself. At the micro level, Bergére delivers a clear picture of the intricate, internecine struggles within Sun's camp. The multitude of personalities and their constantly changing relationship with the charismatic Sun could defeat lesser historians. The first section of her study deals with Sun as the "Adventurer of the South Seas, 1866-1905." Although much of this is familiar from earlier work by Harold Schiffrin, Bergére neatly captures the precarious nature of Sun's efforts during these early years. His strategy of working with secret society groups in China led to repeated failures. Bergére examines the networks that sustained Sun in his early years as well as his multiple identities as Cantonese, Christian, and overseas Chinese, and notes their marginality within the late Qing. The early Sun was a (frequently inept) schemer, yet dogged in his determination. Bergére's account also reminds us of the human costs of these repeated failures. The early efforts were also haphazard. Sun's Revive China Society hardly functioned as an organization, Bergére maintains; it was no more than a personal network. Sun's ideology, which moved from reformist to revolutionary during these years, was ill-defined, as it would long remain. Sun was legendary for shifting his political message to suit his audience. "For Sun," Bergére writes, "as for Mao Zedong after him, the prime virtue of a dogma or ideology was simply its utility" (p. 70). Sun proceeded on two fronts during these years—one against the Qing, the other against the reformists Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. His long competition with the latter may in fact have forced him to refine his ideas, eventually leading to his Three Principles of the People. The formation of the Revolutionary Alliance...

Authority and Welfare in China; Modern Debates in Historical Perspective. By Michael Twohey. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. $75.00.

Preface Introduction PART ONE: ANCIENT AUTHORITY AND WELFARE Authority and Welfare in the Ancient Confucian Texts Kang Youwei Liang Qichao PART TWO: REVOLUTIONARY AUTHORITY AND WELFARE Sun Yatsen Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping PART THREE: NEW AUTHORITY AND WELFARE The 'New Authoritarian' Debates of the Late 1980s The Impact of Tiananmen Conclusion Notes and References Bibliography Index

Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao

Abbreviations Introduction: toward a geography of the discourse of modernity 1. History imagined anew Liang Qichao in 1902 2. The nationalist historian and new historiography 3. The nation and revolution: narrating the modern event 4. Modernity as political discourse: interpreting revolution 5. The spatial logic of the new culture: modernity and its completion 6. Conclusion: toward a production of anthropological space Notes Bibliography Index.

Local Self-Government in Late Qing: Political Discourse and Moral Reform

This article is a study of the concept of local self-government (difang zizht) in the context of reform efforts from 1898 to 1911. Of the institutional changes proposed, local self-government rapidly gained much support among China's educated elites. The author explores the reasons behind much enthusiasm for self-government institutions by analyzing the works of two key reformists, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929). While the reformist approach to local government indicated the continuing influence of thefengjian(feudal) tradition on the one hand, and the reformist notion of citizenship was suggestive of the Neo-Confucian conception of self-cultivation on the other, the article argues that the reformist thought on local self-government represents an important step in moving China beyond an imperial political order.

Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao (review)

Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao (review)