Local Gazetteers Research Articles

The Relationship Between Migration and Private Enterprises in Shanghai during the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Republic of China

In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, private enterprises in Shanghai made rapid development. There are many reasons to promote the development of private enterprises in Shanghai. From the perspective of population migration, this research analyzes how the migration of Chinese and foreign population to Shanghai promoted the development of private enterprises in Shanghai in this period from four aspects: concession, labor and demand, technology, and the change of government control over enterprises. By analyzing old photographs and data from local gazetteers of Shanghai, the paper also investigates the relationship between migration and private enterprises in Shanghai. It demonstrates that the foreign and domestic migration to Shanghai significantly contributed to the development of private enterprises in Shanghai during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Exploring the Rice Cultivars in Large-Scale Chinese Local Gazetteers: A Computational Approach

Chinese local gazetteers have long been widely used by scholars to investigate the local products, culture, economy, and much more. Confronted with large-scale digitized resources nowadays, researchers can explore historical texts in a novel way. In this paper, we propose a computational approach in order to perform large-scale quantitative analysis of plant knowledge embedded in Chinese local gazetteers. We select the typical rice cultivars by their occurrences in the records, interpret their common features, and leverage the data clustering algorithm to investigate the inner connections among cultivars. We conduct a case study on a dataset of records of rice cultivars over 8 centuries in Jiangsu Province, China. We find that although planting early-season rice in Jiangsu province was the common practice, the local rice farmers cared more about the color, quality, and uses of cultivars than their sowing time. In addition, not all the rice varieties mentioned frequently in records are local plants. Plants imported from other provinces or countries were also highly recorded because of their good quality and special characteristics. Our study offers a practical guide and reference to history study as well as useful clues for modern agriculture.

The Art of Compromise: New Maps in Local Gazetteers of the Late Qing Dynasty

In the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911), local gazetteer maps helped to disseminate the innovations of longitude and latitude used in Western cartography. The use of longitude and latitude lines alongside the traditional Chinese cartographic method of “grid scales” suggests that mapmakers chose an ingenious compromise to accommodate new knowledge alongside traditional practices.

Using LoGart to Uncover a New Spatiality of Science in China

LoGart, and especially its image search function Page with Image (PWI), allows for the use of local gazetteers to trace the development of new institutions and spaces for science in China in a geographically more diverse assortment of places than historians of science have hitherto examined. This essay looks at how results obtained by using LoGart help to map out a new spatiality of science in modern China.

Introduction: Redrawing the Map of Science in Modern China

This essay provides an overview of the Local Gazetteers Research Tools (LoGaRT) developed by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and examines the ways that LoGaRT could aid in redrawing the map of modern science in China.

Automatic biographical information extraction from local gazetteers with Bi-LSTM-CRF model and BERT

Automatic biographical information extraction from local gazetteers with Bi-LSTM-CRF model and BERT

“Our Roots Are the Same”: Hegemony and Power in Narratives of Chinese Linguistic Antiquity, 1900–1949

AbstractSince the beginning of the twentieth century, a frequent claim among speakers of local Chinese languages (called fangyan in Chinese) is that their native languages preserve the language of antiquity better than the Beijing-based national language, Mandarin. This paper explores the origin of these claims and probes their significance in the making of the Han ethnoracial collective identity. I argue that claims of linguistic proximity to the imagined ancient origins of Chinese civilization represent a form of “hegemonic Han-ness”—an idealized form of the Han collective identity that was both internally hegemonic, in that it was meant to supersede other expressions of Han-ness, and externally hegemonic, in that it was meant to uphold the superiority of the Han people over other ethnoracial groups. From Zhang Taiyan, whose work provided a model for drawing linguistic connections between contemporary local languages and the language spoken at the dawn of Chinese civilization, to local gazetteer authors, who used linguistic data to prove their mother tongues directly had preserved the language of antiquity without being adulterated by the languages of non-Han peoples, this paper explores how various groups drew upon the cultural power of an idealized Han-centered past to challenge the authority afforded to the national language by the state.

Treating a genre as a database: a digital research methodology for studying Chinese local gazetteers

As digital humanities research relies on the digitization of sources, many of its applications are based on access to data on a huge scale that makes quantitative analyses and distant reading (or a birds-eye view) possible. Based on this assumption, we show how the genre of Chinese local gazetteers, with its volume, consistent structures, and broad geographic and temporal range, provides an ideal case to benefit from the digital approach. This paper introduces the Local Gazetteers Research Tools (LoGaRT), a suite of research tools designed for studying Chinese local gazetteers based on the philosophy that any comprehensive genre, such as Chinese local gazetteers, when accompanied with tools that aim to bring a collective lens to the genre, can greatly enrich the ways that scholars approach it and can transform the genre into a research infrastructure that enables new types of research. We report on how LoGaRT opens up new perspectives for researching Chinese history by showing case studies and the scholarly breakthroughs made by our research group. With this paper we hope to provide one possible answer to the question of how digital methods can contribute to humanities research. Even though LoGaRT is developed for a specific Chinese genre, we argue that the proposed research methodology and the corresponding user workflow and tools developed in our software can be applied to other genres or collections of sources when certain criteria are met.

The Making of a Sacred Landscape: Visualizing Hangzhou Buddhist Culture via Geoparsing a Local Gazetteer the Xianchun Lin’an zhi 咸淳臨安志

This project uses local sources to visualize and analyze the spatial distribution of Buddhist sites in Hangzhou 杭州, China, in the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). It aims to highlight regional religious features in Hangzhou as a locality—the interactions between Buddhism and sociocultural factors—from the visualization and analyses. With the advent of the spatial turn in the field of humanities, numerous endeavors have been undertaken to collect data from religious sites in East Asia. However, the collections are aimed at a nationwide-level scale rather than targeted at regional aspects. Studying religion by using the data of large-scale areas often prevents us from observing regional characteristics such as how religion interacted with local factors. Hence, this project draws spatial data from a Hangzhou local gazetteer titled the Xianchun Lin’an zhi 咸淳臨安志 (Records about Lin’an from the Xianchun Reign, a 100-fascicle local chronicle that depicted the Lin’an Prefecture in the Southern Song dynasty) to create a visualization for all Buddhist establishments in Hangzhou. We observe how a religious landscape within a locality is portrayed when it was renowned as a political, cultural, and economic center at a given time. Starting as a project led by him in 2020, Jiang Wu’s team converted all Buddhist temple locations recorded in the Xianchun Lin’an zhi into geographical coordinates. Based on the dataset, we analyze the distribution of Buddhist temples with the application of GIS via three methods: average nearest neighbor, quadrat analysis, and kernel density to highlight localism and regionalism in Chinese religious studies. Our results of GIS distant reading indicate a highly clustered congregation of Buddhist temples in Hangzhou. Corroborating the results of distant reading with factual information (recorded in historical materials) from close reading, we discover that the spatial pattern of Buddhist temples is correlated with socio-political factors including fengshui, state power, politics, and commercial exchanges. With the combination of distant reading and close reading, we can highlight the interactions between Buddhism and socio-political factors that are not easily spotted via traditional textual approaches or using data that is scaled nationwide.

Achievements of the Compendium Bencao Tujing (Illustrated Classic of Materia Medica): A Preliminary Study

Abstract Bencao Tujing (Illustrated Classic of Materia Medica) is a brilliant and monumental compendium of materia medica by Su Song, which was published in 1061 and gathered ancestral knowledge from the Song dynasty as a legacy for posterity. The compendium emphasized the clinical applications of medicinal materials collected nationwide, which used illustrated atlases as references. The descriptions for each medicinal material subsumed the prescriptions containing it and were supplemented with relevant medical cases. Medical prescriptions predating the Song dynasty were included, which enhanced the clinical usefulness of the pharmacopoeia. The ancestral knowledge of materia medica was extensively merged with natural history throughout the compendium, which also made extensive reference to more than 200 Chinese classics, local gazetteers, and published works from the social and natural sciences. The inclusion of natural history and literature works changed the convention used in earlier pharmacopoeias to present medicines based solely on pharmacological analyses. The compendium also pioneered the inclusion of natural history in pharmacopoeia. Bencao Tujing helped establish China's leading position in the field of materia medica. Su Song's meticulous nature, truth-seeking attitude, and adherence to scientific thinking are truly worthy of emulation and promotion.

An analysis of the Relationship between Zhang Liangzhi’s Official Career and His Contributions to the Compilation of Local Gazetteers

<p>明儒薛瑄於山西河東地區發揚程朱理學，倡研正心復性的實踐之學，受教弟子成眾，後世稱河東學派。薛瑄的再傳弟子呂柟，被視作明代中期河東學派的代表人物，呂柟同時受到關學的影響，除了持續推動研經講學外，還投入地方志的編纂工作，其言教身教之影響值得留意。本文主要探究明代河東學派門人編纂地方志的動向，特別以張良知為例，透過記載其生平事蹟的神道碑文，及相關志書、文集等，考察他在許州、漢中、中都三地的仕宦經歷與修志作為，及其所撰志書史料價值，並指出河東學派關心史志之剪裁編排、重視國家典章制度與官員政務活動的志書風格。</p> <p> </p><p>By focusing on the relationship between the Ming dynasty Hedong School member Zhang Liangzhi’s career and his selection of materials for the compilation of local gazetteers in three different locales (Xuzhou, Hanzhong, Zhongdu), this article makes a preliminary foray into what members of the Hedong School emphasized in their compilation of local gazetteers. Using Zhang’s stele epitaph, his gazetteers writings, and collected works (wenji), along with other historical documents, I investigate the relationship between his approach to governing local communities and the compiling of local gazetteers. Through an assessment of this relationship, this article reveals that the Hedong School not only focused on matters of editing and the arrangement of historical sources but further favored topics related to imperial decrees and regulations, and governmental affairs.airs.</p> <p> </p>

Editorial

Editorial Margherita Zanasi The second issue of 2022 presents six research articles and one review essay. Yue Meng's article explores the development of the concept of "ecology" in China throughout the twentieth century. Meng highlights the tension between, on the one hand, ecological awareness and, on the other, economic objectives as well as postcolonial, socialist, and nationalist discourses. These centralized agendas, she argues, ultimately denied ecology and made it an "unspeakable reality." Vivienne Xiangwei Guo explores the collaboration between Wu Peifu and the Endeavor Society—a group of Beijing intellectuals led by Hu Shi—that resulted in the short-lived 1922 Beiyang "Good People Cabinet." Focusing on this cooperation, Guo explores the discourse on constitutional government and the complex personal network that linked May Fourth intellectuals with public and political personalities such as Wu. Guo's article also challenges the stereotypical representation of warlords as detached from the contemporary intellectual discourse. Jianda Yuan closely examines the records of secret conversations held between the emperor of Manchukuo, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, and important Japanese political and military figures during the period 1932–1938. These records, he argues, shed light on Puyi's political ideas, revealing that he closely identified with Japanese interests in Manchuria and China Proper. Challenging the image of Puyi as a mere Japanese "puppet," Yuan argues that he had more political autonomy than is generally believed. In his article, Yu Wang explores the widespread practice in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the 1950s and 1960s of listening to "enemy radio" such as Taiwan's Voice of Free China. Placing this practice in the contemporary Cold War context, Wang argues that it contributed to the politicization of foreign broadcasts targeting PRC listeners. It also generated tensions between central PRC organizations concerned with national security, on the one hand, and the listeners and local radio administrations, on the other. Wang also explores how the radio, as a communication technology, offered a space for listeners to imagine alternative identities. Kelly A. Hammond and Evan N. Dawley shift the focus to Taiwan. In her article, Hammond examines the outreach of the Guomindang (GMD) toward Muslim communities—both in China and globally—in the 1950s and 1960s. Its main objective, Hammond argues, was to win their support in establishing the Republic of China on Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese state while discrediting the PRC on the mainland. Building on relationships and networks established before 1949, the Nationalists attempted to mobilize postcolonial Muslim nation-states in their pursuit of international recognition. Dawley, by focusing on local gazetteers for major Taiwanese cities, reveals the limits of the Nationalists' attempt to reterritorialize Taiwan as part of China during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dawley argues that this effort was intended to foster a Chinese national identity [End Page 89] as well as to incorporate Taiwan into China's historical narrative and its "physical and imagined geography." Although the development objectives for these cities proved successful, that of Sinification ultimately failed as urbanization unfolded within a distinctively Taiwanese context. In his review essay, Yan Bo explores different approaches to the study of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by focusing on two recently published books: Dong Guoqiang and Andrew G. Walder's A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China and Alessandro Russo's Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture. Four book reviews published with this issue are available at Project MUSE (muse.jhu.edu/journal/390). Finally, Yue Meng is the author featured for this issue in our interview series, available at http://hstcconline.org/interviews-with-authors/. The interview includes a link for free access to her article. [End Page 90] Copyright © 2022 Twentieth Century China Journal, Inc.

Locality and Local Gazetteers in the Republic: A Case for the Continuity of Spatial Order

AbstractThe way late imperial political elites in China positioned themselves in the tianxia—their life world—can be described as a balance between polity and locality, which was often accompanied by an enduring sense of local identity. This article argues that despite the fall of the tianxia concept in modern China, the age-old locality–polity relationship and the elite local identity did not disappear. Taking the flourishing local gazetteer production of the Republican era as a case, I suggest that instead of suppressing locality, the crisis of the polity and the coming of the nation-state in China brought it more to the foreground. The decline of locality in China's political culture occurred only after the communist takeover. The study makes use of the Local Gazetteer Research Tools (LoGaRT) developed by Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences.

Heroic monks and villainous pirates: an inquiry into monastic Buddhist warfare in sixteenth-century China

ABSTRACT This article explores the involvement of Shaolin monks in military campaigns against the so-called ‘Japanese Pirates’ (wokou) in 1550s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. While previous scholarship has only touched briefly on the course and scope of the campaigns, this contribution analyzes the military training, fighting tactics, and actual warfare of Shaolin (and other) monks in the course of these conflicts. Drawing on late Ming historical evidences from chronicles, pen notes, local gazetteers, and previously untouched material, I demonstrate that the monastics in question possessed both outstanding individual fighting skills and above-average military knowledge. Employing strategic formations, battle tactics, and professional modes of warfare, the ‘monk soldiers’ (sengbing) were able to immortalize themselves as brave and righteous patriots. The article thus digs deeper into the entanglements of military and religious circles in late imperial China, a topic that needs to be explored in future scholarship. Ending with a brief excursion to sixteenth-century Korea, the article concludes that comparative research yields important insights of how to better understand Buddhist involvement in military actions in premodern East Asia.

The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City by Juan Du

Reviewed by: The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City by Juan Du Susanne Stein (bio) The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City By Juan Du. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 376. With her equally instructive and highly readable monograph on the urban evolution of Shenzhen, Princeton-educated and Hong Kong-based architect Juan Du aims to dispel a powerful, multilayered myth at the heart of most "rise of China" narratives on the recent past. As the People's Republic of China's original and most prestigious Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and first major window to the outside world after three decades of increasing political and economic self-isolation, Shenzhen has long been stylized as the epitome of the economic reform policies initiated after 1978 by the central leadership under Deng Xiao-ping (1904–97); more recently, it has come to symbolize China's ascent to global power at the turn of the twenty-first century. Forty years after Shenzhen's inception as socioeconomic experimental zone, most of us are still ignorant of the city's complex developments beyond the legendary tale of "former fishing village turned megacity." That is why Du's multifaceted history, written for a "broad intellectual audience," is a welcome addition to existing scholarship on Shenzhen's urban and social landscape (p. 359). By exposing and contextualizing common misconceptions about Shenzhen perpetuated in official versions of the familiar success story, she strives to deliver a "factual account of the city's evolution" (p. 8). This encompasses a thorough reconsideration of Shenzhen's reinvention as SEZ; its purpose and location, neither capitalist enclave nor tabula rasa; the time needed for its development, refuting the notion of an "instant city" founded in 1979; and the various groups and people involved, ranging from Chinese Communist Party leaders, central planners, outside investors, and infrastructure regiments of the People's Liberation Army, to local governments, villagers, and millions of migrants. The four sections in Du's book represent the different scales and foci of [End Page 587] her analysis, proceeding from Shenzhen's National Relevance and Regional History down to the local City Construction and District Transformation levels. In each section the author centers on different (historical) individuals and artifacts entangled with the urban and economic evolution of today's Shenzhen. Drawing on various academic contributions, newspaper articles, local gazetteers, official documents, and her own field research, Du ties the threads of personal histories, experiences, and anecdotes with general developments in the emerging metropolis. Her descriptions are meticulously documented and well-illustrated with relevant maps, photographs, and architectural diagrams. Some readers might wish for a comprehensive theoretical framing of the narratives, including a critical discussion on the sources—as well as their limitations—and a proper bibliography providing easy access to Chinese and Western reference materials alike. Complementing earlier research by Stefan Ai (2014) and Linda Vlassenrood (2016), Du argues that "Shenzhen's growth and development after 1979 should not be attributed solely to the national government's centralized economic policies," but is equally, if not more importantly, rooted in the geography, history, and culture of the Shenzhen region, especially the city's urban form and spatial organization (p. 8). This is a topic she unfolds in her third and fourth sections. Historians of technology, migration, and land use change will be particularly interested in her illuminating sketches of the history of salt and oyster production and the long-term impact of these trades on local infrastructure, architecture, and the natural environment. Du's book also resonates with O'Donnell, Wong, and Bach's (2017) collection on Shenzhen's urban transformation and, more generally, with Peter Herrle, Josefine Fokdal, and Detlev Ipsen's (2015) study on urban(izing) villages in the Pearl River Delta regarding the significance of local negotiations and informal practices alongside national development policies. For planning historians and urban anthropologists, several of Du's observations on the discrepancies between central planning targets and the actual situation may seem prosaic; however, she turns them into a compelling argument against promoting Shenzhen as a "replicable model of city planning and economic development," at home or abroad (p. 9). Du effectively demonstrates that Shenzhen...

Reconstructing cropland change since 1650 AD in Shaanxi province, central China

Regional reconstructions of historical cropland change are essential to improve the accuracy of global datasets. In Shaanxi province, central China, frequently affected by rebellions and natural disasters over the past 300 years, the cropland area fluctuated. In this study, based on local gazetteers, statistics, and survey data, systematic steps are followed to reconstruct the cropland area change since 1650 in Shaanxi province. The result shows four stages of changes in the total cropland area: steady increase during 1650–1830 stimulated by policies and population growth, decrease during 1830–1937 affected by wars and natural disasters, rapid growth during 1937–the 1980s, and rapid decrease after the 1980s influenced by urbanization and the agricultural planting structure adjustment. The total cropland area increased from 2.2 × 104 km2 in 1650 to 3.99 × 104 km2 in 2016. The majority of the cropland concentrated on the Guanzhong region from 1650 to 2016. The cropland expanded from the center to the surroundings in the Guanzhong region, from northeastern to southwestern in northern Shaanxi, and from western to eastern in southern Shaanxi before the 1980s. Cropland area declined in all three regions after the 1980s. The comparisons show most cropland area data in the Qing dynasty from the existing regional studies are still highly dependent on the registered tax-paying cropland area. Without considering agricultural history, changes in the SAGE cropland in Shaanxi province over the past 300 years are irrational. Spatially, HYDE 3.2 dataset cannot show the “real” spatial distribution of the cropland before 1930, because too much cropland is allocated to northern and southern Shaanxi.

The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures by Justin M. Jacobs

Reviewed by: The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures by Justin M. Jacobs Jeff Kyong-McClain The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures. Justin M. Jacobs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 348 pp. Hardcover US $82.50, ISBN 9780226711966; Paperback US $27.50, ISBN 9780226712017; E-book US $27, ISBN 9780226712154. The sub-subtitle to Justin Jacobs' compelling new book on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century removal of antiquities from northwestern China could have been In a Thoroughly Gentlemanly Manner and to Everyone's Satisfaction. Jacobs, a historian of modern China, carefully examines the details surrounding the major archaeological expeditions in Xinjiang and Gansu led by Western scholars (especially, but not exclusively, those overseen by Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot). In short, Jacobs convincingly shows that, until there emerged modern nationalist sentiment in China and a corresponding group of Chinese scholars modeled on Western ones, most workers, local elite, and even national Chinese officials cooperated with the Western archaeological projects. Part of Jacob's persuasive power in Compensations of Plunder is due to the breadth of his sources. He makes extensive use of English, French, and Chinese language documents, including numerous [End Page 370] unpublished diaries and private letters, local gazetteers, and of course the published record. After reading Jacobs' thoroughly-sourced account, though one might dispute an occasional interpretation or supposition, it is hard to imagine that there exists somewhere a smoking gun that would outright refute Jacobs' thesis. Jacobs uses his sources to debunk post-hoc evaluations of the Western explorers that either lionized them for their academic and adventurous prowess or severely criticized them for their role in the wider imperialist enterprise. Rather than making such a dualistic assessment, Jacobs proposes that we consider these expeditions in light of the rising power of nationalism in China vis-à-vis earlier frameworks such as class, empire, and profit. With great clarity, Jacobs lays out a paradigm for understanding the value of artifacts as existing on a scale from "worthless" to "profitable" to "precious" and finally on to "priceless" (p. 35). In the beginning of Jacobs' story, only the Westerner explorers viewed the artifacts as priceless, and that only because they had in mind an imagined link between artifact and national history. Confucian scholar-officials in the region also valued antiquities of course, but not in the same manner nor to the same degree. As Jacobs puts it, it was only when "a new generation of fully Westernized Chinese elites began to do as their Western counterparts did—that is, conflate the material culture of the past with the political legitimacy of newly conceived nations—the art and antiquities of China attained a valuation just as priceless within China as they had already attained outside of China" (p. 36). Jacobs proceeds, then, to tell the story of the emergence of this conflation in China. The first three chapters examine the earliest Western expeditions in the northwest, which did not experience the challenge of Chinese nationalism. In these chapters, Jacobs explores the way Western archaeological expeditions engaged with both commoners (primarily Muslims) and elites (usually Chinese). In the case of the former, Jacobs finds that despite occasional conflicts over pay and labor conditions (which can be considered ordinary problems of labor relations in any context), in general the commoners who signed on to work with the foreign expeditions did so knowing full well what was involved, and in fact often made a great effort to be included as a part of these teams. It was generally believed among laborers in the northwest that there were obvious material benefits to working with the Westerners, including higher than average salaries, access to Western medicine, and the potential prestige of being associated with a foreign outfit, among other things (pp. 62–75). Jacobs calls these expeditions "economic stimulus package[s] of sorts" to the poor oases of Xinjiang (p. 69). If for the lower classes there was a tangible financial benefit to associating with the "Western sahibs," for the Confucian gentlemen, including both the non-office-holding elite and officials, there was a somewhat less tangible but no less real value in "accumulating culture" through association with...

The Sinologist A.O. Ivanovsky and his Study of Materials on the Peoples in Southwestern China

The article is devoted to the Russian researcher of China and Manchuria Alexei Osipovich (Iosifovich) Ivanovsky (1863–1903) and his “Materials for the History of Native Tribes in Southwestern China” (in three books) published in 1887 and 1889. The article describes the historical context, which motivated the creation of encyclopedias and albums with information about the aboriginal peoples living in different areas of the Chinese empire and beyond. Life and work of A.O. Ivanovsky have been studied insufficiently; therefore, the article describes his biography with detailed indication of sources concerning life and contribution of this researcher. It is concluded that throughout his scientific career the researcher was engaged in collecting and classifying various knowledge related to China: he wrote a dictionary and biographical articles for large encyclopedias, during his trip to China he collected samples of the Solon and Dahurian languages, studying the peoples of southwestern China he also adhered to the principle of accumulating the maximum possible number of sources on the subject under study. The article analyzes his monograph "Materials for the History of Native Tribes in Southwestern China" in two aspects: 1) Used key sources (Chinese encyclopedias, geographical descriptions, dynastic histories, local gazetteers); 2) Described peoples, generally termed by names “Mani” and “Liao”, as well as using names derived from these two terms. The structure of the text is characterized by heterogeneity, such as: 1) the first volume uses chronological principle, it covers the period from antiquity to the end of the Song dynasty; the third volume covers the period of the three dynasties (Yuan, Ming and Qing). 2) the second volume uses the territorial principle, the second book is divided into 3 chapters, each is discussing the provinces Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. The publication of the text itself and its content were affected by the financial and organizational difficulties experienced by the author. The article is accompanied by a table compiled to illustrate the work of A.O. Ivanovsky with one of the Chinese sources, “miao album” illustrating peoples of Yunnan "Illustrated Description of the Peoples of the South and West of Yunnan Province" (preface 1837), republished by Saint-Petersburg University Press in 2020.

Qing Dynasty Miao Albums Illustrating Ethic Groups of Guizhou Province: Attribution and Album Genealogy

The paper addresses Qing dynasty albums containing illustrations and notes about ethnic groups of southwest China usually termed as Baimiaotu 百苗圖, or Miao albums, there are Miao albums illustrating ethnic groups of Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Hainan and Taiwan. Library of St Petesrburg State University holds four hand-painted albums — two on Yunnan, two on Guizhou. Over a hundred Miao albums are scattered across the world, with most valuable early editions, some with dates and prefaces, are housed in the Western museums and universities. The paper shows approaches to systematization of the albums showing Guizhou ethnic groups, including such criteria as number of pictures (usually either 82 or 40), the position of the picture and text, special features of pictures (human figures with or without background), some conclusions are based on the typology of albums housed in Guizhou, which was proposed by Chinese scholars. The paper discusses under what circumstances the number of pictures has increased from 40 to 82 at the turn of the 19th century, what sources on Guizhou were used for annotations. The paper compares illustrations and texts from two St Petersburg University albums and those from the US collections. Conclusion about necessity of deeper study of primary sources, which provided basis for Miao albums, e. g., local gazetteers, “Qing Imperial Illustrations of Tributary Peoples” (1761) etc. is made.

Herbalogical study on Liangmianzhen (Zanthoxyli Radix)

Liangmianzhen(Zanthoxyli Radix) has long been used as medicine. The current medicinal parts are different from those in the ancient. As recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopeia, the medicinal part is root. However, in ancient works, the medicinal parts include root, stem, leaf, and fruit. In an attempt to find the historical basis that stem is a reasonable medicinal part, the herbalogical study was carried out on this medicinal based on the formal names, synonyms, original plant, medicinal parts, habitat of the medicinal plant, producing area, processing and preparation methods, efficacy, and indications recorded in ancient Chinese materia medica and local gazetteers. The results showed that Liangmianzhen was firstly recorded as a medicinal in Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica with the formal name of "Manjiao". "Manjiao" was adopted from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty when it was changed to "Rudijinniu", the name originating from the folk in the south of the Five Ridges. Now, the formal name is "Liangmianzhen", which was firstly recorded in Wuxuan County Gazetteer in 1914 and then as a synonym in the Updated Records of Picking Herbs in the South of the Five Ridges. According to the formal names, synonyms, and the descriptions of the original plant, the medicinal plants of Liang-mianzhen have the characteristics of shrub-like young seedlings, vine adult seedlings, corymbiform thyrsus, stems with thorns, amphitropous golden-yellow roots with horn-like branches, and thorns on both sides of the leaves. Thus, "Manjiao", "Rudijinniu", and "Liangmianzhen" were from the same species of Zanthoxylum nitidum(Rutaceae), which was also verified based on the growth environment, habitat, processing and preparation methods, efficacy, and indications. In ancient times, the stem and root were the main medicinal parts and leaves and fruits were also used. However, in the Chinese Pharmacopeia, root is recorded as the only medicinal part, which is obviously inconsistent with the records in the ancient classics. In light of the limited medicinal resources for Liang-mianzhen, other medicinal parts of Z. nitidum is recommended. This study clarified the medicinal parts of Z. nitidum in history. It is recommended that the stem be added to the medicinal parts of Z. nitidum in the next edition of Chinese Pharmacopeia.