Ming China Research Articles

How Should the Dragon King Memorialize the Jade Emperor? Margins of Political Thought in Late Ming China

A vast array of “vernacular” novels from late imperial and modern China feature well-edited official documents such as decrees, edicts, and memorials. The present study argues that these long-overlooked official documents offer unique access to creative political ideas that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. Using Xiyou ji 西遊記 (The Journey to the West) as a case study, this article initiates a critical dialogue between histories of documents, print culture, knowledge dissemination, vernacular novels, and political thought. The study begins with an exposition of the Ming regulations governing the formatting and representation of official documents. Tracing how the civil service examinations familiarized the reading public with documentary formatting, it then details how anonymous producers of various editions of the novel problematized the emperor's two bodies on documentary margins. It concludes by providing examples from Manchu manuscripts and Lu Xun's novels, suggesting that the methods explored here may be applied to further studies beyond Sinitic texts and the late imperial period.

Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China By Sixiang Wang. Columbia University Press, New York, 2023. 424 pp. $140.00 (hardcover), $35.00 (paperback).

Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China By Sixiang Wang. Columbia University Press, New York, 2023. 424 pp. $140.00 (hardcover), $35.00 (paperback).

Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body by Xing Wang (review)

Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body by Xing Wang (review)

Four Heavenly Kings at Hwaŏmsa, Gurye: Pyŏgam Kaksŏng and Sculptor Monk In’gyun

This study focuses on the sculptures of the Four Heavenly Kings at Hwaŏmsa. It had been unknown when or by whom they were made, but fortunately, I was able to propose that they were made in 1635-36 under the supervision of the sculptor monk In'gyun, based on their similarities in iconography and style to the Four Heavenly Kings at Songgwangsa, made in 1628. In'gyun participated in the erection of Buddhist sculptures at Songgwangsa, Hwaŏmsa, and Hŭngguksa. In particular, the Four Heavenly Kings at Songgwangsa were made in collaboration with Ŭngwŏn, and it is likely that with this experience, In'gyun was able to lead the project of the Four Heavenly Kings at Hwaŏmsa. As for the sculpture itself, I have always been curious about the rat in the hand of the King of the West, a motif that appears only in three early-17th-century temples in Jeollanamdo. A symbol of national security and wealth, the rat motif originated in Khotan, Central Asia, passed through Tibet and into Ming China where it was made into a woodcut in 1431. It is likely that Shin Iksŏng, a son-in-law of King Sŏnjo introduced this woodcut print to Chosŏn along with other Buddhist books and prints from Ming. When Pyŏgam Kaksŏng rebuilt Songgwangsa and Hwaŏmsa, he probably consulted Ming prints and put the rat, a symbol of national security and wealth, in the hand of the King of the West. In conclusion, by this study, I have aimed to demonstrate how Buddhist iconographies were not only based on Buddhist scriptures but also created through legends and myths of each region and developed to become a new iconography.

Writing World History in Late Ming China and the Perception of Maritime Asia, written by Elke Papelitzky

Writing World History in Late Ming China and the Perception of Maritime Asia, written by Elke Papelitzky

The Dharma King Who Took Care of His Family: Penden Trashi and the Rise of a Clan-Based Tibetan Buddhist Society in the Fifteenth-Century Northern Sino-Tibetan Borderland

Abstract In the fifteenth century, Tibetan Buddhist monks from the northern Sino-Tibetan borderland played an important role in facilitating religious and political contacts between Ming China and the Tibetan world. With the rise of their political status and religious influence at the Ming court, these Buddhist hierarchs also projected imperial endorsements to the Sino-Tibetan borderland and reshaped the local social structure. This article examines how Penden Trashi, one of the most eminent Tibetan Buddhist monks of the fifteenth century, contributed to the rise of a clan-based Tibetan Buddhist society in early Ming Minzhou 岷州. By scrutinizing Penden Trashi’s biography and personal letters to identify his role in forging the dharma succession pattern and monastic association mode in Minzhou, this article illuminates how imperial patronage reconstructed the power dynamic in the fifteenth-century Sino-Tibetan borderland.

Speaking on Behalf of the Korean King

During the late sixteenth century, top-tier elites of Ming China wrote mock memorials on behalf of the king of Chosŏn Korea. While the Chinese court developed this prompt to familiarize its officials with the changing geopolitics and test their abilities to elaborate on the greatness of China, up until the sixteenth century, elites turned this exercise into an opportunity to rethink the proper order of the world. Notably, some of them epitomized by Ye Xianggao made the critical step to advocate the Korean perspective with words that were even more “intense” than their Korean counterparts. These mock exercises offer access to an important yet much-underappreciated aspect of political culture in early modern China; accordingly, those who had received or had been receiving rhetorical training were actively exploring alternative possibilities of speaking for political and cultural others in a hierarchical world order.

A Study of Women’s Religion, Life, and Agency through Guanyin Hairpins in Ming Dynasty China

Hairpins decorated with motifs related to Guanyin, the most popular bodhisattva in Chinese culture, emerged as a new type of head accessory during China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644). These hairpins have been found in tombs as burial objects and in pagodas as religious offerings. Records of their use have been captured in novels, travel notes, confiscatory inventories, burial arrangements, and ancestral portraits. Guanyin hairpins were used flexibly between religious and everyday domains, being both women’s accessories and a popular deity. They allow for an exploration of how women’s agency dynamically defined the functions of Guanyin hairpins in terms of aesthetic taste, self-appreciation, and religious practices. This diversity of uses further reveals that women not only relied on Guanyin for religious comfort, as current scholarship has established, but also as an expression of taste and appreciation, as reflected in how Guanyin was linked to women’s life and identity in Ming China.

Human Trafficking and Piracy in Early Modern East Asia: Maritime Challenges to the Ming Dynasty Economy, 1370–1565

AbstractThis study asks how human trafficking in Ming China (1368–1644) became enveloped in the emerging global economy of the sixteenth century. Utilizing theoretical insights from the model of “slaving zones,” the essay examines recorded incidents of human trafficking along China’s littoral from 1370 to 1565 and contends that its presence and persistence were intertwined with the Ming court’s economic policies and problems. Here the history of human trafficking in early-to-mid-Ming China is viewed from the perspective of a series of challenges to the country’s economic well-being but also to its power to govern according to its own laws and norms. These challenges include the Ming regime’s efforts: to eradicate piracy and smuggling through their integration into the lawful framework of tribute trade; to support provincial requests for extra revenue to promote military security; to acquire Japanese silver but deny Japan mercantile access to China; to profit from Portugal’s Southeast Asian and Japanese commercial networks. This study argues that the increasing prevalence of human trafficking along China’s coastline was the result of competing forces anxious for power and riches that fused into the thrust of sixteenth-century China’s expanding economy, as well as the adaptability of those in authority to ignore the consequences of allowing safe havens for persons bartering and selling human beings. These factors turned the status of Ming China’s littoral from a “no slaving zone” into an “imperfect no slaving zone.”

What Exactly is a Sum Xu?

This article aims to resolve the academic debate over the identity of the mysterious animal Sum Xu described in Michał Boym’s Flora sinensis. Through examining various Chinese sources published in the seventeenth century and the vocabulary they used to characterize creatures belonging to the Rodentia and Carnivora orders, the essay demonstrates that the animal at stake was most likely a weasel (Mustela), either Siberian (M. sibirica) or Japanese (M. itatsi), and that it was commonly known under the name song shu, even though in modern Mandarin this term is reserved for the squirrel. Additionally, the article investigates methodological problems arising from studying the import of Chinese terminology into the European context and suggests that scholars should consider the unstable linguistic diversity of Ming China when discussing the transfer of knowledge from the East to the West in the early modern period.

A study on the evolution of rhythmical parallel prose in Ming China and its influx into the Chosun dynasty: Focusing on the Wu Zhong Literati in Hongzhi through the Jiajing period

A study on the evolution of rhythmical parallel prose in Ming China and its influx into the Chosun dynasty: Focusing on the Wu Zhong Literati in Hongzhi through the Jiajing period

Ethos and Karma: the Construction of Business Ethics and Social Ethics in Popular Novels from the 16th to 18th Centuries

Abstract The common concept of karma and retribution in the general religious life of Chinese society was not only expressed in the popular literature that has flourished since the Song dynasty, but also reacted to society through the processing, refining, and deepening of popular fiction. Popular novels from the 16th to 18th centuries synchronized with the fresh ideas of New Chan Buddhism, New Daoism, and New Confucianism, which gradually developed an ethos and karma model. It used real life as a metaphor for explaining cause and effect in the construction of new business and social ethics that were urgently needed at the time. The business ethics it reflected and constructed not only included the affirmation of business and the advocacy of hard work to obtain wealth and promote fair competition, but also criticized blindly pursuing profits, especially emphasizing that wealth was determined by destiny and could not be forced. The core of the new social ethics was to establish rules connecting traditional morality and becoming rich, which not only stressed that scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and businessmen should do their parts, but also always put scholarly study as the highest pursuit; while criticizing social injustice, people still strongly desired to pass the imperial examination. This paper examines the great social changes that were occurring in the Ming dynasty, especially in the areas of business ethics and the perception of wealth, through popular literature from Ming China.

Anna Maria Van Schurman’s Chinese Calligraphy

Calligraphy is an understudied aspect of the reception of Chinese art in early modern Europe. Chinese visitors to Middelburg (1601) and Amsterdam (1654) first demonstrated it as a cultural practice. Other written samples circulated in the Dutch Republic, an emporium for Chinese goods. This article focuses on a previously unknown participant in this exchange: Anna Maria van Schurman, Europe’s first female university student, who had mastered various Asian scripts and was expected to try her hand at Chinese and Japanese. In 1637 Andreas Colvius sent her samples of East Asian calligraphy to copy ‘by her own hand’. This exchange makes possible a transcultural study of the calligraphic gift. Via the popular writings of Matteo Ricci, Van Schurman’s correspondents may have learned about the role of calligraphy in fostering social relationships in late Ming China. Some of the visual and material qualities of East Asian writing must have made it look like a fitting tribute to a female European scholar of high profile and, in being exchanged as a gift, calligraphy acquired new meanings even while remaining illegible. In seventeenth-century China and Europe, the friendly exchange of calligraphy expressed new forms of sociability.

The long‐run effects of the imperial bureaucracy: Two tales along the Great Wall of Ming China

AbstractThis article examines the long‐term effects of the administrative system using the Great Wall as a geographical discontinuity. Using town‐level nighttime light luminosity per capita as a measure of economic development, we find that today, luminosity per capita is significantly and robustly higher in towns south of the Great Wall than in those north of it. The holding of resource allocation authority by the administrative hierarchy and the uniform enforcement of justice by hierarchy officials were advantageous for city building and judicial cross‐territory enforceability on the south side of the great wall, which had a long‐term impact on the imperial bureaucracy.

A Structure/Process Approach to Legitimacy: A Local Official's Selection and Legitimation of a Tax Policy in Mid‐Late Ming Dynasty China

AbstractMost studies on the connection between the legitimacy of an authority and its policy selection and legitimation follow a structure approach to legitimacy, which recognises an authoritative actor's selection and legitimation of a policy as determined by the subjects' collective commitment to values. Consequently, it cannot empirically explain policy variation under collective commitment to values and changes in those values. Building on existing processual theories and following the conceptualisation of legitimacy as a social process, this study proposes an integral process approach to legitimacy whereby an authority selects and legitimises a perceived legitimate policy towards subjects. Drawing on findings from a negative case methodology applied to the selection and legitimation of a tax policy by an official in Ming China, this study offers substantive content for an integral process approach to legitimacy. It develops the state legitimacy concept and contributes to emerging theories on the legitimacy dimension of fiscal state formation. Empirically, this study illustrates how the data from the nationwide field survey in mid‐late Ming China were used in tax collection at the local level and illuminates the discrepancies between the survey data and that recorded in local official tax registers.

A Critical Biography of Zhu Zhanshan, Prince Xian of Xiang (1406–1478)

Abstract This essay offers a critical biography of one of Ming China’s (1368–1644) most exceptional yet understudied princes, Zhu Zhanshan 朱瞻墡 (1406–1478), Prince Xian of Xiang 襄憲王. It also complicates our understanding of Ming princes by recounting Zhu Zhanshan’s exceptional relationship with the Ming throne, which presents a unique case study of intense princely engagement in capital affairs. In pursuit of these endeavors, this essay recounts and analyzes the major events in Zhu Zhanshan’s life. These include his political engagements in Beijing during dynastic crises, intellectual development, decades-long interactions with Ming emperors and capital leadership, visits to Beijing, and contributions to local religion in his Xiangyang investiture. The essay concludes with an evaluation of Zhu Zhanshan, his place in the Ming commentarial tradition, and state-princedom relations.

Matteo Ricci's Depictions of Alexander the Great in Late Ming China☆

AbstractThis article primarily focuses on the origin, the earliest dissemination and the accommodation of European Alexander texts in imperial China by Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). After providing an overview of the Chinese Alexander traditions, it first examines the sources of inspiration for Ricci's choice of Alexander as the prominent historical figure in his booklet on friendship, and then explores the reason for and implications of Ricci's allegorical translation of Alexander as Lishan 歷山 in Chinese. The remainder of the article analyses the cultural accommodation and literary tradition of each European exemplum of Alexander anthologized in Ricci's writings, from Jiaoyou Lun 交友論 (Treatise on Friendship) to Jiren Shipian 畸人十篇 (Ten Discourses of the Man of Paradox). The article shows that all Ricci's accounts of Alexander are mainly derived from the European Medieval and Renaissance Alexander tradition and were adapted in China by the strategy of cultural accommodation.

FRIENDSHIP AND HOSPITALITY: THE JESUIT‐CONFUCIAN ENCOUNTER IN LATE MING CHINA. By DongfengXu. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. . Pp. xii + 276. Hardback, $95.00; Paperback, $32.95.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 103-103 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: East Asia FRIENDSHIP AND HOSPITALITY: THE JESUIT-CONFUCIAN ENCOUNTER IN LATE MING CHINA. By Dongfeng Xu. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. . Pp. xii + 276. Hardback, $95.00; Paperback, $32.95. First published: 24 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16348Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1Special Issue: Unique Approaches to Christianity in Africa and BeyondMarch 2023Pages 103-103 RelatedInformation

Zhu Yousi: The Life and Times of a Prince in 16th Century Ming China

The Ming Dynasty imposed all-encompassing restrictions upon its princely population. Princes were effectively barred from participation in dynastic politics, from entering the civil service examinations in pursuit of office, and from undertaking common livelihoods. Many princes thus turned to alternative means of fulfilment or drifted toward dissolution; Zhu Yousi, an ambitious prince in Huguang Province, strove to function beyond these constraints. This article recounts his life and relationship with the Ming princely institution. It first studies his engagement with the Jiajing Emperor during the Great Ritual Controversy in 1521 and his advocacy for princes’ socio-economic freedom. It then examines his downfall in 1525 as well as the events which occasioned his redemption in 1539. Overall, this article situates Zhu Yousi’s story not only within narratives concerning Ming princes and their political activities, but also within an expanding corpus of scholarship which challenges traditional caricatures of princely debauchery.

Religion and Prison Art in Ming China (1368–1644): Creative Environment, Creative Subjects. Ying Zhang. Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 102 pp. €96.

Religion and Prison Art in Ming China (1368–1644): Creative Environment, Creative Subjects. Ying Zhang. Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 102 pp. €96.