Seventeenth-Century China Research Articles

Beyond Boundaries: Painting Re-inscriptions in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century China

This paper explores the widespread practice of adding multiple inscriptions to a single artwork at different times in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries China. Such practices became prominent when literati painters revisited artworks they had previously created or owned, or when paintings had accumulated a multitude of inscriptions over time. Within the realm of Chinese art discourse, this phenomenon is denoted as “re-inscriptions.” By examining re-inscriptions written on extant paintings and embodied in individual anthologies, this paper demonstrates that these texts transcended the boundaries of art and touched upon the painters’ own lives and the society in which they lived. On the one hand, literati painters engaged in a dialogue with their past selves through re-inscriptions, exploring themes of mortality, aging, and the passage of time – topics seldom addressed in traditional Chinese painting. On the other hand, they utilized re-inscriptions as a means of social interaction, with some re-inscriptions becoming formulaic, adaptable to various artworks to meet different social needs. Furthermore, when faced with preexisting inscriptions on an artwork, artists added new ones for a conversation with their predecessors. Throughout this process, the accumulation of inscriptions transformed the artwork into a layered cultural narrative, and enabled the literati painters in shaping a elite community transcending time and space.

Theatricality in the moonlit garden: Qi Biaojia’s (1602–1645) garden of Mount Yu and his midnight suicide

This paper examines the Garden of Mount Yu in the late Ming Dynasty, owned by the prestigious scholar-official and drama critic Qi Biaojia. As seen in his literature on Mount Yu, Qi had projected his theatrical sensitivity onto his viewing of the garden, imagining the emotional interactions between his ‘theatrical self’ and the garden, which emerged again on the night of his martyrdom upon Ming’s collapse. In both circumstances, the alienation of a ‘theatrical self’ enabled Qi to immerse himself in the imagined theatrics while apprehending their illusory quality. This paper takes the nocturnal obscurity and mutability of temporal stages as opposites of daytime normality and demonstrates the obsession with theatricality and its manipulation in seventeenth-century China. Such obsession, when examined in the context of the Ming-Qing transition, reflects a philosophy of living in the post-conquest world, wherein the significance of a garden was highlighted.

Review of A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China


 
 
 A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China. By Li Yu, translated by Jing Shen and Robert E. Hegel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Pp. xxv + 330. $25.
 
 

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.

Seeing Is (Non)Believing and More: Experiencing Further Adventures on the Journey to the West in Seventeenth-Century China

Abstract Further Adventures on the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu, 1641) is a quintessential literati novella that has inspired critical investigations in disciplines such as formal realism, structuralist narratology, psychological realism, stream-of-consciousness, and dream interpretation. This paper examines how the novella, in the form of a printed book, facilitated a reading experience of the text as a Buddhist allegory for readers’ self-interrogation, recognition, and alteration. Spectatorship plays a key role in readers’ experience of literature in its cognitive capacity: if Monkey as an allegory of the mind is the subject enacted by the text constantly positioned as a spectator of his own dreamscape, the subject enacted by the reader observes Monkey’s journey as a performative terrain sustained by historical and social imaginaries. In addition, illustrations function as a paratextual device that forges new image-text relationships to transcend the linear narrative, thereby altering one’s textual knowledge as part of the reading experience. By investigating the act of seeing that transpires on three levels, this study hopes to gain insight on a gnostic experience between seventeenth-century readers and the xiaoshuo narrative as literary and material artifact.

The transnational historiography of a dynastic transition: Writing the Ming-Qing transition in seventeenth-century China, Korea, and Japan

AbstractThe Ming-Qing transition (1618–1683), a dynastic upheaval that not only consumed much of China, but also saw the Qing invasion of Joseon Korea and an influx of refugees into Tokugawa Japan, was a source of inspiration for writers across East Asia. Unofficial, contemporary histories written by Ming and early Qing subjects made their way by land and sea to Korea and Japan, where they were either adapted for domestic audiences or used as the basis for new unofficial histories of the dynastic transition.This article makes the argument that unofficial, contemporary history-writing about the Ming-Qing transition in China, Korea, and Japan was part of a regional trend towards an intellectual culture of contemporaneity. While scholars have focused on the transition and its impact upon notions of cultural centrality, it should be emphasized that these notions emerged alongside developments encouraging the production and circulation of contemporary, cross-cultural knowledge and information. In other words, the flourishing of print, diversification of reading audiences, and evolution of new modes of knowledge-production and transmission formed a background against which demand increased for updated information about a shared world. Participation as producers (writers and editors) and consumers (readers) in this seventeenth-century culture of contemporaneity was restricted by language, schooling, and economic standing. Nonetheless, a transnational history perspective will show that the unofficial, multi-vocal, and multilingual historiography of the Ming-Qing transition encourages a re-evaluation of not only the intellectual history of East Asia, but also the history of the transition.

Astronomical Chronology, the Jesuit China Mission, and Enlightenment History.

This article examines the use of astronomical chronology in Jesuit and secular works of history between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. It suggests that the highly visible adoption of astronomical records in historical scholarship in Enlightenment Europe by Nicolas Fréret and Voltaire was entangled with debates about Chinese chronology, translated by Jesuit missionaries. The article argues that the missionary Martino Martini's experience of the Manchu conquest of China was crucial in shaping his conception of history as a discipline. Political events that unfolded in seventeenth-century China had a marked effect on discussions about emergent world history in eighteenth-century Europe.

The Role of Chinese Family in the Spread of Christianity in the Seventeenth-Century China. The Xu Family of Shanghai as an Example

Chinese family played a fundamental role in the spreading of Christianity in China during the Late Ming and Early Qing dynasty (17 century). The contact of the first Jesuit missionaries with Chinese people was usually limited to men, as e.g. Confucian scholars. Some of them, however, converted their families after they became Catholic. These families were a very important basis for the missionary work: they supported missionaries, organized the religious life of the Chinese Church, and evangelized their neighbors. Without Chinese families the Chinese mission would be virtually impossible. A historical review of the role of Chinese family in the spread of Christianity in China in 17th Century will be presented on the example of the Xu Family from Shanghai. The eminent Confucian scholar Xu Guangqi could – after his conversion to Christianity – convert also his whole family. This conversion helped not only to establish Catholic Church in Shanghai but was also crucial in the process of maintaining Christianity as a “family religion.” Based on published sources, the impact of Xu family on the Catholic Church in China will be analyzed and discussed.

Seeing as Worldmaking: Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock and Yogācārin Epistemology in Late Ming China

This paper examines Wu Bin’s (c. 1543–c. 1626) Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock (1610) from the perspective of Buddhist epistemological notions in seventeenth-century China. In studying a series of gazes focusing on a single object—a stone with a very complex surface—my discussion posits an act of excessive seeing as a process of making worlds. I take a theoretical cue from contemporaneous intellectual discourses, especially those that flourished with the revival of Yogācāra Buddhism in late Ming China. This paper will show how an art object comes into being in perceivable worlds interconnected by the individual’s sensory experiences. My study aims to inquire into the role of illusion as sensory experiences, phenomenological processes, and even notions of soteriological efficacy beyond formal artistic devices. To that end, this paper is the first attempt to situate Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock alongside Buddhist thoughts and artmaking.

"Killing the Adulterer": Masculine Revenge Fantasies in Seventeenth-Century China

This paper provides an overview of the judicial practices on adultery cases that led to homicide in seventeenth-century China. I argue that the lifting of the punishment for the husband who killed only the adulterer in the Ming Code did not lead to immediate changes in judicial practices. On the contrary, the officials deviated from the letter of the code and encouraged, or even urged, the husband to kill both the adulterer and the wife, embracing the idea of "double killing"—killing both the wife and the adulterer "on the spot" and "immediately"—as an assertion of masculinity, a restoration of conjugal morality, and a proof of the killer's motive. The officials' shared view that illicit sex was a heinous crime was consistent with the surging popularity of the chastity cult and moral heroism. Layered legal institutions and multiple applicable statutes related to adultery and homicide also offered convenient space for manipulation by the ruling elites. Therefore, even when the conditions of the homicide did not meet the prerequisites for impunity, some judges argued for a lenient punishment or even impunity for the husband, at the expense of the law.

Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China

Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China

Uzak Doğu'dan Yansımalar: Çin'deki Katolik ve Nesturî Varlığının Karşılaştırılması

Orta çağda Batı Avrupa'dan Fransisken rahipler ve Suriye'den Nesturî rahipler, kendi Hıristiyan mezheplerini ve doktrinini yaymak ve bölgede kiliselerini kurmak için Uzak Doğu'ya gittiler. Benzer hedefleri paylaşsalar da, Fransiskenler ve Nesturîler farklı ikna yöntemleri kullandılar, bu nedenle misyonerlik çalışmalarının sonuçları ve mirası, önemli ölçüde birbirlerinden farklıydı. Moğol bozkırlarındaki mezar taşlarının da kanıtladığı gibi, Nesturîler Uzak Doğu'da dikkate değer ölçüde başarılıydılar; ancak kendi ülkelerinde (Mezopotamya), ironi bir şekilde, giderek marjinalleştirildiler. Buna karşılık, Katolik Fransiskenler ve Uzak Doğu'ya giden diğer Avrupalı seyyahlar, benzer misyonerlik başarısı elde edemediler ve 14. yüzyılın ortalarından sonra bölgede neredeyse hiç izleri kalmadı. Bununla birlikte, kendi ülkelerindeki okuyucuları için yazdıkları seyahatnameler ve mektuplar, hem Orta Çağ'ın sonlarında Avrupa’yı dışa açma hırsları üzerinde hem de on yedinci yüzyıl Çin'indeki Katolik misyonunun dönüşü üzerinde büyük bir etkiye sahipti. Özetle, Nesturîlerin mirası Orta Asya’daki taş anıtlardı ve Fransiskenler ise Batı'da ilham verici metinler bıraktılar. Uzak Doğu'daki Hıristiyan misyonerlik faaliyetinin ilgili uygulamalarının karşılaştırılması, ortaçağ kültürler arası seyahatin hem menşe bölgelerini hem de varış bölgelerini çeşitli şekillerde nasıl etkilediğini daha iyi tanıtabilir. Bu nedenle, Orta Çağ'ın sonlarında Uzak Doğu'daki Hıristiyan varlığı ortadan kalksa da bu misyonerlerin geldiği toplumlar için kalıcı sonuçlar doğurmuştur.

A Couple Of Soles: A Comic Play From Seventeenth-Century Chinaby Li Yu

Reviewed by: A Couple Of Soles: A Comic Play From Seventeenth-Century Chinaby Li Yu Whitney Emerson A COUPLE OF SOLES: A COMIC PLAY FROM SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CHINA. By Li Yu. Translated by Jing Shen and Robert E. Hegel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 360 pp. Paperback, $25.00. A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China comes as a welcome addition to Columbia University Press’ Translations from the Asian Classics series; it offers an accessible new translation of an important comic work by playwright Li Yu. Jing Shen and Robert E. Hegel’s translation allows English-speaking scholars and theatre artists access to another seminal work of dramatic literature from China; this also serves to aid the teaching of theatre history within a global context. Shen opens the book with a thorough introduction to the playwright and plot, giving context to the drama for readers unfamiliar with early Qing dynasty theatre (1644–1661). In the plot summary, Shen makes a point of highlighting the playwright’s depiction of the lead actors both on and off stage as chaste and virtuous as a way into the play’s broader discussion of morality and ethics. However, as Shen notes, the depiction may also be Li Yu’s attempt to elevate the poor reputation of actors during the Ming/Qing dynastic transition. Sections on vocal music conventions help the reader imagine the play in performance, giving an aural dimension to what could have been a dry translation. The introduction also draws attention to Li Yu’s controversial professional and personal life through discussion of the choice to invite the “woman scholar Wang Duanshu” to write the original 1661 preface to the play, also included in this translation. The historical significance of the work, especially when put in conversation with both previous Yuan dynasty zaju and contemporary Qing dynasty chuanqi, facilitates a deeper appreciation of the work within the context of traditional drama in China. Eye-catching artwork on the cover and the inclusion of several contemporaneous woodblock prints of the play in performance serve as illustrations of dramatic moments in the play and add a pleasing visual element to the book. The plot, performed through aria, poetry, and spoken dialogue, concerns a young scholar named Tan Chunyu, who falls in love with the beautiful young actress Fairy Liu. In order to get closer to her, he joins her family’s acting troupe and works his way up to playing romantic lead roles opposite her. Performing as lovers, they express their love for each other through onstage dialogue. However, the evil Moneybags Qian purchases Fairy Liu as a concubine from her greedy mother. The distraught lovers then commit suicide mid-performance by jumping [End Page 221] from the stage into a nearby river. However, the local river god learns of their plight and transforms them into the titular pair of soles to save their love. Murong Jie, a retired official who became a fisherman, catches the fishandthepairarerestoredtotheiroriginal humanforms. Followingthe sage advice of Murong, Tan quickly attains a government position and, aftersomestruggles, defeatsalocal bandofmonstrous brigands. Tanthen resigns his post to spend a quiet life with Liu in the mountains. In keeping in line with the stage conventions of chuanqi drama, the scenes of this lengthy play alternate in tone-romantic “wen” scenes of the lovers Tan and Liu are contrasted with military-focused “wu” scenes about brigands attacking a town. Many hallmarks of comedy are present: lovers separated by a disapproving father, mistaken identity, weddings, and metatheatre, particularly the consequential scene of the actress Fairy Liu playing an inconsolable lover in a play-within-a-play. The use of metatheatre within a kind of tongue-in-cheek criticism of the culture of performing arts is perhaps testament to Li Yu’s own command of the theatre. The work of the translators to enhance the comic tone of the play is perfectly encapsulated in the choice for the title, which plays on the pun of the homonyms “souls” and “soles.” The title also incorporates the offhanded “couple of” which has the meaning of a romantic couple as well as the casual way of referring to a small number of things...

Between Machine and Man: The Question of Creation in the Transmission of Western Mechanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century China (A Case Study)

Abstract This paper aims to explore how the Jesuit missionaries and their Chinese supporters negotiated the tension between mechanical knowledge, along with its embedded theological implications and the Chinese worldview by examining the Yuanxi qiqi tushuo luzui 遠西奇器圖說錄最 and the biography of a Chinese inventor Huang Lüzhuang 黃履莊 in the context of the polemical debates on Christianity in seventeenth century China. Centring on the concept of creation, I demonstrate how the understanding of machine or automata relates to broader questions regarding the natural world and human agency at the juncture of intellectual transformations in both Europe and China: While some European thinkers, inspired by machines, promoted the worldview of a passive nature analogous to machine, concepts of unity and spontaneity provided the Chinese with an opportunity to account for the autonomy of the machine as something operating in accordance with the self-generating natural world.

Syncretism of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism in Liaozhai Zhiyi in Terms of Filial Piety

Liáozhāi Zhìyì is one of the representative compilations in the genre of zhìguài ‘strange writing’ during the Qing (1644-1912) era, and it conveys filial piety through narration and authorial commentary. This research scrutinizes narratives regarding the preponderant construal of filial piety, so as to explore the harmonious contemporaneous of religious thinking and behavior in Qing China. This research conducts interpretative and hermeneutic research on four narratives in Liáozhāi Zhìyì, namely, Xí Fāngpíng, Lè Zhòng, Sìshí Qiān, and Qiánbǔ Wū, and also refers to classic treatises regarding filial piety. Given the fact that narratives in Liáozhāi Zhìyì themed by or appertaining to filial piety entail elements of three religions simultaneously. This study propounds that it illuminates amalgamation of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, i.e. sānjiàohéyī, in seventeenth-century China.

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

The Romance of a Literatus and his Concubine in Seventeenth-century China: Annotated translation of Reminiscences of the Plum-shaded Convent (Yingmeian Yiyu 影梅庵憶語) by Mao Xiang (1611–1693), edited by Jun Fang and Lifang He Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge: Two Memoirs about Courtesans by Mao Xiang and Yu Huai, translated and edited by Wai-yee Li

The Romance of a Literatus and his Concubine in Seventeenth-century China: Annotated translation of Reminiscences of the Plum-shaded Convent (Yingmeian Yiyu 影梅庵憶語) by Mao Xiang (1611–1693), edited by Jun Fang and Lifang He Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge: Two Memoirs about Courtesans by Mao Xiang and Yu Huai, translated and edited by Wai-yee Li

The Romance of a Literatus and His Concubine in Seventeenth-Century China. Translated and annotated by Jun Fang and Lifang He. Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2019. 224 pp. ISBN: 9789888491629 (paper).

The Romance of a Literatus and His Concubine in Seventeenth-Century China. Translated and annotated by Jun Fang and Lifang He. Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2019. 224 pp. ISBN: 9789888491629 (paper).

Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism and Religio-Philosophical Dynamism in the Port City of Quanzhou in Seventeenth-Century China

Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism and Religio-Philosophical Dynamism in the Port City of Quanzhou in Seventeenth-Century China

The Battle of the Astronomers: Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Ferdinand Verbiest at the Court of the Celestial Emperors (1660–1670)

The paper is focused on the two most outstanding figures among the Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century China: Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Ferdinand Verbiest. Schall aimed to introduce the telescope into Chinese astronomy, which was traditionally based on naked-eye observation and calculation. With the advent of the Qing dynasty, he became head of the Mathematical Board and director of the Imperial Observatory. Verbiest was called upon in 1660 to assist Schall in his project of reforming the Chinese traditional calendar. The political situation changed in 1661, with the Empire ruled by a regency hostile to the Jesuits, as were most of the mandarins at the observatory. This was the difficult context of the famous dispute between Yang Guangxian, Wu Mingxuan, and the two Jesuit mathematicians to compare the merits of Western and Chinese astronomy, which lasted from 1664 to 1669. What happened was more than a scientific contest and a court conspiracy: it was a cultural confrontation between the Jesuits and the traditionalist side of the ruling elite, which regarded the Europeans and their increasing influence as a threat for the Empire.