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Organizer: Mary Comerford Cooper, Ohio State University
Chair: Carl Walter, J. P. Morgan Chase
Discussant: Barry Naughton, University of California, San Diego
Keywords: China, finance, equities, credit, politics.
This panel examines a crucial issue in China’s ongoing market reform—development of financial infrastructure. As China’s reformers are becoming all too aware, a functioning market economy not only requires major institutions such as banks and stock exchanges, but also depends on a host of supporting infrastructure. Without consistent accounting standards, bankruptcy provisions, mechanisms to disseminate reliable financial information, a legal system that enforces contracts, managerial labor markets, and regulatory agencies—just to name a few components of financial infrastructure—banks and stock exchanges in a transitional economy tend to function perversely. We examine the political factors that have shaped the development of these institutions and with them the financial markets in China.
Each of the four panelists focuses on a different aspect of the Chinese financial markets. Although all of the research draws on extensive field research, the panelists will employ diverse methodologies from in-depth case studies, interviews with elite bureaucrats, to large-n statistical analysis. Stephen Green and Mary Cooper both address the conflicts of interest between central and local levels of government with respect to China’s developing equity market institutions. While Green’s research analyzes the battle to create a securities regulatory organization, Cooper’s research focuses on the company listing process. Scott Kennedy explores the political and bureaucratic interests that structure the development of credit rating organizations. He finds that although China’s languishing credit-rating industry reflects a weak financial system, the development of this industry is not necessarily essential to strengthen China’s financial system. Finally, Walter Hutchens examines the political dimensions of share-holder lawsuits for securities fraud.
Equity Politics and Market Institutions: The Development of Stock Market Policy and Regulation in China, 1984–2002
Stephen Green, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London
As China’s government leads the transition away from socialist planning, how does it build the regulatory institutions that it needs to manage the new market economy? Creating effective institutions is essential if transition is to be successful over the long-term. This paper explains and evaluates institutional development in China’s stock market during 1984–2002.
In the absence of private firms, government actors designed and controlled the development of equity institutions. These actors operated within a three-level hierarchy: the principals, the senior leadership; two sets of sub-principals, local (provincial-level) and ministry leaders; and agents, bureaux leaders working at the front lines of regulation. The principals experienced two problems in establishing equity institutions that delivered their priorities, financial stability and market development. First, local leaders captured control of the bureaux and used them to maximise investment and fiscal revenues from the stock market. Deficient regulation and regular financial crisis resulted. Second, at the central level leaders competed to defend their organisational interests. Policy stasis resulted.
This was the state of affairs between the late 1980s and 1997: a fragmented state where regulatory authority was dispersed and thus ineffectual. During 1997–98, radical institutional change occurred, resulting in the creation of a securities regulator with considerable administrative authority. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has been able to reduce market instability and orient development towards the central leadership’s priorities.
The paper argues that China’s central leadership can, ultimately, manage economic transition in China through the use of sector-specific institutions. These include restructuring the nomenklatura system, centralizing key powers, reducing the economic incentives for intervention by local leaders, creating criss-crossing oversight and reporting mechanisms, strengthening Party structures, and clarifying responsibilities within the centre. Such institutional changes lead to a stronger state better able to formulate and implement central government policies.
Local Governments and the Politics of Listing on the Chinese Stock Market
Mary Comerford Cooper, Ohio State University
This paper examines a key aspect of the politics of stock markets in China—the distinct differences in interests between central government leaders and local governments. Central government leaders have a powerful incentive to promote macroeconomic stability and good performance of the stock market. Local leaders, for their part, are less concerned with the overall performance of the stock market than with gaining access to the stock market for companies under their own jurisdiction. The paper demonstrates that company listing brings tangible economic benefits to municipalities. Listed companies are associated with higher levels of gross domestic product (GDP), budgetary revenue, and industrial and commercial tax revenue. Therefore, it is not surprising that local officials put substantial effort into lobbying for the right to list additional companies on the national stock exchanges.
China’s Languishing Credit-Rating Industry: Canary in the Mine?
Scott Kennedy, Indiana University
This paper documents the political and economic sources of why China’s credit rating industry has yet to successfully develop and considers the implications for the stability of the financial system. Over the past century, credit-rating agencies (CRA) have become a part of the fabric of Western financial markets, particularly in the U.S. In principle they provide investors with unbiased information about the likelihood of whether issuers of securities will default on their obligations. Since the late 1980s several Chinese credit-rating agencies have provided ratings on domestic corporate bonds and stocks. However, none of these firms has made a profit, and investors ignore their ratings. China’s CRAs are powerless because of government intervention in the bond market, CRA’s inability to obtain reliable financial information, CRAs’ lack of independence, and a weak regulatory framework. While China’s languishing credit-rating industry reflects a weak financial system, the development of this industry is not a prerequisite for China’s improved financial health. Recent comparative research shows CRAs do not fully perform the function their advocates claim they do; CRAs often act more as regulators than critical information providers. In China, investors simply need better financial information, which can come from multiple sources, of which CRAs are just one. The data from this paper comes from primary and secondary documents about the credit-rating industry in China and elsewhere, and from interviews carried out in 2002 and 2003 with CRA executives, investors, and financial regulators in China.
Shareholder Litigation in the PRC: Material Disclosure about China’s Legal System?
Walter C. Hutchens, University of Maryland
When laws and regulations governing China’s securities markets are enacted, "investor protection" is routinely claimed as a purpose. The Supreme People’s Court invoked this customary mantra in 2003 when it unveiled rules enabling PRC investors to sue listed companies for disclosure fraud. Under the new rules, individual investors can sue to recover losses when companies have failed to provide transparency into their operations as PRC law requires. This suggests some strengthening of the PRC’s nascent civil society and legal system. However, careful analysis of the new rules and the context in which they operate reveals that many daunting obstacles confront plaintiffs. In most cases, investors will have to sue government-owned companies in government-controlled courts. In fact, they may do so only after obtaining specific government authorization. The ability of investors to struggle as a class against defendants is also significantly curtailed. Based on these constraints, it appears unlikely this form of litigation will create powerful incentives for compliance with China’s existing disclosure requirements. Indeed, the new rules may do more to protect the state’s interests rather than those of investors. In this sense, China’s approach to shareholder litigation itself makes "material disclosure" about China’s evolving legal system, revealing how the structure of PRC courts and the state’s role as an economic actor can conflict with the enforcement of individual rights through civil litigation. Such litigation thus provides a window onto the emergence of the rule of law and civil society in China and underscores ongoing tensions within PRC reform efforts.
Session 14: New Taxonomies of Knowledge in Late Qing and Early Republican China
Organizer: Joachim Kurtz, Emory University
Chair: Victoria Cass, University of Colorado, Boulder
Discussant: Joshua A. Fogel, University of California, Santa Barbara
Keywords: China, history, late Qing, Republican.
In the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, taxonomies of knowledge in China underwent dramatic transformation. Renewed encounters with ‘Western knowledge’ stimulated a massive increase in epistemic possibilities that provoked a radical re-ordering of China’s discursive terrain. This panel analyzes the specific dynamic of the conceptual and ideological changes that sustained this multilayered process.
Kurtz’s paper documents an attempt to assert the universal validity of Chinese knowledge through its translation into a Western-derived disciplinary matrix, illustrating the violent conceptual transformations that this radical effort required. Fan’s paper analyzes the discovery of cultural meanings in objects of nature in Republican China within a global context of scientific imperialism, tracing the encoding of these meanings in policy and law. Shapiro’s paper analyzes, circa 1900, the broad spectrum of ideas then falling under the rubric of nerves, relating the breadth of nervous discourse to modern transformations in the experience of disease. Chang’s paper revises the idea of forensic medicine in traditional China, showing how the twentieth-century reformulation of forensics broadly transformed social thinking about hygiene and the body.
These papers strive to show that changes in the theories and methods of knowing stirred broad transformations in China’s social and cultural identity. We argue that the analytical shifts in how entities such as the past or the body were understood, pivotal to the disciplines in modern China, went beyond modifying the models used to talk about and fathom the world. Changes in knowledge, this panel argues, also implied new types of experience.
Disciplining the National Essence: Liu Shipei and His Reorganization of China’s Intellectual History
Joachim Kurtz, Emory University
In the decades surrounding the year 1900, the classificatory schemes in which knowledge had been organized in China for centuries were unsettled and gradually superseded by a Western-inspired disciplinary matrix. The institutionalization of new curricula of higher learning and the abolition of the civil examination system unmistakably marked the demise of the old regime of learning. In the natural sciences, the transition quickly led to an almost complete denigration of endemic knowledge. In the realm of the humanities, the transformation was more complex. In order to assert the universal validity of the ethical insights contained in canonical as well as some noncanonical writings, late Qing scholars suggested various ways to integrate classical Chinese learning into Europeanized taxonomical frameworks.
One of the earliest and most consequential attempts to secure a place for China’s embattled moral sciences within the new disciplinary matrix was formulated by Liu Shipei in the context of the ‘National Essence’ (guocui) movement. Drawing on argumentative strategies of the discourse on the ‘Chinese origins of Western science’ and an untested scholarly vocabulary imported from Japan, Liu outlined a master plan for a new grand narrative of ancient China’s intellectual history that raised questions which none of the more self-assured histories of ‘Chinese philosophy,’ ‘Chinese religion,’ etc., with which we are familiar today, could ignore. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the key elements of this radical effort to translate China’s endemic knowledge into Westernized terms, and to analyze the violent conceptual transformations necessary for its completion.
How Did Fossils Become National? Science and Nationalism in Republican China
Fa-ti Fan, State University of New York, Binghamton
During the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreign scientists roamed much of China, studying geography, ethnology, and particularly natural history. Collecting a diversity of specimens, the scientists deposited these samplings in European and American museums. Although Qing officials expressed concern that Western naturalists traveling in China might have an eye on the country’s natural riches, their anxieties regarded the protection of economic resources rather than the "native" objects of nature being gathered by the foreign expeditions. The international controversy over fossils in the 1920s was an immediate cause for the nationalization of antiquities, including fossils and archaeological remains, by the Nationalist government of China. Antiquities, even objects of nature such as fossils, became national treasures by law and thus, by law, required preservation. This episode shows the growth of a Chinese nationalist discourse in the early twentieth century in which nation defined the meaning of nature and nature guaranteed the permanence of the nation. Seen in a global context, however, this event was not an isolated incident. During this period, other nations were also passing laws to protect their antiquities, including objects of nature. This paper discusses this change of attitude and policy in both national and international contexts by examining the intersections of nature, nationalism, imperialism and scientific internationalism.
The Discovery of Nerves in Modern China
Hugh L. Shapiro, University of Nevada, Reno
Until the twentieth century, most healers and patients in China had never heard of nerves. What we now call traditional Chinese medicine, in other words, lacked both the idea and the language of nerves. But this fact, that physicians in China diagnosed and treated patients without attention to the nervous system, is remarkable only to observers from cultures in which the anatomical idea of nerves is so deeply woven into cultural identity that it is hard to imagine practicing medicine without the language of nerves. Put another way, in China, embodied experience was articulated with language and imagery wholly distinct from the vocabulary of experience in North America and Europe. Given the profound differences in social and philosophical orientation, this type of cultural difference is not entirely surprising. However, what is striking is the dynamic by which the discourse of nerves entered and took root in China, which is the topic of this paper.
This paper narrates China’s history of nerves in two episodes. The first regards attempts by foreign protagonists to translate the idea of nerves into the Chinese language, a 300-year effort that began in the early seventeenth century. The second, the focus of the paper, analyzes circa 1900, the broad spectrum of ideas in China then falling under the rubric of nerves, from faith healing to evolutionary physiology. This breadth of discourse, I argue, influenced how the new paradigm of nerves radically transformed not only medicine in China but also the very experience of illness itself.
From "Washing Away the Wrongs" to Modern Medicine: The Transmission of Forensic Medicine into China
Che-chia Chang, Academia Sinica
This paper aims to revise our understanding of forensic medicine in early modern China. The practice of forensic medicine, I argue, had only a remote connection to China’s scholarly medical tradition. To the contrary, medical experts did not practice forensics; instead, it was practiced by wuzuo, coroners with minimal medical training, who, in conducting autopsies, accrued significant amounts of social pollution. The practice of forensics by wuzuo and not by literati-physicians also challenges another established idea. Benevolent officials allegedly practiced forensic examination to "wash away the wrongs" of the people, to bring justice to those wronged. But in actuality this was a job executed by a social group enjoying only nominal trust from officialdom. Finally, this paper aims to make a broader point regarding the relationship between forensics and social consciousness. Transforming forensics in China into a ‘modern medical’ practice entailed much more than acquiring new knowledge or mastering fresh methodologies. Beyond the actual training of forensic examiners, the principal obstacle in early twentieth-century China was the deep-rooted social taboo against dissecting cadavers. I will argue that the complex process by which this taboo was overcome, including acceptance of the analytical opening of the body, transformed not only the teaching and practice of medicine in the modern period, but also witnessed far-reaching changes in the manner that first professionals and then lay people conceptualized the relationship between hygiene and the body.
Session 15: Aftereffects of Silk Road Exchange in China
Organizer and Chair: Katheryn M. Linduff, University of Pittsburgh
Discussant: Sarah M. Nelson, University of Denver
Keywords: Silk Road, China, religion, interaction, gender, archaeology, art history.
The materials and ideas that were traded, exchanged and/or manufactured along the Silk Road had a considerable aftereffect in Chinese society. Evidence from archaeological, religious and social contexts confirms their value far beyond commercial worth. Art historians, historians of trade and religion as well as archaeologists come together here to consider materials from the Silk Road as residual evidence of the movement of people, artifacts and/or ideas into China. The papers explore the use of such items, the materials of their manufacture and the technology used to produce them, as well as their content in relation to several questions: What role did these "exotic" ideas and materials have in the lives of their patrons and/or owners? Are new ideas and materials valued as "foreign" (Wu JM, Wu XL) or are they fully incorporated or assimilated into the dominant ways of thinking as a way of "controlling" foreignness (Wu HY)? Are forms changed and original representational integrity lost in favor of technological display (Krieg), or is technology and iconography used intentionally to express a gender and/or class distinction (Wu JM, Lullo, Krieg)?
Because familiarity with material science, the history of ideas, epigraphy, and the archaeology of death, with analysis of iconography, commercial and political exchange are required to analyze these questions, the papers on the panel are grounded in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches.
Exotica in the State of Zhongshan: Migration, Trade, and Cultural Contact
Xiaolong Wu, University of Pittsburgh
According to Chinese historical records, a group called the White Di who migrated eastward from the Ordos region during the sixth century BCE founded the State of Zhongshan (c. 450–296 BCE) during the Warring States Period (476–221 BCE). During the late 1970’s, the excavation of the tomb of King Cuo (d. ca. 313 BCE) and the Zhongshan capital Lingshou in present-day Hebei Province brought to light thousands of artifacts of various materials, including iron, bronze, jade, gold and silver, pottery, and glass. Although most artifacts belong to the Zhou tradition, many of them incorporated exotic materials and designs.
Decorative motifs borrowed by Zhongshan artisans from the northern nomads—such as raptor-heads, winged felines, and predatory scenes—were incorporated into artifacts related to various aspects of the life of the Zhongshan elite, from architectural decoration to personal ornament. Zhongshan’s patronage and use of artifacts bearing these motifs not only indicate close contact with their northern neighbors, but may also suggest a shared cultural background between Zhongshan and the northern nomads. For instance, the glass beads found in Cuo’s tomb have different chemical compositions, suggesting different places of production. Mortuary materials selected by the Zhongshan compared to those found in contemporary tombs in neighboring regions document the existence of a trade network and raise questions about how glass beads made in the West came to China and why they were found in Zhongshan tombs and not in others.
Glass in Early China: A Substitute for Luxury
Sheri A. Lullo, University of Pittsburgh
Because of the relative paucity of archaeological evidence, glass production in early China has received little attention. Nevertheless, extant glass objects and fragments from Eastern Zhou through the Han period (8th c. BCE–2nd c. CE) tombs suggest that the use of the material in its nascent stages of production was strikingly different from that in corresponding developmental periods in both Mesopotamia and the Roman Empire. In this paper, through a comparative analysis with other early glass-producing regions, I will explore the forms and functions of glass in early China.
According to archaeological and chemical analysis, it appears that the use of glass in early China was different from other regions in regard to both function and composition. During the respective stages before the advent of glass-blowing technology, Mesopotamian and Roams glass were considered luxury items. In the region of China, however, glass served two purposes: as a substitute for jade and other precious materials, and as a component in more unusual creations, amalgamated items that suggest a break from official standards. From the wider perspective of their archaeological context, including the tomb layout, objects and identity of occupant including gender and class, this paper will consider conceptions of this material in early China and possible reasons why it did not become a luxury item in and of itself.
Exotic Goods as Mortuary Display in Sui Period Tombs: A Case Study of Li Jingxun’s Tomb
Jui-man Wu, University of Pittsburgh
Located in the modern city of Xi’an, Li Jingxun’s tomb (599–608 AD) was excavated in 1957. According to her epigraph, Li Jingxun was brought up by her maternal grandmother (Empress of the N. Zhou) and died at the age of nine. Many exotic burial goods—imported from the west along the silk route—were found in her tomb. In this paper, I will examine and analyze the use patterns of burial goods—both exotic and conventional Chinese—as mortuary display in Sui and Tang period tombs of females including those of princesses Yongtai and Fangling Dachang.
Based on an analysis of burial goods, coffin design and epigraphs, I will address the following questions. First, was there a relationship between exotic goods and social status? For instance, Li Jingxun was buried as an "outsider" princess, a status not possible through her father, but through her maternal grandmother, the empress of N. Zhou. Was this an opportunistic choice to make her more marriageable, one based on age, or some other reason? Second, do patterns of display of exotic goods in Sui tombs distinguish ethnic backgrounds? My hypotheses is that western style ornaments—foreign coins and vessels—functioned as symbols of high rank and were especially favored by the "non-dynastic-people" of the Sui period from the north. Their taste for and choice of the "exotic" can be documented by examining the contents of their tombs.
Lotus Blooming under the Cross: Interaction between Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism in China
Hongyu Wu, University of Pittsburgh
The Silk Road not only traded goods, but also saw lifestyles, cultures and religious beliefs transformed. The interaction there not only witnessed competition among religions for followers, royal patronage, and material resources, but also a process of borrowing and assimilation. The Silk Road was more than just a conduit along which religions hitched a ride east; it constituted a formative and transformative rite of passage. "No religion emerges unchanged at the end of that journey" (Foltz 1999: 8). This paper will discuss the relationship between the Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism in China in the Tang (618–907) and Yuan (1206–1368) through examination of Nestorian relics and texts discovered in China.
Conspicuous Nestorian borrowings from Buddhism include the combined symbol of cross and lotus found on the Nestorian tablet set up in about 781 and excavated in the 17th century and on Nestorian tombstones dated in Tang and Yuan dynasty discovered recently. The lotus and cross emblem has not been found in past or present Nestorian centers. In addition to the visual materials, nine existing Tang-date Nestorian texts document borrowings from Buddhism. A Buddhist text documented co-operation in translating Buddhist scriptures, Nestorian churches and priests took Buddhist titles, and the terms for Buddha, karma, and dharma, etc., were also used in Nestorian texts. These appropriations document religious transformation in a "foreign" location.
The Life of Byzantine Coins along the Silk Roads
Annie Krieg, University of Pittsburgh
This paper will investigate Byzantine solidi and what their study can tell us about the cross-cultural contact and exchange along the silk roads. Most coins discovered in Central Asia and China either in burials or found circumstantially in excavations were produced in an era when the Chinese monetary system was not well established (approximately the sixth through eighth centuries CE). Many coins show evidence of piercing after their initial manufacture, signifying their use as ornamentation or jewelry. Coins also possibly traveled such great distances as payment for silk. Their location in burials and use as monetary payment further indicate that these coins were a valuable commodity for Central and East Asian communities. Here I investigate the appeal of these foreign coins to the Chinese and how the aesthetics of the Byzantine solidi were appropriated in Central Asian art, most notably in the bracteates and imitations. I will first devote some attention to distinctive numismatic terminology and the minting process as related to use. After attention to the history and general stylistic features of the Byzantine solidi, I will investigate specific finds of Byzantine coins in tombs in China. This will lead to a consideration of the local production, cultural significance, and stylistic characteristics of the Central Asian bracteates and their imitations in China and their significance in settings beyond the site of their manufacture and commercial use.
Session 16: Urban Lifeworlds and the Everyday: New Approaches to the Modern Experience
Organizer: Angel Lu, Rutgers University
Chair: Haiping Yan, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussants: Xudong Zhang, New York University; Haiping Yan, University of California, Los Angeles
Keywords: literature and cinema, China, late 19th and 20th century, discourse vs. experience of the modern, system vs. lifeworld, elitism vs. ordinary culture, urban consciousness, urban everyday life.
From the New Novel (xin xiao-shuo) of the late Ching to May Fourth New Literature (xin wen-xue), there was, under the guise of vernacularization, an intellectualization of literature. Literature as such, rather than registering the immediate experiences of modernity, became a mouthpiece of modern intellectual or ideological discourses. This historical background has had a significant impact on the study of modern Chinese literature and culture, which, to this day, devotes most of its energies to elite literary and intellectual practices.
This panel reflects a recent turn in the field of literary and cultural studies toward the study of concrete experiences of modernity. It looks at literary and cinematic texts as a deflection of the immediate experiences of the modern within prevalent formal traditions and dominant modes of cultural production. We pay particular attention to everyday experiences that do not relate directly to grand historical or political events, but which actually register the change of consciousness at a much deeper level.
Alex des Forges supplements the usual focus of cinema study with attention to the cinematic experience rather than the actual cinematic products in the late Ching and early Republican periods. Angel Lu examines a particular kind of modernism which celebrates the petty urbanite (xiao shimin) lifeworld as the critical response to modernity. Finally, Jie Lu interprets the national experience of China in the 1990s as the experience of the urban everyday. In each case, the aim is to show the specific characteristics which give the experience of urban everyday life recognizable form.
The Cinematic Mode in Shanghai: 1890–1935
Alexander des Forges, University of Massachusetts, Boston
In our contemporary imagination of Shanghai, the city is inextricably linked with the movies, not only because it served as the setting for so many classics of the 1920s and ‘30s, but also because Shanghai was the first city of Chinese cinema throughout the late Qing and early Republican period. What may be less obvious, however, is the extent to which the movie-going experience changed radically between 1895 and 1935; and furthermore, the significance of literary figures and tropes in the construction of a cinematic mode of consumption that would take concrete form in the films themselves and in spectators’ approaches to them only towards the end of this period. This paper investigates three key conventions of 1930s cinema: the viewing of a lighted screen by spectators who themselves are in the dark; the use of cross-cutting techniques to heighten spectatorial involvement; and the central place given interactions between spectacle and spectators. These three tropes are now closely associated with the cinematic experience by most critics, but in Shanghai they are first introduced in literary texts and only later adopted in cinemas. This paper asks first, how this transfer from one type of cultural production to another could take place; and second, to what extent it is linked to Shanghai’s central role in the early twentieth-century Chinese media-sphere.
Petty Urbanite Lifeworld: Zhang Ailing’s Response to Modernity
Angel Lu, Rutgers University.
According to the common connotations of the term during the Republican period, the petty urbanite (xiao shimin) is a category of people that, although residing in the city, are alienated from both the social processes of modernization and the project of cultural modernity. Yet this category of people, more than any other group, constitutes the true crowd of the urban lifeworld. Zhang Ailing (1920–1995), by declaring the petty urbanite lifeworld as her favorite city experience and her chosen point of view, challenges the discourses of "modernity" that marginalize this important mode of urban existence.
This paper observes that the petty urbanite "Shanghairen" portrayed in Zhang’s novels and essays are "urban" in a very true sense—their mode of existence being the result of a long history of pre-modern merchant capitalism in the lower Yangtze and other regions of China. It is an urban culture very distinct from that of the modern metropolis embodying the spirit of modern, industrial capitalism.
The paper proposes that Zhang’s investment in the petty urbanite lifeworld of Shanghai is a double-edged response to modernity: on one hand it is more advanced than the most moderns in the recognition of the "human" face of money and the celebration of the innocent, healthy appetite for material and sensual satisfactions; on the other hand it is "reactionary" by questioning the meaning and relevance of the modern discourses—universal nationalism, abstract individualism, among many—to the urban lifeworld. The result is a quintessential modernist response to modernity.
Public Space, Urban Everyday: Reading Qiu Huadong’s Beijing Fiction
Jie Lu, University of the Pacific
The paper examines how the emergence of public space created by economic reform, globalization and urbanization affects everyday life in a city (Beijing) so patently poised between "modern" and "traditional," leading to the formation of new urban consciousness and cultural dominance. China’s urbanization that started in the early 1980s gained momentum in the 1990s. This rapid and intense urbanization has changed the urban landscape and created a new and different public space of thousands of restaurants, hotels, and shopping plazas. The space in the form of restaurants and department stores did in fact exist before, even in Mao’s period. Yet it was on such a small scale that it did not have any serious cultural and existential significance in urban everyday life and culture. Thus the rapid emergence of public space in the 1990s has not only changed the basic structure of everyday life in the city but has also given rise to a new sense of urbanity and pushed urban culture to the center of the cultural mainstream. The urban experience is replacing the rural one to represent China’s national experience. I will examine specifically, through a reading of Qiu Huadong’s fiction, urban, cultural configurations, and how the emergence of new public space effected the cultural transformation and everyday life. Seen in a broader context, the dominance of urban culture in the 1990s reflects a social reformation marked by the rise of middle class. I would also argue that urban fiction both represents and contributes to the cultural transformation and formation of a new urban sensibility.
Session 17: The Nature of Culture: Collecting and Conceptualizing "Chinese" Natural History
Organizer and Chair: Jennifer G. Purtle, University of Chicago
Discussant: Kathleen Ryor, Carleton College
Unlike many collectible objects, natural history specimens are distinguished by their lack of human facture. In this sense, the material cultural status of such specimens at the time of their creation is unclear. Less ambiguous is the entry of such specimens into the field of material culture when subject to human processes of evaluation and appreciation like, and often derived from, those that manmade artifacts undergo. This process of acculturation permits natural history specimens to circulate in the material cultural field, heightens their value for display, and opens them to interpretations unencumbered by discourses of intentionality.
Natural history in China has been the subject of relatively little scholarship. Consequently, this panel seeks to expand understanding of Chinese natural history by exploring the reception and exhibition of specimens of Chinese natural history across the longue durée in China, interculturally within East Asia, and beyond. This panel examines four reception contexts of Chinese natural history, those of: Song-Ming literati; 18th-century Kyoto Sinophiles; 19th-century Shanghai intellectuals of several nationalities; and 20th–21st-century Chinese and foreign scientists. Despite the temporal differences of these contexts, the contiguities of interpretive manipulation, particularly collectors’ expressions of their own relation to the past and to "Chineseness," as they understood it, are striking. This panel thus focuses on the ways in which natural history specimens from China were interpreted, displayed, and represented to evoke an essentialist "Chinese" nature, a culturally-specific rather than a biologically-adaptive environmental past.
Conceptualizing Nature and Antiquity: Rock Collecting in Mid- and Late-Imperial China
Yun-Chiahn Chen, University of Chicago
This paper examines rock collecting as an antiquarian practice in China during the Song and subsequent dynasties. Like manmade antique objects, collectable rocks were highly aestheticized by Chinese literati antiquarians in reconstituting "lost origins," whether cultural or natural. Manuals and catalogues for rock collections, such as Rock Manual of Clouds and Forests and Rock Catalogue from the Xuanhe Hall, were produced, in a format similar to those for antique objects, to prescribe cultural and aesthetic value for these natural specimens. Governed by the notion of an idealized origin, collectable rocks, therefore, embody a crossover between nature and artifice.
Beyond the urge to collect detached nature in artificial, manmade environments, an urge intensified by the increasing urbanization in Chinese society during this period, the role of collectable rocks—as both natural and artificial objects—in Chinese cultural history should also be understood in two contexts. Firstly, the micro-macrocosmic relationship between rocks and mountains provided a physical, as well as metaphysical, foundation for Chinese antiquarians to visualize and romanticize nature through collectable rocks. Secondly, the miniature scale of collectable rocks creates objecthood, a condition under which they become independent from anonymous, contiguous rock, to enter literati material culture as named, individual objects. In conclusion, interpretive parallels between rocks and antique objects elucidate parallels between nature and antiquity viewed from the perspective of Chinese antiquarianism: both were ultimate, however, lost origins, approachable only through their collectable fragments.
Recreating China: Early Modern Japanese Visions of Chinese Natural Objects
Hans Bjarne Thomsen, University of Chicago
During the eighteenth century, Japanese intellectuals became profoundly affected by the wave of interest in evidential research (kôshôgaku, kaozhengxue) that entered from the continent. In contrast to the Zhu Xi School of Neo-Confucian thought promoted by the Shogunate, the new school of thought held that the intervening commentaries and analyses of thinkers had corrupted the thoughts and words of ancient sages. In order to understand the pure intent of the ancients, it was necessary to return to the original text. This new school of Confucian philosophy came to influence a number of aspects of eighteenth-century Japanese culture: Japanese poets came to favor Tang or earlier poets as their models, calligraphers championed older clerical or seal scripts, and painters returned to the study of Chinese paintings and to direct observation of natural objects imported from China.
The fifty paintings of the Rokuonji Ensemble, painted by Itô Jakuchû (1716–1800) for the Library of the Rokuonji Temple in Kyoto, recreated a "Chinese" realm through their depictions of natural objects from China. Informed partly by direct observation of objects and partly by Chinese paintings, Jakuchû’s paintings created a space that was pregnant with symbolism for the evidential research-dominated Sinophile salon that met within its rooms. For the members of this salon, the natural objects depicted were not simply beautiful, foreign, or exotic, but were powerful cultural symbols that conveyed and recreated the particular and potent past of the Chinese sages within a Kyoto temple.
Believing Is Seeing: Late-19th-Century Chinese Representations of Museums
Lisa Claypool, Lewis and Clark College
Representations of museums in late-nineteenth century newspapers and travelogues showed their readers sites of spectacle: vitrines and cages holding dragon-headed sheep, gigantic carp, towering camels. In such printed pictures, the museum functioned as a space for recognition of the fantastic yet familiar—of the creatures recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing) and featured in imported ukiyo-e prints—newly organized and presented. Yet for many museum visitors, the historical and cultural status of the naturalia (wu) on display was not quite so clear. The museum was understood as a place to see the world as it was, not as depicted in illustrations. Pictures, as Kang Youwei put it in a discussion of museums, were less efficacious to knowing a thing than looking at it firsthand. The natural world to be found in the museum thus was one entirely new, and since China lacked its own museum, the forum itself posed a certain crisis in its representation of "China."
This paper will look at diaries, travel accounts, and newspaper articles to try to understand how the museum was understood at the turn of the century. It will consider visitor response to museums in Japan and Europe, with an eye to how such discourse set the stage for the establishment of the first Chinese museum, the Nantong Bowuyuan, established in 1905. Finally, it will consider the competition between the Nantong Bowuyuan and the two colonial museums in Shanghai to describe, definitively, the natural landscape of China.
Fossils and Nation in Manchuria
Ruth Rogaski, Vanderbilt University
In 1999, the National Geographic proclaimed to the world that the missing link between dinosaurs and birds had been found in China’s Liaoning Province. Archaeoraptor liaoningensis proved to be an embarrassing hoax perpetrated by a Dongbei peasant, but its "discovery" highlighted the importance of northeast Asia’s fossils in world paleontology. This paper explores how fossils—as natural objects extremely susceptible to manipulation and interpretation—have been used in the creation of both a natural history and a national identity for the politically contested region of "Manchuria."
Fossilized animals and plants are abundant in the rocky hills between Jinzhou and Chengde. This paper summarizes how scientists from the U.S., Russia, Japan, and China made their reputations in the twentieth century by collecting, shaping, and displaying these objects into publicly recognized samples of the earth’s earliest species of birds and angiosperms. Nation, culture, and natural history became directly linked with the founding of Manchukuo when Japanese scientists launched highly publicized expeditions to the region in search of new specimens, a project that would help legitimize Manchukuo as a modern, scientific undertaking. After 1949, Chinese paleontologists used fossils to place a decidedly Chinese mark on Manchuria’s nature, giving names such as Sinosaur-opteryx prima (Zhonghua niao) and Confuciusoris sanctus (Kongzi niao) to new discoveries. This paper concludes with a survey of fossil displays in contemporary northeast Chinese museums, displays which represent Manchuria as a site of rich natural resources that has historically always been Chinese.
Session 18: What is Medieval Literature?
Organizer: Zeb Raft, Harvard University
Chair and Discussant: Stephen Owen, Harvard University
Keywords: China, literature, manuscript culture, textual transmission.
This panel argues that the study of medieval Chinese literature constitutes its own discipline because of a specific historical contingency: its textual sources.
The textual conditions of the medieval period differ from the ancient period, in which the circulation of written texts was highly limited, and the early-modern, in which printing technology ensured easy dissemination. The culture of the paper manuscript presents an awkward conjunction of textual abundance and instability, and this situation has important consequences for the modern researcher.
The instability of medieval texts gives rise to a plurality of variant texts. This suggests that the works had a life outside of the page, within the realm of spoken language, and that our received texts are only particular instantiations of something that existed virtually. This abundance of textual variants would, however, seem to hinder the practice of ‘close reading’ that is the cornerstone of many modern interpretive strategies, as well as traditional biographical analysis.
The abundance of medieval texts, facilitated by the use of paper, fosters an acute relationship of text and context. Individual texts cannot simply be extricated from the sources that convey them, nor can they be accepted simply on the terms in which the sources present them. This balance of text and source complicates, even confounds, common approaches to literary genre and historical significance.
In short, medieval literature is viewed only through the prism of medieval textual sources, and this panel aims to explore the implications of this issue.
Tang Tales in Song Texts
Sarah M. Allen, University of California, Berkeley
Tang dynasty stories (xiaoshuo) are preserved in a number of disparate sources. The vast majority of these sources date from the Song dynasty or later, placing a gap of at least a century between the date of composition and the earliest surviving edition of a story. When more than one text exists for a given story, there are invariably differences between them. Some of these differences are due to the mechanics of manuscript transmission. But, more significantly, the editors and copyists who transcribed Tang stories also made deliberate changes in the texts: they filled gaps, deleted redundancies, and changed the diction of many stories. They also abridged and excerpted from longer stories when a shorter text was desired; some of the most important sources are Southern Song encyclopedias (leishu) that reproduce only fragments of stories. The degree of variation among texts is strong evidence that the stories as we have them today do not represent "Tang" texts, but instead texts that originated in the Tang, and have undergone countless unknown and untraceable alterations since then.
My paper explores the significance of these circumstances of the stories’ preservation for our reading of the stories themselves. The pervasiveness of variation reveals that Song editors regarded them as material that they were free to amend and improve. In reading these stories we must recognize that we can access them only through the lens of the much later compilations that preserved, but also changed them.
Tang Poetry in Tang Manuscripts
Christopher Nugent, Harvard University
As Tang poetry exists today primarily as a set of standardized printed texts, it is easy to forget that these texts have a long history that has removed them substantially from their original context. Few people in the Tang ever read a printed poem; all of them experienced poetry at least partially as an oral art form. The oral aspect of Tang poetry, by its very nature transitory, comes down to us only second-hand, in accounts of recitation practices and hints of oral composition and transmission. Poetry was, of course, written down in the Tang as well, though in a form far different from the printed texts of today. The Tang was a manuscript culture. Each instance of reproduction of a given text thus entailed the possibility of alteration and variance. Put simply, poetic texts in the Tang were fluid, with changes both intentional and unintentional introduced at almost every step of transmission.
My paper begins by discussing some accounts of written transmission in the Tang taken from such sources as anecdote collections and prefaces to poetry collections. I will then look closely at a few of the actual poetic texts that survive from the Tang, i.e. manuscript copies of poems from the caves at Dunhuang, and discuss the degree of variation that those texts demonstrate. The picture that emerges is one far different from the typical picture we have of Tang poetry today, but crucial for understanding what Tang poetry was for people of the Tang itself.
Literary Sources of the Han Inscription
Suh-Jen Yang, University of Washington
The inscription is a long neglected genre with a highly formal and rigid structure written in stereotyped language. I will explore certain literary features it contains such as trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic and penta-syllabic line structure, Chi ci style, and tales of immortality in the Han inscription and to draw scholars’ attention to these indispensable sources of Chinese literature.
The differences between the unrhymed tetrasyllabic structure in the preface, the rhymed tetra syllabic lines in the eulogy section in the inscription compared to those in the Shi jing will first be discussed.
The trisyllabic lines in the inscription combined with those in state ritual songs, Han TLV mirror inscription, Han folk songs, Han rhapsodies, and also in the works of Later Han writer Cai Yong will be the focal point in studying the development of the trisyllabic poems over time. Understanding the penta-syllabic structure in the Han inscription aids us in investigating the origin and early development of the pentasyllabic poem in Chinese literature. The Chu ci structure employed shows the author’s rhetorical consciousness.
Three inscriptions with tales of immortality will be introduced and discussed with the following questions in mind: How did the concept of immortality develop in the Han period, especially among the ordinary people? What is the historical importance of these three inscriptions in the history of Chinese immortality tales? Why were these legendary figures recorded in the media of a stele inscription in the first place?
Sources for Medieval Four-Syllable Poetry
Zeb Raft, Harvard University
My paper will examine the implications of one key source for medieval four-syllable poetry, the Wenguan cilin. This 7th-century anthology, originally an enormous 1,000 juan, has been reconstituted gradually since the late Qing dynasty from fragments in a Japanese library. It currently measures 27 juan, 5 of which contain four-syllable poetry. Most of the works contained in the Wenguan cilin were previously lost or existing only in excerpts. Do these works need to be treated differently than those that have been passed down in other sources? Can we simply add the poems preserved here to the category "four-syllable poetry," or is such a category a problematic historical abstraction when its sources are not duly considered? I will contrast the structure and content of this work with other Tang and Song compendia in an attempt to draw significant connections between our sources and our texts of four-syllable poetry.
Session 19: Manchu Acculturation: New Sources for Studying Change in the Qing
Organizer: Alan Sweeten, Independent Scholar
Chair: Susan Mann, University of California, Davis
Discussant: Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh
Keywords: acculturation, China, Manchus, gender, history, language, medicine, Qing, tombs.
Scholarship on the Qing period has recently moved from arguments that the Manchus were fully acculturated to newer interpretations that emphasize not only the survival of a separate ethnic identity, but its importance in governing a multiethnic empire. Panelists investigate essentialist aspects of Manchu ethnicity as seen in medical, linguistic, marital, and burial practices to evaluate Manchu strategy and success.
Hanson finds that the medical knowledge translated into Manchu in the early Qing reveals basic concerns that most mattered to the ruling Manchus. They also incorporated Chinese medicine as well as therapeutic practices into their already syncretic tradition of steppes herbs and shamanistic rituals. Kim’s focus is on state-directed Manchu language education during the Yongzheng reign when many Manchus were losing their native fluency or purposefully becoming Chinese monolinguals. Official efforts to prevent this shift raise the issue of how emperors prioritized and supported the Manchu language. Wang looks at the issue of identity from the vantage point of Manchu-Chinese intermarriage. Qianlong period archival legal cases involving marriage issues reveal the cultural ramifications of a bifurcated policy that permitted Manchu men more freedom than women to intermarry with Chinese. Cultural mingling appears to have had gendered formations. Sweeten’s study of the Manchu tombs is a comparison of the early ones in the Northeast with the Shunzhi emperor’s. Using tomb structures and dated epigraphical data, he traces Manchu adoption of Chinese imperial symbols. The preservation of Manchu elements in tomb designs and rites was deliberately subtle, but nonetheless one important survival tactic.
Negotiation through Translation: The Significance of Manchu Medical Sources
Marta E. Hanson, University of California, San Diego
What medical knowledge did the Manchus consider important enough to translate into Manchu? Scholars have mined Manchu translations of European medicine for insights into the Jesuit-Chinese encounter, but have marginalized the more extensive efforts to translate Chinese medical texts into Manchu. This bias toward translations of scientific texts from European languages into Manchu conceals the greater effort to translate the Chinese technical literature into Manchu during the early Qing. Similarly, the humanistic orientation of scholars in both Qing history and Manchu studies has contributed to neglect of the scientific literature in Manchu. Scholarship on the Jesuit translations of European medicine into Chinese and Manchu reveals a transition during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from an emphasis on medical theory to practice.
This shift in emphasis was arguably integral to a more pragmatic orientation of the Manchus. The seventy extant medical texts in Manchu date over a span of more than two hundred years from the Shunzhi to the Tongzhi Emperor. Although the Manchus did not have a medical system of their own—relying on the natural drugs and shamanistic practices of the nomadic cultures of the steppes—once they assumed control of China, they encountered a wide range of therapies in Chinese, European, and Tibetan medical texts. By selecting certain subjects over others, they adapted Chinese medical knowledge to their own therapeutic priorities. This process of negotiation and acculturation can be seen clearly through a combination of Kangxi’s own writings on medicine and extant medical texts in Manchu from his reign.
Manchu Language Education and Elite Identities in the Yongzheng Reign
Loretta E. Kim, Harvard University
The Qing emperors, in addition to their primary roles as sovereigns of a polyethnic state, were members and representatives of the Manchu ethnic group. The Kangxi and Qianlong emperors particularly advanced the cultivation and preservation of Manchu institutions and heritage. In addition to specific governmental policies, they sponsored scholarly and artistic enterprises to define and standardize elements of Manchu identity such as language.
I will examine the less-studied "Manchu ethnic policies" of the Yongzheng reign and concentrate on the state’s position on Manchu language education and the execution of such ideals in the establishment and improvement of relevant institutions.
The Role of Manchu Women in Acculturation: A View of Their Attitude towards Intermarriage
Shuo Wang, California State University, Stanislaus
Intermarriage is the inevitable consequence of different peoples living close together and, in turn, accelerates the process of acculturation. If one of the ethnic groups is numerically larger than the other, the smaller group usually prohibits intermarriage with the larger group to maintain ethnic identity. During most of the Qing dynasty, the rulers carried out a bifurcated policy on Manchu and Chinese intermarriage: Manchu men were allowed to marry Chinese women while intermarriage between Manchu women and Chinese men was strictly prohibited. In other words, the court secured ethnic boundaries by controlling Manchu women’s nuptiality and fertility.
Using the Board of Punishments and Imperial Household Department archival records, and interviews with Manchu women who were born in the early 20th century, this paper will examine how the Manchu society reacted to the court policies regarding Manchu-Chinese intermarriage. I argue that a different level of acculturation between Manchu men and women was responsible for an unbalanced pattern of intermarriage in which men found Chinese women acceptable, but Manchu women were reluctant to marry Chinese. This pattern affected acculturation as a gendered formation. To Manchu men a family with a Chinese wife and/or concubines was a place where two cultures mingled while to Manchu women the family was a bastion in which old traditions and habits were maintained.
Early Manchu Expansion and the Development of Imperial Tombs: Insights from Monuments and Inscriptions
Alan Sweeten, Independent Scholar
As the Manchus arose in the Northeast they built "imperial" tombs for their deceased rulers. After the conquest of China began, the Shunzhi emperor selected his tomb site near Beijing rather than in Mukden where his father (Hung Taiji) and grandfather (Nurhaci) were interred. A new precedent established, the Beijing site became a complex of imperial mausoleums now known as the Qing Eastern Tombs (Qing Dongling). Due to their location, Chinese style, and the Confucian state rites performed there, most contemporary Chinese scholars see these tombs as confirmation of Manchu sinification.
Recent Western scholarship, focusing on political and institutional issues, challenges this sinocentric view of how China affected the Manchus. To date, neither the tombs in the Northeast nor China have been evaluated in light of Manchu identity maintenance and survival. Use of Chinese secondary sources along with primary materials such as the Qing Veritable Records and Collected Statutes provides valuable details, but from an on-site examination of tomb structures and sculptures, especially dated inscriptions on steles, new information helps chart Manchu changes as they expanded outward.
The conquest of China and the assumption of imperial power necessarily reflected the adoption of appropriate status symbols. Central among these were grandiose imperial tombs, which bolstered legitimacy by demonstrating support for an ancestral cult. From the Manchus’ perspective, the tombs represented an institutional change of sorts that did not require, necessarily, cultural concessions. In fact, it appears that the Manchus subtly yet persistently maintained at their tombs elements important to their own identity.
Organizer: Ping Yao, California State University, Los Angeles
Chair: G. William Skinner, University of California, Davis
Discussants: Anne Behnke Kinney, University of Virginia; G. William Skinner, University of California, Davis
Keywords: religion, women, family, imperial China.
Although anthropologists and historians have long studied the Chinese family system, little has been done on the role of religion in family life, especially on parent-child relations. This panel attempts to explore the impact of the Three Teachings in the interactions between parents and children, by examining life experiences of Chinese women. Weijing Lu’s case study of "faithful maidens" of the Ming-Qing era challenges the conventional view of the devaluation of daughter in Confucian tradition. She further demonstrates that, even within Confucian families, tension and conflict arose when a daughter chose female fidelity over filial piety, and that parents’ decisions to respect their daughter’s aspiration reflects a redefined Confucian value system in the family. On the other hand, as Suzanne Cahill’s study shows, during the Tang and Five Dynasties period, Daoist daughters who were intent on pursuing religious careers often successfully utilized a variety of strategies to achieve their ends against expressed parental desires. Ping Yao’s study on Buddhist mothers presents a more inclusive family value system. Tang epitaphs often credit Buddhist teaching with a woman’s determination to maintain female chastity and raise her children alone, although a child of a Buddhist mother also faced a dilemma when the mother preferred a Buddhist funeral. Through discussions on parent-child relations from different historical, social, and religious settings, this panel hopes to enhance our understandings of the dynamics of gender relations, family system, and religion from a broad perspective.
Between Filiality and Fidelity: Parent-Daughter Conflict in Late Imperial China
Weijing Lu, University of California, San Diego
This paper explores the interaction and tension in daughter-parent relationships in China’s late imperial period, focusing on cases of zhennü, or faithful maidens—young women who refused to marry after the death of a fiance. A daughter’s decision to remain celibate or to follow her fiancé in death by committing suicide typically was made against the wishes of her parents, and it caused tremendous conflict, resulting in profound distress and trauma for both the daughter and her parents.
The zhennü cases brought the ideal of female fidelity into direct confrontation with that of daughterly duty, both of which were cardinal values in late imperial society. The eventual consent by parents to their daughter’s uncompromised choice and the praise these women received illustrate that fidelity had become the value with primary social relevance for a woman. But emotional struggle underlay all the dramatic zhennü stories, revealing a deep emotional attachment between parent and daughter, especially between a mother and daughter, thus complicating the common view of the devaluation of the daughter within the Confucian family.
The source material for this study is drawn on biographies of zhennü, including those written by fathers and brothers of the zhennü, as well as the writings of the zhennü themselves. The rich content in both types of documents enables us to enter a realm of daughter-parent relations about which there is much yet to be known.
Girl Trouble: Daoist Daughters and Their Struggles between Filial Piety and Religious Vocation in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.)
Suzanne E. Cahill, University of California, San Diego
This paper studies the lives of a small group of Tang dynasty Daoist women to investigate how they resolve the contradictions between the obligations they owe to their families and their own aspirations to pursue Daoist religious practice. Most of my cases come from Du Guangting’s Yongcheng jixian lu (Records of the Assembled Transcendents of the Fortified Walled City), a set of biographies of Daoist religious women, completed around 910 CE. There we see women using various means to negotiate between conflicting demands. On the one hand, the Chinese family system requires that as young children they obey their parents, then that as young women they marry and raise children for the patriline of their husbands. On the other, religious vocations require full-time devotion to Daoist practices and, in some cases, celibacy. The strategies that young women employ to solve their dilemmas are various, and include flight, suicide, and reasoned argument. I am interested in how the historical record shows women formulating and solving their problems and how some of them achieve a successful outcome, the woman survives, is allowed to pursue her religious career, and her family accepts her choice.
Following Mother’s Admonition: Buddhist Mothers and Their Children in Tang China
Ping Yao, California State University, Los Angeles
This paper assesses Buddhist influences in parent-child relationships through a close reading of Tang epitaphs for Buddhist mothers. Nearly one-hundred-and-fifty such epitaphs survived, providing us with vivid stories of how these mothers raised their children and how their children reacted to their mother’s faith. The majority of the epitaphs, many of them written by the offspring, credited Buddhist faith for the mothers’ determination to stay widowed and raise their children alone. Moreover, about ten percent of these epitaphs recorded that one or more children of a Buddhist mother followed her admonition and renounced their mundane life to become a Buddhist monk or nun. However, offspring of Buddhist mothers would often face the dilemma of whether or not they should fulfill their mother’s deathbed wish of being buried separately from her husband or cremated, as such wishes contradict Confucian practices. In examining the parent-child relationship among families with Buddhist mothers, this paper intends to show that, during the Tang, Buddhism played a powerful role in the shaping of family life and the defining of motherhood.
Organizer: Shin-yi Chao, Washington University, St. Louis
Chair: Anthony C. Yu, University of Chicago
Discussant: Yuria Mori, Waseda University
Keywords: China, popular religion.
This panel explores the interaction between the religious and other aspects of Chinese popular culture, with an emphasis on literature. It has been eloquently argued by Anthony Yu that in order to understand Chinese literary tradition, we must appreciate the significant role that religion plays. At the same time, influence moves in the other direction: works of literature not only help to diffuse religious beliefs but also enrich their content. To explore this complex interaction, this panel takes four interrelated media: oral-formulaic performance, vernacular fiction, hagiographic accounts, and ritual drama.
Based on her fieldwork on the Dixi oral-formulaic narratives in Anshun, Guizhou Province, Akiko Inaba investigates the aid that the melodic structure provides to the circulation of song-prose narratives on both religious and non-religious occasions. Meir Shahar’s paper explores the influence of fiction on the mythology of martial arts by examining the legends of Bodhi-dharma (a Buddhist patriarch) and Zhang Sanfeng (a Taoist immortal), who are alleged to have founded, respectively, the two major martial arts schools. Pierre-Henry De Bruyn decodes the ostensibly incomprehensible miracle stories found in hagiographic accounts of the True Warrior (Zhenwu), one of the most prominent deities in the Chinese pantheon. Shin-yi Chao’s paper investigates the ritual theater adapted from folklore and performed by Daoist priests at village rituals in Zhenjiang and Henan Provinces in the 1980s, and argues that the religious scenarios actually contributed to the popularity of the operas.
The Melodic Structure of the Prosimetric Type (shizan xi) of the Chinese Song-Prose Narratives: With a Focus on Dixi of Anshun
Akiko Inaba, Waseda University
Based on the promptbooks collected in the field and the tunes sung by actual performers recorded during my fieldwork research, this paper analyzes the melodic structure of song-prose narratives used in Dixi oral-formulaic narratives in Anshun, Guizhou Province. This paper argues that this melodic pattern is significant in transmitting folklore and religious beliefs, two often intermixed categories that contributed to forming a shared popular culture across China’s vast territory.
As well acknowledged, oral-formulaic performances and texts have played a major role in cultural transmission. A good portion of the Chinese people, those who were illiterate or semi-literate, would have been entirely alienated from literary activities if not for the oral-formulaic traditions.
Religious tunes, such as hymnody and invocations sung at, for example, routine temple activities, exorcist rites, and thanksgiving ceremonies, contribute greatly to the construction of religious perspectives and the consciousness of people. These tunes, as my paper will show, often shared the same structure with the prosimetric narratives.
Two criteria have been promoted to examine song-prose literature: melodic and formal characteristics. Nevertheless, the former has not received deserved scholarly attention. It is my hope that this paper, as it looks into both the melody and syntax, will offer a new perspective from the musical aspect of how these characteristics have contributed to transmission and integration of religious and popular culture in China.
The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts
Meir Shahar, Tel Aviv University
Chinese martial-arts are commonly divided into two schools: internal and external. The former is sometimes attributed to the Taoist immortal, Zhang Sanfeng, who supposedly resided in a Taoist temple on Mt. Wudang, Hubei; the latter is commonly ascribed to a Buddhist saint, Bodhidharma (Damo), who, according to tradition, resided at the Shaolin Monastery on Mt. Song, Henan. The two schools’ professed histories share a perfect symmetry of directions (internal and external), mountains (Wudang and Songshan), religions (Taoism and Buddhism), and saints (Taoist immortal and Buddhist patriarch). This symmetry casts doubt on their historical validity. The martial-arts narrative seems to be the product of a mythic imagination, which fits Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis. The elements of directions, mountains, religions, and saints, appear to have been constructed to fit in a harmonious structure.
When was this mythic structure constructed, and how was it propagated? In this paper I will address this question through an examination of the earliest extant manual that attributes martial-techniques to Bodhi-dharma. Titled Sinews-Transformation Classic (Yijin jing), this manual is a seventeenth-century forgery, presented as if it had been authored by the Indian saint a thousand years earlier and translated from his native Sanskrit into Chinese. Intimately related to late-Ming fiction, its protagonists, Li Jing, Yue Fei, Niu Gao, and even Bodhidharma himself, can be shown to have been borrowed from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century novels. From this perspective the emergence of martial-arts mythology was part of the late-Ming evolution of Chinese mythology at large.
How to Understand Some Ostensibly Incomprehensible Miracle Stories of Zhenwu?
Pierre-Henry De Bruyn, University of Rochelle
As one of the main Chinese gods of the Taoist pantheon, Zhenwu (the True Warrior) has a long history. Known from antiquity as a stellar god of the North called Xuanwu (the Dark Warrior), he was originally represented accompanied by a turtle, and finally with a snake coiled around a turtle, During the Song dynasty, he was identified with a Taoist monk of the Wudang (Warrior worthy) mountains, located in the northwest of Hubei. Officially recognized by the Emperor Yuan Chengzong (1295–1307) as Xuantian Shangdi (High Emperor of the Dark Heaven), Zhenwu was later adopted by the imperial clan of the Ming dynasty as the holy protector of their family because they saw him as the 82nd reincarnation of Laozi. During the Qing dynasty his name was mentioned in many schools of martial arts as well as popular novels. This illustrates the endurance of his popularity among the Chinese people.
The Taoist canon contains a hagiographic record of one-hundred-and-four miracles attributed to Zhenwu and monographs from Mt. Wudang also afford many similar stories. Many of these stories, however, are not only completely unreliable from a historiographical point of view, but seem on the surface to be incomprehensible. Analyzing such examples, we will reflect on the ways in which they offer information of great importance for examining, in a coherent fashion, the place of Zhenwu in the Taoist pantheon, as Livia Kohn suggested at the end of her introduction to the Daoist Handbook (Brill: 2000).
Ritual Theater in a Daoist Framework in 1980s Rural China
Shin-yi Chao, Washington University, St. Louis
This paper explores the interaction between religious practices and popular literature through ritual theater which, in some cases, has been integrated into the liturgy and in others, allows greater ritual participation of believers. This dynamic actually contributes to the popularity of the drama and illustrates the nexus of tradition and contemporary relevance. To investigate this process, I use two case studies of dramatic adaptations of subjects in popular literature: Woman Meng-Jiang, who broke down the Great Wall by her laments, and Princess Miaoshen/Guanyin, who reached Buddahood. Both were performed during the Qing dynasty, declined after 1949, and have been revived since the 1980s. The materials are from the "Studies in Chinese Ritual, Theater and Folklore" series, edited by Wang Ch’iu-kuei.
In villages in the Shaoxing area, Zhejiang Province, Daoist priests performed the opera of the Woman Meng-Jiang at funeral ceremonies for those who died of unnatural causes. In addition to the exorcist functions that the stage performance serves, the falling-wall plot has been integrated in a particularly local manner with the ritual called "Attacking the wall [of Hell]" (Dacheng).
The second case study is the puppet play of the Miaoshan/Guanyin story performed by Daoist priests in Chenhe, Hunan Province, during the local Offering Ritual (jiao). Particular props used on the stage would be prepared by the audience, collected by the troupe before the performance, and returned to the audience via Guanyin as part of the plot. These props then were taken home and became tokens of Guanyin’s blessing.
Session 35: Emperors as Collectors and Connoisseurs
Organizer and Chair: R. Kent Guy, University of Washington
Discussants: Julia K. Murray, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Marsha S. Haufler, University of Kansas
Keywords: China, emperors, art, connoisseurship.
In China, emperors did not have to become collectors in order to gain respect for their cultural attainments. They could, for instance, be patrons of living artists, or produce their own calligraphy or poetry. What are we then to make of emperors who did publicly amass collections of prized masterpieces? What were they trying to say about themselves or their dynasties? What was the impact of their actions on collecting and connoisseurship outside the court?
This panel takes up the cases of three of China’s most famous imperial collectors, Huizong (r. 1100–1125) of the Song, Wenzong (r. 1328–1331) of the Yuan, and Qianlong (r. 1736–1796) of the Qing. Important works survive from each of these collections, many bearing imperial inscriptions. In the case of Huizong and Qianlong we also have detailed catalogues of their collections. Wenzong and Qianlong were members of conquest dynasties, not Han Chinese, complicating their relationship with the art world of their time. By looking at each of these emperors as a collector and connoisseur, we hope to stimulate discussion of central issues about both Chinese connoisseurship and the imperial institution in China. Because of intriguing similarities and differences in the cases, each paper will gain from being presented with the others.
We will keep each paper to twenty minutes to allow a full hour for discussion, starting with our two discussants, both of whom have done work on the connections between emperors and art in China.
Huizong and the Catalogues of His Collections
Patricia Ebrey, University of Washington
The catalogues of Huizong’s painting, calligraphy, and antiquities collections have all survived, and together they list over 9,000 items, divided by genre and artist. These catalogues are well known to art historians, who use them as reference works for lists of objects extant at the time, biographies of Song artists, and critical standards of the period. But they also deserve consideration in their own right. What were Huizong’s goals in having these catalogues prepared? What were his models? Who did the work for him? How did Huizong interact with his curators?
To answer these questions, this paper draws on the three catalogues and the collected works of four of Huizong’s curators, erudite specialists in one or more of the fields of calligraphy, inscribed bronzes, or painting. I will show that the catalogues were modeled on book catalogues and drew from two decades of curatorial research into the objects in the collection, done primarily by officials with appointments in the Imperial Library. At the same time they reflect Huizong’s personal goals. In large part because of Huizong’s politically-charged relationship with the cultural elite of his day, Huizong wanted to demonstrate that his collections were the greatest ever assembled. He also took advantage of the opportunity cataloguing offered to elevate the standing of some of his favorite artists.
Connoisseurship and Identity at the Court of Yuan Wenzong
Ankeney Weitz, Colby College
Yuan Wenzong (Tugh Temur; reigned 1328–1329 and 1329–1331) was one of the most prominent imperial connoisseurs active between Song Huizong’s and Qing Qianlong’s reigns. Wenzong sometimes even fancied himself a latter-day Huizong. However, he also prefigured Qianlong in his use of artistic activities, especially in his collaborative effort with a group of loyal Chinese officials working in his imperial library (the Kuizhangge) to craft a Sino-Mongolian imperial identity by means of the deployment and interpretation of antique Chinese paintings at court. On the one hand, Wenzong and his scholars sought to create a façade of Confucian righteousness; in a number of public documents circulated during and after Wenzong’s reign, Chinese scholars represented this particular emperor’s penchant for painting as a sign of his sincere moral integrity. On the other hand, several of the Chinese paintings presented to Wenzong in his library now bear inscriptions—written at Wenzong’s command—endorsing a specific Mongolian worldview.
This paper argues that Wenzong’s imperial identity was shaped through the concatenation of Chinese and foreign emblems. His officials’ finely nuanced and multi-layered interpretations of antique paintings suggest that, for Wenzong and his artistic advisors, connoisseurship provided a means to assert a unique multi-ethnic imperial presence.
Knowledge and Action on Display: Philology and Politics in Emperor Qianlong’s Connoisseurship
Chin-sung Chang, Yale University
The emperor Qianlong (r.1736–96) amassed the huge imperial collection of paintings that became the nucleus of major museums in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere. Qianlong, however, has long been described as a self-indulgent and unscrupulous collector and connoisseur of paintings because of his relentless acquisitions of private collections as well as his many flawed evaluations and misattributions in authenticating masterworks of the past. Qianlong’s excessive use of seal imprints and superscriptions on ancient paintings further helped to establish such an image.
This paper will both challenge this misrepresentation of Qianlong as an incompetent connoisseur and also argue that the rudiments of his connoisseurship were in fact largely based on textual philology. His authentication of paintings often relied heavily on the methodological vigor of kaozheng (evidential research) studies. Furthermore, his connoisseurship was part of his extensive yet thorough inquiries into the meaning of history, inquiries that were deeply related to the self-fashioning and strengthening of his emperorship. A fine example is Qianlong’s political judgment of Herding Goats attributed to Li Di (ca. 1100–after 1197) that mirrored the court politics of the 1780s, a time when he created discourses of absolute loyalty to Manchu rule. Through investigations of various cases of the kind, this paper will explore how Qianlong’s philological erudition and historical sensibility in connoisseurship served to enhance his imperial power and authority.
Session 36: Making a Better State: Improving Governance in Contemporary China
Organizer: Kenneth W. Foster, University of British Columbia
Chair and Discussant: Margaret M. Pearson, University of Maryland
Keywords: China, state, bureaucracy, governance, reform.
Often lost amidst reports of corruption, political decay, and the alleged retreat of the Party-State in the face of advancing marketization is the fact that, over the past two decades, in some important ways the Chinese Party-State has actually become better able to govern economic and social affairs. This should not be surprising, for over the years Chinese reformers have engaged in a multi-pronged effort to re-make the government administration and develop new and improved governance structures and mechanisms. This is a vast area that is ripe for new research.
The papers that form this panel consider several key issues regarding the attempt by Chinese leaders to craft a revitalized system of governmental administration that can undergird the country’s continuing transition away from state socialism. Lance Guo’s is broadest in scope. He examines the role and fate of party organizations in the effort to improve and strengthen the organs of government, asking if we might be witnessing the decline of party organizations as reformers focus on strengthening the government administration. Kun-Chin Lin looks at the central-local dimension of governance, tracing how the central government has sought to improve its ability to ensure that local officials faithfully implement centrally-financed investment projects. Lastly, Ken Foster explores an initiative in the city of Yantai in which city leaders developed and implemented a new program aimed at improving the quality of services offered by government agencies to the public. By highlighting three key relationships—between party and government, central and local authorities, and government and the public—the panel sheds new light on China’s transformation.
Please note: We have designed a panel with three paper presentations and one discussant with the aim of leaving more time for audience participation and discussion than is normally the case. The authors will end their presentations with some larger implications and some provocative questions intended to stimulate audience participation. In addition, each author will read the panel’s other papers ahead of time and be prepared to comment on them.
Vanguard or Rearguard? Party Organizations and China’s New Governance System
Lance Guo, Bowdoin College
In discussing "governance" in the context of China, one cannot escape the pervasive party organizations both within and outside of the government. This situation poses a challenge to the task of fostering improved forms of governance in the state administration. For while improving governance entails restructuring the government bureaucracy and promoting modern methods of public administration, these efforts do not involve party organizations. So although reformers have sought to re-shape the government so as to make it more technocratic and better suited for the task of managing a marketizing economy, the thorny question of what role party organizations should play has remained unresolved.
This paper will focus on two questions. First, precisely what is the role of party organizations in the effort to craft a new and improved system of governance? Are they a drag on reform or are they in the "vanguard," as the CCP might claim? Second, are the efforts to improve the functioning of the government leaving party organizations in a marginalized position? In other words, as the old system of governance is being gradually transformed, are party organizations succeeding in digging out a niche for themselves that is consistent with the larger reform program? The paper will examine these questions by looking at several different cases. The tentative argument is that market-oriented reforms are inevitably transforming the party from a "vanguard" position to a rearguard one—focusing more on providing support to the government. And while party organizations indeed pose limits to rationalization of state bureaucracy in the short run, there is at least a hint of an emerging synthesis between the government and the party.
With Strings Attached: Improving the Administration of State-Financed Investment Projects in the PRC
Kun-Chin Lin, University of California, Berkeley
Since the mid-1990s, the central government in China has gained increasing shares of total tax revenue and control over banks and the stock markets. In contrast, local governments have suffered fiscal impoverishment and have become more dependent on central state redistribution to accomplish their basic public administrative tasks. Given this opportunity, elite reformers in Beijing have sought to implement radical changes in the ways central outlays are being spent on the ground level, with an eye toward improved monitoring, transparency, and accountability of state agents. If successful, these changes could redefine the fiscal basis of regional economic development as well as the general quality of administration across Chinese localities.
Drawing from recent interviews of top officials in Beijing and previously classified publications, I identify emergent patterns in the authority relations and procedures for state-financed investment projects. At the national level, the State Council, Ministry of Finance and the National People’s Congress have formulated an agenda to overhaul the categorization and oversight mechanisms for revenue streams to local states. Successive bureaucratic streamlining has also reduced access points for localities to lobby for large-scale fixed-capital investments. Major fiscal responsibilities have received further delineation and centralization, including the transfer of the provision of education, medical services, and social welfare to higher level governments. Finally, the central state has limited the alternatives for local states to fundraise independently. It continues to prohibit local state bond issuance, and recently passed a centrally administered fuel tax that will undermine the local states’ prerogative to charge fees and levies on highways.
A New Call to Serve the People: Improving the Provision of Government Services at the Local Level
Kenneth W. Foster, University of British Columbia
Relatively overlooked by outside observers, over the past decade or so local governments in China have engaged in various efforts to improve the quality of the services offered by government agencies. Whether the issue is the processing of business licenses, the collection of garbage, or the investigation of citizen complaints, there has arisen a new focus on the idea that government should actually serve the people, providing useful services efficiently and fairly. A string of initiatives along these lines has emerged from the policymaking core of the Party-State, all loosely under the rubric of creating a modern system of public administration. And various local governments have both implemented such programs and experimented with initiatives of their own. This is an intriguing strand of the Chinese reforms that deserves attention, for the effort to transform the behavior of government agencies towards the public is at the heart of the struggle to transform China’s system of governance.
This paper will explore this effort. It will first assess the initiatives that have emerged from the central Party-State. This will provide the background for the second part of the paper: an in-depth investigation of a path-breaking program to improve government services in the city of Yantai in Shandong Province. In the mid-1990s, the Yantai government borrowed from the United Kingdom’s Citizen Charter initiative to build its own "Service Promise System." The model that was developed eventually drew praise from and was more broadly promoted by the central government. However, it generally failed to catch on elsewhere. The experience of the Service Promise System illustrates both the possibilities for and constraints on the development of a more service-oriented public administration in China.
Session 37: Principled Succession: Changing Perceptions of the Sage King in Early China
Organizer: Kenneth W. Holloway, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: John S. Major, Independent Scholar
Discussant: Sarah Allan, Dartmouth College
Keywords: sage kings, government, religion, philosophy, succession.
Government debates in early China often cited sage kings when discussing important ideals. From the early Zhou through the Han, the lessons drawn from these ancient figures underwent a continuous evolution. Recently discovered bronze and bamboo texts have added to our understanding of this phenomenon. Examining this requires an interdisciplinary approach that includes religion, material culture, political history, philosophy, and hermeneutics. Our panel begins with the religious and political contexts of the traditional Zhou rites of succession, and the evolving role of Yu in cultic practices. Next, in the Guodian texts, the Yao-Shun myth was used to argue for the harmonization of meritocratic and aristocratic methods of government. This will be followed by a discussion in the Mencius of family-anti-family aspects of the legend of Yao’s abdication to Shun. Finally, in the Han, the Yao-Shun myth becomes an active part of succession debates, ultimately resulting in Wang Mang claiming descent from Shun to support his claim of legitimacy over the Han royal house, which had come to be associated with Yao.
Sage King Yu, a Sacred Vessel, and the Way of the Former Kings: Zhou Period Sacrilege or Just Another Ancestor?
Constance A. Cook, Lehigh University
Followers of the cult of Confucius, caught up in a world of budding states with competing lineages and different founder deities, designed a "Way of the Former Kings" out of a traditional Zhou rite of succession centered around the worship of cult-founders, Kings Wen and Wu and their act of "creating a nation" (zuobang). This "Way" (dao) was a blatant attempt to harness the power of the Zhou ancestors through ritual performance while claiming to be keepers of the political standard. The identity of the "Former Kings" and the exact nature of the "Way" became rhetorical weapons in a battle for cultural, political, and moral authority among cult groups, such as the Confucians and the Mohists. By the third century BCE, Xunzi attempted to resolve the ensuing confusion by dividing various numbers of "Former Kings" or "Sages" into two groups: the Former Kings (all pre-Zhou kings) and the Latter Kings (the Zhou kings). This paper focuses on the pre-Zhou Sage-king Yu, the mythic king who channeled the rivers and created the Nine Continents. Until recently, no evidence in the thousands of Western Zhou period inscriptions suggested that Yu was the focus of any cult practice. Last year, a private museum in Beijing discovered an inscription where Yu takes the place of Kings Wen and Wu. This paper defines the religious and political context of the inscription within the evolving role of Yu in cultic practices up through Xunzi’s time.
The Guodian Aristocracy-Meritocracy Hybrid
Kenneth W. Holloway, University of Pennsylvania
"Tang Yu Zhidao," a recently excavated text from Guodian advocates a system of government that combines the advantages of an aristocracy and a meritocracy to form a hybrid. Yao and Shun are seen as harmonizing aristocratic and meritocratic priorities since they chose their successors based on merit, but remained faithful to their lineages by being filial and humane.
The most important difference between meritocracy and aristocracy in the Guodian is scale. The aristocratic system emphasizes the cultivation of virtues based on the family, which is a smaller unit, while meritocracy is concerned with a very large scale. Being national in scope, the priority of a meritocracy is finding capable individuals and not emphasizing ways in which these individuals become capable.
This paper will show that the theme of an aristocracy/meritocracy hybrid is prevalent in Guodian texts. It is central to "Tang Yu Zhidao" and "Wuxing," but also present in "Yu Cong Yi," "Zun De Yi," and "Liu De."
Mencius’ Treatment of the Yao Shun Legend
Moss Roberts, New York University
Mencius strives to reconcile the archetypal legend of sage-king Yao’s transmission of the throne to a stranger outside the family (Shun) with the family values that constitute the foundation of his moral-political doctrine. Accordingly, Mencius begins his treatment of Yao and Shun by providing these thinly sketched men of myth with heart (and family), transforming them into actors in a morality play (in Book V, part 1). For Mencius the heart, representing pathos, is the core concept, the origin of all social values and institutional structures. Shun’s humanization, his acquisition of feeling (qing) is signaled by weeping. Mencius proceeds to endow the two sage-kings with the virtues of filial piety and fraternal devotion in order to counteract the challenging questions of his disciple Wan Zhang, who tries to probe the heterodox anti-family aspects of the legend. This presentation will address the degree of Mencius’ success in overcoming the family-anti-family contradictions in the legends and imposing his own interpretation on the mythic figures. The radical nature of Wan Zhang’s critical questions and Mencius’ responses are also considered.
The Myth of Yao and Shun in the Evolution of Han Political Ideology
Gopal Sukhu, City University of New York, Queens College
Late Zhou thinkers used the myth of Yao and Shun to make licit their yearning for a sage king to replace the decadent royal house, even if he emerged from amongst the commoners.
After the fall of the Qin dynasty, the Chinese empire did indeed go to a commoner, the founder of the Han dynasty, during the first half of which the myth was used to call for the abdication of the royal house in favor of one of another (usually a distaff family) surname deemed more qualified to rule. The reasoning went: the Han emperor is to this other as Yao was to Shun; therefore Han should cede the throne to him. Soon analogy was conflated with genealogy and some declared the Han royal house the actual descendants of Yao. The usurper Wang Mang exploited the same logic to convince the world that he was the legitimate successor of the Han—he claiming descent from Shun.
Textual proof for such claims eventually arrived in the form of forced interpretations of the Spring and Autumn Annals. After the Restoration, these interpretations became orthodoxy, but the image of Yao was now central to a new ideology, wherein the right to rule was unquestionably tied to lineage regardless of merit.
My paper will examine the evolution of this use of the Yao/Shun myth and the hermeneutical interventions that supported it.
Session 38: ROUNDTABLE: Reconceptualizations: Late Qing China
Organizer: Peter Zarrow, Academia Sinica
Discussants: Joan Judge, University of California, Santa Barbara; Xiaoqing Diana Lin, Indiana University, Northwest; Young-Tsu Wong, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University; Theodore D. Huters, University of California, Los Angeles; Peter Zarrow, Academia Sinica
Keywords: late Qing, politics, gender, religion, learning, society, culture.
The late Qing period (c.1880–1912) saw Chinese engaged in a fundamental reappraisal of their world, arguably on a scale comparable to that of the Warring States and Song periods much earlier.
This roundtable assembles scholars of the period from a variety of backgrounds to engage in and provoke discussion of the lexical and conceptual changes taking place during this period. We will examine how late Qing intellectuals, gentry, and urban populations generally rethought existing cultural constructs and created new concepts. We will begin with overviews of the fields of "politics" (Zarrow), "gender" (Judge), "learning" (Lin), "society" (Wong), and "culture" (Huters).
Each speaker will be given no more than ten minutes. Opening remarks will be followed by discussion among the speakers and then the audience. Discussion will not be limited to these keywords, which will simply serve to map its contours.
The objective of this roundtable is to explore different ways that Chinese of the period organized knowledge, perceived the world, and represented power and values in the context of often bewildering transformations. We will not only discuss issues of terminology and translation, but also use keywords as entry points into a range of topics touching on changing social relations, new modes of narrative and performance, modernity, identity, and memory.
While the participants in the roundtable are actively engaged in research on the topics they will present, the roundtable aims to provocatively rethink some of the basic issues in late Qing studies rather than present detailed new scholarship.
Session 39: INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Economics, Information, and Culture in Contemporary China
Organizer and Chair: Barrett L. McCormick, Marquette University
Che Guevara: Dramatizing China’s Divided Intelligentsia at the Turn of the Century
Yinghong Cheng, Delaware State University
"Che Guevara" is the name of an experimental play put on stage by a group of Chinese New Left intellectuals and artists in 2000 and 2001 to challenge China’s post-Mao social transformation by evoking Guevara’s spirit. By using montage, the scenes of the play flash back and forth between two historical contexts. One is the 1960s, focusing on the Cuban revolution and Guevarist discourse with other revolutionary movements and decolonization in the Third World in the background. The other is today’s China within a setting of post-communism and globalization. The play attributed China’s social problems to abandonment of Maoism and embracing of market-oriented reforms and integration into world economy. Filled with sarcasm and even black humor, the play displayed strong sentiments of anti-liberalism (liberalism in China’s context refers to the endorsement of free economy, property and human rights, and constitutional government), anti-globalization and anti-Americanism. The play was put on stage in many Chinese cities, including Hong Kong, and has generated polar reactions from, and intense debate between, the liberals and New Leftist intellectuals.
The paper seeks to reveal the details of the phenomenon—the play, the producers, and the responses—and attempts to contextualize it in a larger socio-political discourse about China’s current condition. It also connects this phenomenon with responses of the international left to globalization and neo-liberalism. Based on these introductions and analyses, the paper attempts to draw a picture of the contemporary Chinese intellectuals who have been torn apart by ideological divergence and the socio-political implications of such a split to China at the turn of the century.
Appropriating Tradition: Classical Chinese Novels and Their TV Adaptations
Jing Shen, Eckerd College
My paper examines TV adaptations of classical Chinese novels and their criticism to investigate the use of tradition in pop culture. TV drama series—a major form of entertainment in China—is one of the best ways to adapt traditional Chinese novels of 100–120 chapters to the screen. It took a huge amount of investment from CCTV to adapt four masterpieces of the genre—The Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Water Margin from the Ming Dynasty, and The Story of the Stone from the Qing Dynasty—into TV drama series. This project, which has successfully connected those literary classics to mass culture, has evoked much critical attention. I will analyze various responses to the adaptations in reference to the original works and demonstrate how literati literature is modernized, commodified, and politicized in the contemporary context. To popularize literati literature through contemporary mass media reveals a dilemma between creativity and faithfulness. While the adaptations exploit the visual and musical potential of the novels to reach audiences of different levels, they often have to discard the original narrative frames as superstitions, which are, however, essential to the sophisticated expression of authorial subjectivity and nuanced irony that are intended to shape readers’ interpretations of the main stories. This need to reinscribe the novels using modern consciousness is also seen in characterization, including male heroism and gender construction. The heroes who have absorbed the literati values embody conflicts between personal and public loyalty, a complicated issue in traditional culture. Contemporary audiences tend to feel puzzled by the apparent inconsistency of these characters. Considering audience perception, the screenwriters and directors expand the scenes involving women characters in the novels that foreground brotherhood, and try to portray loose women as victims of circumstance and sexual frustration. This visual representation also reveals commercial appeal, and audiences who have read the text well criticize this kind of characterization for commodifying sexuality. This paper seeks to cross the boundaries of premodern and modern literature, elite and popular cultures, and texts and media, to show the attachment to and transformability of tradition in contemporary China. The details that are not transformable make readers become more aware of the complexity of the original texts. Slides will be used to facilitate the presentation.
Everyday is Water Splashing Festival: Han Appropriation of Dai Culture in Ethnic Tourism
Monica Cable, Tulane University
After decades of acculturation pressure imposed by the Chinese Communist Party government on ethnic minorities in China, the majority Han are taking commercial interest in these various cultures. This paper explores Han appropriation of the identity of ethnic minorities by focusing on ethnic tourism in the Dai Park located in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China. I will show how a Han management company maintains strict control over the five Dai villages within the borders of the Dai Park, manipulating the visual expression of Dai culture. Within the Park, the Han are both the major sellers and consumers of Dai culture. Park employees are mostly Han, and thousands of Han tourists daily overwhelm the small villages. Ethnic markers are highlighted and negotiated in interactions between the Dai and other ethnic groups, primarily the Han. In the construction of Dai identity, traits such as language, dress, and architectur