Session 16: Other Effects: The Christian Impact on Late Imperial China

Organizer: Dongfeng Xu, University of Chicago

Chair: James G. St. Andre, National University of Singapore

Discussant: Richard P. Madsen, University of California, San Diego

These papers discuss the Christian influence on Chinese culture. They examine how the cross-cultural interactions during the late imperial period generated new readings of literature, changed drastically the Confucian thinking, and brought about new modes to the already flourishing and complicated print culture of China.

The first paper focuses on the Jesuit influence on the Chinese literary commentary, an understudied area. It discusses how works of astronomy and sermon stories (exempla), translated by the Jesuits, were applied to commentaries on literature during the late Ming and early Qing. This new method of commentary, the paper argues, results in different and new interpretations of such disparate literary works as the Shijing and the Peony Pavilion. The second paper looks at the Neo-Confucian reaction to the Jesuits. In their refutation of Christian doctrines, the Neo-Confucian apologists vehemently denied the Jesuit claim that the appearance of the term Shangdi in Chinese classics proved that the ancient Chinese knew and revered the Christian God. Forced away from the concerns typical of Zhu Xi, the Cheng brothers, and Wang Yangming, the Neo-Confucians were led back by the Jesuits to the Confucian canons to look into the religiosity of Confucianism, a kind of investigation the Neo-Confucians had tried to avoid since the Song. The last paper has a wider angle than the first two. Focusing on Protestant missionaries from a later period, and introducing an annotated bibliography of about 2,400 Protestant writings in Chinese, this paper seeks to reveal the interactions between different ethnic and religious groups. Besides the Chinese reception of these Protestant works, the paper also discusses the relations between the Chinese print culture and Protestant publications. It also examines the influence of early Catholic writings on Protestant texts and translations.

Together, these three papers examine different aspects of this cross-cultural encounter and the long-lasting effects on both sides.

Hospitality: The Case of Late Ming China and the Jesuits

Dongfeng Xu, University of Chicago

This paper discusses how the China-West encounter challenged the subjectivity or identity of Neo-Confucians in the late Ming. As is known, the anti-Christian literati were a group unlikely to be hospitable to the Jesuit missionaries who had just arrived in China. The Confucians simply assumed the role of unfriendly and arrogant hosts, attempting to dominate and silence their guests. Examining some details in the Poxie ji (1635), a collection of several anti-Christian works, this paper considers the Confucian attacks on Christianity as efforts to secure the Confucian position as host/master through a Self-Other dichotomization. But following the argument in the book, the reader soon becomes aware that the Neo-Confucian authors were often forced, by the questions from the Jesuits, to twist the standard interpretation of the metaphysical values and concepts from Zhu Xi, the Cheng brothers, Wang Yangming, etc. Furthermore, they had to follow the Jesuits to look into the religiosity of pre-Han Confucianism by examining such terms as Shangdi, Tiandi, etc., an investigation that the Neo-Confucians had tried hard to avoid since the Song dynasty. Following the book’s argument, the reader sees that the Confucian confrontation with missionaries forced the former to adopt "a language of the other."

Missionary Books, Chinese Books: On Missionary Publishing in the Late Qing

Ryan Dunch, University of Alberta

Christian missionary presses produced a bewildering array of Chinese publications in the late Qing period, ranging from single-sheet tracts and elementary primers to massive tomes on many areas of learning. While their significance for modern Chinese history has often been acknowledged, to date no comprehensive guide to missionary publications in Chinese has existed. This paper will introduce an annotated bibliographic database of some 2,400 missionary works (not including Bibles, Bible portions, or periodicals) published between 1811 and 1911, and discuss broad trends in their development over that period. Like their 17th-century Roman Catholic predecessors, the early Protestant missionaries in China were fascinated, and often perplexed, by the kaleidoscope of reading material they encountered in Chinese culture, and influenced by it in multiple ways even as they sought to position their publications within it. The paper will highlight the evolution in physical form and presentation of missionary books; their genres and styles in relation to Chinese models; and the influence of the earlier Roman Catholic books in Chinese on the late Qing Protestant missionary authors/translators.