The discourses of classical scholars during the eighteenth century reinforced a shift from Song-Ming rationalism to a more skeptical and secular classical empiricism. By making precise scholarship the source of acceptable knowledge, Qing classicists contended that the legitimate reach of ancient ideals should be reevaluated through comparative delineation of the textual sources from which all such knowledge derived. This turn to empirically based classical inquiry meant that abstract ideas and rational argumentation gave way as the primary objects of elite discussion to concrete facts, verifiable institutions, ancient natural studies, and historical events. In general, Qing classicists regarded Song and Ming “Learning of the Way” as an obstacle to verifiable truth because it discouraged further inquiry along empirical lines. The empirical approach to knowledge they advocated placed proof and verification at the heart of analysis of the classical tradition. During this time, scholars and critics also applied historical analysis to the official Classics. Classical commentary yielded to textual criticism and a “search for evidence” to refortify the ancient canon. Representing a late imperial movement in Confucian letters, Qing classicists still sought to restore the classical vision. The early modern power of their philology, however, yielded the forces of decanonization and delegitimation as modernist trends, which went beyond the intellectual limits they had imposed on their own writings.
Starting with a court debate which broke out in the spring of 1684, this essay explores the multivalent symbolism of the Kangxi emperor’s first imperial tour to Shandong and Jiangsu provinces in the fall of 1684. Some courtiers advocated treating the Kangxi emperor’s touring activities as a rite of conquest, while others saw them as an exercise in sagely rule and benevolent civil governance. Here I suggest that this ritual controversy revealed a tension between civil and military values within the political culture of the Qing court. Furthermore, this ideological tension became most acute and apparent during the Kangxi emperor’s “eastern” and “southern” tours of 1684, when the imperial procession approached and crossed certain culturally and symbolically significant locations. As such, we are reminded that the legitimization of Qing rule was never fully complete, but was rather an open-ended and ongoing historical process.
This article explores the relationship between Christianity and Chinese society in the second half of the nineteenth century by re-examining the primary sources of anti-Christian movements. The first part shows how Christian churches broke the dominance of the Qing government over local society. Conflicts between Christianity and Chinese religion were often transformed into political confrontations between churches and the Qing bureaucracy. The second part analyzes how Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism interpreted Christianity, with an emphasis on how to understand the perception of Christianity in Chinese society. Exploring broader societal perceptions of Christianity—and not just those expressed in the writings of the Confucian literati—allows for a more nuanced understanding of Chinese interpretations of Christianity. The third part studies the relationship between churches and Chinese religious sects. On the one hand, in the language of anti-Christian movements such as those of the Zaili and Cai sects, Christianity was the hateful “Other.” On the other hand, in the process of preaching Christianity, churches themselves experienced a period of transmutation: they recruited into the church not only non-religious civilians but also the followers of popular religions. For a long period, Christianity was called yangjiao, the “foreign religion,” making it the “Other.” Missionaries started to feel an urgency to reject their identity as the “Other” after the harrowing experience of the Boxer Movement.
National heroes are important in the development of nationalist thinking. One important figure in this context is General Yue Fei (1103–42), who unsuccessfully fought the invading Jurchen in the twelfth century. Shortly after his execution, a temple was built in his honour in Hangzhou. Local chronicles show that this temple was constantly renovated in later dynasties. Due to his continuous worship as a loyal warrior—even during the Qing dynasty—his temple became a powerful site of identity. His veneration as a national hero in the course of the twentieth century has, however, posed a problem to a post-1911 China that felt compelled to sustain a multi-ethnic nation-state, whilst at the same time facing the difficulty of not being able to do without General Yue Fei. This article shall make it apparent that his resurrection as a national hero in the twentieth century was possible because of certain narrative strategies that had already been propagated by the Manchurian rulers of the eighteenth century.
This paper focuses on several villages of Licheng county in the southeastern part of Shanxi province, probing into how the war and the revolution affected village society in North China. The primary concern of most existing studies on the Chinese Revolution has been to examine how the Communist Party of China (CPC) mobilized peasants in a certain area, boosted their revolutionary consciousness, and ultimately led them to win the revolution, and to carry out this inquiry in the context of the orthodox history of the CPC, from top-down perspective. The paper focuses on the microscopic world of a village, and examine, from the bottom-up perspective and in the context of the history of the village itself, what the war and the revolution meant to the village, several factors that have remained rather inconspicuous begin to surface. The case studies of several villages in Licheng county shows that the revolution unfolded as an extension of various conflicts or rivalries that had existed for years within each village, or between different villages. One group of well-to-do people who had once monopolized public authority within a village fell from power, while a group of poorer peasants who had been dominated by the richer group joined the CPC and emerged as new power holders in the village. The motives that drove peasants to join the CPC were often far more complex and diverse than conventional theory would have us believe.
How new was the New China? This article explores the experience of Beijing tailors in the early years of the PRC in light of this question. After 1949, many long-established tailors simply continued to ply their trade in their old business premises, giving a strong impression of continuity in the social fabric of the city. They were increasingly challenged, however, by newcomers to the industry, including petty entrepreneurs who chose to invest in a socially useful trade, and the graduates of newly established sewing schools, usually women. Policy shifts from the New Democracy period through the “three anti” and “five anti” campaigns to the eve of the socialist transformation in 1956 affected old and new businesses, men and women, in different ways. Overall, the reduction in entrepreneurial freedoms that characterizes this period of Chinese business history was, in this sector of industry and commerce, most strikingly manifest in limitations on what tailors were licensed to make, which had effects on what Beijing people wore. From these various perspectives, 1949 can be seen to be a rather clear dividing line in the history of Beijing, but it was possibly a rather faint line at first, becoming darker and thicker as the 1950s progressed—or should that be “regressed?”
Hung Wu, The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs;
Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China;Mingke Wang, Qiang zai Han Zang zhijian:
Chuanxi Qiangzu de lishi renleixue yanjiu;
Si-yen Fei, Negotiating Urban Space: Urbanization and Late Ming Nanjing;
William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing;Rong Xia, Funü zhidao weiyuanhui yu kangri zhanzheng;
Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity;
Yunqian Chen, Chongbai yu jiyi: Sun Zhongshan fuhao de jian’gou yu chuanbo