Li Li 李立 & Shi Qing 史青, Qingdai Yunnan ‘Yiren tushuo’ yanjiu 清代雲南「夷人圖說」研究 (Research on Qing Dynasty Ethnographic Albums from Yunnan Province), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2021. ISBN 9787101153354, 164 pages, 68 RMB.
Reviewed by Li Yutong 李雨桐 (Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg)
This book provides a comprehensive examination of ethnographic albums in Yunnan during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The authors Li Li (Yunnan Normal University) and his co-author Shi Qing (Yunnan Forestry Technical College) focus on two central aims. The first is to concentrate on the content depicted and documented in the ethnographic albums. In order to achieve the goal, the authors illustrate the intricate details of the characteristics and customs of diverse ethnic groups in Yunnan during the Qing dynasty. The second aim revolves around the motivations of the illustrators. The book endeavors to uncover the underlying rationales that drove the creation of these ethnographic albums. Whether their motivations stemmed from a scholarly desire to document the diversity of ethnicities or whether they were swayed by political, social, and cultural conditions in frontier regions, the illustrator’s intentions added layers of complexity to the local history of Yunnan.
Everybody working in the field of new religious groups in late imperial China will be familiar with Cao Xinyu’s 曹新宇 essential contributions, especially the 2012 donation of a cache of northern Chinese religious images and texts he received from an elderly lady in Wanquan 萬全 County (in the far north of Hebei Province) who wanted to ensure that her cultural inheritance ended up in the right hands. The complete find was published in Taiwan the following year and thus became generously available to international scholars (p. 1–7).
Wang Rui’s new biography of Zhang Taiyan, entitled The Revolutionary Confucian Scholar, is part of a wave of new research on Zhang Taiyan in China sparked by the publication of the revised version of the Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian 章太炎年谱长编 (Nianpu biography of Zhang Taiyan) and the new edition of Zhang Taiyan quanji 章太炎全集 (The complete works of Zhang Taiyan).
Since the seminal work by Nishijima Sadao 西嶋定生 in the early 1960s, the nature, institutional design, and social implications of rank (jue 爵) during the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–220 CE) continue to attract scholarly attention. Using unearthed legal and administrative materials, recent research has substantially expanded, revisited, or even refuted Nishijima’s model. In light of the newest works of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scholars, Jia Liying’s book offers a timely synthesis of this long-standing academic debate.
Wang Yongping is a Professor of History at the Capital Normal University in Beijing and a leading scholar of Daoism under the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Following in the wake of his earlier books on Tang entertainments (1995), the cultural history of the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties period (2000), and Daoism in Tang society (2002), the present volume addresses four related subjects: (1) Daoism and the Tang social order, with special reference to the place of women; (2) the trajectories of selected Daoist priests and their networks of social relationships; (3) Daoism in daily life under the Tang, notably the Daoist imprint on seasonal festivals, folk customs, and popular practices; and (4) the interaction and different degrees of integration between the Three Teachings (Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism). In ten chapters, framed by an introduction and an afterword, Wang thus explores the broad impact of Daoism on the everyday life of Tang society.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, studies on Kang Youwei (1858–1927) have experienced a steady and consistent surge, especially in the context of reassessing the late Qing period beyond the traditional interpretation of the “Western shock” as the predominant (if not the only) impulse to the radical transformation of China at the dawn of the 20th century. Over the last decades, more careful observation of the developments from the Jiaqing 嘉庆 period (1796–1820) onward has demonstrated the multiplicity of “intellectual paths” that Chinese élites were exploring well before the acceleration imposed by the forced penetration of Euro-Atlantic concepts (and their Japanese re-elaborations). These observations align with a more nuanced and detailed approach to the evolution of Chinese concepts, as seen in the light of Begriffsgeschichte
This monograph by Zhang Xiping, distinguished professor at Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学) and Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学), focuses on the intellectual exchange in philosophical and religious fields between China and Europe. This includes classical and medieval philosophies and Christianity in Europe and Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism in China. First published in 2001 and republished in 2010 and 2021, the 2021 edition of the book belongs to the book series Ruxue yu Ouzhou wenming yanjiu 儒学与欧洲文明研究 (Studies on Confucianism and European Civilization). According to Zhang, the 2021 edition inherited the structure of the previous editions but with a few amendments to details, which readers can notice from his citation of more recent publications (p. 530).
Wei Shanling’s book on the Guomindang Government’s Aid to Chinese Overseas Students is an in-depth analysis of the discourse between various government institutions on the disbursement of financial aid for living expenses and return tickets to struggling overseas Chinese students during the Second Sino-Japanese War and its aftermath until 1946. The study is a result of Wei’s doctoral research at Nanjing University and was published in the “Universities and Contemporary China” (Daxue yu xiandai Zhongguo 大學與現代中國) series, edited by her supervisor Zhu Qingbao 朱慶葆, who also contributed a preface on the role of universities in the making of modern China.
Chang Jianhua’s Policies on Governance and People’s Livelihood in the Early Qing Period represents a growing interest and trend among Chinese scholars in revisiting Qing (1644–1911) history in recent years. It includes eighteen essays, all of which were previously published in various Chinese academic journals between 2008 and 2020, by the author on topics ranging from the political consolidation of the Qing to the dynasty’s economic policies. The compilation is one of eleven volumes from the fourth edition of the ‘Collected Papers of Nankai Historians’ (南开史学家论丛).
I am interested in the relationship between theater and society, and so I was excited to read the new book by Hu Xingliang, Trends of Thought in Modern Chinese Theater – The Modernization of Theater and the Modernization of Society (hereafter Trends of Thought). However, I soon realized that it is not a new book at all, but a slightly revised version of Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiju sichao 二十世纪中国戏剧思潮 (Trends of Thought in Chinese Theater in the Twentieth Century), published in 1995 by Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe. Nevertheless, Hu Xingliang is such an important figure in modern Chinese theater studies that his book still deserves a critical review. As a matter of fact, Trends of Thought has been republished along with three other books by Hu to celebrate his scholarly accomplishments and the results of various large research projects conducted over the last several decades.
Almost fifty years ago, tomb 3 of the early Han Mawangdui 馬王堆 site (hereafter MWD) in Changsha was excavated in December 1973 and could be dated to 168 BCE. The archaeologists unearthed a wealth of artefacts similar to those found in tomb MWD 1 which had already been excavated in 1972. However, a lacquered chest containing two bamboo manuscripts and more than two dozen silk manuscripts had a much longer-lasting impact on the study of ancient China than the mummy of the tomb owner found in MWD 1.
This book examines the representation of disasters in oracle bone inscriptions from the late Shang dynasty (ca. 13th century–11th century BCE). Disasters are a ubiquitous topic in oracle bone inscriptions, as almost every inscription is connected in one way or another with an attempt to prevent or investigate ominous and harmful events of various magnitudes. However, to date, no comparable monograph has attempted to explore the matter to its fullest extent or for its own sake.
In 1592 the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), who had only recently politically unified a Japan ravaged by more than a century of civil war, decided to invade Korea, which at that time was ruled by the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897). The Koreans were not prepared to resist the Japanese onslaught, the largest amphibious landing in world history up to that point. Around 150,000 Japanese soldiers participated in the operation, with another 140,000 joining in a second landing in 1597.
Weng Youwei’s The Axis of Change in Modern China is a perplexing book with an elusive message, although the book is not without merit. Its self-declared goal is to uncover the “inherent logic of historical development” (历史发展的自身逻辑, 〈代前言〉, p. 1) that supposedly informed China’s modern history from the second half of the 19th century to the (from the author’s perspective) inevitable victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949. Weng pursues this goal by analyzing “three central issues” (三大轴心问题) that he feels decisively shaped the course of China’s social transformation in the late Qing and early Republican eras: The “construction of the modern warlord discourse” (近代军阀话语之建构), the “reform of the provincial institutional [system] and the evolution of society” (省区制度之变革与社会之演进), and the “transformation of the contemporary state” (现代国家之转型). However, the reason why these three issues are especially suitable for uncovering said logic is not sufficiently made clear, and Weng’s overall argument only works if the reader shares the author’s – virtually axiomatic and never explicitly expressed – assumption that the rise and victory of the CCP were scientifically inevitable.
The discovery of the oracle bones in the early 20th century marked a new era for modern historical research on early China. Ever since, excavated texts on bone, bronze, bamboo, silk, and wood regularly grab headlines and receive strong scholarly attention. The so-called Tsinghua manuscripts, a corpus of numerous manuscripts on bamboo slips, are the latest significant find of this sort. The collection was acquired in 2008 by Tsinghua University in Beijing, although the texts were probably illegally looted from an ancient tomb, and their exact provenance remains unknown. Despite these unfortunate circumstances, academia widely considers them authentic sources from the Warring States Period (ca. 480–221 BCE), primarily based on philological arguments. Since the discovery and subsequent successive publication, these manuscripts have been subject to intense debate and extensive research.