Wang Fuzhi (王夫之, 1619–1692, courtesy name, Ernong 而农, he also styled himself Chuanshan 船山) was witness to a calamity — the fall of the Ming Empire first to the bandit armies of Li Zicheng and subsequently to the Manchu ‘peacekeeping forces’ under the regent Dorgon. He became active in the anti-Manchu resistance and when the last of the Ming claimants proved unable to restore a Chinese emperor to the throne, Wang “retired” in his early-30s, living in the hills of Hunan province, and devoting himself to a life of writing and scholarship. So virulent were his writings attacking the Manchus that his essays and books went unpublished for nearly 200 years, until Wang was “rediscovered” in the latter half of the 19th century when his particular brand of anti-Manchuism seemed a useful complement to more recently imported and adapted ideas of ethnic-nationalism. The fact that philosophically, Wang espoused a form of materialism, guaranteed that while nearly unknown in his own time, he would be well-remembered in ours.
This is Wang Fuzhi in high dudgeon:
“Now even the ants have rulers who preside over territory of their nests, and when red ants or flying white ants penetrqate their gates, the ruler
Puyi (The Xuantong Emperor)
Most people know that yesterday marked 200 years since the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin…but it was also the 96th anniversary of the end of Manchu rule. The text below is a section from one of two edicts which officially ended imperial rule. The first turned over the reins of government to Yuan Shikai and the new Republic of China. The second requested that the Republican Army for not disturbing the Imperial ancestral tombs and temples, and to protect the title and person of the young emperor and his family.
“We have respectfully received the following Imperial Edict from Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Dowager Longyu:
As a consequenceof the uprising of the Rebublican Army, to which the different provinces immediately resonded, the Empire seethed like a boiling caudrong and the people were plunged into utter misery. Yuan Shikai wsa, therefore, especially commanded some time ago to dispatch commissioners to confer with representatives of the Republican Army on the general situation and to discuss matters pertaining to the convening of a National Assembly for the deciding a suitable mode of settlement. Separated as the South and the North are by great distances, the
February 3, 2009 marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of writer Lao She. I wrote this short piece last year to mark the occasion of anniversary number 109, and I like it so much that I’m running it again. Enjoy.
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Originally published February 3, 2008:
Today is the birthday of the celebrated novelist, playwright, and also YJ’s favorite author, Lao She, born Shu Qingchun in Beijng, 1899. His family was Manchu, members of the Red Banner, and Lao She’s father was killed defending the city against the Allied Expeditionary Force sent to quell the Boxer Uprising. After her husband’s death, his mother took to working as a laundry woman to support herself and her son. Remembering those years, Lao She would later write:
“During my childhood, I didn’t need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother’s stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family.”
As a young man, he worked as a teacher and
Yung Wing (容闳, 1828-1912) was the first Chinese graduate of Yale University (class of 1854) and went on to have a long and diverse career as an interpreter, tea trader, diplomat, educator, military procurement specialist, and writer.
In his autobiography 我在中国和美国的生活 My Life in China and America, he recounts an incident that took place in Shanghai after his return from the United States via Hong Kong. Yung Wing was insulted by a Scotsman and took matters into his own hands, punching the Scot in the mouth in front of the British consul and calling out the man as a ‘blackguard.’ It’s an amusing story, but Yung Wing draws from it an analogy for the Chinese nation:
“The incident was the chief topic of conversation for a short time among foreigners, while among the Chinese I was looked upon with great respect, for since the foreign settlement on the extra-territorial basis was established close to the city of Shanghai, no Chinese within its jurisdiction had ever been known to have the courage and pluck to defend his rights, point blank, when they had been violated or trampled upon by a foreigner. Their meek and mild disposition had allowed personal insults and affronts to pass
One new feature I’m trying to kick off here at The Granite Studio is an entirely biased and hugely subjective review of some of my favorite historians of China. These are the writers and scholars who influenced me when I began studying Chinese history and who continue to serve as inspirations as I continue my own career in the field.
Given my research interests, I’m starting with Paul Cohen. It was a footnote in his first book, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Anti-foreignism, 1860-1870 that was the original impetus for my dissertation, and I still re-read Professor Cohen’s seminal work on the subject about once every six months or so.
But of his many works, perhaps my favorite is a slim volume he published in 1984, not about Chinese history per se, but about the study of Chinese history in the American academy. To briefly and inadequately summarize, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past ambitiously breaks down the collective oeuvre of American academic writing on China since World War II into three distinct generations based on the predominant mode of analysis at the time: “China’s Response to the
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