Journal of Chinese History最新文献

{"title":"Ghosts and Religious Life in Early China By Mu-Chou Poo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 350 pp. £75.00 (cloth)","authors":"Jue Guo","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.37","url":null,"abstract":"tion, Ma’s work opens up a valuable window into the maritime world of Shandong and Northeast Asia, which has been largely overlooked in the historiography of maritime China. It provides a necessary corrective to the overwhelming focus upon the southeastern coast. Perhaps Ma could have offered a broader view in temporal terms. Many of the examples that he raises of continuity from Yuan to Ming apply only to the early Ming. Over the long term, “Japanese” piracy did become increasingly multiethnic, with Chinese constituting at least a plurality of many predatory bands, bands which were, indeed, increasingly formed in reaction to the tightening of the sea ban. Similarly, land journeys and the Grand Canal eventually replaced the sea route for Korean and other tributary embassies, and grain shipments. In this sense, the Yuan–Ming transition appears to be a much greater rupture, characterized by an overall withdrawal of the Chinese state from the sea lanes. This excellent study would certainly be strengthened if Ma addressed these issues in greater depth.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"236 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47224401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The History of Chinese Studies in Austria Revisited","authors":"G. Lehner","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.12","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces the origins and developments of Chinese studies in Austria. In addition to factors and institutions that were instrumental in the development of these studies, the lives and works of individuals important to this development are revisited, starting with brief remarks on the scholarly interest in China in eighteenth century Austria and on early efforts to obtain Chinese books and Chinese printing types in the nineteenth century. The achievements of individual scholars are examined against the backdrop of their institutional affiliations and their experiences, if any, in China. In addition, the reasons for the delayed institutionalization of Sinological studies at university level are highlighted.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"575 - 590"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41599937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"History of Pre-Modern Chinese Studies in Germany","authors":"H. van Ess","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Research into traditional China at German universities began in the early nineteenth century. It took several decades, however—until after the unification of Germany in 1871—positions at the universities of first Leipzig and then Berlin and Hamburg to be established in order to professionalize traditional China studies. The third and fourth decades of the twentieth century saw a rapid expansion, but Nazi rule between 1933–1945 led to massive emigration of German sinologists. This article looks into the details of this development and the disastrous consequences it had for German sinology. It then proceeds to the new beginnings made after World War II when some emigrants returned to Germany from China. East Germany lost many sinologists, who left the GDR when the Berlin wall was built. The article finishes with the challenges that a politically important China presents to traditional sinology.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"491 - 524"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48227379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"China's European Headquarters: Switzerland and China during the Cold War By Ariane Knüsel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xiv + 311 pp. £75.00 (cloth)","authors":"Q. Zhai","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.40","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"216 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48319221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chinese Asianism, 1894–1945 By Craig A. Smith. Harvard East Asian Monographs 444. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. xiv + 294 pp. $55.00, £44.95, €49.50 HC (Cloth).","authors":"Evan N. Dawley","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.36","url":null,"abstract":"area, known as Westpark (Xiyuan 西苑), served as the site of the imperial lotus cultivation. In the late nineteenth century, it became the retirement palace of Empress Dowager Cixi, and a short railway line was even constructed there (230). In the twentieth century it became a public park and, subsequently, the headquarters of the Communist party. My only critique of this otherwise excellent volume is that the image program, while generally strong, could have been edited with the same attention to detail as the text. The hand-drawn chart of the Wanggiyan clan’s family tree in Kai Jun Chen’s essay (77), for instance, should have been executed digitally, to match the more polished chart of the accounting system workflow in Wang and Bae’s essay (116). Several places in the book would also have benefited from more illustrations. For instance, Martina Siebert refers to photographs taken by Osvald Sirén of Westpark in 1923, which show the lotus ponds in disarray, but no photographs are provided (251). Hui-chun Yu’s likewise alludes to a painting entitled “Elephant and Horse Tributes from the Gurkha Campaign” (Kuo’er ke jin xiang ma tujuan 廓爾喀進像馬圖卷) that depicts the animals on their tribute journeys (279). Although no image is provided, a footnote directs us to a link on the Palace Museum’s website where we are able to view the large painting in detail, which while helpful is not consistent with the rest of the volume. In sum, Making the Palace Machine Work is remarkable for its novel focus on the inner workings of the palace, which are often overlooked in scholarship on the Qing court. It reveals that the minutiae of the day-to-day palace operations can be just as fascinating as the grander imperial spectacles that they help create. This book also demonstrates how, when done right, an edited volume can achieve much more than a monograph by a single author. By incorporating research from scholars with diverse expertise, the book is able to cover a wide range of interesting topics. At the same time, due to the meticulous work of the editors, these disparate topics are seamlessly integrated into the overarching concept of the palace machine. Combined with the fact that all the essays were held to the same high standard with regard to writing and research, the volume never feels disjointed. The end result is complex and sophisticated, yet tight-knit and cohesive: an excellent model for future edited volumes.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"245 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46502794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis","authors":"Du Qingbo","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.25","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Several cultural features found by archaeologists at the First Emperor of Qin's necropolis did not have roots in East Asian cultures but were inspired by cultural exchange with the civilizations of West Asia along the various “Silk Roads.” Examples considered in this article include terracotta figures of soldiers and horses, long-pole acrobatics, terraced architecture for tombs, bronze chariots, bar-shaped bricks, and technology for casting and repairing bronze statuary. Within Qin culture more broadly, there are several other cultural features which were probably brought from West Asia, including iron metallurgy, gold-working, trough-form pan tiles for roofing, stone inscriptions and stone sculpture, elliptical cocoon-form flasks, and possibly the transmission of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. Furthermore, non-material elements of political and economic culture from the Persian Empire and Hellenistic kingdoms were also brought eastward alongside these materials. They were part of a coherent system that inspired the political and cultural revolutions of the First Emperor.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"21 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45068725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Temples in the Cliffside: Buddhist Art in Sichuan By Sonya S. Lee. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. 296 pp. $65.00 (cloth)","authors":"Tom Suchan","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.31","url":null,"abstract":"Sonya Lee ’ s Temples in the Cliffside: Buddhist Art in Sichuan is a welcome addition to studies of the religious cliff sculpture of southwestern China. The book provides accounts of several of the major cliff sculpture sites in the region of the Sichuan Basin within what is now the administrative areas of Sichuan Province and the municipality of Chongqing. The numerous and widely dispersed cliff sculptures of the region provide an important repository of Buddhist and Daoist art (though this book does not consider the latter), which is of great value for the study of medieval Chinese religion and artistic trends. Over the years, the study of these materials has itself become a growing specialized field of Chinese art historical research, as many researchers in the study of medieval Chinese history and religion draw upon the rich corpus of in situ iconographical and epi-graphical materials found within the region. Temples in the Cliffside is a well-researched book, based primarily on the author ’ s prior publications. It contributes to this field of knowledge, especially with regard to the transformation of rupestral sites, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from active religious sites to cultural heritage sites. The book tries to break new ground in approaching the subject matter from an ecological perspec-tive: one that raises many questions for this reader. Sonya Lee","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"218 - 222"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47978685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Promise and Peril of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial China By Wai-yee Li. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 362 pp. $140 (cloth), $35.00 (paper), $34.99 (eBook).","authors":"B. Rusk","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.28","url":null,"abstract":"Wai-yee Li ’ s study looks closely at the tensions around the ownership, accumulation, and transmission of valuable things in the late Ming and early Qing, with a particular focus on objects highly esteemed by, or with deep personal and shared meaning for, male literati. It combines close readings of texts in multiple genres — fiction, drama, poetry, and occasional prose — with discussion of the wider sociocultural setting within which real objects changed hands and human lives were shaped by the trajectories of the things in question.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"223 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45868083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Ming Confucian's World: Selections from Miscellaneous Records from the Bean Garden By Lu Rong. Translated and Introduced by Mark Halperin. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022. 188 pp. $99.00 (cloth) $30.00 (paper).","authors":"Harry Miller","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.32","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.32","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"213 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47692993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Taxation, Property Rights and Fiscal State: The Historical Analyses of China In Capital and Ideology","authors":"W. Leung","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.10","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The widely acclaimed Capital and Ideology, though an important contribution to the inequality debates, is limited by its use of secondary sources and fiscal state framework in its historical analysis of China. Its arguments for a Confucian trifunctional society with property rights sacralized by nobles’ and scholars’ regalian functions, and persistently low and stagnant taxation in premodern China overly simplify the historical reality. Using primary Chinese sources, this article highlights the major oversimplifications. The information and issues presented here are also worth considering for similar social and fiscal studies of premodern China.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"181 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47076563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}