Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950最新文献

{"title":"The Troublesome Ghosts: Part 1","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_010","url":null,"abstract":"Most of the pingmin [common people] who lived in China in the late Qing and the Republic (from 1850 to 1949) knew that many deities and ghosts had the power to affect their daily lives. Temples and shrines to these supernatural beings dotted the countryside andwere an ever-present sight in all the villages, towns, and cities throughoutChina.Their imageswere frequently encountered, whether as statues in an incense-filled shrine or in printed representations pasted on the gates of homes to ensure protection, and allmajor festivals of the Chinese calendar contained references to the gods or the ghosts that populated both heaven and earth.1 Almost all premodern societies organized their belief and value systems around their perceptions of the world of spirits, gods, ghosts, and demons. These were powerful forces that had abilities far beyond those possessed by mere human beings. When large phenomena such as unexpected storms or thunder were encountered, or when smaller maladies such as a severe headache or sudden vomiting occurred, troublesome events that did not seem to have a clear or immediate cause, it was widely assumed that the influence of the superhuman forces was in play. Because these forces were all-pervasive and not always predictable in their actions, they elicited both awe and fear amonghumanbeings. The big issues for China’s pingminwere how to approach these powers, how to demonstrate one’s respect for them, and how best to avoid their displeasure. Over the centuries in China, a large body of literature emerged to describe these powerful forces.","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125492473","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":"Korean and Japanese Chaoben","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_015","url":null,"abstract":"In the period 1850–1950 covered by this book, China had a vibrant chaoben culture that extended into almost every facet of life for the common people. By contrast, chaoben culture in Korea and Japan was much more limited. I draw this conclusion from my investigations of themarkets for handwritten books and booklets in Korea and Japan and from the types of handwritten materials available in antiques stores and flea markets there. In premodern times, people in both Korea and Japan usually wrote with a brush and black ink on handmade paper. They also wrote in classical Chinese [wenyanwen文言文], generally omitting punctuation marks. In Korea, following Chinese practice, the name of the copyist, the date of the copy, or its location were usually omitted. It is often possible to find clues in the text to give some likely answers to these questions. In the “official” or “semiofficial” handwritten materials I have gathered, such as tax records (not discussed in this study) or the Japanese chaoben discussed below, names, dates, and locations are regularly given, although this is not the case for items of an unofficial nature. Among the chaoben produced in Korea that I have seen, almost every category of subject represented in the Chinese handwritten materials was also produced in Korea: copying of Buddhist orDaoist religious texts, genealogies, fortunetelling texts, examples of letters and social announcements, herbal medical recipes, etc. The differences compared to material from China that I perceive were that people in Korea who could write in Chinese with good calligraphy were in general from the educated and elite classes, not from the lower economic or social strata. Therefore, their interests focused on propagating and endorsing the highly respected Confucian ritual behavior prescribed for all critical life transitions—of which funerals and weddings were the most important. Korean elites made great efforts to learn the numerous details and procedures for ceremonies such as those relating to funerals, and as a result they produced lengthy and detailed descriptions of all aspects of funerals, and they kept records of the money offerings made by guests at funerals and of the eulogies delivered at the funeral or later at the gravesite during a memorial service. I have found many such handwritten materials in Korea, but they are much less common in China. Korean scholars preferred to follow the Chinese practice of writing in the standard [zhengkai正楷] style of calligraphy. Chinese friends have sometimes toldme the classical Chinese texts of the Korean writers were “strange” or “incorrect” compared to the classical Chinese they had learned in school. The penchant for paying great honor to Confucian rituals and theirmany requirements is also reflected in thewoodblockprints from theChoson periodof the 1800s to 1910available in themarketplace.TheKoreans reprinted/republished","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125895887","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":"Teacher Xu: Entering a Classroom in Late Qing China","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_006","url":null,"abstract":"This is the story of Teacher Xu.We know this story because of a set of teaching materialsTeacherXu left behind thatwere preservedbyhis student. TeacherXu was not a member of China’s elite but, rather, a typical schoolteacher living at the end of the Qing dynasty, when the time-honored and traditional approach to pedagogy was still very much in force. He must have been a lively teacher, with a charismatic personality and a touch of humor, which he brought into the classroom. He seems to have been deeply committed to his students and was concerned about their well-being. All these qualities are reflected in the teaching materials, the “text” he used. Teacher Xu was one of the common people in China. He made his living using his knowledge of writing and his own education to work as a teacher of boys (who were most likely to be students) most likely ages seven to sixteen. He imparted basic reading and writing skills and the intellectual culture they had inherited as Chinese. Some of the boys may have hoped to continue their studies and to take the provincial-level examination that would lead to a government-awarded degree. But when the traditional educational systemwas abolished in 1905, and when new elementary schools using new-style printed textbooks were adopted, Teacher Xu’s traditional texts and classroom style began to fall out of favor. The old-style education did not disappear in China after 1906, especially in the countryside, though ambitious students and their parents knew that the modern age called for a different set of skills and a less traditional worldview. The teaching materials we have that allow us to compose a portrait of Teacher Xu consist of 102 pages of handwritten information that Teacher Xu decided one day to have copied and bound together with string. He no doubt had other texts and materials in either handwritten or printed form that he used in the classroom,but these are thematerials that came intomypossession. I bought the bound text used by Teacher Xu at the Panjiayuan market in Beijing in September 2005, when I had just begun to collect handwritten texts offered by the used booksellers. The price was not high, because most","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129711788","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 Qing Dynasty Astrologer’s Predictions for the Future","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_007","url":null,"abstract":"In January 2012, I was in Shanghai and naturally sought out several markets where I hoped to find research materials like those I have been collecting since 2004. Every Sunday, the Confucius temple in Shanghai holds a book fair in the main courtyard of the temple grounds, so that was an obvious place for me to explore. The majority of books for sale were produced in China after liberation in 1949, especially in the late 1970s and 1980s, when book publishing expanded after the Cultural Revolution concluded. Publications from the Cultural Revolution era seem to sell well in Shanghai and Beijing because they evoke nostalgia for a simpler time, especially among people who do not remember the period very well.1 Middlebrow novels, biographies of emperors or classical heroes, and translations intomodern Chinese of classical","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115534855","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":"Full Translation of Fifty Days to Encounter the Five Spirits","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_016","url":null,"abstract":"Wuyin 戊寅 Day. For those afflicted on this day, the ghost is surnamed Yan 閆, named Zhao 肈. It has one body with four arms, holding a large ax. When it encounters humans it begins chopping. It causes the person to be unable to raise their four limbs, to feel cold and suddenly hot. This ghost is setting in the northeast direction on something metal. It will be good if it departs. Wuyinri bingzhedezhi, qi gui xing Yan ming Zhao. Yishen sishou zhidafu. Fengren jikan. Lingren sizhi buju, huhan zhare. Gui zai dongbei tieqi shang zuo. Quzhi zeji.","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133626371","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":"Various Categories of Chaoben Not Discussed in the Text","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"08 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126419310","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":"Mr. Bai and Mr. Qian Earn Their Living: Considering Two Handwritten Notebooks of Matching Couplets from China in the Late Qing and Early Republic","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores two chaoben that I bought in China in the spring of 2012. They were written between the end of the Qing dynasty, around 1880, and the early years of the Republic, about 1913. They were both written by literate men whose daily life was very close to the common people in terms of their life expectations and their modest incomes. The men, who had received some formal education and had the ability to read and to write, took advantage of those abilities to earn income by preparing couplets of congratulatory poems that were, and still are, a big part of the social and celebratory life of the Chinese. By attempting to draw inferences andmake logical assumptions from the information in these two chaoben and themanner inwhich the information was presented, I suggest the ways in which they can reveal something about the lives, the worldview, and the economic standing of both men. By looking carefully at the contents of what theywrote, we see that these chaoben can also be used to reconstruct something about the communities in which both men lived and worked. The bulk of the content in both chaoben is matching couplets. Many literate men in this period could regularly earn extra income by offering to write matching couplets, celebratory rhyming phrases that were demanded onmany social occasions, such as NewYear festivities and weddings. Many handwritten booklets containing sample phrases are available in the used book markets in China. The volume of chaoben available in markets attests to the popularity of matching couplets and the ubiquity with which literate men turned to this custom as a way to earn income. In addition to introducingmatching couplets, this chapter takes us to the village and city streets where ordinary people lived and worked. Rhyming couplets captured the values and the images of the common people of that era and we can use them to symbolically construct the world as they knew it and as they thought it should be.","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129456135","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 Troublesome Ghosts: Part 2","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_011","url":null,"abstract":"Ghosts are, in general, troublesome creatures. The lower ranks of the Daoist hierarchy of spirits includes many ghosts. Someone who is being harassed by ghosts can call for help from a spirit general. Sometimes, former generals who were heroic in life are honored as spirit generals after their death and are given the title prime marshal [yuanshuai 元帥]. These spirits can carry messages fromDaoist masters on earth who are human beings to the deities in the heavens. They are also responsible for security and the protection of the celestial realms. They command thousands of ghost soldiers, who can be ordered to attack the ghosts and demons who are causing trouble for human beings. One text I bought is titled Eight Effective Formulas [Ba qinkoujue八親口 決].1 It was written and illustrated in October 1904 and is filled with incantations calling upon spirit generals and their troops and horses for help in dealing with unwanted ghosts and evil forces. In order to marshal these spirit forces, in the course of a ceremony a Daoist ritual master would bang on the alter a wooden “command placard” [lingpai令牌] block as a sign of his issuing an order to the spirits. A lingpai I bought in December 2014 that was made in Changsha長沙 perfectly illustrates its function. It is 5–1/8 inches (13cm) high and a little over 2 inches (6cm)wide, with a square base representing the earth and a rounded top representing the heavens. On one face is carved “An Official Order to the Command of the Five Thunders” [Chiling wu leihao ling敕令五 雷號令], and on the side orders to the forces to be mobilized: “Tens of thousands of spirit generals, Thousands of troops and horses” [Wanwan shenjiang,","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127104552","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":"Contextualizing Chaoben: On the Popular Manuscript Culture of the Late Qing and Republican Period in China","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_003","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1850 and 1950, China enjoyed a vibrant popular manuscript culture.* Books hand-copied by brush1 proliferated in the large cities, market centers, and even inmany villages. At first glance, it seemsparadoxical that handwritten materials would flourish at the very time that printed matter was increasingly available, often in inexpensive, illustrated lithographed editions sold in bookstores and local markets. By the 1920s, printed copies of virtually every popular and well-known text in China had been reproduced for sale and circulated widely. Yet thousands of people continued to copy these texts by hand for use in daily life, and they handwrote notebooks for their own reference. This chapter explains why the practice of hand-copying materials continued and how they were used. I began collecting these books in 2004, and all the examples used in this chapter come from my personal collection. They are all one-of-a-kind notebooks [bijiben 筆記本], also referred to in this study as booklets, since they usually contain fewer pages than books and have the feel of an informal","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121458076","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 List of Chaoben in the Author’s Personal Collection Used in This Study","authors":"R. Suleski","doi":"10.1163/9789004361034_013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361034_013","url":null,"abstract":"The majority of items in this list are handwritten, unless otherwise noted. A few are woodblock prints or lithographs. Many of the handwritten chaoben had no cover or title page, inwhich case I use the first fewwords on the first readable page as the title. The items are listed below in alphabetical order based on the English-language titles. This list includes all the chaoben mentioned in this book, fifty-seven titles, but my full collection comprises about 250 chaoben. For a more complete discussion of the contents of the ones discussed in this book, please see the notes to the respective chapters.","PeriodicalId":318420,"journal":{"name":"Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116470689","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}