Stitching Words to Suture Wounds: A Manuscript Diary from the Taiping-Qing Civil War (1851–64)

Abstract:Detailing the traumatic experiences an individual, a family, and a local community in Jiangnan area underwent amidst the Taiping-Qing civil war (18511864), Shen Zi's Bikou riji raises questions about the diary as a literary, cultural, and historical phenomenon during catastrophic times. Written on used slips of paper of various sizes and pasted on the back of old account books, the manuscript registers numerous temporal dimensions for which the war serves as a reference point. Exploring this collage-like, patchwork manuscript as an archeological site reveals two essential aspects of diaries: the references to the self and the temporal structure with implied narrativity. Ultimately, Shen Zi's heavily edited, patchwork manuscript diary showcases how a diary synthesizes the experiences from the realms of both the personal and the historical within the temporal structure of the everyday in catastrophic times.