scholarly journals THE SILENT HALF SPEAKS

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-210
Author(s):  
Shellen Wu
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Liang Qichao ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kang Youwei ◽  
History Of Modern China ◽  
Qiu Jin

It wasn't so long ago that histories of China's rocky transition to modernity featured a small and entirely male cast of characters. In the works of the first generation of American Sinologists, from John King Fairbank to his most famous students such as Joseph Levenson, a few men, from late Qing statesman Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 to reformers and revolutionaries like Kang Youwei 康有為, Sun Yatsen 孫中山, and Liang Qichao 梁啟超, loomed large over the narrative of the Chinese revolution. Into this lacuna Mary Rankin's rediscovery of the late Qing female martyr Qiu Jin 秋瑾 came as a thunderbolt. Her work opened up the possibility that perhaps the problem wasn't the absence of women in China's revolution but the failure of scholars to look for their contribution. Rankin's 1968 article on “The Tenacity of Tradition,” and her subsequent bookEarly Chinese Revolutionariespaved the way for a far more nuanced and complicated new social history of modern China.

Zhang's Hat on Li's Head: A Chronic Case of Quid Pro Quo in the History Books

1991 ◽  
Vol 126 ◽  
pp. 364-366
Author(s):  
Gregor Benton
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chronic Case ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chen Duxiu ◽  
History Of Modern China ◽  
History Books

Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) and Peng Shuzhi (1896–1983) were leading members of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP); they were both expelled from it as Trotskyists in 1929 and were arrested together in 1932. Though the two men were quite different in temperament and appearance, today book after book on the Chinese Revolution uses a photograph of Peng, looking dashed and dazed at the time of his and Chen's trial by the Guomindang in 1932, in the belief that it is of Chen. The first instance I can find of this mix-up is in the Chinese translation published in Paris in 1973 of Harold Isaacs’ Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution; it was then repeated in more widely available form in a pictorial history of modern China brought out in Hong Kong in 1976 by the pro-Communist Seventies Publishing Company.

Japanese Modernization and the Emergence of New Fictwn in Early Twentieth Century China: A Study of Liang Qichao

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 817-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Willcock
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Small Circle ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Liang Qichao ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Artistic Quality

Inspired by Japanese influences among others the late Qing period saw a great surge in the writing of fiction after 1900. The rate of growth was unprecedented in the history of Chinese literature. The great surge coincided with rapid socio-political changes that China underwent in the last fifteen years of the Qing Dynasty. At the psychological level, the humiliating defeat by Japan in 1895 gave rise to a feeling of urgency for reform among some progressively minded Chinese intellectuals. Those reformers came to view fiction as a powerful medium to further their reform causes and to arouse among the people the awareness of the changes they believed China most urgently required. Fiction was no longer considered as constituting insignificant and trivial writings. It was no longer the idle pastime of retired literati composed to entertain a small circle of their friends, or written by a discontented recluse to vent a personal grudge through a brush. The role of fiction came to be defined in relation to its utility as an influence on politics and society and its artistic quality was subordinated to such a definition.

The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin: The Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Fujian Province, 1820s to 1920s. By Joyce A. Madancy. [Harvard and London: Harvard East Asia Monograph, 2003. 430 pp. $50.00; £32.95. ISBN 0-674-01215-1.]

2005 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 449-450
Author(s):  
Xun Zhou
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Opium Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Migration ◽  
Early Republican

Visiting New York's Chinatown, it is surprising to find there a memorial statue of the legendary anti-opium hero, Lin Zexu, instead of the more usual statue of the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen. Perhaps Lin deserves his place in New York's Chinatown: it is generally believed the history of Chinese migration into the New World was a chapter of humiliation, resulting from the evil opium and the opium trade. Until very recently, the conventional wisdom has been that it was the opium trade that ended the house of Qing, and that opium had turned China into a nation of hopeless addicts, smoking themselves to death while their civilization descended into chaos (a view challenged by Dikötter, Laaman and Zhou in Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China).In her book The Troublesome Legacy of Commissoner Lin, Joyce Madancy argues that, like opium, Lin Zexu was turned into a potent symbol of nascent Chinese nationalism (p. 5). Like opium, the legacy of Lin continued well into the 20th century. In his native Fujian, for instance, Lin “came to represent the vitality of elite activism and the complex links between provincial, national, and international interests. Lin Zexu's character and mission embodied the themes and motivations of Fujian's late Qing opium reformers – the righteousness of opium reform, pride in country and province, and a none-too-subtle slap at foreign imperialist greed.” Accordingly, during the late Qing/early Republican anti-opium campaign in Fujian, “reformist elites, and officials presided over the apotheosis of Lin Zexu, whose image loomed, literally and figuratively, over their efforts and shaped the rhetoric and tone of suppression” (p. 5).

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