Local Elites and Scholarship in Late Imperial China

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.196 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Steven B. Miles

Keyword(s):

Cultural Production ◽

Song Dynasty ◽

Tang Dynasty ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Local Elites ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Southern Song ◽

Local Schools ◽

Scholarly Production ◽

Intellectual Movements

Before the end of the Tang dynasty, cultural production was largely a court-centered activity. This began to change as the nature of China’s political, social, and cultural elite, the literati (shi), was transformed by the Southern Song dynasty. Henceforth, the elite of China was primarily a local elite, occasionally producing holders of high office but primarily focusing on activities in their home areas to achieve and maintain their status. One important activity was scholarship, which involved such activities as establishing private academies (shuyuan) and the production of texts such as gazetteers and anthologies, many of which were concerned with the locales in which they were produced. The late imperial period, beginning in the Song, witnessed alternating periods of statist and localist turns, as the initiative in scholarly production shifted between the imperial court and local elites. Intellectual movements such as Neo-Confucianism and evidential research (kaozheng) fed into the production of localist texts and the formation of regional or local schools of scholarship.

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Late Imperial Economy, 960–1895

Chinese Studies ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0027 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Tim Wright

Keyword(s):

Economic History ◽

Song Dynasty ◽

Tang Dynasty ◽

Western Europe ◽

18Th Century ◽

Chinese Economy ◽

Early 19Th Century ◽

Late Imperial ◽

The Song Dynasty ◽

European Experience

Although for most purposes “late imperial China” refers to the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911), many scholars believe that key aspects of China’s late imperial economy came into existence as a result of a series of changes that began in the late Tang dynasty and culminated during the Song dynasty, known as the “Tang-Song transformation.” While these changes included, for example, the growth of markets, they were by no means limited to—or even mainly related to—economic history but included political changes, such as those in the nature of the elite. Without prejudging the issue, this article covers the whole period from the establishment of the Song dynasty to the first Sino-Japanese War, after which railways and economic modernization began to change the Chinese economy. The old stereotype of premodern China as unchanging and economically stagnant has long been discarded, and scholars recognize that China had a dynamic and successful economy that managed to feed a growing population and developed a range of sophisticated institutions. The stereotype is now being turned on its head, and many are asking whether as late as the 18th century at least parts of China were as prosperous and as advanced as western Europe, whether Chinese commercial and legal institutions were as accommodating of economic growth as those in Europe, and, as a result, how one can explain the “great divergence” that took place between Europe and the rest of the world from (in this view) the early 19th century. A further underlying issue is to what extent models based on the European experience can be used to understand or explain development patterns in China. The most notable example of trying to force Chinese development into a European framework was of course Marxist stage theory. But more recently “Eurocentric” theories and models of development that are based on the European experience have been more widely rejected coupled with attempts to develop more distinctively Chinese—or Asian—models.

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Qing Women's Poetry on Roaming as a Female Transcendent

NAN Nü ◽

10.1163/156852610x518200 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 65-102 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Yanning Wang

Keyword(s):

Tang Dynasty ◽

Chinese Literature ◽

Female Subjectivity ◽

Women's Poetry ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Women's Culture ◽

Literary Images ◽

The Tang Dynasty ◽

Scholarly Attention

AbstractYouxian shi (poetry on roaming as a transcendent) has long been a conventional poetic genre in Chinese literature. It has been the common conception that youxian poetry was most popular from the Wei dynasty (220-265) through the Tang dynasty (618-907), and up until now, scholarly studies on the genre seemed to focus exclusively on Tang and pre-Tang periods. This gives the impression that after the Tang nothing of interest was written in this particular genre. Consequently, very little scholarly attention has been given to the youxian poems composed in post-Tang periods. This article examines youxian poems by Qing (1644-1911) women, specifically those poems entitled Nü youxian (roaming as a female transcendent). With the increasing consciousness of "self," the rise of groups of women writers, and the popularity of women's culture in late imperial China, youxian poems provided a unique literary space for women's poetic and autobiographical voices, certainly deserving more scholarly attention. I argue that by presenting female transcendents or women pursuing transcendence at the center of a poem and re-inscribing the traditional literary images, the poets created a stronger female subjectivity that reflected women's desires in their intellectual and spiritual lives. I also propose that nü youxian was a new subgenre of youxian poetry, emerging only in the context of the efflorescence of women's poetry.

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The Tang Empire

10.1093/oso/9780197532768.003.0013 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 380-400

Author(s):

Mark Edward Lewis

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

Tang Dynasty ◽

Large Scale ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Local Market ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Interregional Trade ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Labor Service ◽

The Tang Dynasty

The Tang dynasty reunited continental East Asia using institutions inherited from the nomad-dominated Northern dynasties: state-owned land; exactions of grain, cloth, and labor service levied on notional “average” households; a hereditary “divisional army” concentrated around the capital and professional soldiers at the frontier, cities divided into walled wards with state-administered markets; a hereditary, imperial super-elite; and state-sponsored Buddhism and Daoism. The An Lushan Rebellion in the mid-eighth century eliminated these institutions. In their place emerged the major characteristics of late-imperial China: a fiscal system that assessed actual wealth and taxed trade; a new pattern of state service based on textual, technical, and military expertise measured by examinations; large-scale interregional trade through purely commercial entrepôts and local market towns; the incorporation of China into a multistate East Asian world; and the linkage of continental East Asia into a world economy through oceanic trans-shipment of commodities.

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Family and Lineage in Late Imperial China

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.394 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

David Faure ◽

Xi He

Keyword(s):

Song Dynasty ◽

Filial Piety ◽

Chinese People ◽

Ruling Elite ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Late Imperial ◽

The Song Dynasty ◽

The Family ◽

Ancient Times ◽

Standard Practices

Like all peoples, Chinese people value their families. Unlike many other peoples, they see them in the wider context of their lineages, that is to say, in terms of descent lines traced from their ancestors. Although it is sometimes said that such ideas about the family and lineage had early origins, in early times only the families of the ruling elite (the “great clans”) traced their descent lines. For the majority of Chinese people, the tracing of descent beyond the family began no earlier than the Song dynasty, from about the 10th century. The practice spread together with ritual changes that governed sacrifice to ancestors. Again, while beliefs in the efficacy of ancestors to bring about good or bad fortune had been present from ancient times, it was in the Song that standard practices were established on how and what commoner families could sacrifice to their ancestors. Those practices were proposed by scholars and officials in opposition to Daoist and, especially, Buddhist practices that had been prevalent. It took several centuries for the alternative, neo-Confucian rituals to take hold, and even then, they supplemented rather than replaced the practices that the neo-Confucians opposed. In this process, the fundamental principles that underpinned both family and lineage, the ideals of filial piety and of cohabitation and property-sharing, the subordination of women to men, even the manner by which ancestors themselves may be tracked and the properties held for sacrificing to them, took many turns that combined secular, utilitarian purposes and a deeply religious view of the connections between ancestors and their descendants.

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A Confucian Iconography of Cao E (Maiden Cao): Narrative Illustrations of a Female Deity in Late Imperial China

NAN Nü ◽

10.1163/15685268-00181p04 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 84-114

Author(s):

Gilbert Chen

Keyword(s):

Gender Identity ◽

Visual Representation ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Local Elites ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Cultural Implications ◽

Local Officials ◽

Imperial China

This article examines the narrative illustrations of a female deity called Cao E (Maiden Cao), a work produced in eastern Zhejiang during the post-Taiping era. It focuses on the artistic composition and the cultural implications of this iconography. Using both textual sources and pictorial materials, this study investigates how this pictorial hagiography served as a forum through which a state-sanctioned local cult was visualized and perceived by a heterogeneous audience including itinerant officials, local elites, and illiterate commoners. The mixed audience had different understandings and expectations of Maiden Cao and her visual representation, among which gender-related issues were contested. The present study reveals a dynamic picture of how a seemingly orthodox work sponsored by local officials and elites could be sabotaged because of local people’s expectations of Maiden Cao, and her gender identity in particular.  

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The Local Promotion of Mazu: The Intersection of Lineage, Textual Representation, Confucian Values, and Temples in Late Imperial China

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel11030123 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 123

Author(s):

Yanchao Zhang

Keyword(s):

Filial Piety ◽

The State ◽

Literary Production ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Local Elites ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Confucian Values ◽

Imperial China ◽

Textual Representation ◽

Popular Religiosity

This article explores the role that local elites played in the development of the Mazu cult, a local goddess cult in Putian district in late imperial China. I argue that local elites were central in the promotion and transmission of the cult. Through compiling and writing key Confucian texts featuring Mazu, they reshaped, manipulated, and represented certain aspects of her cult in accordance with their interests. As a result of the activities of local elites, Mazu became associated with the Lin lineage, an influential local lineage. In this manner, Mazu came to be seen as an expression of the lineage’s authority, as well as an imperial protector embodying local loyalty to the state and a daughter who was the paradigm filial piety. In addition to the literary production, local elites, in particular the descendants from the Lin lineage, established an ancestral hall of Lin in the port of Xianliang dedicated to Mazu, further sanctioning divinely the local elites’ authority and privilege in the community. I conclude that the locally promoted version of goddess worship operated at the intersection of state interests, Confucian ideology, the agency of local elites, and the dynamics of popular religiosity.

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Where the Two Worlds Met: Spreading a Buddhist Canon in Wanli (1573–1620) China

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society ◽

10.1017/s1356186315000498 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 487-508

Author(s):

DEWEI ZHANG

Keyword(s):

The State ◽

Late Imperial China ◽

Local Society ◽

Local Elites ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Imperial China ◽

State And Local ◽

Court Politics ◽

The Relationship ◽

Selection Of

AbstractThe imperial bestowal, as a major way of distributing the Buddhist canon, profoundly affected the contours of Buddhism in late imperial China. But why did the inner court engage in the distribution? How did it choose the recipient from the outside world? How was it possible for an aspirant to the canon to win out among the competitors? These questions concern the dynamics and mechanism behind the diffusion of the canon. They also cast new light on the relationship between Buddhism and the state and local society by revealing how the two otherwise separated worlds interacted. This paper is intended to tackle these unexplored questions by examining the extensive bestowal of the Ming Beizang during the Wanli court (1573–1620). It first makes a survey, revealing how uneven the distribution was in terms of both time and region. It then explores the motives of the imperial members as patrons in the context of court politics. Its focus, however, is on the agents and elements working behind the selection of the beneficiaries, and how their interplays conditioned the influence of the canon in local societies. In the process, the roles of the emperor, court women, eunuchs, officials, monks, and local elites are all examined.

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Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Course of History Since Middle Antiquity

Journal of Chinese Humanities ◽

10.1163/23521341-01010006 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 88-119

Author(s):

Li Zhi’an

Keyword(s):

Song Dynasty ◽

Tang Dynasty ◽

Chinese History ◽

Southern Song ◽

The North ◽

Before And After ◽

The Tang Dynasty ◽

The Yuan Dynasty ◽

Southern Dynasties ◽

Southern Institutions

Abstract Two periods in Chinese history can be characterized as constituting a North/South polarization: the period commonly known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420ad-589ad), and the Southern Song, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties (1115ad-1368ad). Both of these periods exhibited sharp contrasts between the North and South that can be seen in their respective political and economic institutions. The North/South parity in both of these periods had a great impact on the course of Chinese history. Both before and after the much studied Tang-Song transformation, Chinese history evolved as a conjoining of previously separate North/South institutions. Once the country achieved unification under the Sui Dynasty and early part of the Tang, the trend was to carry on the Northern institutions in the form of political and economic administration. Later in the Tang Dynasty the Northern institutions and practices gave way to the increasing implementation of the Southern institutions across the country. During the Song Dynasty, the Song court initially inherited this “Southernization” trend while the minority kingdoms of Liao, Xia, Jin, and Yuan primarily inherited the Northern practices. After coexisting for a time, the Yuan Dynasty and early Ming saw the eventual dominance of the Southern institutions, while in middle to late Ming the Northern practices reasserted themselves and became the norm. An analysis of these two periods of North/South disparity will demonstrate how these differences came about and how this constant divergence-convergence influenced Chinese history.

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