Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China: Northern Taiwan in the Nineteenth Century.

1996 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1259
Author(s):  
David Ownby ◽  
Mark A. Allee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Northern Taiwan

Sending Flowers into the Mirror: Jinghua yuan as Metafiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-431
Author(s):  
Liangyan Ge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Civil Service Examinations

Abstract This study offers a reading of the early nineteenth-century Chinese novel Jinghua yuan 鏡花緣 (Flowers in the Mirror) by Li Ruzhen 李汝珍 (1763–1830?) as a fiction about fiction making. Contextualizing the novel in a society where the civil service examinations are among the most important cultural institutions, this article considers the protagonist Tang Ao's 唐敖 voyage to bizarre, fantastical islands, narrated in the early chapters of the novel, as an account of his conversion from examination scholarship to fiction creation. From these islands, his symbolic realm of fictionality, he sends flower spirits-turned-girls to China for the female examinations, here interpreted as an enterprise to fictionalize the examination system. Thus the narrative of the girls' participation in the exams and ensuing celebrations in later chapters becomes a fiction within the fiction. Discussing the dynamic between the examinations and fiction writing elevated in the metafictional structure of the novel, this study considers Tang Ao a fictional representative of many scholars in late imperial China, whose experience with the examinations was not merely a cause of intense frustration but also an inexhaustible source of literary inspiration.

scholarly journals John Fryer and the Shanghai Polytechnic: making space for science in nineteenth-century China

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wright
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Science Textbooks ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
John Fryer ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
New System

The introduction of modern Western science into late imperial China naturally involved the creation of new linguistic spaces through the translation of science textbooks and the formation of a modern scientific lexicon, but it also required translation in another, physical, sense through the creation of institutions whereby the new system of practices and ideas could be transmitted. The Shanghai Polytechnic, opened in 1876 under the direction of John Fryer, was promoted as an academy for the ‘extension of learning’; this paper explores the role John Fryer and his Polytechnic played in making space for science in late nineteenth-century China.

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

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.

The Emaciated Soul: Four Women’s Self-Inscriptions on Their Portraits in Late Imperial China

NAN Nü ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-69
Author(s):  
Yuanfei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Imperial China

Abstract This article examines the emaciated self-images of four women’s self-inscription poems on their own portraits. They are Huang Hong (early seventeenth century), Xi Peilan (1760­­­–after 1829), Tan Yinmei (fl. mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century) and Zheng Lansun (1819-61). These women similarly describe their self-images as qiaocui (emaciated), alluding to the legendary girl poet Feng Xiaoqing. Inherently ambivalent, qiaocui could imply sexual and erotic appeal, the virtuous mind of a recluse, sickness, ordinariness, melancholy, as well as aging and death. The article argues for the importance of the rhetoric of qiaocui and the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing in the self-inscriptions by women in Hangzhou and the broader Jiangnan region as a medium to construct their female subjectivity. This article suggests that, initially a persona publicly circulated in the late Ming, the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing came to define the women’s personhood in private spaces in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

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