World Dissemination and Influence of Chinese Historical Classic Shi Ji (Historical Records) (Note 1)

<p><em>Shi Ji is the first biography history in China and the most influential historical masterpiece in Chinese history. In the past 2000 years, the cultural classic had exerted remarkable influence upon scholars all over the world, becoming the cultural heritage for all human civilizations. The richness of the relative research findings and significance to overseas scholars of ancient Chinese culture are prominent in numerous ancient codes and books. By literature study, we traced the historical impact of Shi Ji in East Asia, Europe and the United States, exploring its contribution to the human world civilization. It is found that, due to different research emphasis and cultural backgrounds, overseas scholars’ researches of Shi Ji have presented us with many different outcomes: translations and studies of Shi Ji in East Asia should be much earlier than those in Europe and America; related studies in East Asia were focused on interpretation and understanding of the text from its translation and annotation, whereas those in Europe and America showed more interests to the holistic study of the cultural background, the author as well as his life. Despite their different research focuses, all the scholars, on the basis of repeated studies and textual researches of Shi Ji, had contributed their own constructive views.</em></p>

RU SCHOLARS, SOCIAL NETWORKS, AND BUREAUCRACY: DONGHAI 東海 MEN AND MODELS FOR SUCCESS IN WESTERN HAN CHINA (206 b.c.e.–9 c.e.)

In this study I take men from Donghai, a region of northeast China, as a case study for examining models of success in the Western Han (206 b.c.e.–9 c.e.). Employing digital tools to mine data from The Grand Scribe's Records (Shi ji) and The History of the Western Han (Han shu), I explore the social networks and career patterns of men from a region that enjoyed a reputation for producing a remarkable number of high officials and celebrated Ru. I focus on three questions. First, what was the social mechanism that enabled people to distinguish themselves at both the local and the imperial levels? Second, did these celebrated men from Donghai serve as bridges connecting the local to the capital, directing resources back to their hometown and helping their local fellows achieve success? Third, did their positions in the central government remove them from local society by transforming them into capital-dwelling elites primarily concerned about the success of their families in the central court? In addressing these questions, I probe the dynamics between bureaucratic hierarchy, social networks, and the flow of talent and resources. I investigate various understandings of prestige and the strategies for climbing the ladder of success. Furthermore, I ask which forms of social prestige—for example, academic reputation, wealth, social networks—could bypass the hierarchical system imposed by the imperial bureaucracy, providing direct access to lofty positions. Did the patterns of success seen in the Donghai group reflect a bias built into the sources, constitute a regional variation, or provide a universal model for success in early imperial China?

“He killed a chicken, but it didn’t die”

Mandarin contrasts typologically with English in its lexicalization of state change (Talmy 2000). The majority of Mandarin monomorphemic verbs is moot about or implies a state change, whereas English has many monomorphemic verbs (e.g. kill) that entail a state change. This study investigates empirically the nuanced lexicalization of state-change implicature in Mandarin monomorphemic verbs and its implications for the linguistic typology of encoding state change. Two experiments were conducted with adult native Mandarin speakers: a rating task about the acceptability of sentences that expressed a failure of fulfilment of a state-change (e.g. Zhangsan sha le ji, ke shi ji mei si ‘Zhangsan killed a chicken, but it didn’t die’) and a multiple-choice task that probed the preferred interpretation of monomorphemic state-change verbs. The results of both studies reveal a significant effect of verb types and post hoc comparisons show a cline of state-change implicature in the target verbs.

IDENTIFYING THE TEXTUAL SOURCES OF SHI JI: REVIEWING PAST RESEARCH FOR A MORE ENCOMPASSING METHODOLOGY

While many aspects of Shi ji authorship are either unknown or speculative, the source texts of Shi ji and Sima Qian's use of them are viable yet underexplored paths to a deeper understanding of this monumental work. From the 1920s to the present, seven scholars from China, Japan, and Taiwan have attempted to ascertain the extent of Sima Qian's textual perusals and adaptations by compiling bibliographies of Shi ji source texts. This article compiles some of their results for comparison and analysis. From this, principles are highlighted for generating a more comprehensive methodology.