Mourning, Personality, Display

This paper studies the language used by five sixteenth-century men as they mourned their mothers, sisters and daughters. I will look at writings by Wang Jiusi (1468-1551), Li Mengyang (1475-1529), Li Kaixian (1502-68), Gui Youguang (1506-71), and Xu Wei (1521-93). The basic hypothesis of this article is that there was a fairly standard mid-Ming language of mourning for women, but that these tropes could be inflected quite differently depending on the personality and era of the writers. By concluding with an examination of how Ye Shaoyuan (1589-1648) organized the commemoration of his deceased wife and daughters in the compendium Wumeng tang ji (Collected works from the Hall of the Mid-day Dream) the paper attempts to show that by the seventeenth century, the cult of qing (emotion) could have a strong effect on the tropes in which women were mourned. It also discusses the degree to which the language of mourning was also a language of display, in which the writers intended to make their own qualities known to a public of their peers.

China’s View of the West, A Comparison of the Historical Geographies of Wei Yuan and Xu Jiyu

Wei Yuan and Xu Jiyu, civil servants in mid 19th century China, were deeply disturbed by British expansion into Asia. On the theory that one should know one's enemies, both wrote pioneer historical geographies designed to introduce Chinese officials to the sources of Western power. They both made extensive use of missionary sources; however, there were significant differences between the works of Wei and Xu. Wei never abandoned the Middle Kingdom concept whereas Xu came to realize that the West had developed its own civilization, and he encouraged China's development of trade and commerce, especially in Southeast Asia. Wei and Xu's works circulated among a small number of Chinese officials on China's east coast, but it was not until after China's defeat in the Opium War, 1839-42, and the near over throw of the Qing dynasty by the Taipings that the works were reprinted and served as introductions to the West.