Reflections on Chinese Historical Thinking

Of this series of reflections, one of the most important is that the first generation of Chinese historians who were exposed to Western influence only in a limited way produced historical scholarship far superior to that of the later generations who applied the so-called scientific method. Comparing Chinese historiography to Western theories since the 18th century, China seems backward, but compared to ancient Greek historiography as far as underlying assumptions, principles, and methods are concerned, there appear to be as many similarities as differences. The essay argues that fundamental to Chinese historical thought is the centrality of human agency in the making of history, and that Chinese historiography was also very much concerned about the Rankean notion of “What had actually happened?”

The Two Worlds of Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)

This is a thematic literary study of the “Utopian world” and the “world of reality” in China's greatest pre-modern novel. It shows how an ideal imaginary world where youth, beauty and love are kept safe is closely connected with the harsh, ugly and lustful world of reality. Thus, the collapse of the ideal world is seen as inevitable because it can never resist the erosion and invasion of the world of reality.

Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Qing Confucian Intellectualism

This essay describes the internal development of Neo-Confucianism from the Song (960-1279) to the Qing (1644-1911). It sees the central problem in Qing intellectual history as arising from a renewed tension between “erudition” and “essentialism,” but with a shift from moral grounds to intellectual grounds. It proposes a new scheme of three-stage periodization of Neo-Confucianism, according to which its development from early Song to mid-Qing times may be understood in terms of the inner logic of intellectual history.

Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment

This article examines the history of how the May Fourth Movement in China became widely known as a Chinese Renaissance or Enlightenment. It shows why neither of these Western analogies fit the Chinese context and concludes that May Fourth is primarily an age of cultural contradictions that were both multidimensional as well as multidirectional because there were several May Fourth projects constantly undergoing changes and often conflicting with one another, and each project also had different versions.

Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship

While comparing Chinese biographical writing with the Western tradition, this article focuses on the evolution of the chronological biography (nianpu). It further discusses how Qing dynasty evidential research (kaozheng) resulted in the chronological biography gradually assuming an independent existence, no longer being a mere appendix to collected works, but becoming an integral component of Chinese historiography.

The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China

This essay surveys the history of how the idea of democracy came to China and demonstrates that from the late 19th century to 1919 leading advocates of democracy, both reformers and revolutionaries, came almost invariably from the intellectual elite with a strong background in Confucian culture. The article sees the waning of elite culture in 20th-century China as one of the main factors explaining why China has not made much headway toward democracy. With the marginalization of the intellectuals during the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party, democracy lost any powerful intellectual elite to champion it. The Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989, however, is seen as proof that hopes for democracy have not completely disappeared.

Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture

This study details the parts of Sun Yat-sen’s system of thought that drew on ideas adapted from the Chinese intellectual tradition. It discusses Sun’s thought in the context of late 19th-and early 20th-century Chinese intellectual history. Admitting Sun’s debt to Western thought, the article finds its deeper structure to contain component parts of the Chinese tradition and painful struggles to reconcile modernization with what Sun perceived to be the essence of Chinese culture. Thus, Sun’s three principles are seen to have been conceived in a Chinese context.

Dai Zhen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology

This study examines philosophy (moral principles) and philology (evidential investigation) as the two basic constituent elements in Dai’s system of Confucian learning. It shows that for Dai his philology and his philosophy were inseparable. His philosophy is seen as an inevitable outgrowth of his philology and his philology was close to the Confucian Dao and thus necessary to a correct understanding of Confucian moral philosophy.

Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition

This essay focuses on Dai Zhen (1724-1777)’s relation to Zhu Xi (1130-1200). It demonstrates why it is most reasonable to take Dai Zhen as an ideal example of the Ming-Qing intellectual shift of emphasis in Neo-Confucianism from the moral element (zun dexing) to the intellectual element (dao wenxue). It further argues that this shift made it perfectly legitimate for Dai Zhen, a philosophical follower of Zhu Xi, to be at the same time philologically critical of him.

The Study of Chinese History

This essay delineates the main trends of modern Chinese historiography through a critical review of the two major historical schools—“the school of historical data,” and “the school of historical interpretation.” The “Data school” is seen to be deliberately indifferent to its own time and the “Interpretation school” is shown to make a too close connection between its interpretations and the times in which they are made. It suggests going beyond the positivistic confines of these two schools, affirms that Chinese culture has its own unique pattern, and can be more fully understood through comparative studies.