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The late-Ming household encyclopedias (riyong leishu) produced in Jianyang, Fujian, have long attracted the attention of historians as sources that offer some insight into the daily lives of commoners. This study, however, does not treat these cheap imprints as direct reflections of contemporary social realities but as a category of cultural products that played an important role in the prospering print culture and cultural consumption of late-Ming China. First, this study analyzes the commercial strategy of the Fujian publishers, examining their target audience. They produced a large number of household encyclopedias, of which we still have at least thirty-five editions. Since there were several kinds of household encyclopedias circulating in late-Ming book markets, the differences in their specific content, style, and printing quality help us discover why and among whom the Fujian encyclopedias were popular. They met the needs of functionally literate people who were not highly educated, but who had enough disposable income to learn about urban culture. These people constituted a group of new cultural consumers distinguishable from the educated literati and rich merchants who had a long history of consuming books and other cultural products.
Then, this study focuses on the sections on calligraphy and painting in several editions of the encyclopedias to examine how the Fujian household encyclopedia helped to create meanings for everyday life and delineate alternative social spaces. First, it is clear that these publications represent late-Ming fashion in art and culture. Artistic work was deeply implicated in daily life; for example, playing visual games with Chinese characters in seal script could be fashionable in social gatherings. Second, the artistic knowledge promoted by Fujian encyclopedias reveals a great deal about how social practices related to art in the late Ming—a view that is very different from what we have learned from literati writings on art. If reading as a kind of social practice exerts social influence, we can also detect a social space that was formed by the circulation of the Fujian household encyclopedias. And this social space, regardless of its differences from upper class social space, demands that we reconsider the dichotomy between “elite culture” and “popular culture.”
This paper investigates the development of travel and the consumer culture that surrounded it in the late Ming period. By this time, travel had become commercialized and market-oriented, as seen in the increasing composition and publication of travel books, new modes of transportation, and the thriving business of providing lodgings. Tourist guides and package tours demonstrate that travel became a new fashion that was widespread not only among upper and lower gentry, but also included travel for pleasure by commoners. Moreover, travelers placed great emphasis on comfort, which thus also marks a distinguishing feature of travel during late Ming.
The new fashion for travel gave rise to an important debate. Although some gentry criticized it as a wasteful and decadent form of consumption, others noted its useful economic effects. The final section of this paper explores the mentalities of the late-Ming gentry through an examination of their discourse about travel. Some gentry clearly associated travel with social status, and sought to define new tastes in travel that would distinguish their travel culture from that of commoners. Taken as a whole, this paper suggests that the tourism specifically and a consumer society more broadly developed in China at least as early as in Western Europe, if not earlier. Furthermore, some features of the consumer culture of travel during late Ming indeed corresponded to the characteristics of consumer culture commonly associated with “modernity.”
This essay explores Zhang Binglin’s (1869-1936) knowledge and critique of Western modernity. As a conscientious thinker active during the late Qing and early Republican period, Zhang acquired Western knowledge via Japan and reached his own version of cultural pluralism through a critical response to the West. Although his fame as a classical Chinese scholar and his anti-Manchu activism gave him a reputation as a traditionist, he was in essence a pioneer of modern Chinese thought His early book, “Words of Urgency” (Qiushu), displays knowledge of modernity and arguments for it. Zhang here often cited Western history and theories to make his points. From his Western knowledge he sensed the crisis of the traditional Chinese learning, wondering if talented contemporary scholars could ever catch up with the West in scholarship. Zhang also came under the influence of Social Darwinism, from which he noted the necessity of change and accommodation. But he did not think change equated to Westernization; rather, he found the need to accommodate China’s own distinct culture and evolved China’s own modernity.
Zhang realized each human culture had its unique characteristics. Under the threat of foreign imperialism, he increasingly felt compelled to preserve China’s national essence, in particular its history, language, and customs, in order to maintain national identity. Unlike the conservatives of his time, Zhang had no intention of rejecting foreign culture. What he looked for was cultural pluralism, which he theorized most clearly in his study of Zhuangzi’s “Essay on Relativism” (Qiwulun). Zhang filled the old bottle of Daoist insights with the new wine of pluralism. In similar ways nineteenth-century Russian and Japanese intellectuals also searched for their respective cultural autonomy under the impact of the West. The Slavophiles renewed their concern about the purity and independence of Russian traditions. In Japan, a new generation of Meiji intellectuals centered at Seiky?sha in the 1880s sought cultural autonomy. Both the Russians and the Japanese recognized the superiority of the modern West in particular areas, but they rejected cultural universalism. The modern world, in other words, should accommodate various different cultures. Zhang might not have been aware of the Slavophiles, but he had a close connection with the Seiky?sha intellectuals. Not surprisingly, the same cultural problem brought the Russians, the Japanese, and Zhang to the similar conclusions.
Liang Qichao’s historiographical thought represents the beginning of modern Chinese historiography and reveals some important directions of Chinese historiography in the twentieth century. As pointed out by many scholars, recently including Tang Xiaobing and Edward Wang, the development of Liang’s historiographical thought can be divided into two stages. First, Liang’s 1902 “New Historiography,” published in his New Citizen Journal, emphasized scientific, Enlightenment, and evolutionary vision of history. The second stage emerged in the 1920s, especially with the publication of Liang’s Methods for the Study of Chinese History. Here he emphasized the uniqueness and multiplicity of history and culture and criticized the Western-centered, evolutionary historiography that he had earlier advocated. How did this change occur? In terms of external reasons, the impact of World War I and the influence of German historicism and Neo-Kantianism played crucial roles. Yet Liang’s relationship with Chinese traditional scholarship also contributed to this change. This paper argues that Liang’s “new historiography” in both stages was based on the Buddhist and Confucian traditions to a considerable extent. Thus he not only introduced Western ideas but also sought convergence between Western ideas and concepts rooted in Chinese tradition. His efforts to establish a “new historiography” cannot be separated from his lifetime search for “modern” scholarship for China.