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In the late Qing, many newly translated Chinese terms invented by the Japanese were imported into China with tremendous cultural effect. Facing this terminological invasion, Chinese officials, scholars, and students such as Zhang Zhidong, Yan Fu, Lin Shu, Zhang Binglin, and Peng Wenzu harshly criticized the new vocabulary. Moreover, some Chinese scholars, especially the famous translator Yan Fu, created new terms to replace the Japanese neologisms. This gave rise to a competition that lasted from the late Qing to the early Republican period. Yet by the 1920s, most of the terms that had originated in Japan had been incorporated into the Chinese language at the expense of the terms created by Yan and other Chinese.
This article describes the competition and discusses the abandoned neologisms invented by Yan Fu. These terms included transliterated terms such as “tuodu” (拓都, total), “yaoni”(么匿, unit), “niefu” (涅伏, nerve), “luoji” (邏輯, logic), “wutuobang” (烏託邦, utopia), as well as newly invented translations such as “guanpin” (官品, organic), “bule” (部勒, organization), “qunxue” (群學, sociology), “mingxue” (名學, logic), and “tianzhi” and “minzhi” (天直、民直, rights).
Most of the terms invented by Yan gave way to Japanese neologisms. The failure of Yan’s own neologisms was also seen in his failure to unify translated terms when he was the head of the Office for the Compilation of Translated Terms in the Ministry of Education. The competition between the terms invented by Yan and by the Japanese indicates that Xun Zi’s view on “the correct use of names” is still insightful. Xun Zi noted, “Names have no intrinsic ‘appropriateness.’ They are bound to something by agreement in order to name it. The agreement becomes fixed, the custom is established, and it is called ‘appropriate.’…. Names do not have intrinsic good qualities. When a name is direct, easy, and not at odd with the thing, it is called a ‘good name.’” There were some “good names” in Yan’s translations, but unfortunately they were not fixed by public agreement. Nevertheless, his ways of creating new terms revealed proper standards of translation.
Baiyun guan, the most famous temple of Quanzhen Daoism since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, was also extensively written about during the Qing dynasty. Since the founding of the Republic of China, its reputation had declined somewhat, but it still had considerable influence in Beijing. In the 1940s, lawsuits were brought against An Shilin, the prior and manager of Baiyun guan. In the end, An Shilin and his assistant, Bai Quanyi, were burned to death by a group of their fellow Daoist clerics. In this author’s view, this was not only a tragedy for An Shilin and the Baiyun guan, but it also symbolizes the nadir of Baiyun guan and Daoism in modern history. This study is based on the Beijing Municipal Archives and shows how the 1946 tragedy resulted from the inner contradictions of Baiyun guan, particularly among the factions of Daoists fighting over temple property and succession procedures. It also resulted from problems of modern politics and the social role of Daoists. This article thus aims to give a fuller and deeper explanation of the lawsuit involving Baiyun guan in the 1940s, and its relationship to the tragedy. This article hopes to promote further research on the relationships among politics, Daoism and the social role and destiny of Daoism in modern Chinese history.
Departing from the conventional research on U.S. aid to Taiwan, which focuses on its relationship to Taiwan’s economic growth, this study explores the influence and continuity of U.S. aid from the perspective of the medical system and public health. Since the Taiwan government had provided for neither a national health policy nor a central health organization in the Cold War period of the 1950s and 1960s, American guidance and recommendations played a vital role in shaping the long-term health planning of Taiwan. The Ten Year Health Plan of the 1960s, proposed by the Provincial Department of Health and suggested by the representative of the World Health Organization, had been shaped by the U.S. Aid Health Program of 1950s. What were the priorities and characteristics of these programs? How did American ideas on public health reintegrate the social order of Taiwan? Why did the new priorities differ from the powerful health policy of the previous Japanese rule, which emphasized tropical disease control? Based on the archives of the Council for United States Aid (CUSA), this study examines the arguments between Taiwanese health officers and American advisors and their differences concerning health planning in the 1950s and 1960s. Focusing on hospital reconstruction, medical education, and environmental sanitation, it traces how American ideas on public health changed medical practice in Taiwan.
In 1630, Jiang Yunlong (c.1575-?) was sent to Macao to buy European cannon and hire Portuguese mercenaries by the famous late Ming Christian convert Xu Guangqi (1562-1633). Unfortunately, Jiang was accused of corruption and was suspended from his post and prosecuted. More than three hundred well-trained mercenary gunners that Jiang recruited were also sent back to Macao. Due to this incident, efforts to introduce European cannon in the wake of the defeat of the battle of Saerhu (1619) came to an unhappy end. This article investigates Jiang Yunlong’s life and his social background to understand why Xu Guangqi chose to consign this important mission to Jiang, and to reexamine the issues surrounding how Western learning penetrated and spread in late Ming society. The results are finally treated as an example how historians can benefit from utilizing newly available massive electronic databases in the so-called “e-evidential research era.”
In her new book, Patricia Thornton discusses how the state has been disciplined in modern China, basing this comparative study on the Yongzheng emperor, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong. She argues that these three rulers each sought to broaden the expression of the state power at the grass-roots level through a redefinition of moral discourse. Though deserving praise for her approach, this work is seriously marred by its mistaken treatment of ambitious anti-corruption campaigns as common feature under the three regimes. She further argues that the Yongzheng emperor fabricated a financial crisis to unleash a thorough purge of county level officials; that Chiang Kai-shek ignored mass mobilization and local self-rule, therefore dooming his government from the beginning; and that Mao Zedong started the four-cleanings campaign to reclaim his lost prestige after the Great Leap Forward. But because Thornton fails precisely to delineate the concept of moral discourse and corruption discourse, her argument appears confusing, and her misreading of source materials further mars the merits of her monograph.