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This paper examines the origin and sources of a series of one of the most popular folk stories in modern and contemporary China, “Killing the Tartars on Mid-Autumn Day,” and assesses its affinity with political and folkloric development. These stories reflect the collective memory of the misery of the Chinese peasants in the Huai and Yangzi River region under the repressive Mongol rule. They describe how the peasants, tipped off by a message found hidden in the stuffing of a moon cake on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, rose up in rebellion, slaughtered the Mongols and toppled the Yuan dynasty. “Tartars” was a derogatory ethnic appellation for the Mongols. Later versions of these stories attributed the ingenious moon cake plot to Liu Bowen, the great minister of the Ming dynasty founder who was later mythologized as a sagacious strategist and clairvoyant prognosticator, author of the renowned prophecy book Shaobingge. None of the standard histories carry any reference to these sensational stories, and various versions of the saga were transmitted through oral narration and later recorded by folklorists with additional trappings. Similar versions appeared in a Mongol legend, with both oral and written forms, attesting to the reciprocal influence of Han and Mongol folk culture. This popular folklore was fictitious; in fact, Chinese peasants rose against the Mongols under the propaganda of the White-Lotus Maitreya society, and the Yuan dynasty did not end until after more than a decade of infighting among contentious Chinese warlords culminating in the founding of the Ming dynasty. Nevertheless, there was a modicum of truth in the stories’ descriptions of various Mongol repressive measures against the Chinese, such as “ten Han families forced to host a Tartar at home,” “ten families sharing a single kitchen chopper,” “Mongol headman claiming the first night of a virgin set to marry,” “twenty Han families grouped into a household headed by a Northern official,” and so forth. Though presented in exaggerated fiction, such events can be traced to Yuan historical records. A crude form of the stories appeared in the early Yuan work Jinyulu ascribed to Xu Dazhuo and first printed in the late Qing. It relates how a certain Chinese female in Wu County in Suzhou was molested on her wedding night by the Mongol headman; she killed the headman and committed suicide together with her husband, thus precipitating the villagers of several provinces to rise up against the Mongol chief. Probably inspired by this bizarre source, the anonymous author(s) or promoters of the “killing the Tartars” stories extracted random information from the official Yuan history and Mongol folklore about Mongol officials’ callous treatment of the Han Chinese, as well as the alleged eschatological revelation on the intercalary fifteenth day of the eighth (lunar) month proclaimed by the seditious Eight Trigrams Society to buttress the fictional allure of the stories. Finally, they co-opted Liu Bowen to be the mastermind of the moon cake plot that sparked the rebellion to complete the folkloric saga.
During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, bondservants of the Imperial Household Department staffed many customs houses. The customs duties they levied were delivered to the Ministry of Revenue, while the emperor received the “surplus” revenue. The imperial income rose due to an increase in trade between China and Russia in the eighteenth century. For example, the trade through Kiakhta in the 26th year of Qianlong’s reign (1761) was 1,011,067 rubles, increasing eightfold to 8,383,846 rubles in the 5th year of Jiaqing’s reign (1800). At the customs house for Sino-Russian trade in Kalgan the surplus increased from 16,000 to 30,000 taels, and at Chongwen Gate receipts rose from 70,000 to 140,000 taels. It is obvious that the Qing emperors benefited greatly from Sino-Russian trade.
Furthermore, Qianlong modified the meltage-fee system enforced by Emperor Yongzheng, reducing the rate from 30-50% (of the principal taxes) to 10%. This reduction apparently lessened the financial burden on the populace, but in fact, every customs superintendent resorted to a variety of fiscal expedients such as surcharges to compensate for the quality of silver or to cover the cost of tribute or budget shortfalls. In the emperor’s view, these newly added levies were only about 10% of the Ministry of Revenue’s custom receipts. According to Douglas North’s neoclassical theory of the state, an absolute monarch will maximize private advantage. Indeed, the Qing emperors expanded their personal wealth with the aid of bondservants. The Imperial Household Department’s income from customs surplus, miscellaneous levies, and the sale of ginseng and precious stones was estimated at 600,000 to 800,000 taels per annum, or about 15-20% of the total customs revenue.
Surcharges added to customs levies were too numerous to calculate and provided many opportunities for bureaucratic corruption. For example, Zheng Wusai, the superintendent of Yuehai Customs, raised the meltage fee rate, and An Ning hiked the surcharges to compensate for the quality of silver without permission, among many other cases. At first, Qianlong confiscated the properties of such embezzlers, but these properties were insufficient to compensate for the losses from peculation. As a result, the emperor established a system of punishment that obligated the embezzlers and their paternal relatives to repay the losses. Although the money that the bureaucrats owed to the government should have been paid to the Ministry of Revenue, the emperor ordered the payments to be handed over to the Imperial Household Department. As the emperor set this selfish example, so the bureaucrats followed suit. This pattern of corruption lasted until the end of the Qing dynasty and was a major cause of the Qing'’s decline.
This essay examines the transformation of the function and structure of the knowledge system of Chinese culture by performing frequency counts and meaning analyses of such terms as gezhi (gaining knowledge by studying of the principle of matters), kexue (science), changshi (common sense) and jishu (technology). The research was conducted with the help of a database specialized for the study of modern Chinese intellectual history. We investigate the formation and structure of scientism in modern Chinese political culture. We also examine the differences between Chinese scientism and its Western counterpart.
First, we determined that the term gezhi was used to refer to “science” since the late Ming dynasty because of the emphasis on the integration of knowledge and morals by the Cheng-Zhu School of Neo-Confucianism and the formation of the modern Chinese tradition. It was a manifestation of the common-sense rationality of Chinese culture. Second, the term kexue was originally used as the short form for keju (imperial civil service examination system) and xuexiao (school) in Chinese. The replacement of gezhi by kexue happened between 1902 and 1905—the same period that the abolition of the examination system took place. We analyzed the reasons why these two events coincided from the perspective of intellectual history, finding that the Qing government had adopted a dualistic ideology that maintained a demarcation between China and the West. It used this ideology as the foundation of its abolition of the examination system and the launching of constitutional reform. This dualism resulted in the divorce of “science” from “morals.” Chinese intellectuals thus began to use the amoral kexue to denote “science.”
By doing frequency counts and meaning analyses of kexue, changshi and other related terms, we found that as an important concept of modern Chinese culture that took shape during the New Culture Movement, kexue has been given two different meanings. First, as modern common sense, it was seen as the revival of a justification structure similar to that of the Cheng-Zhu School of Neo-Confucianism. This justification structure was used to determine the moral values from a knowledge system based on common-sense rationality. Kexue was used to attack superstition and served as the basis of a new ideology. Second, it was often used to refer to both science and technology and covered the contents of the Confucian concept of jingshi zhiyong (practical application of knowledge to governing the country).
We found that although the replacement of gezhi by kexue symbolizes the modern transformation of the knowledge system of Chinese culture (and its application) under the impact of the West, the relationship between the knowledge system and the new ideology (modern value system) remained isomorphic during the New Culture Movement. This proves that the positioning of the knowledge system and new ideologies (modern value systems) may vary according to the values of different civilizations while this positioning does not change with the modern transformation of knowledge systems and traditional cultures.
Beginning publication in Tainan during the period of Japanese rule, San Liou Jiou Tabloid (1930-1935) featured popular literature and art. Influenced by various factors—the cultural ideology of the colonial regime, controls over language and publication, new literature movements and debates, and commercial interests, as well as the popularization and the advanced thought seen in modernized societies, San Liou Jiou Tabloid went its own way in a world of high-toned journalism. An examination of the contents of 479 issues during the five years of its publication reveals that the publication consistently adhered to the position it set for itself: providing amusement and light-hearted entertainment. The editors endeavored to be marginalized. This opens up a new perspective on popular journalism, as distinct from the grand ideas of new elites of Taiwan new literature movements and the great camp of colonial ideology. Did this tabloid—sited between the classical and vernacular; Western and Eastern; refined and vulgar—construct new viewpoints on life, lyricism, images, and feelings? This article examines the tabloid’s three “visions” of eroticism, trifles, and humor. Freed from the domination of grand social and political theories, amid the flow of modern trends, various kinds of chaotic and interesting cultural phenomena emerged. San Liou Jiou Tabloid created a public domain of humorous remarks; poured in sensual pleasure; scraped together quotidian details of metropolitan life in Taiwan, and so both supported and questioned traditional mainstream views. It thus happened to serve as witness to the modernity of the Taiwan of the 1930s.