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Bulletin
Conference volumes
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Special series
Vol. 68
ISSN：
1029-4740
Date：
2010-6
Softcover：250 TWD
Price：
未出版
Pages：
188
Vol.：
0
Size：
16 K
Other Ordering Methods：
MH
Abstract：
This issue contains three articles: "'Medicine Cures Only Benign Illnesses; The Buddha Saves Only Those with the Right Karma': The Medical Market, Medical Knowledge and Patient-Physician Relationships in the Ming-Qing Period", by Chu Ping-yi; "Enlightening the Masses:Elite Discourse on Popular Reading Habits in the Late Qing Period", by Zhang Zhong-min; "The Beginnings of Birth Planning in Shanghai in the 1950s and 1960s", by Kohama Masako. There is a field review: "Localizing Revolution: A Critical Overview of Western Research on the History of the Chinese Communist Revolution in Rural China during the Past Thirty Years" by Chen Yao-huang; Book Review: "_The Great Enterprise of Nation-Building: The Light and the Dark”: Izutani Yoko, Politics and Economy in the Formative Period of the People’s Republic of China_" by Hsiao Ming-li.
Contents
Articles
“Medicine Cures Only Benign Illnesses; The Buddha Saves Only Those with the Right Karma”: The Medical Market, Medical Knowledge and Patient-Physician Relationships in the Ming-Qing Period
[Abstract]
Chu Ping-yi
PDF
1
This paper investigates the mentality represented by the proverb “medicine cures only benign illnesses; the Buddha saves only those with the right karma” (藥醫不死病，佛度有緣人) in the Ming-Qing period. Depending on context, the meaning of this proverb fluctuated from “medication is useless for incurable diseases” to “whether or not one is cured largely depends on the fateful encounter between the patient and the right physician.” The proverb nonetheless expressed patients’ anxieties over healing and mistrust of medicine and physicians. I argue that this proverb was embedded in the laissez faire medical market of the Ming-Qing period during which there was not even a minimum guarantee of the quality of a given physician. Although medical information circulated freely and physicians were abundant, patients at that time were troubled by the problem of how to find useful information and competent physicians. Patients chose a physician based on word of mouth, and often employed several physicians at the same time, but also changed them quickly. It seems that patients were easily convinced of the skill of a given physician while at the same time mistrusting physicians generally, since they were not sure how to assess physicians’ skills. In response, patients developed strategies to reduce risks. They tried to learn medicine and prepared medications themselves, appealed to religious healing, and argued for moral cultivation to nourish both the physical body and spiritual life and to guard against illness. To cope with their patients’ state of mind, physicians resorted to the art of persuasion in addition to medical skills. Physicians also complained that the behavior of the patient might actually increase risks since they exerted no control over the healing process. The proverb “medicine cures only benign illnesses; the Buddha saves only those with the right karma” thus encapsulated the tense patient-physician relationship and projected it to a religious cosmology where the frustrations of medical encounters were expressed in Buddhist terms of chance and fate.
Keyword
：patient-physician relationship, medical market, medicine and religion, medical risk management, uncertainty
Enlightening the Masses:Elite Discourse on Popular Reading Habits in the Late Qing Period
[Abstract]
Zhang Zhong-min
PDF
51
The history of prohibited books cannot be excluded from the history of reading. Condemnations of and policies actions against the circulation of yinci xiaoshuo (pornographic novels) and the like among the people never died out in premodern China. Reflecting Western intellectual influences, progressive intellectuals in the late Qing began to be aware of the important social functions of novels and drama. They reflected on the linkage between the popular novels and drama performances and the Boxer Uprising. They brought together reading, enlightenment, and the nation-state to purify the reading habits of the lower strata, enlighten the masses, and create modern citizens by replacing yinci xiaoshuo with xin xiaoshuo (new fiction) and xin xiqu (new drama). Nevertheless, new fiction and reformed drama were themselves open to varying interpretations, and created a discoursive space for multiple voices carrying different meanings for different audiences, not necessarily enlightenment-oriented. As well, the inner logic of the popular culture of reading can never wholly be subjected to outside discipline. This limited the efforts of intellectual elites to purify popular reading habits.
Keyword
：history of reading, pornographic novels, lower strata, xin xiaoshuo (new fiction), xin xiqu (new drama), reading habits
The Beginnings of Birth Planning in Shanghai in the 1950s and 1960s
[Abstract]
Kohama Masako
PDF
97
Fertility rates in China had started to decline sharply before the one-child policy was put into effect in 1979. Shanghai experienced a decline in the late 1950s and the 1960s, somewhat ahead of the rest of China. This decline was the consequence of birth control campaigns that the government had intermittently conducted since the mid-1950s in response to high demographic pressures. Birth control, which became known as jihua shengyu (birth planning), was not compulsory but was practiced on a voluntary basis throughout this period. Despite this, coping with the double burden of work and home, women willingly complied with birth control campaigns launched by Shanghai Health Bureau, women’s federation, and other organizations. By the early 1960s, the concept of birth control had reached even uneducated working-class women. But birth control methods at that time were not sufficiently developed in regards to safety, effectiveness, and convenience. Moreover most of men were not willing to use birth control. These technological limitations on top of the gendered social structure led Shanghai women to adopt induced abortion and jueyu (tubal ligation), which could harm their health but allowed them to make decisions on reproduction for themselves.
Keyword
：birth planning, birth control, Shanghai, jueyu (tubal ligation), reproductive rights
Research and Discussion
Localizing Revolution: A Critical Overview of Western Research on the History of the Chinese Communist Revolution in Rural China during the Past Thirty Years
[Abstract]
Chen Yao-huang
PDF
143
Since the late 1970s, “local studies” has become increasingly important in the field of Chinese Communist history in the West. As ever more archival materials on the Chinese Communist Revolution became available, new research began to draw attention away from the “grand theory” approach of the previous generation of scholars, arguing that the revolution was in essence a congeries of local revolutions that was adapted to the complex Chinese local reality step by step by local party members. Local studies have indeed now become the mainstream of the field. Why did the local studies approach spring up? What did the proponents of local studies advocate? Should there be any more detailed deliberation on their argument? This article will try to answer these questions by examining the English-language literature from the past thirty years on the history of Chinese Communist Revolution in rural China.
Keyword
：history of Chinese Communist Party, history of rural revolution, China studies, local studies, base area studies
Book Reviews
“The Great Enterprise of Nation-Building: The Light and the Dark”: Izutani Yoko, Politics and Economy in the Formative Period of the People’s Republic of China
Hsiao Ming-li
PDF
181
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