Chinese Asianism, 1894–1945 By Craig A. Smith. Harvard East Asian Monographs 444. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. xiv + 294 pp. $55.00, £44.95, €49.50 HC (Cloth).

Abstract

area, known as Westpark (Xiyuan 西苑), served as the site of the imperial lotus cultivation. In the late nineteenth century, it became the retirement palace of Empress Dowager Cixi, and a short railway line was even constructed there (230). In the twentieth century it became a public park and, subsequently, the headquarters of the Communist party. My only critique of this otherwise excellent volume is that the image program, while generally strong, could have been edited with the same attention to detail as the text. The hand-drawn chart of the Wanggiyan clan’s family tree in Kai Jun Chen’s essay (77), for instance, should have been executed digitally, to match the more polished chart of the accounting system workflow in Wang and Bae’s essay (116). Several places in the book would also have benefited from more illustrations. For instance, Martina Siebert refers to photographs taken by Osvald Sirén of Westpark in 1923, which show the lotus ponds in disarray, but no photographs are provided (251). Hui-chun Yu’s likewise alludes to a painting entitled “Elephant and Horse Tributes from the Gurkha Campaign” (Kuo’er ke jin xiang ma tujuan 廓爾喀進像馬圖卷) that depicts the animals on their tribute journeys (279). Although no image is provided, a footnote directs us to a link on the Palace Museum’s website where we are able to view the large painting in detail, which while helpful is not consistent with the rest of the volume. In sum, Making the Palace Machine Work is remarkable for its novel focus on the inner workings of the palace, which are often overlooked in scholarship on the Qing court. It reveals that the minutiae of the day-to-day palace operations can be just as fascinating as the grander imperial spectacles that they help create. This book also demonstrates how, when done right, an edited volume can achieve much more than a monograph by a single author. By incorporating research from scholars with diverse expertise, the book is able to cover a wide range of interesting topics. At the same time, due to the meticulous work of the editors, these disparate topics are seamlessly integrated into the overarching concept of the palace machine. Combined with the fact that all the essays were held to the same high standard with regard to writing and research, the volume never feels disjointed. The end result is complex and sophisticated, yet tight-knit and cohesive: an excellent model for future edited volumes.