Writing, Publishing and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700 by Joseph R. Dennis (review)

Abstract

Xie 朱偰 (Qiqian 啟鈐), who published the first modern studies of Dadu’s palaces and gardens in 1930 and 1936.10 Why these were not used by Chen Gaohua is unknown, but given their use in secondary literature for the next eighty years, the omission immediately renders the book out of date.11 This fact, that Chen’s book itself is now out-of-date—not the omission of one or another author who has worked on the capital or subjects related to it—is the shortcoming of a translation of a thirty-three-year-old book whose subject is grounded in excavations and modern understandings of urban studies. Readers of JSYS may well find useful sections in this translation. However, they will be frustrated by the choppy and often seemingly random coverage of topics that one would expect to have disappeared in the English version. A reader of Chinese might prefer to read the original, perhaps with the translated endnotes alongside.