Ying-shih Yü. Chinese History and Culture, vol. I: Sixth Century B.C.E. to Seventeenth Century. Eds. Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke. Masters of Chinese Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Abstract

The redoubtable Ying-shih Yü’s most important studies in English have been republished in two volumes as part of the Masters of Chinese Studies series, edited by David Der-wei Wang for Columbia University Press. Because the chapters are sequenced chronologically, the ones that will most interest readers of Early China are in volume I. Volume II stretches from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The collection had apparently been planned for several years, but in late 2014, when Yü’s medical condition prevented him from proofreading the final text, Wang called on Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke to help complete the project (p. xvi). The process of digitally formatting the files had resulted in the loss of significant amounts of text, which Chiu-Duke and Duke restored by referring to the original publications. In addition, they made “a few minor changes” (not further documented) and added some Chinese graphs for the sake of clarity. Since these volumes could not have been published without their painstaking labor, the entire field is in their debt. The first seven chapters focus on early China: “Between the Heavenly and the Human” (pp. 1–19), “Life and Immortality in the Mind of Han China” (pp. 20–57), “‘O Soul, Come Back!’: A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China” (pp. 58–84), “New Evidence on the Early Chinese Conception of the Afterlife” (pp. 85–90), “Food in Chinese Culture: The Han Period (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.)” (pp. 91–121), “The Seating Order at the Hong Men Banquet” (pp. 122–33), and “Individualism and the Neo-Daoist Movement in Wei-Jin China” (pp. 134–65). The last of these, despite the title, trenchantly discusses Wang Chong 王充 (27–c. 100 c.e.) and his reception in the Six Dynasties, and thus will undoubtedly interest Han