ABSTRACT:This article analyzes territorial disputes and political relationships at the border between China and Vietnam from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Predominant Western scholarship argues that, owing to the tributary relationship among states and polities, there was no territorial boundary in premodern Asia; furthermore, it suggests, the concept of the “geo-body” of a nation or sovereign state only arose with the transfer of new mapping technology from Europe. This article argues instead that the absence of lines of demarcation on Vietnamese and Chinese maps before the late nineteenth century does not connote a lack of consciousness of the existence of borders. The quest for autonomy throughout history by local communities living between China and Vietnam gave rise to border conflicts, which led to the intervention by and expansion of these two states, as well as negotiations and territorial division between them. The transformation of the China-Vietnam border from a premodern to a modern form thus did not depend solely on its cartographic representation; it also involved the power of the state to control space. Additionally, this article demonstrates that tensions over the border did not simply involve central governments but often resulted from a combination of local conflicts and the complicated relations between local actors and the state. The article suggests a new approach to exploring the history of state borders from the perspective of local people, in which the “in-between communities” are not seen as passive objects of border demarcation but are also a driving force in the establishment of a frontier. While the “in-between communities” discussed in this article were behind conflicts over land and its division into national territories, their manipulations of ethnic identity and transgressive mobility also helped blur the border between the two countries.
{"title":"Contested Sovereignty: Local Politics and State Power in Territorial Conflicts on the Vietnam-China Border, 1650s–1880s","authors":"Luân Đường Vũ","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0017","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article analyzes territorial disputes and political relationships at the border between China and Vietnam from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Predominant Western scholarship argues that, owing to the tributary relationship among states and polities, there was no territorial boundary in premodern Asia; furthermore, it suggests, the concept of the “geo-body” of a nation or sovereign state only arose with the transfer of new mapping technology from Europe. This article argues instead that the absence of lines of demarcation on Vietnamese and Chinese maps before the late nineteenth century does not connote a lack of consciousness of the existence of borders. The quest for autonomy throughout history by local communities living between China and Vietnam gave rise to border conflicts, which led to the intervention by and expansion of these two states, as well as negotiations and territorial division between them. The transformation of the China-Vietnam border from a premodern to a modern form thus did not depend solely on its cartographic representation; it also involved the power of the state to control space. Additionally, this article demonstrates that tensions over the border did not simply involve central governments but often resulted from a combination of local conflicts and the complicated relations between local actors and the state. The article suggests a new approach to exploring the history of state borders from the perspective of local people, in which the “in-between communities” are not seen as passive objects of border demarcation but are also a driving force in the establishment of a frontier. While the “in-between communities” discussed in this article were behind conflicts over land and its division into national territories, their manipulations of ethnic identity and transgressive mobility also helped blur the border between the two countries.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"497 - 533"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article examines Sino-Korean cultural relations in the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on representations of Korean anticolonial activist An Chunggŭn’s assassination of Japanese prime minister Itō Hirobumi (1909). Two different junctures in particular are considered: the release of the film Patriotic Spirit by Chŏng Kitak in 1928 and the Wanbaoshan Incident in 1931. Patriotic Spirit, a transnational dramatization of An’s story, was the first Chinese film directed by a Korean; the Wanbaoshan Incident was a violent conflict between Chinese and Koreans caused by the unofficial “discord-provoking policy” of the Japanese empire. The article tracks changes in Chinese responses to An’s story before and after these two junctures, showing that Patriotic Spirit subtly communicated transnationalism while also catering to the Sinocentric taste of Chinese audiences. It also examines how Chinese print media in 1928 appropriated Patriotic Spirit for nationalist ends. Following the Wanbaoshan Incident, An’s story resurfaced in China. Despite heightened anti-Korean sentiment in China at this time, An avoided Chinese condemnation because the Chinese unwittingly categorized him as Korean yet not Korean. Hence, while An’s story became integrated into Chinese discourse, this study reveals, the sign of An Chunggŭn caused a rupture in the Han/non-Han divide embedded in Republican-era Chinese nationalism.
{"title":"The Afterlives of An Chunggŭn in Republican China: From Sinocentric Appropriation to a Rupture in Nationalism","authors":"Inhye Han","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0002","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines Sino-Korean cultural relations in the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on representations of Korean anticolonial activist An Chunggŭn’s assassination of Japanese prime minister Itō Hirobumi (1909). Two different junctures in particular are considered: the release of the film Patriotic Spirit by Chŏng Kitak in 1928 and the Wanbaoshan Incident in 1931. Patriotic Spirit, a transnational dramatization of An’s story, was the first Chinese film directed by a Korean; the Wanbaoshan Incident was a violent conflict between Chinese and Koreans caused by the unofficial “discord-provoking policy” of the Japanese empire. The article tracks changes in Chinese responses to An’s story before and after these two junctures, showing that Patriotic Spirit subtly communicated transnationalism while also catering to the Sinocentric taste of Chinese audiences. It also examines how Chinese print media in 1928 appropriated Patriotic Spirit for nationalist ends. Following the Wanbaoshan Incident, An’s story resurfaced in China. Despite heightened anti-Korean sentiment in China at this time, An avoided Chinese condemnation because the Chinese unwittingly categorized him as Korean yet not Korean. Hence, while An’s story became integrated into Chinese discourse, this study reveals, the sign of An Chunggŭn caused a rupture in the Han/non-Han divide embedded in Republican-era Chinese nationalism.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"28 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66755828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article deals with the noted Russian Narodnik revolutionary Nikolai Sudzilovsky-Russel (1850–1930), his views on China and Japan, and the background of those views in the Russian intellectual tradition. Russian revolutionaries tended to share many of the Eurocentric biases of their Westernizer (Zapadniki) mentors and often viewed Asia—East Asia included—as retrograde, Japan being seen as an exception. Russian Narodniks’ positive view of Japan was not unrelated to their belief in the unilineal hierarchy of progress and civilization, in which Japan was seen as topping Russia. Sudzilovsky-Russel’s views originally developed as a continuation of this paradigm. However, his observations of the contemporaneous Chinese revolutionary movement and personal exchanges with Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) showed him the revolutionary potential of China. In the end, he accepted the idea that a political revolution in China would provide an important impulse to the cause of social revolutions in the West. Concurrently, in the dialogue between Russian and Chinese revolutionaries, something akin to a general strategy for radical change on the world’s agricultural periphery was taking shape, anticipating a number of later ideological and political developments in both China and Russia. Sudzilovsky-Russel viewed the tasks facing Russian and Chinese revolutionaries as essentially similar: while catching up with the supposedly advanced societies of the West, both were to bypass the “plutocratic” capitalist stage on their way to an emancipatory, alternative modern future.
{"title":"A Russian Radical and East Asia in the Early Twentieth Century: Sudzilovsky, China, and Japan","authors":"V. Tikhonov","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0006","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article deals with the noted Russian Narodnik revolutionary Nikolai Sudzilovsky-Russel (1850–1930), his views on China and Japan, and the background of those views in the Russian intellectual tradition. Russian revolutionaries tended to share many of the Eurocentric biases of their Westernizer (Zapadniki) mentors and often viewed Asia—East Asia included—as retrograde, Japan being seen as an exception. Russian Narodniks’ positive view of Japan was not unrelated to their belief in the unilineal hierarchy of progress and civilization, in which Japan was seen as topping Russia. Sudzilovsky-Russel’s views originally developed as a continuation of this paradigm. However, his observations of the contemporaneous Chinese revolutionary movement and personal exchanges with Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) showed him the revolutionary potential of China. In the end, he accepted the idea that a political revolution in China would provide an important impulse to the cause of social revolutions in the West. Concurrently, in the dialogue between Russian and Chinese revolutionaries, something akin to a general strategy for radical change on the world’s agricultural periphery was taking shape, anticipating a number of later ideological and political developments in both China and Russia. Sudzilovsky-Russel viewed the tasks facing Russian and Chinese revolutionaries as essentially similar: while catching up with the supposedly advanced societies of the West, both were to bypass the “plutocratic” capitalist stage on their way to an emancipatory, alternative modern future.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"147 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article examines how urban space in Cheju City can be imagined as a site of experience and identity. The rapid development of Cheju City on Cheju Island, the Republic of Korea’s prime resort and ecological heritage destination, has foregrounded tensions between global tourism and local identity. How people experience cities physically has an intimate connection with how they imagine and represent urban space. Cheju City, which has transformed from being the modest seat of a long-marginalized periphery into a burgeoning tourism hub, is a battleground on which differing visions of urban space as the location of culture are staged. Such debates are as much about the right to represent identity as about the right to use urban space. While urban redevelopment in Cheju City erases entire city blocks for tourist facilities and elaborate monuments to distant pasts, emergent social movements are rearticulating sites of memory to recover a sense of a Cheju-specific landscape and to redefine local identity. Using ongoing ethnographic and archival research conducted since 2012, this article demonstrates how a new urban heritage paradigm is emerging in Cheju. Heritage is no longer confined to essentialist conclusions drawn from rural folklore but now directly addresses urban experience.
{"title":"Imagining Urban Community: Contested Geographies and Parallax Urban Dreams on Cheju Island, South Korea","authors":"Tommy Tran","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0000","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines how urban space in Cheju City can be imagined as a site of experience and identity. The rapid development of Cheju City on Cheju Island, the Republic of Korea’s prime resort and ecological heritage destination, has foregrounded tensions between global tourism and local identity. How people experience cities physically has an intimate connection with how they imagine and represent urban space. Cheju City, which has transformed from being the modest seat of a long-marginalized periphery into a burgeoning tourism hub, is a battleground on which differing visions of urban space as the location of culture are staged. Such debates are as much about the right to represent identity as about the right to use urban space. While urban redevelopment in Cheju City erases entire city blocks for tourist facilities and elaborate monuments to distant pasts, emergent social movements are rearticulating sites of memory to recover a sense of a Cheju-specific landscape and to redefine local identity. Using ongoing ethnographic and archival research conducted since 2012, this article demonstrates how a new urban heritage paradigm is emerging in Cheju. Heritage is no longer confined to essentialist conclusions drawn from rural folklore but now directly addresses urban experience.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"176 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article considers the discourse surrounding the popular Chinese table game of mahjong in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using it as a barometer to trace social and cultural changes during the late Qing and Republican periods. After analyzing the connection between mahjong; its forerunner, madiao; and their antithesis, weiqi (go), it traces the changing position of mahjong in Chinese society from a game seemingly loathed by literati to a staple of bourgeois parlors. Drawing on a variety of journals, newspapers, and visual sources, the article further explores culture from class and gender perspectives in the late Qing and Republican periods, as mahjong moved from a visibly male activity to one largely associated with women. Finally, it considers the relationship between games and discourses of modernity, and the important changes taking place regarding leisure time in the twentieth century. The article argues that mahjong has been uniquely resistant to regulation and control. Enjoyment of the game spread across class and gender lines, despite the efforts of reformers, for reasons that reflect and embody key shifts from the late Qing dynasty through the end of the Republican period.
{"title":"The Game People Played: Mahjong in Modern Chinese Society and Culture","authors":"Maggie Greene","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0001","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article considers the discourse surrounding the popular Chinese table game of mahjong in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using it as a barometer to trace social and cultural changes during the late Qing and Republican periods. After analyzing the connection between mahjong; its forerunner, madiao; and their antithesis, weiqi (go), it traces the changing position of mahjong in Chinese society from a game seemingly loathed by literati to a staple of bourgeois parlors. Drawing on a variety of journals, newspapers, and visual sources, the article further explores culture from class and gender perspectives in the late Qing and Republican periods, as mahjong moved from a visibly male activity to one largely associated with women. Finally, it considers the relationship between games and discourses of modernity, and the important changes taking place regarding leisure time in the twentieth century. The article argues that mahjong has been uniquely resistant to regulation and control. Enjoyment of the game spread across class and gender lines, despite the efforts of reformers, for reasons that reflect and embody key shifts from the late Qing dynasty through the end of the Republican period.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"1 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article examines the life and works of Richard E. K. Kim (1932–2009), a first-generation Korean diasporic writer in the United States. It focuses on how Kim struggled to overcome the nihilism of suffering and death that derived from colonialism and the Korean War through his literary works. Kim witnessed firsthand these two major historical events, which caused irrevocable psychological and physical damage to many people of his generation. In his autobiographical fiction, he conveys painful memories of the events by reviving the voices of people in that era. What his works offer us goes beyond vivid memories of the past, however; they also present the power of forgiveness as a condition to overcome the nihilism of suffering and death. Remembrance and forgiveness are, therefore, two major thematic pillars of his works that enable us to connect to these difficult and traumatic times. These themes are portrayed in such a gripping way mainly because Kim tried to maintain a certain distance—an emotional and linguistic distance—from the familiar, in order to elucidate the reality of the human condition: an ontological position of the exile from which he produced his works. This article argues that Kim’s works provide us the possibility to transcend the nihilism of historical trauma through articulating the meaning of remembrance and forgiveness from his self-assumed position of exile.
{"title":"Against the Nihilism of Suffering and Death: Richard E. K. Kim and His Works","authors":"Jooyeon Rhee","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0003","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines the life and works of Richard E. K. Kim (1932–2009), a first-generation Korean diasporic writer in the United States. It focuses on how Kim struggled to overcome the nihilism of suffering and death that derived from colonialism and the Korean War through his literary works. Kim witnessed firsthand these two major historical events, which caused irrevocable psychological and physical damage to many people of his generation. In his autobiographical fiction, he conveys painful memories of the events by reviving the voices of people in that era. What his works offer us goes beyond vivid memories of the past, however; they also present the power of forgiveness as a condition to overcome the nihilism of suffering and death. Remembrance and forgiveness are, therefore, two major thematic pillars of his works that enable us to connect to these difficult and traumatic times. These themes are portrayed in such a gripping way mainly because Kim tried to maintain a certain distance—an emotional and linguistic distance—from the familiar, in order to elucidate the reality of the human condition: an ontological position of the exile from which he produced his works. This article argues that Kim’s works provide us the possibility to transcend the nihilism of historical trauma through articulating the meaning of remembrance and forgiveness from his self-assumed position of exile.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"63 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66755893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article examines the literal and figurative domestication of Straits Chinese, or Peranakan, history in selected heritage projects in late twentieth-century Malaysia and Singapore. These projects simultaneously foreground Straits Chinese history as a symbol of interracial harmony and marginalize it as a cultural artifact. Over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ethnoculturally hybrid Straits Chinese positioned themselves as “the King’s Chinese,” champions of a Confucian-values renaissance, and citizens of independent Malaysia and Singapore. Their adaptability helped them survive the upheaval of imperialism, decolonization, and nation building, but it was also controversial for its suggestion of political flexibility. Today, Southeast Asian governments and the Peranakan themselves depict the community as a uniquely local model of ethnic integration. Museums and historic homes emphasize portrayals and consumption of supposedly feminine aspects of Peranakan culture (e.g., fashion and cuisine), while downplaying purportedly masculine elements (e.g., the possession of multiple nationalities). By conflating femininity, tradition, and racial hybridity, this approach reifies stereotypes about gender and cultural identity, and replaces transgressive potential with politically anodyne nostalgia and commercialization. As anxieties about race, national history, and belonging continue to undergird the modern polity, transnationalism and transculturalism are acceptable as long as they are confined to the past.
{"title":"Domesticating Hybridity: Straits Chinese Cultural Heritage Projects in Malaysia and Singapore","authors":"K. M. Teoh","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0005","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines the literal and figurative domestication of Straits Chinese, or Peranakan, history in selected heritage projects in late twentieth-century Malaysia and Singapore. These projects simultaneously foreground Straits Chinese history as a symbol of interracial harmony and marginalize it as a cultural artifact. Over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ethnoculturally hybrid Straits Chinese positioned themselves as “the King’s Chinese,” champions of a Confucian-values renaissance, and citizens of independent Malaysia and Singapore. Their adaptability helped them survive the upheaval of imperialism, decolonization, and nation building, but it was also controversial for its suggestion of political flexibility. Today, Southeast Asian governments and the Peranakan themselves depict the community as a uniquely local model of ethnic integration. Museums and historic homes emphasize portrayals and consumption of supposedly feminine aspects of Peranakan culture (e.g., fashion and cuisine), while downplaying purportedly masculine elements (e.g., the possession of multiple nationalities). By conflating femininity, tradition, and racial hybridity, this approach reifies stereotypes about gender and cultural identity, and replaces transgressive potential with politically anodyne nostalgia and commercialization. As anxieties about race, national history, and belonging continue to undergird the modern polity, transnationalism and transculturalism are acceptable as long as they are confined to the past.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"115 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Within the field of Sino-Tibetan frontier studies, there is very little indepth scholarly discussion about commerce, trade, and the people who facilitated these activities across the Sino-Tibetan border; studies in English are particularly sparse. This article aims to contribute to a wider and deeper understanding of the nature of trade on the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the role of women as facilitators by looking at some of the actual “dealmakers.” In the border town of Dartsedo—the “Shanghai of Tibet”—guozhuang (trading houses, Tib. achak khapa) not only evolved into convenient spaces for travelers to come to rest, but also were spaces of flux. It was in these trading houses that traditional notions of gender, class, and hierarchy were called into question and played out in unexpected ways. Women came to dominate the guozhuang because the work was likened to managing a household and therefore viewed as a lower-status occupation. This notion was reinforced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Chinese values and customs were introduced into the local society through frequent intermarriages between Han and Tibetan inhabitants in Dartsedo.
{"title":"Guozhuang Trading Houses and Tibetan Middlemen in Dartsedo, the “Shanghai of Tibet”","authors":"Yudru Tsomu","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Within the field of Sino-Tibetan frontier studies, there is very little indepth scholarly discussion about commerce, trade, and the people who facilitated these activities across the Sino-Tibetan border; studies in English are particularly sparse. This article aims to contribute to a wider and deeper understanding of the nature of trade on the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the role of women as facilitators by looking at some of the actual “dealmakers.” In the border town of Dartsedo—the “Shanghai of Tibet”—guozhuang (trading houses, Tib. achak khapa) not only evolved into convenient spaces for travelers to come to rest, but also were spaces of flux. It was in these trading houses that traditional notions of gender, class, and hierarchy were called into question and played out in unexpected ways. Women came to dominate the guozhuang because the work was likened to managing a household and therefore viewed as a lower-status occupation. This notion was reinforced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Chinese values and customs were introduced into the local society through frequent intermarriages between Han and Tibetan inhabitants in Dartsedo.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"291 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article focuses on the trade routes in the western Sichuan borderlands that facilitated contact and trade between Chinese counties and Eastern Tibet. In particular, the article offers a description of “official routes” (guandao)—which the Chinese emperor twice proclaimed to be the vital mode of access between China and Tibet—from Chengdu, Sichuan’s provincial capital, to Khampa areas, with Lhasa as the final destination. The exchange of goods in this region followed various routes during different periods. From the tenth to sixteenth centuries, transactions occurred primarily along the borders of Amdo (Tib. A mdo, Northeastern Tibet), but for political, economic, and practical reasons, such exchanges became more limited geographically and eventually focused along the Sichuan-Kham/Ngawa border. Many routes shifted to the towns of Kangding (Tib. Dartsedo) and Songpan (Tib. Zungchu), the main sites of distribution, where rich opportunities for trade and a strictly limiting transport geography made them important entrepôts that evolved into centers of prosperity. The geographic range of this article reaches to these two towns and leaves the investigation of the routes that led to western centers such as Derge, Batang, Chamdo, and Jyekundo for future research.
{"title":"“To Control Tibet, First Pacify Kham”: Trade Routes and “Official Routes” (Guandao) in Easternmost Kham","authors":"Patrick R. Booz","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0008","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article focuses on the trade routes in the western Sichuan borderlands that facilitated contact and trade between Chinese counties and Eastern Tibet. In particular, the article offers a description of “official routes” (guandao)—which the Chinese emperor twice proclaimed to be the vital mode of access between China and Tibet—from Chengdu, Sichuan’s provincial capital, to Khampa areas, with Lhasa as the final destination. The exchange of goods in this region followed various routes during different periods. From the tenth to sixteenth centuries, transactions occurred primarily along the borders of Amdo (Tib. A mdo, Northeastern Tibet), but for political, economic, and practical reasons, such exchanges became more limited geographically and eventually focused along the Sichuan-Kham/Ngawa border. Many routes shifted to the towns of Kangding (Tib. Dartsedo) and Songpan (Tib. Zungchu), the main sites of distribution, where rich opportunities for trade and a strictly limiting transport geography made them important entrepôts that evolved into centers of prosperity. The geographic range of this article reaches to these two towns and leaves the investigation of the routes that led to western centers such as Derge, Batang, Chamdo, and Jyekundo for future research.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"239 - 263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:In the late Qing and early Republican eras, eastern Tibet (Kham) was a borderland on the cusp of political and economic change. Straddling Sichuan Province and central Tibet, it was coveted by both Chengdu and Lhasa. Informed by an absolutist conception of territorial sovereignty, Sichuan officials sought to exert exclusive authority in Kham by severing its inhabitants from regional and local influence. The resulting efforts to arrest the flow of rupees from British India and the flow of cultural identity entwined with Buddhism from Lhasa were grounded in two misperceptions: that Khampa opposition to Chinese rule was external, fostered solely by local monasteries as conduits of Lhasa’s spiritual authority, and that Sichuan could arrest such influence, the absence of which would legitimize both exclusive authority in Kham and regional assertions of sovereignty. The intersection of these misperceptions with the significance of Buddhism in Khampa identity determined the success of Sichuan’s policies and the focus of this article, the minting and circulation of the first and only Qing coin emblazoned with an image of the emperor. It was a flawed axiom of state and nation builders throughout the world that severing local cultural or spiritual influence was possible—or even necessary—to effect a borderland’s incorporation.
{"title":"Victorianizing Guangxu: Arresting Flows, Minting Coins, and Exerting Authority in Early Twentieth-Century Kham","authors":"Scott Relyea","doi":"10.1353/ACH.2016.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ACH.2016.0011","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In the late Qing and early Republican eras, eastern Tibet (Kham) was a borderland on the cusp of political and economic change. Straddling Sichuan Province and central Tibet, it was coveted by both Chengdu and Lhasa. Informed by an absolutist conception of territorial sovereignty, Sichuan officials sought to exert exclusive authority in Kham by severing its inhabitants from regional and local influence. The resulting efforts to arrest the flow of rupees from British India and the flow of cultural identity entwined with Buddhism from Lhasa were grounded in two misperceptions: that Khampa opposition to Chinese rule was external, fostered solely by local monasteries as conduits of Lhasa’s spiritual authority, and that Sichuan could arrest such influence, the absence of which would legitimize both exclusive authority in Kham and regional assertions of sovereignty. The intersection of these misperceptions with the significance of Buddhism in Khampa identity determined the success of Sichuan’s policies and the focus of this article, the minting and circulation of the first and only Qing coin emblazoned with an image of the emperor. It was a flawed axiom of state and nation builders throughout the world that severing local cultural or spiritual influence was possible—or even necessary—to effect a borderland’s incorporation.","PeriodicalId":43542,"journal":{"name":"Cross-Currents-East Asian History and Culture Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"350 - 377"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/ACH.2016.0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66756715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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