While recent studies have illuminated elite women’s Buddhist piety and practices, we remain limited in our understanding of elite women’s relations to and involvement in other religions, especially Daoism and local cults and practices. This article fills the gap and furthers our understanding of late Qing elite women’s religiosity and practices with a focused study of the Daoist beliefs and devotional practices of Wang Duan (1793–1839). Based on close reading of poems and other writings produced by Wang Duan, her relatives, and fellow poets, I reconstruct Wang Duan’s Daoist religiosity and devotional practices in the context of her marital household’s religious milieu, and the larger literary and religious community she was involved with. I show that Wang Duan’s exposure to the Daoist practices of her relatives by marriage such as Chen Wenshu and Lady Guan Yun led to her own life-long practice of reciting Daoist scriptures for the sake of saving the soul of her husband and of pacifying the local dead and the martyred worthies of Suzhou. Through the initiation by her aunt-in-law Chen Lanyun, a Quanzhen Longmen priestess, she also developed strong institutional ties to the Daoist monastic center based on Mount Jin’gai in Huzhou, the epicenter of Quanzhen Daoism in late Qing Jiangnan. Her active participation in local spirit-writing altars in Suzhou and Hangzhou, her literary homage to Gao Qi (1336–74), and her frequent recitation of the salvational Daoist Jade Scripture of the Great Cavern by the Primordial Origin contributed directly to elevation and consecration of the martyred early Ming poet as a patron god of local spirit-writing altars and rain-making cults in Suzhou and Yangzhou. Consistent with her status and role as a well-known and creative poet, Wang Duan used poems as a medium to express her multifaceted religiosity and identity. I argue that Wang Duan’s Daoist religiosity not only attests to the extent of Daoist practice in many elite women’s daily life, but also demonstrated that through their religious commitment and participation, elite women such as Wang Duan, exerted their agency and power in shaping Quanzhen Daoism and local religious practice in late Qing Jiangnan.
{"title":"Of Poems, Gods, and Spirit-Writing Altars: The Daoist Beliefs and Practice of Wang Duan (1793–1839)","authors":"Xun Liu","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2015.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2015.0006","url":null,"abstract":"While recent studies have illuminated elite women’s Buddhist piety and practices, we remain limited in our understanding of elite women’s relations to and involvement in other religions, especially Daoism and local cults and practices. This article fills the gap and furthers our understanding of late Qing elite women’s religiosity and practices with a focused study of the Daoist beliefs and devotional practices of Wang Duan (1793–1839). Based on close reading of poems and other writings produced by Wang Duan, her relatives, and fellow poets, I reconstruct Wang Duan’s Daoist religiosity and devotional practices in the context of her marital household’s religious milieu, and the larger literary and religious community she was involved with. I show that Wang Duan’s exposure to the Daoist practices of her relatives by marriage such as Chen Wenshu and Lady Guan Yun led to her own life-long practice of reciting Daoist scriptures for the sake of saving the soul of her husband and of pacifying the local dead and the martyred worthies of Suzhou. Through the initiation by her aunt-in-law Chen Lanyun, a Quanzhen Longmen priestess, she also developed strong institutional ties to the Daoist monastic center based on Mount Jin’gai in Huzhou, the epicenter of Quanzhen Daoism in late Qing Jiangnan. Her active participation in local spirit-writing altars in Suzhou and Hangzhou, her literary homage to Gao Qi (1336–74), and her frequent recitation of the salvational Daoist Jade Scripture of the Great Cavern by the Primordial Origin contributed directly to elevation and consecration of the martyred early Ming poet as a patron god of local spirit-writing altars and rain-making cults in Suzhou and Yangzhou. Consistent with her status and role as a well-known and creative poet, Wang Duan used poems as a medium to express her multifaceted religiosity and identity. I argue that Wang Duan’s Daoist religiosity not only attests to the extent of Daoist practice in many elite women’s daily life, but also demonstrated that through their religious commitment and participation, elite women such as Wang Duan, exerted their agency and power in shaping Quanzhen Daoism and local religious practice in late Qing Jiangnan.","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"9 1","pages":"23 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2015.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67083306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-12-01DOI: 10.7765/9781526137265.00003
Steven B. Miles, Mengdie Zhao, Xin Yu, S. Fong, Anne-Sophie Pratte
Abstract:This paper provides an overview of the judicial practices on adultery cases that led to homicide in seventeenth-century China. I argue that the lifting of the punishment for the husband who killed only the adulterer in the Ming Code did not lead to immediate changes in judicial practices. On the contrary, the officials deviated from the letter of the code and encouraged, or even urged, the husband to kill both the adulterer and the wife, embracing the idea of "double killing"—killing both the wife and the adulterer "on the spot" and "immediately"—as an assertion of masculinity, a restoration of conjugal morality, and a proof of the killer's motive. The officials' shared view that illicit sex was a heinous crime was consistent with the surging popularity of the chastity cult and moral heroism. Layered legal institutions and multiple applicable statutes related to adultery and homicide also offered convenient space for manipulation by the ruling elites. Therefore, even when the conditions of the homicide did not meet the prerequisites for impunity, some judges argued for a lenient punishment or even impunity for the husband, at the expense of the law.I then analyze a court case story by the editor and publisher Yu Xiangdou (active 1588–1637), whose crime stories with innovative format combining narrative with formal legal documents were widely read and circulated since the late Ming. As a prolific commercial publisher attuned to the tastes of the literati, Yu provides a mildly critical perspective on the statute and its unintended moral consequence that is rarely seen in the more orthodox writings by officials.
{"title":"List of Contributors","authors":"Steven B. Miles, Mengdie Zhao, Xin Yu, S. Fong, Anne-Sophie Pratte","doi":"10.7765/9781526137265.00003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137265.00003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper provides an overview of the judicial practices on adultery cases that led to homicide in seventeenth-century China. I argue that the lifting of the punishment for the husband who killed only the adulterer in the Ming Code did not lead to immediate changes in judicial practices. On the contrary, the officials deviated from the letter of the code and encouraged, or even urged, the husband to kill both the adulterer and the wife, embracing the idea of \"double killing\"—killing both the wife and the adulterer \"on the spot\" and \"immediately\"—as an assertion of masculinity, a restoration of conjugal morality, and a proof of the killer's motive. The officials' shared view that illicit sex was a heinous crime was consistent with the surging popularity of the chastity cult and moral heroism. Layered legal institutions and multiple applicable statutes related to adultery and homicide also offered convenient space for manipulation by the ruling elites. Therefore, even when the conditions of the homicide did not meet the prerequisites for impunity, some judges argued for a lenient punishment or even impunity for the husband, at the expense of the law.I then analyze a court case story by the editor and publisher Yu Xiangdou (active 1588–1637), whose crime stories with innovative format combining narrative with formal legal documents were widely read and circulated since the late Ming. As a prolific commercial publisher attuned to the tastes of the literati, Yu provides a mildly critical perspective on the statute and its unintended moral consequence that is rarely seen in the more orthodox writings by officials.","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 137 - 139 - 178 - 42 - 43 - 88 - 89 - v - v - vi - vi"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71317318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Relying on recently discovered contracts from a Qing monastery, this case study focuses on two intimately linked developments essential to understanding the world of these monasteries. First, through asset consolidation and individual transactions between monks and members of the lay community, the monastery embedded itself inside the local society. Second, within monasteries, lineage served as an important organizing and conceptual principle, one that bore remarkable similarity to the structure and logic of lay lineages. This lineage principle played a crucial role in the transformation of a monastery from a coterie of discrete Dharma houses to an institution with a shared, overarching strategic vision. The shared property of a Dharma lineage was, in part, constitutive of its collective identity, one that was also conceptually fundamental for the monastery’s efforts to consolidate its assets as a unitary entity. The internal acquisitions and external investments of that shared property further strengthened the financial foundation of a monastic community. In sum, the everyday strategies of a Qing monastery revealed by transactional documents demonstrate that land transactions between the monastery, its internal lineages, and the laity were fundamental to the continuing evolution of Qing monasteries as vital and innovative institutions.
{"title":"Land, Lineage and the Laity: Transactions of a Qing Monastery","authors":"W. Luo","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2015.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2015.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Relying on recently discovered contracts from a Qing monastery, this case study focuses on two intimately linked developments essential to understanding the world of these monasteries. First, through asset consolidation and individual transactions between monks and members of the lay community, the monastery embedded itself inside the local society. Second, within monasteries, lineage served as an important organizing and conceptual principle, one that bore remarkable similarity to the structure and logic of lay lineages. This lineage principle played a crucial role in the transformation of a monastery from a coterie of discrete Dharma houses to an institution with a shared, overarching strategic vision. The shared property of a Dharma lineage was, in part, constitutive of its collective identity, one that was also conceptually fundamental for the monastery’s efforts to consolidate its assets as a unitary entity. The internal acquisitions and external investments of that shared property further strengthened the financial foundation of a monastic community. In sum, the everyday strategies of a Qing monastery revealed by transactional documents demonstrate that land transactions between the monastery, its internal lineages, and the laity were fundamental to the continuing evolution of Qing monasteries as vital and innovative institutions.","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"36 1","pages":"123 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2015.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fifty years of Qing studies—and Late Imperial China","authors":"Tobie S. Meyer-Fong","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2015.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2015.0000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"36 1","pages":"v - vi"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2015.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hou honglou meng (1796) (Later dream of the red chamber) is the earliest sequel to Cao Xueqin’s Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber). It does more than redeem the romantic tragedy of the parent novel: it also intervenes to strengthen the dissolving Jia household and family structure and offers a conscious act of literary critique on the novel. Hou honglou meng deliberately intervenes in the parent novel's metafictionality, reconstructs the Jia mansion and redraws its boundaries, and rewrites its family dynamics with a new balance of emotion (qing) and ritual (li). In the process it offers new visions of the wealthy household, of romance and marriage, of the domestic novel as a genre, and of the relationship between text, author(s), readers, and critics.
{"title":"Reframing the Boundaries of Household and Text in Hou Honglou Meng","authors":"J. Moyer","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Hou honglou meng (1796) (Later dream of the red chamber) is the earliest sequel to Cao Xueqin’s Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber). It does more than redeem the romantic tragedy of the parent novel: it also intervenes to strengthen the dissolving Jia household and family structure and offers a conscious act of literary critique on the novel. Hou honglou meng deliberately intervenes in the parent novel's metafictionality, reconstructs the Jia mansion and redraws its boundaries, and rewrites its family dynamics with a new balance of emotion (qing) and ritual (li). In the process it offers new visions of the wealthy household, of romance and marriage, of the domestic novel as a genre, and of the relationship between text, author(s), readers, and critics.","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"36 1","pages":"53 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2015.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines a late Qing woman’s jacket embroidered with eight well-known Suzhou garden and temple sites. Such an object makes little sense within the conventional historiography of Chinese dress, long dominated by regulated garments like dragon robes and rank badges, and consequently, concerned with themes of imperial status and official rank. I argue that the jacket is best understood, instead, at the juncture of three wider historical processes: the popularisation of tourism, the commercialisation of embroidery, and the role of urban courtesans in nineteenth-century Suzhou. Combining close analysis of material culture with a wide range of textual sources, in particular folkloric records and urban “bamboo ballads”, the article demonstrates the impact of handicraft commercialization and widening material consumption upon late Qing women’s fashions, and explores the degree to which these developments enabled women to connect with and contribute to popular urban culture. The jacket thus highlights not only the economic salience of commercialized handicrafts, but also the growing visibility of women in the early modern Chinese cityscape.
{"title":"Eight Scenes of Suzhou: Landscape Embroidery, Urban Courtesans, and Nineteenth-Century Chinese Women’s Fashions","authors":"Rachel A. Silberstein","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2015.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2015.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a late Qing woman’s jacket embroidered with eight well-known Suzhou garden and temple sites. Such an object makes little sense within the conventional historiography of Chinese dress, long dominated by regulated garments like dragon robes and rank badges, and consequently, concerned with themes of imperial status and official rank. I argue that the jacket is best understood, instead, at the juncture of three wider historical processes: the popularisation of tourism, the commercialisation of embroidery, and the role of urban courtesans in nineteenth-century Suzhou. Combining close analysis of material culture with a wide range of textual sources, in particular folkloric records and urban “bamboo ballads”, the article demonstrates the impact of handicraft commercialization and widening material consumption upon late Qing women’s fashions, and explores the degree to which these developments enabled women to connect with and contribute to popular urban culture. The jacket thus highlights not only the economic salience of commercialized handicrafts, but also the growing visibility of women in the early modern Chinese cityscape.","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"109 1","pages":"1 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2015-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2015.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction Huang Shuhua (style name Wanli, 1847–64), the protagonist of Xu E’s (style name Wuge, 1844–1903, juren 1885) play Lihua xue (Snow on the Pear Blos som/The Pear Blossom Rights Wrongs, completed 1886 and published 1887) is an exile in three stages: originally a flower-spirit expelled from heaven, she grows up in a scholar’s family in the outskirts of the Taiping capital Tianjing (Nanjing).1 In her childhood the family kept a low profile, maintaining loyalty to the Qing while living in the Taiping capital and making a living by farming. They thus were displaced in both social class position and in political allegiance. During the Qing reconquest of Nanjing, a soldier slaughters her family and takes her far from home. In an inn in Hunan she leaves a written record of her plight, and subsequently succeeds in killing her abductors and herself. She thus becomes a martyr of the Taiping civil war after the time for
{"title":"The Captive’s Revenge: The Taiping Civil War as Drama","authors":"R. Huntington","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2014.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2014.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Huang Shuhua (style name Wanli, 1847–64), the protagonist of Xu E’s (style name Wuge, 1844–1903, juren 1885) play Lihua xue (Snow on the Pear Blos som/The Pear Blossom Rights Wrongs, completed 1886 and published 1887) is an exile in three stages: originally a flower-spirit expelled from heaven, she grows up in a scholar’s family in the outskirts of the Taiping capital Tianjing (Nanjing).1 In her childhood the family kept a low profile, maintaining loyalty to the Qing while living in the Taiping capital and making a living by farming. They thus were displaced in both social class position and in political allegiance. During the Qing reconquest of Nanjing, a soldier slaughters her family and takes her far from home. In an inn in Hunan she leaves a written record of her plight, and subsequently succeeds in killing her abductors and herself. She thus becomes a martyr of the Taiping civil war after the time for","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"35 1","pages":"1 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2014.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction False accusation [wugao] was a strategy deployed by a range of individuals in order to bring their complaints to the court for remediation. It lays bare the very real ways in which locals—including the poor—actively shaped formal disputation as it entered the courtroom. The study of false accusation exposes the sophisticated strategies Qing subjects employed to advance their interests in court, and makes clear that even among the rural poor there was a broad knowledge of the workings of the legal system. Indeed, many individuals resorted to cunning strategies to circumvent normal channels of local dispute resolution in order to avail themselves of state authority. Conversely, one also sees the state, as represented by the local magistrate, ignoring the maneuvering and manipulation of locals in order to intervene in local disputes, which were often economic clashes at their root. In this interaction between locals and the county magistrate, the state remained deeply relevant in local life even at the very end of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). False accusation cases not only reveal the driving role for locals in the late Qing, but also expose an expanded sphere of state engagement. Instead of turning away cases based on hollow accusations, magistrates went out of their way to rule on the often-petty disputes that lay at their core. Why would they do this? A simple explanation suggests that this is what local governance looked like in the late Qing. Magistrates exhibit a surprising willingness to adjudicate, and turn a blind eye toward the false accusations that landed a case in court. The examination of false accusation cases exhumes an expanded role for the state at the local level.1 The county magistrate’s engagement with the communities he oversaw enhanced the Qing state’s vitality and legitimacy at
{"title":"The Logic of Lies: False Accusation and Legal Culture in Late Qing Sichuan","authors":"Quinn Javers","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2014.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2014.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction False accusation [wugao] was a strategy deployed by a range of individuals in order to bring their complaints to the court for remediation. It lays bare the very real ways in which locals—including the poor—actively shaped formal disputation as it entered the courtroom. The study of false accusation exposes the sophisticated strategies Qing subjects employed to advance their interests in court, and makes clear that even among the rural poor there was a broad knowledge of the workings of the legal system. Indeed, many individuals resorted to cunning strategies to circumvent normal channels of local dispute resolution in order to avail themselves of state authority. Conversely, one also sees the state, as represented by the local magistrate, ignoring the maneuvering and manipulation of locals in order to intervene in local disputes, which were often economic clashes at their root. In this interaction between locals and the county magistrate, the state remained deeply relevant in local life even at the very end of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). False accusation cases not only reveal the driving role for locals in the late Qing, but also expose an expanded sphere of state engagement. Instead of turning away cases based on hollow accusations, magistrates went out of their way to rule on the often-petty disputes that lay at their core. Why would they do this? A simple explanation suggests that this is what local governance looked like in the late Qing. Magistrates exhibit a surprising willingness to adjudicate, and turn a blind eye toward the false accusations that landed a case in court. The examination of false accusation cases exhumes an expanded role for the state at the local level.1 The county magistrate’s engagement with the communities he oversaw enhanced the Qing state’s vitality and legitimacy at","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"35 1","pages":"27 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2014.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67083027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction Located far away at “Heaven’s end” (tianmo), Dongchuan is one of many remote places in the hinterland of Southwest China (Fig. 1). Dongchuan has deep, river-carved gorges and rugged mountains, with significant local variation in climate like most of Southwest China. Mainly because of this rough topography, Dongchuan and other parts of present-day northeastern Yunnan continued to be occupied primarily by indigenous groups for many centuries. Between 1726 and 1730, the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) took away the power of indigenous chieftains and started to pursue effective control over this area by means of institutional and military force. After the Qing conquered this area by repressing so-called rebellious indigenous powers, the government gained easy access to Dongchuan’s rich copper deposits, an important resource because copper coin was one of the main currencies used in market exchange during the Qing. Meanwhile, drawn by the flourishing mining business, increasing numbers of Han Chinese migrants from other parts of China hurried here to find work and settle. In the first half of the eighteenth century Dongchuan became very important to the Qing economy. Along with this economic boom and political change, Dongchuan’s local landscape also experienced a transformation. Local officials proudly claimed that Dongchuan had been converted from a “nasty den of
{"title":"The Making of a Frontier Landscape: The “Ten Views of Dongchuan” in Eighteenth-Century Southwest China","authors":"F. Huang","doi":"10.1353/LATE.2014.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LATE.2014.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Located far away at “Heaven’s end” (tianmo), Dongchuan is one of many remote places in the hinterland of Southwest China (Fig. 1). Dongchuan has deep, river-carved gorges and rugged mountains, with significant local variation in climate like most of Southwest China. Mainly because of this rough topography, Dongchuan and other parts of present-day northeastern Yunnan continued to be occupied primarily by indigenous groups for many centuries. Between 1726 and 1730, the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) took away the power of indigenous chieftains and started to pursue effective control over this area by means of institutional and military force. After the Qing conquered this area by repressing so-called rebellious indigenous powers, the government gained easy access to Dongchuan’s rich copper deposits, an important resource because copper coin was one of the main currencies used in market exchange during the Qing. Meanwhile, drawn by the flourishing mining business, increasing numbers of Han Chinese migrants from other parts of China hurried here to find work and settle. In the first half of the eighteenth century Dongchuan became very important to the Qing economy. Along with this economic boom and political change, Dongchuan’s local landscape also experienced a transformation. Local officials proudly claimed that Dongchuan had been converted from a “nasty den of","PeriodicalId":43948,"journal":{"name":"LATE IMPERIAL CHINA","volume":"35 1","pages":"56 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LATE.2014.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67082612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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