From Rural China to the Ivy League: Reminiscences of Transformations in Modern Chinese History. By Yü Ying-shih. Translated by Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2021. $114.99 (cloth); $49.99 (paper)

dence,” but are understood both critically and discursively as a part of how a “Kongzhai effect” was created and sustained in the face of (often) indifference and (occasionally) hostility. This is in some ways a record of failure, of things that didn’t happen, plans that didn’t come off (quite literally; some of the most fascinating illustrations are handdrawn plans for unachieved renovation in the 1840s, from the archives of the Confucian headquarters at Qufu). Kongzhai was clearly never as famous, never as prominent, never as loved as its most dedicated supporters felt it should be. Some readers may find themselves calling to mind the poignant chapters in the great Qing novel Ru lin wai shi, itself set in the mid-Ming, which deal with the ultimately unsuccessful attempts of a group of local literati to institute a cult of Tai Bo, legendary founder of the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the grand ceremony narrated in loving detail in chapter 37, by the end of the novel, his temple too is “falling down.” There may perhaps have been many such failed enterprises across the Ming–Qing ritual landscape, reminding us that history is not only written by the winners, it is written about the winners. There are sites of forgetting, as well as lieux de mémoire. Perhaps appropriately, the few surviving material fragments that have survived the wreck of Kongzhai’s fortunes have now been relocated to become embedded in one of the rebuilt “classic gardens” which are a very visible “newly old” (xin jiu) manifestation of a “traditional Chinese culture” in the contemporary urban landscape. This very welcome study shows just how fluid and contingent that “traditional Chinese culture” really was, far from the monolithic and triumphalist presence taken for granted in so much contemporary official discourse, which might have plenty of room for the celebration of Confucius (in his place), but which has, it seems, no place for Kongzhai. In showing us how this situation was arrived at, and the many twists and turns that led there, Julia Murray has provided an outstandingly rich and thought-provoking account, which will be of enduring value.