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Abstract
In recent years, scholars have drawn attention to the fact that manuscripts are hardly static objects but prone to change over the course of time. Following this line of research, the present paper considers ancient Chinese scrolls as evolving entities and discusses some of the implications for their reconstruction and description.
Abstract
This study, emphasizing recently discovered bamboo manuscripts as both cultural documents and material objects, investigates the active and autonomous roles played by the scribes of the Tsinghua manuscript collection. Because pre-imperial textual culture has been presented as having tremendous orthographic flexibility and textual fluidly, the codicological and paratextual properties – titles, slip numbers, punctuation marks, verso lines, etc. – have often been considered as being applied without any overarching rules. Yet despite the difficulty of finding any consistent pattern of material design throughout the entirety of pre-imperial manuscripts, within the Tsinghua University collection, I have found not absolute, yet clear overlaps among the codicological and paratextual designs and the classifications of scribal hands. These overlaps indicate that titles, slip numbers, and punctuation marks were deeply associated with the scribes or producers rather than with the readers or users. Most of the punctuation marks should be viewed as a regulation or instruction for the text’s correctness rather than some readers’ understanding or interpretation. Altogether, these purposeful, pragmatic, and surprisingly advanced paratextual devices resonate with the producers’ deepening concerns about textual loss, and show local and even individual efforts and methods to organize and stabilize the ever-changing textual lore.
Abstract
Among the written sources discovered from the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng
Abstract
This article proposes a typology of punctuation devices based on functional criteria. It argues that a broad concept of punctuation – including not only non-“alphanumeric” marks but also layout and spacing as well as script features – is needed to do justice to the diversity of material features of manuscripts and their changes over time.
Abstract
The phrase “make wet its upper part” (jiang qi shang
Abstract
The common concept of karma and retribution in the general religious life of Chinese society was not only expressed in the popular literature that has flourished since the Song dynasty, but also reacted to society through the processing, refining, and deepening of popular fiction. Popular novels from the 16th to 18th centuries synchronized with the fresh ideas of New Chan Buddhism, New Daoism, and New Confucianism, which gradually developed an ethos and karma model. It used real life as a metaphor for explaining cause and effect in the construction of new business and social ethics that were urgently needed at the time. The business ethics it reflected and constructed not only included the affirmation of business and the advocacy of hard work to obtain wealth and promote fair competition, but also criticized blindly pursuing profits, especially emphasizing that wealth was determined by destiny and could not be forced. The core of the new social ethics was to establish rules connecting traditional morality and becoming rich, which not only stressed that scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and businessmen should do their parts, but also always put scholarly study as the highest pursuit; while criticizing social injustice, people still strongly desired to pass the imperial examination. This paper examines the great social changes that were occurring in the Ming dynasty, especially in the areas of business ethics and the perception of wealth, through popular literature from Ming China.
Abstract
The money culture of a given time and place can have a profound influence on literature, a medium that allows for the artistic expression of aesthetic taste. This article takes money culture as its analytical lens to explore the cultural transformation of literary concepts that were prevalent in Chinese novels. It will delve into the transition from agricultural production and lifestyles, which were focused on productive and consumptive survival, to industrialized production and lifestyles, which were centered on monetary survival. Additionally, it will trace the evolution from farming literature, which is rooted in Confucian morality, to commercial literature, which is characterized by themes of wealth, lust, and the search for novelty.
Abstract
The pre-modern Chinese novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan provides a wealth of information on the use of silver and copper cash in the economy of the late Ming dynasty. An analysis of the text reveals that there was no mechanism for remote remittance in the modern financial sense during this period. Therefore, it is necessary to reexamine several research works which have claimed the existence of remote remittance in financial history studies. Upon scrutinizing the various types of standard cash minted from the Jiajing to Chongzhen eras, it is evident that the popular “yellow-fringed coin” referred to in the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan was actually an umbrella term that encompassed both yellow coins and lathed-rim coins. Furthermore, the decimal conversion coins mentioned in the text that were withdrawn from the market due to unusability were most likely the decuple coins in the Tianqi era universal currency. The political incompetence of the late Ming period also caused the common people to reject the universal currency of the period, which was more valuable than the universal currency of previous periods.
Abstract
Along the Grand Canal and in adjacent areas, where the pursuit of livelihoods among literati was most concentrated and visible, were important centers for the creation and dissemination of Ming and Qing dynasty novels and operas. To a large extent, the pursuit of livelihoods among literati brought about the birth of a large number of literary works, particularly Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty novels and operas. On the one hand, literati earned a wage through their livelihoods, improved their living environments, and laid a certain economic backdrop for later Ming and Qing novels and operas; on the other hand, through reader acceptance and market feedback, the literati put forward requirements for literary creation that closely aligned with readers and the market, and to a certain degree brought about changes in the subject matter and artistry of novels and operas. It can be said that the fertile Jiangnan region and the Grand Canal gave birth to literary and artistic giants and works that have been passed down through the centuries. The present article is an analysis of the relationship between literati livelihoods and the development of Ming and Qing novels and operas in the Grand Canal region.