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This paper discovers the names of five governors of the Qin dynasty Dongting commandery, and finds that there were four possible locations of the commandery capital. Having determined that the “Qianling yi you xing Dongting” bamboo manuscripts were envelopes delivered from Dongting commandery to Qianling county, and Dongting commandery controlled over at least fourteen counties, we can draw a map on this basis. Based on these findings, this paper argues that the counties interacted with each other through document delivery, transportation, logistics, judiciary, official disposal, migration, and prison labour. This paper then indicates that in the Dongting commandery, all of the soldiers and officials, even at the lowest level, came from places other than the Dongting area. Non-native officials, soldiers, civilians, and criminals together constituted an immigrant community. Considering that the locals seemed to have no legitimate military power, political power or living space within the city, the Dongting area could be regarded as a colonial society. The Dongting commandery is typical of the “strong government, weak society” phenomenon. For the Qin government, the commandery system was a powerful institution to monitor regional society. However, implementing such harsh rules upon the remote south also reflected the excessive state apparatus, which might explain the quick collapse of the Qin dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper attempts to reinterpret the organization and administration of the tianguan ... institutions situated in Hexi ..., which were established by the Han government during the reign of Emperor Wu as one of the regional administrations duguan ..., and served as important units in military farming .... The paper argues that nongzhang ..., instead of being merely a district ... level official subordinate to nongling ..., should be classified as the magistrate in the bureaucracy of tianguan; and nongsefu ... should be considered as the real district-level official of tianguan. The paper further examines the changes within the bureaucratic framework of tianguan in Juyan ..., showing that there were two radical reformations in its framework: the first one occurred between the reign of Emperor Zhao and Emperor Xuan, which led to the establishment of a more organized structure and uniform boundary; the second happened in Wang Mang's reign as part of his land reforms, which involved not only a renaming of the bureau from tianguan to xiantian ..., but also a restructuring from a bureau which was not committed to civilian administration, to a quasi-county organization that processed direct control over people within its jurisdiction. The remaining parts of the paper primarily use xingma ... tianguan in Jianshui ... as an example, demonstrating the communications between tianguan and regional military units, i.e. commandants ... and companies ..., where the tianguan was located, and revealing that although tianguan was theoretically a regional branch office directly controlled by the Superintendent of Agriculture ..., it was supervised by regional military units in most administrative aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official documents and local gazetteers of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) recorded primarily the facilities and administrative organizations of prisons at the local level, without much mention of the actual daily operations in jails. On the other hand, in many of the late Ming vernacular tales, local prisons were described as a netherworld controlled by corrupt clerks and their ruthless underlings, where bribery and murders are recurring narrative motifs. These fictional references, nonetheless, often serve as source materials for scholars who conduct critical discussions of the prison as well as the legal systems of the time. In addition, they often mix up the two different provincial judicial systems of the Ming and Qing dynasties, treating them as one intact institution. In the light of the Mengshui zhai cundu, a characteristic casebook published at the end of the Ming dynasty, this paper attempts to explore the interactions between the sophisticated, if not tedious, provincial judicial review procedures and the administration of local prisons in late Ming China. It discusses the differences in the provincial judiciaries between the Ming and the Qing. Through authentic judicial cases, this paper examines the first hand experiences of prefectural judges and other legal officials assigned to the jails, and analyses the problems in the local prisons in Guangdong and, possibly the whole country, in late Ming China. It concludes with a discussion of the critical impact that the prison administration inflicted upon the quality of justice in the legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the life and work of Qian Haiyue (1901-1968), a rarely known Chinese historian of the twentieth century. Qian's compilation of the History of the Southern Ming, a grand project that took him four decades to accomplish, virtually fell on deaf ears. It was not until 2006, or almost four decades after his tragic death, that his History of the Southern Ming was formally published. This paper argues that it was personal bad luck, as much as the paradigmic shift from traditional Chinese historiography to modern Chinese historiography, that leads to silence by which Qian and his work were engulfed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the re-establishment and development of the Three Capital Guards (san ya ... ) military system: the Palace Command (dian qian si ... ), the Metropolitan Cavalry Command (ma jun si ... ), and the Metropolitan Infantry Command (bu Jun si ... ) during the reign of Emperor Gaozong ... (r. 1127-1162) of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). Previous studies all focused on Northern Song's (960-1127) Three Capital Guards and their capabilities, and Southern Song's Three Capital Guards were neglected. The author considers this topic an important issue in Song military history. This paper is divided into four parts. The first part traces the corruption of the Three Capital Guards system during the reign of Emperor Huizong ... (r. 1101-1125) and Qinzong ... (r. 1126-1127). The second part analyses the rising power of General Yang Yizhong ... and his Shenwu Central Army (shenwu zhongjun ... ). Yang rebuilt the Palace Command, and commanded this capital guard for nearly thirty years under Emperor Gaozong. The Shenwu Central Army is regarded as the predecessor of the Palace Command. The third part focuses on the process of rebuilding the Three Capital Guards. The last part evaluates the role played by the Three Capital Guards in important political and military affairs during Gaozong's reign. Finally, the author concludes that the significance of the Three Capital Guards system reconstituted under Gaozong is that it is an "internal-oriented," not an "external-oriented" defense system. This is the main difference of the Three Capital Guards between the Northern Song and the Southern Song dynasties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is without question that Lin Shu made a great contribution to the modernization of China. Almost all writers of the May Fourth generation first came to know the Western literature mainly through Lin's efforts. However, there was a surprising rupture in the evaluation of Lin's translation activities. Comments about the merits of Lin's translations were totally overturned in the May Fourth period to the extent that his appearance as a translator of Western literature was regarded as a "strange event." A major ground for this was certainly the fact that Lin, who translated 213 Western works into Chinese within a period of less than twenty years, actually knew none of the Western languages. Past studies on Lin's translation activities were mainly concerned with comparing Lin's translations with the source texts and finding out their discrepancies. The present paper tries to show that this kind of investigation presupposes the modern idea that translation should centre on the source text and therefore typifies the intervention of the discourses of modernity into historical studies. By using Lin as a case study, it tries to reappraise the current view on translation in the late Qing from the perspective of post-colonial studies and discuss several important topics in it, including the role, the responsibility, and the authority of the translator. At the end of this paper, the author tries to explain the roots of this particular literary norm on translation and the transition, following the modernization of China, from this view to the modern idea that translation should centre on the source text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, in the arena of Classical Chinese literature study, the term Jian'an fenggu is generally conceptualized as the representative feature of the literary works, especially poetry, of the Jian'an period (196-220). Some use the terms Han-Wei fenggu or Jian'an fengli instead, and "Han-Wei" refers also to the Jian'an period. However, despite the popularity of the term, the explicit content of Jian'an fenggu has been an issue under constant controversy. Re-examining the literary histories since the late Qing dynasty, one can notice the obvious growth of popularity of the term as well as rapid changes of its content. As a matter of fact, to conceptualize Jian'an fenggu as a representative feature of a literary epoch is a way of understanding literary history that comes along with the rise of new approaches to literary history writing. This paper traces how Jian'an fenggu becomes an unavoidable term in the literary history of the past few decades, in order to explain why the term is on the one hand widely adopted, yet on the other hand its meaning has never reached a consensus. This paper also tries to show how researches might be led astray by using the term casually without a full consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his Changchun daojiao yuanliu, Chen Minggui (1821-1881) remarked that "when we asked the Daoist temples either on Luofu shan or in the provincial city for the origin of their lineage, they all responded that they belonged to the Quanzhen order." The 1942 Annual of Guangdong reported that "there were many local Daoist temples scattering in the counties [of Guangdong]. Their administration was modelled on the Daoist (Quanzhen) temples on Luofu shan." In the past, scholarly study of the Quanzhen order founded in Guangdong during the early Qing period was not very advanced. The only exceptions are the Changchun daojiao yuanliu by Chen Minggui and Luofu shan zhibu by Chen Botao (1855-1930). Although the two Chens' first scholarly history of the Quanzhen lineage began in Guangdong, their impact was not so much evident. This paper attempts to trace the history and transformation of the Quanzhen lineage on Luofu shan. It makes extensive use of the collected epigraphy of temple steles, local gazetteers and local historical materials, and some anecdotal jottings and stories as key sources to reconstruct the historical development of those Quanzhen temples. The present paper covers three main parts. It begins with a study of the beginning of the Quanzhen lineage founded in Guangdong during the reign of Kangxi (1662-1722). It then attempts to reconstruct the transmission of the Quanzhen lineage on Luofu shan. Part two will trace the history of the Daoist Monasteries of Chongxu guan and Sulao guan with a particular focus on the issue of how they changed to the Quanzhen lineage. Finally, it will attempt to reconstruct the history of the Daoist Monastery of Yuanmiao guan in Huizhou city nearby Luofu shan. The Monastery was founded in the Song, and survived through the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties to the present day. In early Qing, the Monastery underwent a reformation with the result that it changed to the Quanzhen lineage. In conclusion, the present study finds that the Daoist temples of Quanzhen lineage on Luofu Mountain, Huizhou as well as those in other cities of Guangdong were developed after a disengagement from their originally established local tradition. Since the early Qing, the Quanzhen lineage had been considered as a Daoist order officially endorsed and publicly promoted by the imperial policy. Influenced by this trend, Daoist temples on Luofu shan respectively reformed themselves by making connection with the Quanzhen lineage. With the support of the local Qing officials and local gentry, the conversion of Daoist temples on Luofu shan was completely realized. One can find the later spread of Quanzhen tradition in other Guangdong Daoist temples after the middle of Qing and the trend continues to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refutes the established opinion that Zhu Yuanzhang's Grand Pronouncements (Dagao) lost its legal authority during the Xuande reign (1426-1435). It makes a case that at least three of its items were continuously enforced in the judicial system until the end of the Ming. As reflected in numerous legal publications from the Jiajing reign (1522-1566), after the accession of Emperor Shizong, there was a trend demanding the reintroduction of ancestral rules, including the Dagao. As a result, in Hu Jie's ... Baiyi xinpan, a collection of his model legal case reports composed in 1536-1537, a case is judged by quoting the Dagao item "Buddhist or Daoist monks not complying with ancestral teachings." By consulting some judicial cases concerning monks from the Chongzhen reign (1628-1644) alongside Hu's case, this paper reveals that mid and late Ming judges punished offenders in accordance with this Dagao item. For offences such as Hu's case that were originally miscellaneous capital crimes, however, the offenders were merely sentenced to a beating with heavy stick or enforced a return to secular life. The change of punishments in this case reflects a possibility that, from the Jiajing reign on, there was a new relationship between the Great Ming Code and the Dagao. While a judge might employ a Dagao item to define a crime, he must determine the punishment by referring to the article of the Code to which the Dagao was attached. Another possibility for the change of punishment is that this Dagao item was employed after the Jiajing reign only for the definition of crimes, yet by incorporating a new regulation governing the secular engagements of monks introduced in 1500 into this old title, its original punishment is replaced by the new measures prescribed in the new regulation. Moreover, ceasing the application of the Da Ming lügao ... in 1497 only implies that the Dagao items concerning the administration of death penalties were no longer enforced. In fact, the Dagao item "Fleeing from military exile of corrupted officials and clerks who had imposed evils to the common people for many years," through which the offenders could be punished by military exile, which is one degree lighter than death penalties, was still employed by the daily encyclopedia Santai wanyong zhengzong ... ... published in 1599 as a valid charge for common people launching complaints against corrupted officials and clerks. Finally, this paper discusses the change of scope in the practical application of the Dagao item "Reduction of punishment by one degree through possession of the Dagao" that occurred throughout the Ming period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ming times, anti-government revolts based at the Big Rattan Gorge (Datengxia) area in central eastern Guangxi had great consequences for the social security and ethnic relationship of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. The Ming court responded to the regional turmoil with three large-scale military campaigns, respectively launched in 1465, 1528, and 1539. The first of these campaigns involved the largest number of soldiers and had the greatest of historical impact. The military leaders of this campaign were assistant censor-in-chief Han Yong and commander-in-chief Zhao Fu. But Qiu Jun, a Guangdong native from Hainan, then a compiler in the Hanlin Academy, was also an important figure in the campaign because the court had formally adopted his strategy for the military actions and their aftermath. Han Yong did not in effect put Qiu Jun's strategy into action, but neither was he able to end decisively the turmoil despite his successes on the frontline. The present paper studies the century-long Ming government policy in dealing with ethnic risings in Guangxi as a background for the 1465 campaign. It then analyzes the strategy and tactics Qiu Jun and Han Yong respectively devised for the campaign itself and for postwar rehabilitation. It further analyzes Qiu Jun's strategy for long-term control of the Yao and Zhuang aborigines, which he devised a decade or more after the 1465 campaign. The paper argues that Qiu Jun and Han Yong each proposed their strategies in accordance with different interests: Qiu for those of Guangdong natives, Han for the campaigning soldiers. Han lacked a plan for the long-term peace of the area concerned. Unlike Qiu, who eventually proposed a self-government for the ethnic Yao and Zhuang and a cultural policy for drawing the aborigines to the government, Han relied on military suppression and the effect of deterrence. Nevertheless, Qiu's measures for rehabilitation were mostly ignored by the mainstream bureaucracy. During the two decades after the 1465 campaign, only his proposal for rewarding native officials who helped the government in the campaign was put into practice. The turmoil of the Gorge area continued as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A leader of the Doubting Antiquity Movement of the 1920s, Gu Jiegang (1893-1980) was well known for his cultural iconoclasm. But in the 1930s, he experienced a drastic change in his intellectual life. Partly in response to Japanese expansion in Manchuria and northern China, Gu no longer practised “learning for the sake of learning.” Instead, he used his academic writings to mobilize his fellow countrymen to defend their nation. As a result, he changed both the purpose and the content of his academic writings. Unlike his previous works which challenged the Confucian orthodoxy, he affirmed the Chinese tradition. Rather than exposing the hypocrisy of national memory, he participated in creating a collective memory for national resistance. In this paper, the author examines these changes in Gu’s thoughts and links them to the broader context of the Sino-Japanese War (1937- 1945). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When discussing Liu Shipei's Classics Studies, scholars have often focused on Liu’s doctrine about equating “Classics” and “History.” However, the doctrine appeared only in the early period of Liu’s works and, on the contrary, the later period of Liu’s works emphasized the distinction of “Classics” and “History.” Through discussion of the later period of Liu’s scholarship on the Zuo zhuan, this paper aims on the one hand to analyze the reason for Liu’s differentiating “Classics” and “History” at that time, and on the other hand to point out that Liu’s scholarship on the Zuo zhuan in his later period considerably supported the scholarship on the Zuo zhuan in the Han dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the coinage during the Jiajing reign (1522-1566) with the objective of showing why the Ming government issued copper cash, but instead ultimately used silver bullion as its unit of account. Throughout the long reign of forty-five years, the Jiajing government attempted to establish a single form of legal money. As early as 1527, when the government cast the Jiajing coins, it considered the money as merely one of many forms of legal tender. Besides the Jiajing coin, the government also accepted tax remittances paid in various kinds of coins produced in different reigns and dynasties. This policy brought into play Gresham's law of "bad money driving out the good." Inferior coins from earlier dynasties and outlaws prevailed. As a solution, in 1552 the Jiajing emperor ordered that taxpayers should pay the government with only Jiajing coins. However, the effort to drive those inferior private coins, now in the shape of Jiajing coins, out of market was still in vain. In 1565, at last, the government gave up collecting tax payment in copper cash. It accepted silver bullion originally paid in coins. From then onwards, silver bullion played a prime role in the fiscal policy of the Ming government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on eleven different kinds of romanized dialect records, this paper conducts a phonological study of the Chaoshan dialects in the nineteenth century. It compares the differences between the romanized records and the various dialects spoken in the Chaoshan area, analyses the phonological features and their notational representations, and concludes that the phonological system of the records was a system based on the dialect of the city of Chaozhou. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithography was introduced to China from the West in the late Qing dynasty. As the new technique made it possible to produce large volume printing without compromising on quality, publishers made use of it to produce cheap and reduced-size editions of aids important for candidates preparing for official examinations. Included in such materials were commentaries on the Four Books and the Five Classics, selections from essays of successful candidates at civil service examination (weimo ...), anthologies of eightlegged essays, poems and political essays, encyclopedias, compilations of Western learning (Xixue ...), and writings on statecraft (Jingshi wenbian ...). This paper examines the production and circulation of lithographic-printed examination aids by publishers in Shanghai from 1880 to1905. It argues that, to meet the needs of candidates, publishers produced the aids in accordance with the curricular format prescribed for provincial and metropolitan examinations. It also notes that they took advantage of the new print media--in particular, newspapers (such as Shenbao ...)--to market their examination aids, and the modern transportation systems and postal services to expand their sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chen Weisong (1625-1682), a ci ... writer of the seventeenth century, was a major figure responsible for the promotion of ci poetry in the Qing dynasty (1639-1911). He was highly regarded by his contemporaries and, with the rise of the Changzhou school of ci poetics during Jiaqing (1796-1820) and Daoguang (1821-1850) reign periods, his status became even more prominent in the movement. There has been, however, a serious lack of in-depth study of his influence especially during Yongzheng (1722-1735) and Qianlong (1736-1796) periods. This paper seeks to fill this gap by carefully looking at how Chen was received during this time. With particular reference to the charismatic image he projected, the specific writing style and skills for which he was praised, the notion of ci and its history that he advocated, and the great efforts he devoted to compiling ci-anthologies, the study examines the various literary roles associated with Chen. It highlights the increasing importance he assumed in the promotion of poetics, and concludes that it was during the eighteenth century that Chen eventually acquired the status of a canonical master in Qing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most recent researches on Xu Can's ci are focusing on her nostalgia of the fallen Ming dynasty, which was rarely found in women's writings during the Ming-Qing transition. Apart from this, the love affairs between Xu Can and her husband Chen Zhilin was one of the important themes among her writings, but unfortunately it has not received enough attention from scholars even though it is worth researching. In fact, Xu Can not only used poetry as a means of communication with her husband, but also expressed her feelings inspired by him through writings. Therefore, these works could show how she thought and felt about the marriage and reflected their love affairs. This paper attempts to investigate the subject comprehensively by analysing Xu Can's works and examining Chen Zhilin's writings and other relevant historical documents. In addition, a reinterpretation of Xu Can's ci to the tune Yi Qin E ... (Chun gan ci Su'an yun ...) is offered and concrete evidence of Chen Zhilin taking concubines is presented. As the records of Xu Can's life are very rare, it is hoped that this article can provide a deeper understanding of her marriage and works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Morrison and Joshua Marshman, two of the earliest Christian missionaries to China and India, were also pioneers of English Sinology. They published, in 1812 and 1814 respectively, two of the earliest English translations of the Dwcue. In this paper we analyse these two versions in terms of the translation strategies adopted, the sinological standards demonstrated, and the responses they each incurred. This is followed by our reflections on the role of translation in constructing the images of Confucianism and China in the, colonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emperor Hailing founded the heir apparent palace system of the Jin dynasty. It was aimed at consolidating the paternal succession system in the political system of the dynasty. However, Hailing altered the structure and official titles of the heir apparent palace systems of the Tang and Song instead of following them intact. Thus, through this simplified heir apparent palace system, Emperor Hailing could fully control the crown prince and those heir apparent palace officials. In restructuring the heir apparent palace system, Hailing's original intention was to train his son Wanyan Guangying to be the future emperor of the dynasty, and keep the imperial power in his house. He streamlined the structure of the heir apparent palace system by taking the Tang model and absorbing Northern Song's reform in the system. It was vividly a reflection of Emperor Hailing's absolute imperial power. Jin's heir apparent palace system was inherited by the Mongol- Yuan dynasty, and it indirectly influenced the development in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. Both the Jin historical works Da Jin guozhi and Jinshi systematically recorded the heir apparent palace system; the former was published forty years earlier than the later, near the fall of the dynasty. However, although the heir apparent palace system founded by Emperor Hailing had not been modified by later Jin emperors, the historical sources of this system recorded by the Da Jin guozhi were unverified. It is doubtful whether this work truly revealed the original nature of Jin's heir apparent palace system. The historical sources of the system recorded by the Jinshi could also not be ascertained. This paper attempts to scrutinize Jin's heir apparent palace system as described in these two works by consulting historical documents of the Jin and Yuan, as well as works of the Tang and Song dynasties. It will also discuss the structure, features of Jin's heir apparent palace system, the criteria of choosing heir apparent palace officials in Emperor Hailing's reign, and the development of the heir apparent palace system during the middle period of the dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xia Jingguan published six volumes of selected annotations of Tang, Song and Jin poems in 1940, one of which being The Poetry of Mei Yaochen. Mei Yaocheng's poems were highly acclaimed in the Song dynasty, but not in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In late Qing they became popular again thanks to the Tong Guang School, in which Xia was the one who most strongly recommended Mei. We can examine the significance of Xia's annotations of The Poetry of Mei Yaochen in three aspects: first, the emphasis on the spirit of scholars hailed from a humble social origin and the gentleman's ideals in his poetics; second, the expression of aesthetic notions that synthesize Tang and Song poetics and develop infinite poetic realm; and third, Xia's recognition of Mei's fengya ... heritage and the impact of Xia's promotion of Mei's poems on the history of poems in modern studies of Mei's poems. The paper concludes by underscoring the values of Xia's annotations in regard to modern studies of Mei's poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the "bare-handed combat" style (...) to compose poems describing snow was frequently mentioned in works on Song dynasty poetics and it was well received as a creative theory in poetic composition. The gist of this theory is to forbid describing the poems in direct language (...). What was labelled as the "bare-handed combat" style rejected stereotyped expressions, classical precedents, eschewed the current model, differed from the establishment, and stressed creation of outstanding vocabulary: ingenious, innovative and even bizarre. We may call such attempts as "creative destruction" or "revolutionary construction." In the words of the commentators, although these works may have "discarded all the familiar things," or "not allowed to hang on something concrete like an inch of iron," they could still "crisscross the boundaries of the poetic world" and appear "outstanding and glamorous in painstaking poetic construction" and served as antidote to plagiarism. In many ways these efforts revealed the trend of emulating antiquity but making innovative changes of the tradition in Song poetry. This paper will first discuss poems of describing objects close to the real features before the Song dynasty, then examine the change to the practice of "forbidding using words depicting the subject directly" in light of the development in Song poetry. I have chosen from the Complete Song Poetry (...) samples of poem describing snow by using the "bare-handed combat" style, and analyse them accordingly. I have identified four characteristics of this style: avoiding errors and showing correctness, detaching from existing model, emphasizing functional role, and describing features to evoke the spirit. They all conformed to the criteria of "forbidding using words depicting the subject directly." In Song times, in literary gatherings and poetry society meetings scholars customarily exchanged poems; and they often challenged the difficult huddle in writing poetry as pastime. The poet therefore sought to be a winner in innovative ways. In this context, their aspiration was aided by the rise of printing and expanded circulation of books. In their attempt to emulate antiquity but renovate the old ways the Song poets sought to change the methodological approach and the writing style and emphasize on creating new ideas and new vocabulary as their distinctive accomplishment. The "bare- handed combat" style stressed the euphemism of the "twists and turns on the truth" just like the practice of the Caodong school of Chan Buddhism (...), which admonished disciples "not to describe directly about the positive nature" (...). These are illustrative examples of the innovative achievements of the Song writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ye Xiaoluan, the author of literary collection Fansheng xiang (Revival after Death), was a well-known female writer in the late Ming dynasty. She died six days before her wedding day and her death was said to be the result of her studying Buddhism. This paper investigates the cause of Ye Xiaoluan's death by analyzing her history of adoption and the essays written by her family members. Besides using the traditional technique of textual analysis, a psychological explanation on her mental health will also be considered. The conclusion is that Ye Xiaoluan may have died of depression and long term anorexia nervosa because of her rejection to her marriage to Zhang Liping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toward the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, Emperor Xian considered the Hanshu too voluminous and ordered Xun Yue to copy and edit it. Xun Yue summarized Hanshu's contents in the annalistic structure. He started his writing in the third year of Jian'an (198) and finished it in the fifth year of Jian'an (200). Since Xun Yue adapted the Hanshu for his Hanji, which is the first book to set up the intact compilation system of dynastic history presented in a chronological form, attempts have been made to probe the relationship between the Hanshu and the Hanji. Hanji initiated the new annalistic form of chronological Chinese historical classics. Nevertheless, very few scholars have devoted the effort to the study of the relationship among the Shiji, the Hanshu and the Hanji. The present paper aims at examining the above relationship with a view to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the Hanji and to analyse the reference sources of the Hanji through the parallel readings of the Shiji and the Hanji. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing the source materials, this paper, a discussion of various topics such as the ancesters and circle of friends and the works by Gao Kegong, the renowned painter in the Yuan dynasty, will shed light on the following points. The Gao clan, originally from the land of Huihe or Huihu (Uighur) in western Asia, moved eastwards to Fangshan county, Yan prefecture, before the Yuan. Gao Kegong's father, Gao Heng or Gao Jiafu, lived in the home of his wife's father Mr Li after becoming his son-in-law. Li was a shangshu of the "ambulatory" Six Boards of Shanxi province. Later, Kegong moved to Yanjing (Dadu), and became a Confucian scholar under the tutelage of his teacher Hao Jing. Besides inheriting the family's scholarly tradition, Gao Kegong dabbled in poetry and painting. Even before he was appointed a local official in the Jiangnan region, a circle of friends made up of literary scholars from Yanjing was already formed. They include connoisseurs of cultural relics such as Xianyu Shu, Li Kan, Li You, Liang Ceng, Yao Sui, Chang Shiwen, and others. After his arrival in Hangzhou, during the five and eight months when he was out of government service, he endeavoured to refine his painting skill and reaffirm his own style. Because of his extraordinary artistic achievement, people at that time attributed his success to exposure to the "beautiful scenery of Hangzhou" and also to the "outstanding personages and sumptuous environ in Dadu." As a result, his work became a fine model of painting for emulation by admirers in later generations. It is not appropriate to call Gao Kegong a "Huihui painter" or to take him as a Muslim. The scorn of him reported in the works of Zhou Mi, one of his closest friends, makes the readers suspect that he might not be a member of the Islamic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Chinese intellectuals obtained knowledge of political parties during the period from 1856 to 1895. The author presents a discursive history of the "political party" in late Qing, focusing on the construction and resources of this concept. It appears that Chinese intellectuals' knowledge of the "political party" was ambiguous, framed partly in the traditional mode of thinking and differing according to each individual's intellectual capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wenxian tongkao by Ma Duanlin of the Yuan dynasty is a monumental work of scholarship in Chinese historiography. It has invited many discussions among scholars in academic circles. The topics of discussion include Ma Duanlin's historical thought, the composition principles of his opus, its value as a source of history, or the merit of the monograph on Bibliography (Jingji kao); but few attention has been given to the monograph on Historical Comments (Shilun). This paper is focused on the latter topic. In a breakdown of nine sections, it will examine its principle of composition, amendment of historical sources, the perimeter of his historical comments, to be followed by comments on the Bibliography monograph. It will conclude with an assessment of the shortcomings and limitations of this work, and also a discussion of the significance of this work in college teaching in modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connection between the preponderance of the Ming eunuchs under Emperor Yongle and Emperor Xuande and the dispatch of the "treasure ships" in seven epochal maritime expeditions to the Western oceans under the command of admiral Zheng He and his associate Wang Jinghong during the early fifteenth century. Despite a profusion of scholarly literature, Chinese and Western, on diverse aspects of these spectacular voyages, almost none investigate the role played by the eunuchs of the inner court familiar with seafaring. This oversight was evidently due to the fact that since Zheng He and his associates were mostly eunuchs, it was assumed that their activities had already bespoken the eunuch contributions. Moreover, there are few sources that expose the working of the eunuchs in the initiation and management of the expeditions. In several interrelated issues, the author seeks to demonstrate how the court eunuchs, having won their master's confidence and acquired unchecked power, planned and managed the expeditions to fulfil the ambition and desire of the emperor without the knowledge of outsiders. The secrecy of their missions, that they masterminded the operation in the emperor's name and communicated the outcomes only to the emperor and not to the governmental bureaucracies, accounted for many gaps of information on the vicissitudes of the voyages, including the dates of departure and return, the objectives and results of the voyages in the official records. Seen in this light, the contention reported in late Ming works such as Yang Zongjian's Shuyue zhouzhilu or Gu Qiyuan's Kezuo zuiyu that the dearth of official records on these missions was caused by destruction of the archives by later scholar-officials who had decried the extravagant costs of the maritime expeditions and their futility to the national cause could not be valid. The deliberate lowkey reporting of these episodes in the Taizong shilu, the reign records of the Yongle emperor, by official compilers under Xuanzong who sought to deflect criticisms that these treasure seeking maritime adventures and bellicose attitude toward the foreign states to enforce the tributary system violated the ancestral injunctions laid down by the dynastic founder Taizu further obscured their real intentions. The last part of the essay re-evaluates the historical and recently available archaeological evidence for a reconstruction of the life and career of both Zheng He and Wang Jinghong, in particular on how they became eunuch and rose to pre-eminence by serving in the military guards of the future Yongle emperor and campaigning on his behalf in the usurpation of the throne. In the case of Zheng He, attention is focused on his Muslim nobility ancestry in Yunnan since the Mongol era, the origin of his surname Zheng, dates of birth and death, whether or not his remains were brought home for burial after his death in Calicut, and the controversies over the sites of his grave in different locales in Nanjing. In the case of Wang Jingzhong, it introduces solid evidence that his original name was Wang Kuitong, the name "Jingzhong" was invested by Emperor Renzong and was used in the Taizu shilu and subsequent official records; it also examines his seafaring background in Fujian and his career as chief eunuch and commander of the maritime voyages together with Zheng He. It is argued that he was not subordinate to Zheng He but was in fact a co-commander of the armada by contributing his knowledge and experience in navigation. It is significant that he was given a higher profile than Zheng He in the seventeenth-century novel of the maritime voyages Sanbao taijian Xiyangji tongsu yanyi by Luo Maodeng who wrote this work to showcase the might of Chinese sea power in the waning days of the Ming dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did the Han government allow the southern Xiongnu to immigrate into the prefectures on the fringe of the Han border? In this paper we discuss only the financial reasons of the Han empire's policy on this issue. The nomad economy of the Xiongnu was not self-sufficient. They depended on the supply of the agricultural society of the Han empire in several ways. First, the Xiongnu raided the Han border prefectures and took the ration and other goods. Second, the Han emperor offered consorts to the Xiongnu chieftains when the latter surrendered and were recognized as the subject of the former. Third, the Han emperor made payment of cash and goods to the Xiongnu when the latter was strong and the former wanted peace. The Han government had to pay the Xiongnu whatever they asked to maintain peaceful relations. The only way the Han government avoided payment to the Xiongnu was to wage war, defeat the Xiongnu and chase them far away from the border. But the cost of war deemed too expensive. In the beginning of the Eastern Han, the southern Xiongnu surrendered to the Han emperor. The Han government settled them in the regions inside the border, and kept them under surveillance. The government considered that this was the best way to handle the matter financially, though the emperor still gave a large sum of valuable gifts annually to the Chief of the southern Xiongnu, and provided the tribesmen with economic assistance in their difficult times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kuang Zhouyi, one of the most outstanding lyric poets and critics of the Qing dyansty, has aroused heated discussions in recent years. Like most traditional Chinese critiques, Kuang's comments generally take the form of short remarks, approximating the expression of momentary feelings. As a result, even though much effort has been put on explaining Kuang's core concepts: zhong ..., zhuo ..., and da ..., they still incur doubts among modem readers. This paper aims at clarifying the nature and meanings of the three concepts by tracing their origins, studying Kuang's original text and examining opinions of various scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xue Xuan (1389-1464) was the first Ming Neo-Confucian to be enshrined in the Temple to Confucius during the Ming. It took his supporters more than a century to achieve that, and this paper divides the process into three different stages. Initial failures during the first stage forced supporters to compromise with a specialised local shrine for Xue. The second stage saw members from the rival Wang Yangming School sharing the goal of enshrining Xue with Xue's supporters. Wang's students joined the effort with an unspoken agenda: to pave the way for Wang's inclusion. Furthermore, the short-lived alliance and consensus between Xue's supporters and Wang's disciples in the discussion of 1540 was crucial in changing the paradigm for evaluating Confucians as worthy of enshrinement. Without this change in paradigm, Ming Confucians would have had rhetorical difficulty awarding the honour to one of their own during the dynasty. In the end, with intense competition between the Cheng-Zhu adherents (including Xue's supporters) and Wang's school, politics played an important role in the final stage. The alliance at this last stage was complex, not only were political allies involved; people also rallied behind the cause because of common philosophical inclination, regional pride, and family histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war put China in great financial difficulties, pressing China into asking for military and monetary assistance from the international communities. But without enough foreign currencies for repayment, the Chinese government resorted to barter trade (...), an ancient mode of commodity exchange, which came into full swing as time went by. First with U.S.S.R. and later with the U.S. and U.K., this mode of trading provided loan and assistance to China during the war. In particular, the barter trade with the Soviet Union at the early stage of the war had played a crucial role in the Chinese government's effort in seeking foreign aid to fight against the enemy. This paper focuses on how China supplied goods to U.S.S.R. through barter trade in accordance with the agreement. It examines the produce (such as Chinese wood oil, tea leaves, bristles, raw silk, and wool) that were purchased and distributed as a whole by the Fu Hua Trading Co. (...), China National Tea Co. (...) and the Foo Shing Trading Co. (...) under the purview of the Foreign Trade Commission (...). Drawing on original documents of the aforementioned companies, public archives, and reviewing previous literature, the author discusses in detail the negotiation process and contents between China and U.S.S.R., organization and evolution of the trade committee, the quantity, price, means and routes of transportation of the traded produce. They are followed by an in-depth analysis of the effects and problems of the barter trade between China and U.S.S.R. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the history of Zhiben Hall in Dafan village in Huizhou prefecture in the Yuan-Ming transition period and describes the trend of Confucian transformation of local cults in this area. The Zhiben Hall built by Wang Tong and his brother Wang Rui, two famous local 61ites in Wuyuan sub-prefecture, based on an old temple of a local god of war named Duan Gong. In Zhiben Hall the god Duan Gong was pictured as a Confucianized figure, Wang Pen, who can be located in the lineage of the Wang's in Dafan village and whose story can be traced in Xin'an zhi, the first official annals of this area. The transformation of Duan Gong from a god to an ancestor marked the initiation of lineage building in this area and reflected the remodification of social ideal borne by those local 61ites such as the Wang's brothers. This new tendency, furthermore, was accompanied with the wide spread of Neo-Confucianism in Huizhou prefecture from the late Yuan to early Ming times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the Chinese viewed all foreigners as inferior and uncivilized barbarians, concept that was formulated almost two thousand years ago. The Manchu, who established the Qing dynasty, likewise looked at the Westerners in the same manner when they first encountered them. This caused a lot of diplomatic issues. It was not until the second defeat on the Chinese side by the British in 1860 that the Qing rulers agreed to write into the peace treaty that they would not use the term "barbarians" to refer to the Westerners. However, it took several decades more before the average Chinese fully recognized that there were things to learn from the West. One question they often raised with their teeth gnashing was: "Why should we learn from the barbarians?" The present paper takes up cases of several officials and thinkers in their attempts to urge the introduction of Western ideas through translation in the 1840s-1860s. It demonstrates how the traditional Chinese view towards the foreigners has been a determining factor in the translation of Western works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]