The Conservation Department of the National Museum of Chinese History

TheConservationDepartmentofNationalMuseumofChineseHistoryisanorganiza-tionspecializedontheresearchandpracticeofconservationscienceandtechnology.Itcom-prisesthreelaboratoriesofconservation,utensilrestorationandpaintingrestoration,with30scientistsandtechnicians.Thedepartmentwasestablishedin1952.Intheperiodofmorethan40years,thede-partmentcarriedontheworkofconservationscienceandtechnologyinall-roundway,withtheaimofpreservingtheculturalrelicsofhumanbeings,thedispositionoflayingequalstressonbothba…     

The Chinese–Korean co-production pact: collaborative encounters and the accelerating expansion of Chinese cinema

Official film co-production treaties are designed by policymakers to stimulate a range of collaborations, technology transfers, and joint funding initiatives in the industry. Since July 2004, the Chinese government has used this top-down approach to cultural diplomacy as a symbolic tool for advancing Chinese cinema and opening the domestic market to a host of willing international partners. Korean filmmakers in particular have exploited the (often informal) opportunities presented, engaging in vigorous cooperation with Chinese colleagues across all sectors of the production ecosystem. The continuing flow of Chinese–Korean transnational film encounters, underpinned by influential personal networks, resulted in the signing of a formal China–Korea co-production agreement in July 2014. To examine the efficacy of this policy intervention, this article analyzes the diversity of film collaboration that preceded this agreement and its impact on transnational filmmaking in China. It investigates the strategies used in the remaking of Korean auteur Lee Man Hee’s 1966 melodrama Late Autumn (2010), technical innovation in the VFX-heavy Mr. Go (2013), and the making of mega-distributor CJ E&M’s romance drama A Wedding Invitation (2013) to illustrate how Korean firms and practitioners are expanding the commercial entertainment boundaries of Chinese cinema. In so doing, it also reveals how Chinese film companies are enabling the Korean film industry to internationalize its approach to overseas markets beyond the kind of conspicuous policy initiatives tailored for a globalized cultural economy.     

Jean-François Foucquet's Contribution to the Establishment of Chinese Book Collections in European Libraries: Circulation of Chinese Books

This article focuses on the circulation of Chinese books by looking at the books which François Foucquet carried from China to Europe. By examining different “booklists,” it investigates how books circulated not only from one concrete place to another, but also through different “lists”: bookseller lists, transportation lists, cataloguing lists, lists of forgotten books, or quotation lists. In addition, by linking the various catalogues and book lists to the holdings of European libraries and, in turn, Foucquet's library to the other systematic transfers of books from China to Europe, this study reconstructs the “communication circuit” of a library. This reconstruction is an “intercultural” communication circuit, which runs from the Chinese bookseller over the shipper to the European reader. On the basis of this analysis, this article shows the important role Foucquet and other Europeans played in a new epoch of interest in Chinese culture: the constitution of Chinese libraries in Europe.     

Historiography and Chinese modernity—A study of the historiographical ideas of Li Dazhao

ABSTRACT

In search of modernity in China, history played a crucial role. Many leading intellectuals in modern China were historians and/or historical thinkers. Despite his untimely death, Li Dazhao was particularly important. Among his cohorts, Li was arguably the first one who paid close attention to the need for the Chinese to change their views of the past and accept Darwinism as a new historical outlook. That Li later became an avowed Marxist also had a good deal to do with his belief in Darwinism or evolutionism. He was fully convinced that history moves along a linear progressive path, which enabled him and many others to argue the necessity of changing China for the modern. In a word, the acceptance of historical evolutionism paved the way for the commitment to modernity by the Chinese.     

Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy: The Intriguing Contrast of Chinese and European Theism

The Chinese rites controversy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been often studied, but hitherto mostly as a quasi-linguistic-and-technical dispute between the followers of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the Jesuit China mission, and his many different enemies in the Catholic Church. In reality the involved debate was much more complex than that at every turn. To show this and more, this article takes a close look again at how and why Chinese terms and customs came to figure in Ricci's proselytising work in China, how they were challenged both inside and outside the Jesuit China mission, how the Chinese reacted and why, and what the debate revealed about the intriguing contrast of Chinese and European theism.     

THE GUARDIANS OF THE HOLY LAKE——A Record of the Observations of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Stationed in the Lake Namtso

<正>In July of 2005,the holy lake Namtso welcomed several special guests who were subsequently stationed there to start a long-term observation of the Lake.They were to carefully watch changes around the lake,including the glaciers,rivers and plants in the peripheral area.To date,they have been stationed there for about four years and achieved much in terms of collecting valuable information from their observations of Lake Namtso and Mts.Nyangchen Thanglha.     

The non‐identical Chinese twins: Traditional China and Chinese Yankees at the centennial exposition of 1876

Six years before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Americans gazed at China through an elaborate exhibit brought to the Centennial Exposition. ‘Orientalists’ praised the exotic beauty of the objects and the sophistication of the Chinese attendants, but they were enamored only with Chinese high culture. In contrast, ‘Progressives’ saw the exhibit as proof of China's stubborn refusal to enter the modern world. When 113 Chinese boys studying in New England schools toured the exposition, Orientalist and Progressive opinions converged. Both groups agreed that these boys demonstrated the requisite intellectual ability and cultural refinement to undergo the Americanization process successfully. By revealing this critical link between citizenship and class (comprising education, status, and professional achievement), reactions to the Chinese presence at the exposition shed light on the widespread movement to curtail Chinese immigration.     

Echoes of tradition: Liang Qichao’s reflections on the Italian Risorgimento and the construction of Chinese nationalism

This paper examines how Liang Qichao viewed the Italian Risorgimento, with the focus on his reflections on its meanings in the historical contexts of Chinese politics and tradition. It will identify and analyze the many forces and ideas that influenced Liang as he formulated his reflections, especially the timing around the turn of the twentieth century and the discourses of nascent nationalism in Japan where Liang lived in exile. The way Liang created – or recreated – the Italian story demonstrated that the Chinese had finally begun to realize a crucial point about the building of a modern nation. While Britain, the United States, and France were able to build a modern nation by starting from the grass roots and more closely observing Enlightenment ideals, China did not have the luxury or the time to follow the same path. In the age of high imperialism, the weak would simply be weeded out quickly. Without national salvation, there could be no modern nation. National salvation, as exemplified by the Risorgimento, involved maintaining and glorifying the country’s own traditions and core values, which would in turn unify different social segments. Liang and his fellow reformers realized the importance of having simultaneously a national cause, a single political party, and a single leader, instead of having to take separate steps toward awakening. Liang’s awakening paved the way for the unfolding of the great Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century, led first by the Kuomintang and then by the Communists. Following Liang’s track of thinking, they both strived to build – or rebuild – a political centralism.     

Yangjiao or the ��Other��? Christianity and Chinese society in the second half of the nineteenth century

This article explores the relationship between Christianity and Chinese society in the second half of the nineteenth century by re-examining the primary sources of anti-Christian movements. The first part shows how Christian churches broke the dominance of the Qing government over local society. Conflicts between Christianity and Chinese religion were often transformed into political confrontations between churches and the Qing bureaucracy. The second part analyzes how Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism interpreted Christianity, with an emphasis on how to understand the perception of Christianity in Chinese society. Exploring broader societal perceptions of Christianity—and not just those expressed in the writings of the Confucian literati—allows for a more nuanced understanding of Chinese interpretations of Christianity. The third part studies the relationship between churches and Chinese religious sects. On the one hand, in the language of anti-Christian movements such as those of the Zaili and Cai sects, Christianity was the hateful “Other.” On the other hand, in the process of preaching Christianity, churches themselves experienced a period of transmutation: they recruited into the church not only non-religious civilians but also the followers of popular religions. For a long period, Christianity was called yangjiao, the “foreign religion,” making it the “Other.” Missionaries started to feel an urgency to reject their identity as the “Other” after the harrowing experience of the Boxer Movement.     

Chinese capitalism at the crossroads?

China's 30 years of reform are often presented as a seamless progression towards greater liberalization and opening up. This review article of Yasheng Huang's Capitalism with Chinese characteristics shows how the author makes a compelling argument about how radically China's economic reforms changed from before and after the Tiananmen Square incident in June 1989. The 1980s saw the pro-rural, largely equitable, and generally liberal economic policies, with a private sector able to find sources of capital from family or relationship networks, and the creation of a very flexible and largely unplanned town and village enterprise system across China. From the 1990s, however, China has been dominated by pro-urban, less equitable and much more heavily state-led economic policies. Shanghai exemplifies this, with a highly circumscribed non-state sector, stagnation of per capita GDP growth in favour of company growth, and the Pudong development area largely based on land grab, and disrespect for the private property rights of the former tenant farmers based there. China grapples with the legacy of this policy change in 1989 to this day, with an increasingly disenfranchised and impoverished rural population, and cities that are both unsustainable, but irrevocable.     

The evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's policy on the bourgeoisie (1949–1952)

From its very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a shifting policy towards the bourgeoisie. Until the early 1940s, it maintained a relatively stable policy which successfully isolated the monied classes in China and helped it overthrow the rule of the KMT. But with the establishment of the new regime, the CCP Central Committee came under conflicting pressures: on the one hand it continued its former policy out of political expediency; on the other hand, based on traditional socialist political theory and Soviet experience, it kept a close watch on the bourgeoisie and even proposed targeting them as the chief enemy of next revolution. After the establishment of the PRC, as a result of the failing economy and the new government's lack of economic support and political experience, the CCP firmed up its policies on the bourgeoisie. However, with the bourgeoisie and capitalism still prominent elements in Chinese society, the communists became uncertain about which direction to take. As the CCP Central Committee had anticipated, officials of both the party and the government often gave way to corruption after taking over major cities. The Central Committee regarded this particular combination of money and power as a “violent attack” against the new communist regime by the bourgeoisie as a whole. In order to tighten its grip on national power, the Central Committee launched two anti‐corruption movements known as the Three‐Antis and the Five‐Antis. These movements were in fact aimed at the bourgeoisie as a whole, and succeeded in destroying the basis for capitalist business in the New China. Encouraged by this outcome, the CCP launched a policy of socialist transformation aimed at depriving Chinese capitalists of their means of production. Thus the CCP gradually and inevitably moved away from its original policy of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie.     

A Study of Chinese College Students’ View on the Latest Network Catchwords

随着网络技术的迅猛发展,人们对网络的研究也风生水起。互联网是一个虚拟社区,它和现实社会有着直接的割不断的联系。在虚拟社区中,人与人交往离不开网络语言。本文主要研究中国大学生对网络流行语的态度并总结了网络语言的发展前景。     

Chinese Objects in Eurasian Empire: On the Cultural Meaning of Chinese Art in Russia in the Late 17th–Early 18th Centuries

This article examines special features of “Chinoiserie” or “Chinese fashion” (“Kitaischina”) in Russia from the late 17th to the early 18th century: The reign of Peter the First. It discusses this cultural phenomenon’s historical origins, demonstrates the role of Chinese luxury goods and art objects in the era’s Russo-Chinese cultural exchange, and illustrates how Chinese decorative arts were used in Russian palaces. While Chinoiserie in Russia was influenced by similar trends in Western Europe, it was rooted in the unique history of regular contacts between Russia and the Qing Empire. Chinese objects not only appeared as commodities in the higher levels of Russian society, they also contributed to the prestige of the Russian state. Peter the First had a political purpose behind the collection, display and imitation of Chinese art objects in Russian palaces, as these practices demonstrated the growing wealth and power of newly established Russian Empire, which enjoyed trade connections with the Qing Empire. While contemporary perceptions of China in Russia were derived mostly by the exotic images of export art, ethnographic collections of genuine Chinese utensils, which were founded during that period, also contributed to Russian views of China. This research uses a comprehensive methodology, combining studies of material objects preserved in Russian museums and written sources, including archival records.     

“Who Is Reciting the Name of the Buddha?” as Gongan in Chinese Chan Buddhism

Chan Buddhism’s ambivalent relationship with language and literature is perhaps most starkly seen in its practice of gongan meditation. This practice was first instituted by the famous Linji master Dahui and involves an intense meditational focus on the “punch line” (huatou) of what is typically a story about an ancient Chan master or an enigmatic question like “why did [the legendary founder of Chan] Bodhidharma come from the West?” In the Ming dynasty, a new gongan became widely used in Chan meditation: the phrase “who is reciting the name of the Buddha?” This was a reference to the widespread practice of chanting homage to the Buddha Amitābha in hope of getting reborn into his paradise. In using this new gongan, Chan seemingly embraced oral practice in an unprecedented move and appeared to combine the other-power of Amitābha worship with the self-power of Chan meditation. Scholars have struggled to understand this development, and several have dismissed it as an example of the degeneration of Chan and its later pandering to lay people. I argue that the development of this gongan can best be seen as an attempt to reframe the practice of Buddha-recitation in a Chan meditative framework; and further explore the rationale for the practice as given by the influential Buddhist thinker Yunqi Zhuhong, who was a staunch advocate of Buddha-recitation.     

Wading into the stream of Chinese life: the life and missionary career of Roderick Scott in China, 1916–1949

The legacy of Western Christian missionaries to China during the early twentieth century has often been debated by historians, being judged both positively and negatively. Yet, the truth is usually more complex. In examining the lives of Roderick and Agnes Scott, two American missionaries and educators who were active in Fuzhou from 1916–1949, the historian can see how the interaction between Western Christianity and Chinese culture played out in at least one instance, and observe how one American couple developed a growing affinity for the Chinese people and their culture, which gradually led them to the role of interpreters and advocates on behalf of the Chinese during and following World War II. Yet the papers of Roderick Scott also provide examples of the complex relationship between the Chinese and resident foreigners during these years. They document the rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in the 1920s, the debates over the Sinicization of western institutions in the years that followed, the solidarity displayed by foreign missionaries toward the Chinese during the years of the Sino–Japanese War, and their great reluctance to leave China following the revolution of 1949.     

From Tongbo Village to Widow Village—The Legacy of the Chinese Civil War

Located on Dongshan Island,off the coast of Fujian province,is a typical rural village called Tongbo.On May 10,1950,147 men were abducted by the KMT army on its way to Taiwan.Since a majority of the men were already married,overnight,their wives became "widows," and most would remain so for the rest of their lives.Consequently,Tongbo village became more widely known as Widow Village.The first objective of this paper is to document the tragic experiences of men and women in Tongbo village,focusing on these forced separations in 1950,the possibility of reunion after 1987,and the struggle to cope with the difficulties in between.The second objective of this paper is to argue that while heartbreaking,the experiences of this village are not extraordinary in the context of the Chinese Civil War.What made the men and women in Tongbo extraordinary is not their collective suffering,but how these villagers suffered less,not more,than in many other places,because of the actions of three key figures.