Setting Moon and Rising Nationalism: Lugou Bridge as Monument and Memory

This paper examines Beijing’s Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge) in terms of monument and memory. With 800 years of history to its credit, this structure carries with it a select set of textual memories passed down from one dynasty to the next, and finally into the 20th century when its traditional associations of architectural and natural beauty were supplemented by its modern association with the beginning of the Anti‐Japanese War of Resistance (Second World War in China). With the opening of Sino‐Japanese diplomacy in the 1970s, the Chinese authorities began to accredit further significance to the bridge as a site of Chinese indignation over Japan’s perceived refusal to take responsibility for its wartime aggression. This point was driven home most forcefully through the construction of the Anti‐Japanese War Memorial Hall in 1985, and the continuing use of the site as a tool of diplomacy. Lugou Bridge, therefore, serves to demonstrate how political authority and cultural nationalism are constructed through the continuing appropriation of monumental artefacts and traditions.     

马可波罗上都之旅考述

国内外学者对马可波罗来华旅程众说纷纭,莫衷一是。本文在前人研究基础之上,对《马可波罗寰宇记》所载首个隶属忽必烈汗之地——可失合儿至元上都期间若干地名、史实、马可波罗旅行路线进行了详细考述,总结出《马可波罗寰宇记》存在一种暂时偏离马可波罗旅程正途,而插述与之邻近或甚远地区的编排体例。     

Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century

Henricus Martellus's four world maps of c.1489 show a non‐existent Asian peninsula east of the Aurea Chersonesus (the Malay peninsula). For some decades a group of scholars in Latin America has been claiming that this so‐called ‘Dragon's Tail’ peninsula is really a pre‐Columbian map of South America. In this paper, the cartographical and place‐name evidence is examined, showing that the identification has not been proved, and that perceived similarities between the river and coastal outlines on this ‘Dragon's Tail’ peninsula and those of South America are fortuitous. Ptolemy's depiction of an enclosed Indian Ocean was invalidated when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Consequently, a year or two later, Martellus adapted the east Asian section of Ptolemy's world map, providing China with an east coast and turning the southward extension of Asia into a peninsula. The non‐Ptolemaic place‐names on these maps were derived from Marco Polo's writings.     

对《马可波罗游记》Bangala史实的考释

《马可波罗游记》对Bangala的记载多有疏漏讹误之处,国内外学者对Bangala的考释众说纷纭,而在马可波罗出使云南时是否到过Bangala问题上尚有较大争议。笔者发现《马可波罗游记》并未记载缅城至Bangala的日程,从而对学界较为流行的马可波罗出使Bangala说提出了质疑。本文以《马可波罗寰宇记》及《马可波罗注》为主要参考依据,在前人研究的基础上考证出Bangala即孟加拉,而马可波罗并没有到过其地,并指出了《〈马可波罗行纪〉云南史地丛考》所谓马可波罗1287年出使Bangala说值得商榷之处。