The Civil Examination System in Late Imperial China, 1400-1900

Scholars often contend that civil examinations were what made imperial China a political meritocracy. They point to the examination system to show that the selection process served more as a common training program for literati than as a gate-keeper to keep non-elites out. Despite the symbiotic relations between the court and its literati, the emperor played the final card in the selection process. The asymmetrical relations between the throne and its elites nevertheless empowered elites to seek upward mobility as scholar-officials through the system. But true social mobility, peasants becoming officials, was never the goal of state policy in late imperial China; a modest level of social circulation was an unexpected consequence of the meritocratic civil service. Moreover, the meri^t-based bureaucracy never broke free of its dependence on an authoritarian imperial system. A modem political system might be more compatible with meritocracy, however. One of the unintended consequences of the civil examinations was creation of classically literate men （and women）, who used their linguistic talents for a variety of non-official purposes, from literati physicians to local pettifoggers, from fiction-writers to examination essay teachers, from Buddhist and Daoist monks to mothers and daughters. If there was much social mobility, i.e., the opportunity for members of the lower classes to rise in the social hierarchy, it was likely here. Rather than ＂social mobility,＂ this phenomenon might be better described as a healthy ＂circulation＂ of lower and upper elites when compared to aristocratic Europe and Japan.

Publishing and Medicine:A Potentially Integrated Field?

This article focuses on the intersection of English-language scholarship between the history of publishing and the history of medicine in Imperial China.As an important part of cultural and social history,both topics have attracted attention from a number of historians.This article contains three sections.The first section introduces the evolution of Chinese book and publishing history in recent years and examines what book historians have done in relation to traditional Chinese medicine.The second section explores how medical historians have considered the role of printing in the history of Chinese medicine and the ways in which medical publications were used as primary sources or subjects of research.The third section explores scholarship on medical epistemic genres,a subfield of medical history,in Chinese medicine,specifically focusing on medical case histories and recipes from the comparative and cross-cultural perspectives.Finally,the conclusion explores potential future directions from the integration of Chinese publishing history and medical history.

The Nature and Impact of Late Imperial Chinese Academies:A Review of Some Recent Publications in China

This review essay analyzes the historiography of Confucian academies(shuyuan)in imperial China,focusing on five representative books published in China between 2008 and 2014,including two new editions of books originally published in 1995 and 2004.The five authors share a deep concern about the nature of academies,particularly their relationship with the state.A secondary theme that these books address is the impact that academies had on late imperial Chinese culture and society.Read together,these five works show how research on academies in imperial China has evolved over the past two decades.

Cattle Slaughter Industry in Qing China:State Ban,Muslim Dominance,and the Western Diet

Cattle slaughter and beef consumption are barely mentioned in the literature on Chinese economic,food,or animal history.This is possibly due to the widely held popular and scholarly assumption that beef was avoided and even considered taboo in the daily diet of Chinese people in premodern times.This article investigates the tangible regulation and practice of cattle slaughter in Qing China—the period when the beef taboo was argued to be formally subsumed into Chinese morality.I ask the following questions:To what extent did the Qing state ban cattle slaughter?How was the ban enforced in the localities?Did Chinese people slaughter cattle for consumption?Were there lawful beef markets in Qing China proper?How did increasing beef-eating Western sojourners since the mid-19th century impact this sector?Accordingly,I demonstrate that with the leeway provided by the state,the cattle slaughter industry developed in many regions of China proper,especially large cities.In this sector,Chinese Muslim merchants played a dominant role,even though the Han merchants could outnumber them.Their efforts have prepared the state and Chinese merchants to better cope with new circumstances since the mid-19th century.Broadly,this paper sheds light on how different religious,ethnic,and national groups affected the economy and the practice of law in the Qing dynasty.

Writing Her Way through the Legend of Yue Fei： Zhou Yingfang and Jing zhong zhuan

General Yue Fei has long been considered a symbol of loyalty and resistance in Chinese history. His legend has been circulating in various forms since the twelfth century. In the context of the emerging women-authored tanci narratives and the political disorder of late 19th century China, this article examines how the gentry woman author Zhou Yingfang （1829-95） enriches the narratives of Yue Fei by inserting a number of domestic themes into her tanci adaptation. She redefines the virtues of both genders and expects transformed family dynamics. In considering scholarly interpretations of the tanci in the modem period, this article also argues that the May Fourth scholars tended to neglect and/or suppress Zhou Yingfang＇s gendered consciousness in her alternative imagination of history.