The first works of Chinese vernacular fiction available in the West were published 1735,when the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde compiled translations of three pieces of Chinese vernacular fiction from Jingu qigu...The first works of Chinese vernacular fiction available in the West were published 1735,when the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde compiled translations of three pieces of Chinese vernacular fiction from Jingu qiguan(Marvels Ancient and Modern).These were later translated into English in The General History of China(1736)edited by John Watts.The three stories are"Lu Dalang gives money to re-unite his family","Zhuangzi bangs a drum and becomes an immortal",and"The bad servant sues his master because of a private grudge".The stories are framed by a dual purpose:they were a means to understand the nature of Chinese society,and they were also a pivot in the changing views of China.The moral content of the stories is played out in ambiguous ways,varying between simplistic moral lessons of good and bad rewards for good and bad deeds,and a more amoral tone.展开更多
Female Generals of the Yang Family,a fictional opera from Chinese history,tells the story of the Yang family's female generals safeguarding their homeland and the drama that ensues.The popular opera is performed r...Female Generals of the Yang Family,a fictional opera from Chinese history,tells the story of the Yang family's female generals safeguarding their homeland and the drama that ensues.The popular opera is performed regularly in Beijing by the China National Peking Opera Co. Peking Opera was inscribed.on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.展开更多
This essay explores different seventeenth-century accounts of the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644--Chinese vernacular novels and literati memoirs, Jesuit histories, and Dutch poetry and plays--to investigate a develo...This essay explores different seventeenth-century accounts of the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644--Chinese vernacular novels and literati memoirs, Jesuit histories, and Dutch poetry and plays--to investigate a developing notion of openness in both Europe and China. In Europe, the idea of openness helped to construct an early-modern global order based on the free flow of material goods, religious beliefs, and shared information. In these accounts, China＇s supposed refusal to open itself to the world came to represent Europe＇s Other, an obstacle to the liberal global order. In doing so, however, European accounts drew on Chinese popular sources that similarly embraced openness, albeit openness of a different kind, that is the direct and unobstructed communication between ruler and subject. This is not to say that Chinese late-Ming accounts of the fall of the Ming are the source of European ideals of liberalism, but rather to suggest that, at a crucial early-modern moment of globalization, European authors misapprehended late-Ming ideals of enlightened imperial rule so as to consolidate their own worldview, foreclosing late-Ming ideals in the process.展开更多
基金the staged achievement of the National Social Science Fund of China(国家社科基金青年项目No:15CZW023)
文摘The first works of Chinese vernacular fiction available in the West were published 1735,when the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde compiled translations of three pieces of Chinese vernacular fiction from Jingu qiguan(Marvels Ancient and Modern).These were later translated into English in The General History of China(1736)edited by John Watts.The three stories are"Lu Dalang gives money to re-unite his family","Zhuangzi bangs a drum and becomes an immortal",and"The bad servant sues his master because of a private grudge".The stories are framed by a dual purpose:they were a means to understand the nature of Chinese society,and they were also a pivot in the changing views of China.The moral content of the stories is played out in ambiguous ways,varying between simplistic moral lessons of good and bad rewards for good and bad deeds,and a more amoral tone.
文摘Female Generals of the Yang Family,a fictional opera from Chinese history,tells the story of the Yang family's female generals safeguarding their homeland and the drama that ensues.The popular opera is performed regularly in Beijing by the China National Peking Opera Co. Peking Opera was inscribed.on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.
文摘This essay explores different seventeenth-century accounts of the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644--Chinese vernacular novels and literati memoirs, Jesuit histories, and Dutch poetry and plays--to investigate a developing notion of openness in both Europe and China. In Europe, the idea of openness helped to construct an early-modern global order based on the free flow of material goods, religious beliefs, and shared information. In these accounts, China＇s supposed refusal to open itself to the world came to represent Europe＇s Other, an obstacle to the liberal global order. In doing so, however, European accounts drew on Chinese popular sources that similarly embraced openness, albeit openness of a different kind, that is the direct and unobstructed communication between ruler and subject. This is not to say that Chinese late-Ming accounts of the fall of the Ming are the source of European ideals of liberalism, but rather to suggest that, at a crucial early-modern moment of globalization, European authors misapprehended late-Ming ideals of enlightened imperial rule so as to consolidate their own worldview, foreclosing late-Ming ideals in the process.
