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
Traditional Chinese culture covers a variety of ethical principles and behavioral norms that have arisen from thousands of years of Chinese social life to handle interpersonal relationships in an appropriate way. Such...Traditional Chinese culture covers a variety of ethical principles and behavioral norms that have arisen from thousands of years of Chinese social life to handle interpersonal relationships in an appropriate way. Such principles and norms are a typical expression of Chinese people＇s wisdom in the analysis of their surroundings. However, traditional Chinese culture also contains some poisonous thinking that has been carefully nurtured by feudal rulers to maintain their power. In the practice of the great social changes of pre-1949 China, after repeated experience, people gained a relatively clear and comprehensive understanding of traditional Chinese culture： it should neither be totally affirmed nor totally rejected. Rather, we should analyze it concretely, endeavoring to separate the dross from the essence. In late Qing and Republican China, traditional culture was continuously handed on and renewed, and this process will be carried on and on.展开更多
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.
文摘Traditional Chinese culture covers a variety of ethical principles and behavioral norms that have arisen from thousands of years of Chinese social life to handle interpersonal relationships in an appropriate way. Such principles and norms are a typical expression of Chinese people＇s wisdom in the analysis of their surroundings. However, traditional Chinese culture also contains some poisonous thinking that has been carefully nurtured by feudal rulers to maintain their power. In the practice of the great social changes of pre-1949 China, after repeated experience, people gained a relatively clear and comprehensive understanding of traditional Chinese culture： it should neither be totally affirmed nor totally rejected. Rather, we should analyze it concretely, endeavoring to separate the dross from the essence. In late Qing and Republican China, traditional culture was continuously handed on and renewed, and this process will be carried on and on.
