Sources in Chinese History

Diverse Perspectives from 1644 to the Present

David Atwill, Yurong Atwill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429560347
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Sources in Chinese History, now in its second edition, has been updated to include re-translations of over a third of the documents. It also incorporates nearly 40 new sources that work to familiarize readers with the key events, personages, and themes of modern China.

Organized thematically, the volume examines China's complex history from the rise of the Qing dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century through the formation of the People's Republic of China up to the present. Each chapter begins with an annotated visual source followed by a chapter introduction and analysis of textual sources, allowing students to explore different types of sources and topics. Sources in Chinese History contextualizes the issues, trends, and challenges of each particular period. Special attention has been made to incorporate a variety of viewpoints which challenge standard accounts. Non-traditional documents, such as movie dialogues, are also included which aim to encourage students to reconsider historical events and trends in Chinese history.

This volume includes a variety of sources, such as maps, posters, film scripts, memorials, and political cartoons and advertisements, that make this book the perfect introductory aid for students of Chinese history, politics, and culture, as well as Chinese studies after 1600.

part 1

Late Imperial China (1644–1911)

TIMELINE

WORLD		CHINA
	1368–1644	Ming dynasty
British East India Company established	1600
	1644	Qing dynasty founded
	1692	Kangxi issues Edict of Toleration
	1720	Gonghang guild system established
Papal bull ends Jesuit mission in China	1740s
	c. 1740	Pu Songling’s Strange Tales first published
	1757	All Western trade restricted to Guangzhou
Boston Tea Party	1799
	1799	Qianlong emperor dies and Heshen sentenced to death
	c. 1805	Shen Fu publishes Six Chapters of a Floating Life
Queen Victoria ascends British throne	1837
	1839–1842	Opium War
	1842	Treaty of Nanjing
Communist Manifesto published	1848
	1851–1864	Taiping Rebellion
	1860	Convention of Beijing signed/Yuanming Yuan burned
American Civil War	1861–1865
	1861	Zongli Yamen founded
	1865	Jiangnan Arsenal created
Japan’s Meiji Restoration	1868
	1884–1885	Sino-French War
	1894–1895	Sino-Japanese War
	1898	Hundred Days Reform
	1900	Boxer Uprising
	1905	Sun Yat-sen forms Revolutionary Alliance
Henry Ford builds first Model T	1908	Cixi and Guangxu Emperor die
	1911	Wuchang Uprising
	1912	Republic of China established

chapter 1

Early to Mid-Qing

1. SHUNTIAN (BEIJING) EXAMINATION HALL: The Shuntian Examination Hall (first built in the early Ming dynasty [1368–1644]) had more than 50 rows of low buildings with over 17,000 examination cells. It was one of the largest in the whole of China (only Nanjing’s was larger). The larger buildings behind the gate at the center and upper portion of the compound were walled off and separated from the rest of the compound and were where the administrative staff and officials (who graded the exams) resided.

2. EXAMINATION SYSTEM: Using exams to select imperial officials began in China as early as 165 BCE. A three-tier system with each tier conferring to a more prestigious degree (and access to a higher office) began around 1370. The examination hall shown here held the provincial level (juren) exams. While the notion of an examination to select officials may sound quite conventional, the first record of any similar civil service exams in European countries did not occur until the early eighteenth century.

3. EXAMINATION CELLS: Each cell contained two boards that could be arranged to form a bench, a table, and a bed. The cell itself was a little over three feet wide and four feet deep. When sitting, they faced north toward the front to allow guards to monitor their actions. Given the open nature of the cells, the exam experience was highly dependent upon the weather.

4. LIFE and DEATH WITHIN THE EXAMS: Typically held in early autumn, the exams were often hot, dirty, and uncomfortable affairs. Exam candidates, upon arriving at the examination hall, had to provide proof of their identity and status (to prevent others from taking the exam in their place). With the stress and minimal amenities, it is no surprise that candidates (some were in their 60s and 70s) died during the exam. In such cases, their bodies were wrapped, labeled with their name, and thrown over the wall for municipal authorities to collect and notify their next of kin.

5. CHEATING: Despite the many efforts to prevent cheating, there are many stories of examinees bringing in cheat sheets, study aids, and other guides to help them construct their “eight-legged essays” (1.1). Those caught cheating would be dismissed and forbidden from taking the exam for the next two cycles, which for many students would mean the end of their dreams of ever becoming an official. Equally, to prevent collusion between local exam takers and exam graders, no local officials were allowed to serve as graders.

6. A TYPICAL DAY AT THE EXAMS: The question for the day would be received at 10 a.m. The exam candidates would remain in their cells until dusk writing a draft 600–700 characters long and then carefully copy out a final version. Simply copying the essay in the correct and elegant calligraphic style could, even for a rapid writer, take many hours. After handing in their exam papers, they would be provided with a meal and then attempt to get a night’s rest in preparation for the next day’s exam (the exam would usually have at least three days of testing).

Walking along Beijing’s trendy downtown shopping district today, there is little to distinguish it from a modern Western city. Glass-faced office buildings dominate the skyline, and popular American restaurant chains, such as Pizza Hut, KFC, and Starbucks, crowd the main streets. Given these superficial similarities, one might assume that modern China is unconcerned with its own past in its race to adopt the global trends of the twenty-first century. Yet this illusion is quickly dispelled by the imposing presence of the Forbidden City in the very center of the city. As the former residence of the Qing emperors (1644–1911), the Forbidden City occupies over 250 acres of prime real estate in downtown Beijing. Now a museum, the 600-year-old palace is a sprawling complex of some 800 halls and 9,000 rooms. Its presence offers a potent reminder of China’s imperial past.

The Forbidden City is not merely a dusty relic retained out of a misplaced nostalgia for a bygone era. The Qing emperors and their accomplishments are well known to most contemporary Chinese. The popularity and interest in the Qing dynasty is illustrated by the numerous television series fictionalizing the lives of the emperors and court life. Often more than 50 episodes long, the series are immensely popular among all age groups. Similarly, at most major tourist sites one can dress up in imperial costumes and have a souvenir picture taken. Numerous restaurants in many major cities have also adopted “imperial” themes where the staff dress in late imperial clothing, and specialty dishes from recipes adapted from the imperial kitchen are served.

QING DYNASTY (1644–1911)—The last Chinese imperial dynasty, founded in 1644 by Manchus from northeastern China. It fell in 1911 after the Wuchang Uprising.

LATE IMPERIAL CHINA—A period of Chinese history traditionally defined as beginning with the end of Mongol rule in 1368 and concluding with the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

The symbolic power of the Qing is not limited to entertainment and tourism. Mao Zedong clearly sought to tap into the symbolic power of the Qing when he stood atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace on October 1, 1949, and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China. For decades, China’s top leaders have (in an explicitly symbolic move lost on no Chinese) lived in Zhongnan Hai, the former imperial gardens adjacent to the Forbidden City. Why does a country that has so fervently sought to sever itself from its pre-revolutionary past continue to celebrate its imperial roots?

GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE (TIANANMEN)—The main gate and entrance to the Forbidden Palace, erected during the Ming dynasty and rebuilt in 1651. Over 100 feet tall, the gate has five arched portals through the base, the middle and largest being exclusively for the emperor.

ZHONGNAN HAI—An official compound just west of the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing, which, in the first decades of the PRC, housed its top leaders and today serves as the headquarters of the party and top government officials.

The allure stems, in some part, from the sheer success of China’s last dynasty, the Qing dynasty. In comparison to the long succession of dynasties that preceded it, the Qing stands out as one of China’s most accomplished imperial dynasties of the early modern world. The Qing emperors ruled an empire of roughly 4.6 million square miles that, by the end of the Qing dynasty in the early nineteenth century, contained nearly one-third of the world’s population.

The Qing’s rise to power was not without challenges. The Qing emperors were ethnically Manchu, not Han Chinese. The Manchus stormed into Chinese history as a powerful military presence out of the Northeastern Asian steppes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It was their ability to co-opt Chinese culture and attitudes—while retaining their ties and control of the Asian steppes—that helped to secure their rule over China.

HAN CHINESE—The term Han Chinese today refers to the ethnic majority of China’s population. In imperial times, “Han Chinese” often referred to individuals viewed as culturally Chinese, regardless of their ethnicity.

The Qing dynasty also marked an era of increased contact between China and Europe. Western accounts of China have tended to exaggerate the insularity of late imperial China and the Qing ruler’s disdain for European ideas. Although the average Chinese remained generally unaware of Europe, to suggest that this meant China had no interest in things non-Chinese over-simplifies the global ties of the era. Documents in this chapter reveal that the Qing court had considerable contact with many Europeans, including Jesuit priests, diplomatic envoys, and merchants. Still, Qing China remained quite selective in what they sought from Europe. China dominated much of Asia, politically, culturally, and commercially. As a result, the Qing rulers focused, for the first century and a half of their rule, on consolidating and expanding their power over China and in Asia rather than worrying about the shifting global, political, and military balances of power occurring in Europe at the time.

JESUITS (SOCIETY OF JESUS)—A Christian religious order of the Roman Catholic Church that first established Chinese missions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Successfully operating in the Ming and early Qing era, the Jesuits actively transmitted European knowledge to China and Chinese learning to Europe. Their influence ended when Pope Clement XI decided that Chinese Confucian practices and offerings to the emperor constituted idolatry.

Rise of Qing: Conquest, Consolidation, and Preservation

It is tempting when reading any history of China to accept the beginning and ending dates of an imperial dynasty as absolute. In the case of the Qing dynasty, 1644 marks the year the Qing dynasty was founded, but it would take several more decades of Qing military campaigns and conquests before China completely submitted to Manchu rule. Qing forces continued to battle Ming loyalists and other renegade forces for over 40 years (1.3). Not surprisingly, most Chinese commoners did not immediately accept the new dynasty. As a result, the early Qing emperors expended considerable effort to sway and coerce the Chinese populace into accepting their new rulers (1.1 and 1.2). At the same time, the Manchu elite agonized over how best to preserve their own Manchu identity (1.4).

1.1 Shunzhi’s Head-shaving Decree (1645)

In 1644, the Manchu armies surged out of northeast Asia, captured Beijing, and founded China’s last imperial dynasty (1644–1911). Large swathes of China continued to oppose Qing rule, giving the Manchu leaders the awkward task of separating those Chinese who supported them from those who did not. To clarify this process, Dorgon, the uncle of the Shunzhi emperor (r. 1644–1661), issued an imperial edict to the Board of Rites requiring all Chinese males to shave their forehead and wear a queue in the Manchu style. This decree was especially loathsome to most Chinese because Confucian beliefs dictated that “one’s body, hair and skin are inherited from one’s parents, one should not dare to mutilate them.” The stark choice faced by most Chinese is caught in a popular saying of the day “lose your hair and keep your head or keep your hair and lose your head” [liutou bu liufa, liufa bu liutou].

Questions

• 1.How did the typical Chinese male react to Shunzhi’s decree?
• 2.Why might Qing officials be reluctant to enforce such a decree?

On the fifteenth day of the sixth month [July 7, 1645] this decree was sent to the Board of Rites:

In the past, the head-shaving mandate has not been consistent, and been left unspecified. It had been planned to issue a decree once the empire had been firmly established. Now that the inner and outer [China and Inner Asia] has become one family, with the emperor as the father and all the people as the sons, how can the father and sons be different from each other? If they were not of a single body and had two hearts, then would they not be like foreigners to one another. Such matters do not need further elaboration, every official and person in the empire is undoubtedly already aware of it.

From today forward, with this proclamation, all residents of the capital and its adjacent regions must within ten days—and Zhili with the other provinces within ten days of receiving this proclamation—abide...