How to travel to Late Imperial China?
January 24, 2022 10:41 AM Subscribe
I'm interested in China around 1850-1910 as a setting - daily life, the shock of industrial revolution and invasions and uprisings as experienced by people who weren't Big Historical Figures - but hampered by my lack of Chinese. Period sources originally written in languages I know (English, Polish, French, German) tend to be frightfully colonial. What would you recommend from a Chinese POV, fiction or nonfiction, that's available in one of these languages?
I'm familiar with some popular fiction - Anchee Min's Cixi novels, Sui Sin Far, Winnifred Eaton, Pearl S. Buck, Amy Tan, Lisa See. Looking for more like this, fiction or memoir or primary sources, stuff that captures the period even if it was written much later, as long as the writer has done their homework. I'm interested the most in Shanghai, but also other areas of China, Straits, early American Chinese, immigrants to other countries. Assume I'm covered for how Big Historical Events went, but if you know a novel or account of daily life in say, the Heavenly Kingdom or the Boxers, I'd love to hear about it.
I'm familiar with some popular fiction - Anchee Min's Cixi novels, Sui Sin Far, Winnifred Eaton, Pearl S. Buck, Amy Tan, Lisa See. Looking for more like this, fiction or memoir or primary sources, stuff that captures the period even if it was written much later, as long as the writer has done their homework. I'm interested the most in Shanghai, but also other areas of China, Straits, early American Chinese, immigrants to other countries. Assume I'm covered for how Big Historical Events went, but if you know a novel or account of daily life in say, the Heavenly Kingdom or the Boxers, I'd love to hear about it.
You might find the first section of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China to be useful. I’m not sure of the exact date range there.
posted by elanid at 5:59 PM on January 24, 2022
posted by elanid at 5:59 PM on January 24, 2022
Lu Xun is just a little outside your period, but some of his writings will be in it, and he definitely covered modernization from a Chinese point of view. He's a major figure anyway and well worth reading.
posted by zompist at 6:19 PM on January 24, 2022
posted by zompist at 6:19 PM on January 24, 2022
A couple suggestions:
An Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao, who later ended up in the United States amd wrote one of the first popular Chinese cookbooks for a mass American audience. It’s toward the end of the period you’re interested in.
Boxers and Saints by Gene Yang about the Boxer Rebellion.
The Last Eunuch of China by Jia Yinghua, translated by Sun Haichen, which covers periods at the very end of the span you are talking about and a period beyond, but is about Sun Yaoting who was born in 1902 and generally held to be the last surviving eunuch from the Imperial Court.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, which is fully outside your 1910 end date, but is very much about Shanghai and the nearby area and Chinese people dealing with big historical changes and global developments in the 1920s onwards. There is a lot of description of the family backgrounds and dynamics of the people it follows though, that reaches back to your period of concern.
Factory Girls by Leslie Chang is half profiles of girls who work in Shenzhen and other Chinese factories in the early 2000s, and half investigation of her family history during the late Imperial period and points after. I have mixed feelings about the book and the writer’s presentation, including what struck me as a Chinese-American as some anti-Blackness and plenty of ugly snobbery, but it’s interesting reading and may be worthwhile to you because of the depiction of upper-middle/upper class traditional Chinese life in that period.
posted by joyceanmachine at 8:26 PM on January 24, 2022
An Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao, who later ended up in the United States amd wrote one of the first popular Chinese cookbooks for a mass American audience. It’s toward the end of the period you’re interested in.
Boxers and Saints by Gene Yang about the Boxer Rebellion.
The Last Eunuch of China by Jia Yinghua, translated by Sun Haichen, which covers periods at the very end of the span you are talking about and a period beyond, but is about Sun Yaoting who was born in 1902 and generally held to be the last surviving eunuch from the Imperial Court.
Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, which is fully outside your 1910 end date, but is very much about Shanghai and the nearby area and Chinese people dealing with big historical changes and global developments in the 1920s onwards. There is a lot of description of the family backgrounds and dynamics of the people it follows though, that reaches back to your period of concern.
Factory Girls by Leslie Chang is half profiles of girls who work in Shenzhen and other Chinese factories in the early 2000s, and half investigation of her family history during the late Imperial period and points after. I have mixed feelings about the book and the writer’s presentation, including what struck me as a Chinese-American as some anti-Blackness and plenty of ugly snobbery, but it’s interesting reading and may be worthwhile to you because of the depiction of upper-middle/upper class traditional Chinese life in that period.
posted by joyceanmachine at 8:26 PM on January 24, 2022
Anthology of Chinese literature by Cyril Birch should have something in that time frame.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 3:59 AM on January 25, 2022
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 3:59 AM on January 25, 2022
Response by poster: Thanks everyone! It does exemplify my problem - everything is to the end of Qing. Apart from Anchee Min's Cixi books, the only things I've found in English for 1850 to 1890 are written by Western soldiers and missionaries.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:44 PM on January 25, 2022
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:44 PM on January 25, 2022
Best answer: The first thing that came to my mind was this memoir translated by Xiaofei Tian, The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath.
If you are open to read sources in other genres, Wilt Idema has translated a lot of different kinds of literature from late imperial China. The following two works feature at least some material from the period you are interested in: Two Centuries of Manchu Women Poets: An Anthology; Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women’s Script. Also, he's not not a big historical figure, but the poetry of Huang Zunxian provides a really interesting perspective on the period.
Besides translations of literature, there is a lot of interesting recent scholarship on the cultural history of the period, including Tobie Meyer-Fong's What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China.
posted by mustard seeds at 8:11 PM on January 26, 2022
If you are open to read sources in other genres, Wilt Idema has translated a lot of different kinds of literature from late imperial China. The following two works feature at least some material from the period you are interested in: Two Centuries of Manchu Women Poets: An Anthology; Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women’s Script. Also, he's not not a big historical figure, but the poetry of Huang Zunxian provides a really interesting perspective on the period.
Besides translations of literature, there is a lot of interesting recent scholarship on the cultural history of the period, including Tobie Meyer-Fong's What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China.
posted by mustard seeds at 8:11 PM on January 26, 2022
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