REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Voices from the Bottom Rung of Society

Liao Yiwu

The Public Toilet Manager

Grandpa Zhou has handled human waste for almost all his life, first as an employee of the state in charge of cleaning public toilets and now as an independent toilet manager under contract with the city government of Chengdu to manage a large public toilet in the northwestern part of the city. “It’s serious business,” says Grandpa Zhou. He’s about seventy years old, but he looks pretty energetic.

I had known of Grandpa Zhou for quite some time. His toilet stands almost next door to my mother’s teahouse. But we were simply nodding acquaintances. One night I summoned up enough courage to get over my concerns about losing my social status as an intellectual and started a conversation with him.

 

GRANDPA ZHOU

 

Are you coming in to use the toilet or not? It’s already past midnight. Based on our rules I need to charge you extra. How else can I pay my taxes to the city’s Environment and Hygiene Department? But since you’re a regular client, I’ll waive the extra charge.

 

LIAO YIWU

 

I’m not here to use the toilet. I want to take you out for tea.

 

ZHOU

 

You don’t have to bother. I’m only a public toilet guard.

 

LIAO

 

Let’s go over to the teahouse, Grandpa Zhou.

 

ZHOU

 

You’re too nice. Is your mom’s teahouse still open? Actually, the more her customers drink, the better for my business. When their bladders are full they come to my place. It’s mutually beneficial.

 

LIAO

 

In this world there are rich people and poor people, aristocrats and common folks. But when it comes to the call of nature, everyone’s equal. Even the emperor has to take a shit.

 

ZHOU

 

I’ve never seen a royal family member taking a shit. If they did, they wouldn’t come to do it in this public toilet.

Hey, you’re a writer, you like to collect material for your articles. Did you know there was an attempted murder here not long ago? About two weeks ago a guy was chasing a young woman and she ran into this toilet. I tried to stop the guy at the door but couldn’t. All the female squatters were startled and began to scream. I sent my son to break it up, but the man took a knife out of his pocket. Nobody dared move. The guy seized the young woman and was about to slash her face. She went to her knees, begging for mercy.

You know how in many public toilets the fertilizer companies put plastic containers near the urinals to collect urine? I grabbed one of those containers and splashed its contents all over the guy. That stopped him. He was soaked. Later on someone called the police and they took both the man and the woman away.

Guess what happened the next day? I saw the man and woman walking on the street, hugging and kissing like lovers. I tried to dodge them, but they came up to me. The guy pointed his finger at my nose: “You motherfucker, how dare you pour all that pee on me?”

I didn’t reply. He continued swearing at me: “You fucker, why didn’t you mind your own damn business? Look what you did. My whole body smells like piss.”

When I heard that, I lost it. “If I hadn’t poured the urine,” I said, “you’d have killed someone!”

Then—I couldn’t believe it—the woman started to defend him. “So what if he killed me? It had nothing to do with you. You’re the stinking public toilet manager. We’ve been dating for almost three years. He’s tried to kill me more than ten times, but I’ve survived. Why call the police? We got detained yesterday and our families had to bail us out. When they saw us, they all covered their noses. Our neighbors laughed at us. Nowadays, everyone in China talks about the rule of law. We’ve been traumatized. We’re going to sue you.”

My son was incensed and got into a terrible argument with them. He grabbed a copper ladle and was ready to fight. I tried to hold him back, but that bitch jumped out in the street and screamed murder. All hell broke loose. We got quite a crowd. What pissed me off was that the guy pointed at my son in front of the crowd and said, “Did you just use that ladle to stir up the shit in the latrine? You’re a born toilet cleaner. You even use a shit ladle as a murder weapon.” So insulting! That was no shit ladle. It was for cooking. My son threw it at them. The people in the crowd thought it was covered with shit and ran away as fast as they could.

Let me tell you, there’s never been any shortage of these scoundrels in our city. They don’t have jobs, they just hang out on the street and make trouble. This jerk I was telling you about still shows up at my toilet. He always taunts me: “Since you’re not too well off I won’t seek any economic compensation for what you did to me. In return for our kindness, why don’t you allow me and my girlfriend to use the toilet free for one year?”

 

LIAO

 

He does sound like a jerk.

 

ZHOU

 

Yeah, but I’m not mad anymore. What goes around comes around. I used to go out of my way to help people, sometimes people used to make fun of me and call me The Shit Samaritan. Well, it took me half a month to go through the various bureaucratic hoops before I could obtain the contract to run this bathroom. All I’m going to do from now on is guard the toilet and collect the entrance fee. In the future, even if someone falls into the latrine, I won’t pull him out.

If I was born ten years later I would never have thought to make a living in the toilet business. When I was young you didn’t have to pay to answer the call of nature. All public bathrooms were under the supervision of the municipal Environment and Hygiene Department. Later, the department assigned each public toilet to its nearby street committee. The street committee then asked the local residents to take care of the toilets themselves. In the end, nobody was taking responsibility for their maintenance and they got dirty. When it rained the street flooded with human waste, and even cars couldn’t get through. When the sun was out the human waste dried up, and the moist stink could bring tears to your eyes. There are still a couple free toilets like that in the city, in the old residential areas. But nowadays most public bathrooms have been renovated and it’s a good business.

As you know, houses built before the 1970s didn’t have indoor plumbing. People had to rely on public bathrooms. Sometimes they had to walk quite far. At night, families had to use chamber pots. Chamber pots painted in red were popular items for bridal showers or dowries. A sturdy chamber pot could last over ten years. Every morning, in the old days, families used to dump their chamber pots into the public toilets or wait for the human waste truck. Those trucks were more punctual than public buses. While waiting for the truck people chatted and caught up with each other over the day’s gossip. It was quite harmonious.

Read more at Paris Review

Dissident Chinese Writer Flees to Germany

Liao Yiwu, one of the most persecuted writers in China, fled into self exile in Germany this week. While still in China, his writings on the plight of the country's downtrodden had earned him travel restrictions and threats from the police.

BEIJING — After being denied an exit visa 17 times, yanked off planes and trains by the police and threatened with yet more prison time, one of China’s most persecuted writers, Liao Yiwu, slipped across the border into Vietnam last week and then made his way, via Poland, to Germany, where he promptly declared himself an exile.

“I’m ecstatic, I’m finally free,” he said in a telephone interview from Berlin on Monday morning before plunging into a day of interviews and photo shoots. “I feel like I’m walking through a dream.”

Of course, his escape — arranged by friends whom he declined to name — has not brought unadulterated joy. By fleeing his homeland, Mr. Liao, 52, made the difficult decision to abandon the wellspring of his work, much of it journalistic explorations of China’s downtrodden: the political outcasts, impoverished farmers, death row inmates and others who have been traumatized by famine and Communist-inspired zealotry, then cast aside during the nation’s manic embrace of material wealth and collective amnesia.

He also leaves behind his family in southwestern Sichuan Province, including his mother, his son, two siblings and a girlfriend. “I’m trying to convince myself that I won’t be away from China very long, that things will change sooner than later,” he said.

In the West, Mr. Liao is best known for “The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up,” which was banned in China soon after it was published in Taiwan in 2001. The book, a collection of interviews with people he encountered in prison and during wanderings in the southwest, tells the unadorned stories of 27 people, among them a public toilet attendant, a persecuted landlord, and the men, known as corpse walkers, whose job it is to transport the dead back to their hometowns for burial.

After it was published, his already strained relationship with the authorities worsened. He was barred from traveling to literary festivals in Germany, Australia and the United States, and was forced last spring to sign a vow to cease publishing outside China. Breaking the pledge, he was warned cryptically, would bring even greater torment.

Given the predicament of his friend Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and writer who is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, Mr. Liao knew what might await him. The threat gained greater urgency with the impending publication in the United States of “God Is Red,” a book by Mr. Liao about Chinese Christians, and a memoir about his time in jail, “The Witness of the 4th of June.” The memoir, whose title refers to the military suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, has been delayed several times by skittish publishers in Germany and Taiwan.

Read more at The New York Times

Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber(红楼梦), or The Story of the Stone(石 头记), is the greatest masterpiece of Chinese classical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties with the most profound influence on later generations. The work is comprised of 120 chapters, the first 80 of which were written by Tsao Hsueh-chin and the remaining 40 by Kao Hgo.

Tsao Hsueh-chin, the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, lived between 1715 and 1763. His ancestral family once held great power. As such, he led a wealthy noble life in Nanjing as a child. When he was 13 or 14, the family was declining and moved to Beijing, where life took a turn for the worse. In his later years, he even led a poor life. Drawing on his own experience, Tsao Hsueh-chin put all his life experiences, poeticized feelings, exploratory spirit and creativity into the greatest work of all time - Dream of the Red Chamber. Drawing its materials from real life, the novel is full of the author’s personal feelings filled with blood and tears.

Dream of the Red Chamber is a novel with great cultural richness. It depicts a multi-layered yet inter-fusing tragic human world through the eye of a talentless stone the Goddess used for sky mending. Jia Baoyu, the incarnation of the stone, witnessed the tragic lives of “the Twelve Beauties of Nanjing”, experienced the great changes from flourishing to decline of a noble family and thus gained unique perception of life and the mortal world. Revolving around Jia Baoyu and focusing on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai against the backdrop of the Great View Garden, the novel portrays a tragedy in which love, youth and life are ruined as well as exposes and profoundly reflects the root of the tragedy – the feudal system and culture.

Read more at  History Culture China

T’sao Hsueh Ch’in, The Dream of the Red Chamber

The Chinese The Dream of the Red Chamber may well be as great a book as the Japanese The Tale of Genji. Its virtues are not as obvious. In fact, they are not obvious at all. They are the virtues that distinguish Chinese civilization from Japanese — the virtues of a vaster humanity. Both novels have a lucidity and immediacy of narrative seldom encountered in Western fiction of a serious character, but amongst us confined to cowboys, detectives, and the funny papers. Alex Comfort once compared Chinese fiction to Pepys’s Diary, “a perfectly translucent medium through which we see the characters in all their moral nudity.” The contemporary author most like a Chinese novelist is Georges Simenon. You are too busy with the story to notice psychological insight or dramatic command until a week after you have finished the book.

The plot is the familiar, recurrent one of so much great fiction, as it is a specialty of both Chinese fiction and philosophy of history — “When women rule, the house decays” — but also its contrary, a celebration of the matriarchy that underlies and sustains Chinese society. Like all great fiction, it is also the story of the immensely difficult achievement of personal integrity. The narrative works toward a transcendental meaning of life through that life itself, which so conspicuously hides all such meaning. The characters are all “fallen beings.” The hero is an unprepossessing, idle scholar-gentleman, timid, oversexed, unstable. The two young heroines are both hysterics, the villainess a stock ruthless sister-in-law. The action is confined almost entirely to the women’s quarters and consists mostly of vapors, tantrums, fugues, and quarrels. Time goes by. As in life, the characters run down, coarsen, sicken, and die. At the end everybody is worn out.

Yet Pao Yu’s meaningless life unconsciously evolves slowly toward illumination. He is a Taoist saint who doesn’t know he is one and doesn’t want to be one. Like Prince Genji, he is indifferent to and ignorant of his cosmic role. He struggles, unaware, against an embodied principle of hate. When salvation comes, it is scarcely distinguishable from its opposite. Behind commonplace life and death lurks another world which intrudes at all crucial moments, a mirror-image more real than this life, where destiny is achieved and manifest; like the dream time of the Australian aborigines where everybody is his own ancestor that lies dormant below the dust of the desert and is awakened by penances of blood and feathers.

Genji is a mystical Buddhist work. The Dream of the Red Chamber is Taoist; its principle of salvation is inaction — wu’wei: the strength of the still keystone in the arch; the water wandering amongst mountains, seeking its own level, eventually wearing away the highest peaks. The talisman of Pao Yu’s integrity is the uncut stone of precious jade with which he is born, which he loses and finds again at the brink of death. Pao Yu’s father, Chi Cheng, the embodiment of patriarchal legalism, presides over the waking world with iron rigor and unrelenting contempt for his son and all his ways; but the dramatic pivots of the novel are a series of dreams, apparitions of the true world in which doubled images of the girls who love and hate Pao Yu function as moral determinants, presided over by the great matriarch, the grandmother of the family.

It is the metaphysical modesty of Taoism that gives The Dream of the Red Chamber its style, that modesty which is the necessary ingredient of the very greatest style in any art. The most profound human relationships; the deepest psychological insights; the most intense drama; the revelation of the moral universe in trivial human action, in the simple narrative of ordinary happenings — greatness of heart, magnanimity (“human-heartedness” is the Chinese term) is the substance from which the narrative is carved.

Read more at Classics Revisited

Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦)

Another Kind of American History in Chongqing, 5: Revision

by Xujun Eberlein

(Continued from 1. Prologue, 2. Evolution, 3. Puzzle, and 4. Explorers)

Li Hua has been the director of the SACO museum for 25 years. He has published many books about SACO, Red Crag, and the prisons. Before I finally met him in person in February 2009, all his books I had seen fiercely denounced SACO the "concentration camp," even though he knew very well the contradictory research results from his own staff members.

(Left: at one of the prison sites, in mid-morning, a traffic sensor shows "1702 visitors" so far that day (2009))

Back in 2008, I was enticed to confront Li Hua about those contradictory research results, to hear his side of the story. I asked a Chongqing friend whether he knew how to get hold of him. The friend said, "What's the point? He is a party hack, he won't say anything true." Others told me there was no way I would be able to see him, "He's a big busy man!"


I visited Chongqing again in February 2009. A childhood friend of mine thought he could help make an appointment for me because he knew a family member of Li Hua's. The friend was so sure about his backdoor. The next day, he called to say "sorry" -- Li Hua rejected the request right away.

A few days after that, an American writer friend Lisa Brackmann (btw, she has an awesome thriller set in China) came to Chongqing and we went to the Red Crag Village together. This is a separate but related museum, about 10 miles from the SACO site. Li Hua is also the director of this one and his main office is there.

In the afternoon, when Lisa and I were about to leave, we passed by the path leading to Li Hua's office. I decided to try my luck. Figuring that Li Hua was probably a man who cared about his international face and thus would be more willing to meet a foreigner, I urged Lisa to go with me, giving her a brief explanation of my purpose. Lisa, being a kind friend, complied. On the way up the path we were stopped three times, first by a woman sweeping the ground, then a man, finally a secretary of Li Hua's. Each asked if we had an appointment, and each time I said yes. In the courtyard of a two-story building, the secretary asked us to wait downstairs while she went up to check with her boss. A minute or two later we were brought in, pretty much as I expected. (I want to apologize to Lisa again for using her like that, but her foreigner face apparently worked.)

Li Hua was a sturdy man with a chubby rough face, in his mid-50s, dressed in a blue jacket and jeans. He sat on an expensive-looking mahogany chair, and two attractive young women waited at his sides. A plaque of "The Li Family Troupe" hung on the wall - in previous generations his family had run a famous Sichuan-opera troupe.

He put a cigarette between his lips, and one of the young women leaned over to light it for him. His secretary brought us tea. I talked with Li Hua in Chinese while Lisa listened. Hearing that we were writers interested in SACO's history, he pulled out his new book from the shelf behind him, gave us each a copy - very generous of him. I glanced at the book title: Decoding the Red Crag Archives.

Now, here came the surprise. I asked Li Hua about the relation between SACO and the prisons. He said, "They were unrelated. There has been a mix-up. We are restoring history's original face."

I paused. An official revision of history was quietly taking place. I wanted to ask about his numerous previous writings contradicting his words, but was too embarrassed to say things like that to someone's face. Instead I said, "The mix-up, was it intended or unintended?"

He paused. Then: "Unintended."

I waited. No more elaboration.

Later I browsed his new book, which was published in November 2008. It is essentially a popular edition of story-telling, with anecdotes of historical figures related to the novel Red Crag. Nothing much new there - all the stories I have read elsewhere, but in one chapter titled "Disclosing SACO Secrets," there is a line saying "SACO was unrelated to Juntong's concentration camp." That's it, one line among 349 pages.

It is progress, I suppose, but I couldn't cheer myself to it. One line, and a history is effortlessly turned, no explanation, no apology, let alone any sense of shame about his own past propaganda writings and organization of mendacious exhibits.

Perhaps that is why Li Hua's book can be published, but Sun Dannian's can't. Perhaps that is why Bo Xilai wants ten Li Hua's for Chongqing.

Read more here at The Atlantic

Another Kind of American History in Chongqing, 4: Explorers

by Xujun Eberlein

(continued from 1. Prologue, 2. Evolution, and 3. Puzzle)

Sun Danian is very frustrated that no one dares to publish her new book, Exploring SACO, 160,000 words resulting from nearly 20 years of painstaking exertion.

The publishers she contacted all showed strong interest initially. Then the manuscript was either killed in an in-house censoring process or, after it passed the first checkpoint and was sent to the government's Administration of Press and Publication for its imprimatur, disappeared like a "clay kettle falling into the sea."

Left: SACO's meteorological headquarters (2009)

Sun has published three nonfiction books before. One of her previous publishers was excited to hear about Exploring SACO.  "Is the book about SACO fighting the Japanese or killing Communists?" the publisher asked. Sun Dannian told him it's the former. "Then I can sell 5000 copies right away!" the man exclaimed. After thinking through the hassle of the censoring process, however, he reluctantly gave up, and referred her to another publisher. The other publisher was equally interested, and took it one step further, submitting the manuscript to the censor. That was nearly a year ago.  Sun called recently and the answer was "no news." The No's she received from other places were without explanation.

I recently read an excerpt from her manuscript, which starts with her personal journey.  She is a vivid writer, and the writing is very readable. The reason for her rejections might be that the propaganda authorities are not ready to let the public see a dramatically different image of SACO, despite the conclusions long accepted in academic circles. I say "the propaganda authorities," because bureaucrats in those departments often make up rules far more rigid than the central government's policy. There is a Chinese saying, "The emperor isn't worried; worried are the eunuchs."

Articles countering the "SACO concentration camp" image have been published in various magazines for the past three decades.  The earliest one I'm aware of dates back to 1988. In the Fall 1988 issue of American Studies, a quarterly at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is an article titled (in translation) "What SACO Really Was," written by Deng Youping. A Chongqing man born in 1956, Deng Youping was a staff member at the "SACO: Crimes of America and Chiang" museum from 1978 to 1991. His position allowed him access to old prison archives not open to the public, and his arguments are supported by solid data.
 
Deng's article established that, during SACO's time from April 1943 to May 1946, Bai Mansion was not used as a prison. It was originally a warlord's villa; in 1939 Dai Li changed it into a detention house under his secret police (Juntong). Upon SACO's establishment in spring 1943, to accommodate American personnel, Dai Li converted Bai Mansion into a guesthouse, called the "third guesthouse of SACO."  It resumed its prison function in late 1946, after SACO's closure.

Though Deng did not paint as clear a historical picture for Refuse Pit, he provided a long list of names of the political prisoners killed in both prisons from 1939 to 1949, together with their jail time. A pattern became clear from the list that the prisoners were there either before 1943 (fewer than 20) or after July 1946 (hundreds).  None were present during SACO's active time from April 1943 to May 1946.  Thus Deng's article effectively cleared SACO's notorious name as a "concentration camp."

In late 2008, I was made aware of Deng's article by historian He Shu, who has repeatedly quoted it in his own writing. I tracked down Deng Youping in February 2009, and met him in his current office at the Three Gorges Museum in downtown Chongqing. He told me one of the things that motivated him to dig into the locked archives was an American visitor's question: "Do the accusations against SACO have a basis?"
 
Deng regretted that he was unable to include SACO's contribution to fighting Japan: "My paper wouldn't have gotten published if I said that then."

What Deng wrote was actually quite subversive, yet the article did not make much splash.  The journal's narrow academic readership was certainly one reason, the public's readiness for that kind of analysis might be another. The timing, 1988, seemed a bit too soon for it. It did not even attract much attention from Deng's colleagues, among them Sun Danian, who joined the SACO museum in 1990 and her exploration now goes a lot deeper than Deng's.  Yesterday I spoke with her on the phone; she had a vague recollection of seeing Deng's article in the early 1990s, but its content did not stick.  "Maybe because I'm a sensory learner," she said. She also had a different mindset at the time.

Sun Dannian is a Chongqing native.  She was twelve when she first visited the SACO exhibition in 1963.  She was in the 4th grade; her teacher brought the entire class there. "I wrote a composition after the visit, my words trembling with emotion," she recalls in her book's prologue, "and I wasn't the only one. Many of us were like that - deeply moved."  That first impression lasted for 27 years.  In 1990, after an eight-year stint in Tibet as an art-and-literature teacher, she found a job back home as a staff member at the "Gele Mountain Revolution Memorial Museum," previously the SACO exhibition. She was more than pleased. For the first two or three months at her new job, she spent most of her spare time exploring every corner of this "cultural relic protection zone," an area of a little over two square kilometers.

For a while she "steeped in familiar ether like I had in the 4th grade," and was a bit surprised such a "pure feeling" still existed in her. She was 39 then, no longer young, with a bumpy life. Ever since she was little, she had an astute awareness of her "bad family background," living constantly in humiliation. Her father, Sun Mingxun, was a devoted disciple of the great educator Tao Xingzhi and diligently practiced Tao's "life education" philosophy. In 1957, however, when Dannian was barely 6 years old, her father, a professor of Chinese literature, was designated as a "rightist."  He was deprived of salary and eventually starved to death in 1961 during the three-year famine, leaving his wife in hardship alone to bring up their two daughters.

The Cultural Revolution cut Dannian's middle school education short. She then spent 10 years laboring in a rural production team.  After the turmoil ended, in 1978, she managed to pass a national exam and enter college, studying Chinese literature where her father once taught.  Upon graduation, she chose to work in Tibet on an 8-year contract.

Read more at The Atlantic

Another Kind of American History in Chongqing, 3: Puzzle

by Xujun Eberlein

(Continued from 1:Prologue and 2:Evolution)

For the two years following 9-11, I struggled with a Hamletian question, "To quit, or not to quit?" I eventually chose the former, bowed out of my high-tech job, and became a writer and a guilty dependent of my husband.

After I started writing in earnest (my focus then was on the cultural revolution), I browsed the Internet more diligently. One day in early 2005 I happened upon a Web page, whose content gave me pause.

Written by the proud son of a Navy officer who had served in SACO, the text expressed admiration for Miles and Tai Li (i.e., Dai Li), and was a tribute to the father's brave participation in "guerrilla warfare operations against the Japanese troops." The Web page gave a few links to other sites related to SACO personnel, where I saw the same pride manifest.

By that time, I had gotten used to the information disparity on both sides of the Pacific. Still, the two irreconcilable images of SACO were unsettling at a personal level. Did either of us, the descendants of the SACO men or Chinese like me, see the full picture? 

It isn't easy to reject a certain notion when one has been accustomed to it from a young age, much like one's taste for food. Nonetheless I began to research, at first aimed at finding evidence of SACO's involvement in the Refuse Pit and Bai Mansion prisons, depending mainly on English resources. I searched library catalogues and the Internet extensively.  I read whatever I could get hold on SACO.  Among the books I have read, three are especially worth noting.  I won't be giving a detailed review of each, just note a few things of particularly relevance to my subject.

Milton Miles' 600-page memoir, A Different Kind of War: The little-known story of the combined guerrilla forces created in China by the U.S. Navy and the Chinese during World War II., Doubleday, 1967  

Miles was a Vice Admiral and SACO's co-director. In the memoir, he did not hide his hatred toward the Chinese Communists. I got the impression that, if it were up to him, he wouldn't have minded lumping them with his Japanese enemies. The book claims that "SACO had no personnel that was employed against the Communists, and that no equipment had been supplied for use against them except in certain already reported instances when they themselves had attacked our Chinese troops." I doubt the veracity of such a claim, but Miles might well have believed it. I found his unconditional trust in Dai Li quite naïve, but the book did give me the impression that Miles was genuinely unaware of the prisons at his "Happy Valley" headquarters. This was baffling.

A SACO researcher in Chongqing, Sun Dannian, told me recently that Miles' book is unavailable in mainland China, and there has been no Chinese translation of it published there, though she had read a Taiwan-published translation. Her impression of Miles from that translation was "he was an excellent naval officer doing a great job."

The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945 by Michael Schaller, Columbia University Press, 1979

This was the only foreign book quoted (not sure since when; in any case won't be earlier than 1979) at Chongqing's SACO museum, apparently for its favorableness, and the author was respectfully addressed as "America's China expert." I took a photo of the quote, which was in Chinese translation, during my 2002 visit to the museum. Some time later I bought a copy of the book. That quote's original English text, as I found in a chapter titled "SACO: The Counter-Revolution in Action," reads as follows:

Amidst the highly unstable political and military situation in wartime China, the politicized personnel of SACO played a pivotal role in affecting both the current policies and future expectations of the two contending Chinese factions. SACO's direct involvement in China, its willingness to become a conduit for secret military programs, and its dedication to the destruction of revolutionary movements all gave it a disproportionately large impact on Chinese-American relations. ... SACO's essential policy had been to help prepare the KMT for civil war.

The chapter cites activities of SACO that supports the above charge. At one point, it refers to a source's accusation "Miles's personal participation in mass trials conducted by Tai Li, after which political prisoners were buried alive." However, no specifics such as time and location are given. There is also an indirect allegation appearing at the end of the same chapter, which mentions that, in 1974, "the Chinese press carried gruesome reports on the mangled human remains which had been unearthed at SACO's 'Happy Valley' headquarters near Chungking." ("Chungking" was the 1940s transliteration of Chongqing.) The bodies referred to here must have been those from the same photo I had seen in my childhood, because nothing new was unearthed in 1974, the year I graduated from high school.

Read more here at The Atlantic

Another Kind of American History in Chongqing, 2: Evolution

by Xujun Eberlein

(First a note about yesterday's post: a reader wrote to call my attention to "David Herlihy's 2010 book The Lost Cyclist, which tells the story of Frank Lenz, the first American to cycle across China...in the 1890s!"  I want to thank the reader, and I really look forward to reading that book. Meanwhile, let me take the opportunity to make a correction.  I think - and this could still be wrong - Bob was the first American who cycled across China after it re-opened in the 1980s. Now, the SACO story continues from yesterday's prologue.)

Following Red Crag's publication, an exhibition titled "SACO: Crimes of America and Chiang [Kai-shek]" opened in 1963, and immediately became a big hit for tourists.  The two prisons, Refuse Pit and Bai Mansion, were displayed as part of the SACO "concentration camp," together with torture cells equipped with American supplies. Included was also the residence of Miles, which Dai Li had built for him. On its walls were texts describing Miles as a mad anti-Communist American military man.

Passionate visitors came in an endless stream to look for traces of the Red Crag heroes. Monuments were built up for the martyrs. When I was in middle and high school in the 1970s, every year on November 27 we students went to sweep the tombs.  Each time we took a day-long tour round the exhibition area.

The impression of American cruelty at SACO ran deep and we never questioned its authenticity. The novel Red Crag spread the accusation, and the exhibition established hard evidence. The martyrs were real people (two of them, Qi Liang and Wang Po, were my father's underground comrades); the prisons and the SACO site were real places. What was there to question?

In early 1967, several years after Red Crag's publication, the novel's leading author Luo Guangbing jumped off a building and killed himself. This happened in the heat of the Cultural Revolution; I was eleven then. I was utterly stunned to hear a friend of my parents describing the gross suicide scene (though today some still suspect Luo was murdered).  I was too young to understand why a hero who survived torture and massacre in an enemy prison would want to die in an era following the victory of his own side.

***

Bob never visited the SACO site in 1987.  A year later we married. China was changing fast, and so was my parents' view of Americans. Our marriage was a personal happenstance, but its possibility was dictated by historical conditions: it happened after a turn in Sino-American relations. Accompanying China's economic reform and opening, the image of Americans held by Chinese was transforming from fierce paper tiger to exotic animal and then to fleshed-out human.


My father's condition for accepting Bob as his son-in-law was "Keep my daughter out of politics!" which Bob cheerfully accepted. In our happiness we never asked whether he meant Chinese politics or American politics. Either one, we couldn't have cared less.

Among our wedding guests was Uncle Jin, an old friend of my parents and an idol of my youth. In 1948 Uncle Jin had been arrested as an underground Communist and jailed in the Refuse Pit prison, in the same cell with Luo Guangbing (Red Crag's author). Fortunately, several months later Uncle Jin was bailed out by his wealthy landlord family, thus avoiding a deadly fate in the November 27, 1949 massacre.

At our wedding, Uncle Jin again suggested Bob visit SACO. "You must see the handcuffs, made in USA!" he said repeatedly. Bob was annoyed, but he smiled and said some polite and meaningless English that Uncle Jin did not understand.  In private though, he complained to me, "Why does everybody want me to see SACO?"

What Bob wanted to do was ride his bike to Tibet, along the Sichuan-Tibet road that was built in the 1950s.  It had been his plan the year before in the first place. But once again his ambition was foiled by my fierce objection: that road was too harsh, too dangerous for a cyclist.

I moved with Bob to Boston in the summer of 1988, started a family, got my PhD and began work with a small technology company. That busy life kept me "out of politics" without the slightest nudging from Bob - until one day thirteen years later, when the twin towers fell.

For me, Chinese netizens cheering the lesson that America had received signaled the return of abstract hatred. I was troubled: what my generation dropped, the new generation picked it back up.  I say "abstract" because, I'm sure, if an American tourist ran into one of those young Chinese in a private situation, he or she would be as friendly as anyone.

My enthusiasm in technology waned. In spring 2002, I took an unpaid leave from work, and returned to Chongqing with Bob and our young daughter. This was only the second visit to my hometown in the 13 years since I had left. I was driven by an urge to revisit my childhood and youth, to understand my past.

My father again suggested we go see SACO, but this time his tone was completely different from that of 1987. "They expanded and remodeled the place and made big sculptures. It looks magnificent," my 76-year-old father said happily, as if talking about a recreational theme park. There was no hint of historical grudge.

So we went. Chongqing's change had been overwhelming, yet I was not quite prepared for what I saw at the "martyrs tomb."  

The tomb itself, which was a collective burial for the hundreds slaughtered in the 1940s, still looked familiar, but that was it. Nothing surrounding it was the same.  The once solemn and quiet mood from my teenage memory, set off by tall pines and cypresses lining stone steps, was replaced by an outrageously large-scale commercial ambiance complete with vulgar decorations.  A gigantic brown sculpture of figures - revolutionary heroes in a typical propaganda pose - stood on top of an interminably wide flight of concrete steps. The new name of this place? "Red Crag Soul Square." It was like someone had put the dead for sale in a fake-upscale market.

Left: "Red Crag Soul Square" (2002)

Read more here at The Atlantic

Another Kind of American History in Chongqing, 1: Prologue

by Xujun Eberlein

In the summer of 1987, my future husband, Bob, cycled across China -- I think he was the first American who did that -- as he came to meet me in Chongqing. As a yet-to-be-betrothed daughter, I lived with my parents, because an unmarried person was ineligible for an apartment. My parents, who had both been underground Communists in the late 1940s and active protesters against America in the post-WWII years, were shocked to see an American with a bike on his shoulder walking through the door of our 4th floor apartment. At the time, either a bike or a foreigner was a rare sight in Chongqing the inland mountain city. Across China, Westerners had only recently -- and guardedly -- been allowed to travel about, provided that they did not break the country's often invisible rules or court its untainted women.

My parents, temporarily held back by their traditional hospitality for guests (I told them Bob was my teacher at graduate school), tolerated Bob the American visitor for one day. The second day, my father could no longer bear his discomfort and ordered Bob to depart. Before laying down the law, he suggested Bob visit SACO - 中美合作所 (Zhong-Mei hezuosuo), on Gele Mountain in the western part of Chonqging.

"What is SACO?" Bob asked. I was very surprised. Having never set foot outside China, I thought every American knew the name SACO ("Sino-American Cooperative Organization"), just as every Chinese knew the name "Zhong-Mei hezuosuo."

I told Bob what I had known since elementary school: SACO was an American-operated concentration camp that tortured and killed underground Communists in the 1940s. It had two prisons, one called Refuse Pit, another Bai Mansion. The name of SACO's American co-director was Milton Miles, a US Navy official, and its Chinese director was Dai Li, the head of the Nationalist secret services (called euphemistically the Military Statistics Bureau, or "Juntong"). Dai Li was known to my parents and their Communist comrades as "China's Himmler."

Bob, largely apolitical, was hardly interested. If anything, he dismissed the notion of an "American-run concentration camp" as a myth. MIT-educated, he had done some reading on Sino-American history before traveling to China in early 1987, but had never heard of such a thing.

Though I had no desire to have Bob visit the SACO site, and was unhappy about my father's intent to instill guilt in an American, Bob's dismissal put me in a mood to argue. "This one is real," I said. I had seen, in the SACO museum, handcuffs marked "Made in USA," and pictures of the dead bodies wearing them. My statement was not ideologically based (in fact, I had gotten into political trouble for my dissident thoughts and writing in the early 1980s), but history is history, or so I thought. Bob barely shrugged, unconvinced yet with no desire to argue.

In retrospect, Bob was the first person I know to counter the mainland Chinese notion of SACO's history, albeit intuitively (and with an American bias). He did later speculate that, if there were actually such a graphic concentration camp in China operated by Americans, the ubiquitous US journalists wouldn't have foregone a Pulitzer-winning opportunity to expose it, ergo SACO would already have been public knowledge in the US.

But things are not always that straightforward.

Read more here The Atlantic

An abandoned history of Chinese influence

Painters in Edo Period Osaka modeled themselves on the Chinese literati artists, finding fellowship in their shared interests

Edo Period (1603-1868) paintings from Osaka have been relatively neglected in comparison with paintings from Tokyo and Kyoto. A canonical list of works and a historical framework were written up in Tokyo in the 1890s in a series of influential lectures by scholar Okakura Tenshin, setting the directions of subsequent scholarship. Osaka received scarce consideration, and it was not until the 1981 exhibition "Osaka Painting Schools in the Edo Period" at the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art that interest returned. Now, a new show, "The World of Bunjinga in Early Modern Osaka" at the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History till Feb. 22, takes another look, focusing on bunjinga — Japanese paintings done in the style of Chinese literati from the Song dynasty.

 

Eastern inflections: Imamiya Taishitsu's "Floating Wine Cups"(1832) and Zen priest Kakutei's "Yellow Birds in a Willow"(undated; below) ASHIYA CITY MUSEUM OF ART

Kansai University art historian Nobuo Nakatani offers reasons for the inattention. When Osaka's economy collapsed during World War II, collectors stopped buying Osaka paintings and haven't returned to them since then (Nakatani has pointed out that these pieces can now be acquired at prices equivalent to "a salaryman's pocket money"). Another, earlier reason was the distinctly Chinese orientation of artists in the city — a backward-looking position — when Japan was about to modernize and its Meiji (1868-1912) government was creating slogans such as "Out of Asia, Into Europe."

China figures prominently in the coterie of artists and intellectuals who orbited the influential painter and naturalist Kimura Kenkado (1736-1802), whose work is on show in the exhibition. Born Kimura Sonsai, he became known as Kenkado, from the Japanese name of the school he later founded: Hall of the Concurrent Reed. Due to his fragile health as a youth, Kenkado was encouraged to pursue a scholarly life by his father. At age 5 or 6, he took an interest in art, and later studied with the Kano School painter Ooka Shunboku (1680- 1763), before learning flower and bird painting with the Obaku Zen priest Kakutei (whose "Yellow Birds in a Willow" is in the exhibition). This was the colorful and decorative Ming dynasty (1368-1644) style of Shen Nanpin, who visited Nagasaki from 1731-33 and established a following among locals.

Other literati, such as Kyoto-based Nakabayashi Chikuto, took a dim view of mixing the craftsmanlike skill of Nanpin's botanical accuracy with the cherished, expressive possibilities of true literati painting; still, such a style percolated unreservedly in Osaka works.

At age 15, Kenkado visited Ikeno Taiga, considered Japan's premier literati painter, and became his pupil and then patron. To become part of the bunjinga world, however, it was not enough to study painting and scholarship alone, or join a school. As a Chinese import that took root in 18th century Japan, literati painting escaped art's boundaries and came to represent a whole lifestyle that was imbued with poetic sentiments and gentlemanly ideals.

Kenkado's membership in the Konton (Elegant Confusion Society) is instructive. There, members would gather, sometimes in Chinese dress, to enjoy steeped tea and savor Chinese verse, art treasures and the Confucian classics — in short, to become erudite and cultivated, and to share a common interest in the culture of China, though one very much internalized, lacking as they did the actual desire to travel there.

Their fellowship is obvious in their joint contributions to a single work, such as "Views from High Atop a Mountain" by Kenkado, Totoki Baigai, and Okada Beisanjin and his son Hanko. As well, the often modest size of paintings suggests that they were to be exchanged and enjoyed among friends.

Such a sense of fellowship can also be discerned in the benefaction of Maruyama Sessai, Daimyo of Nagashima from 1776-1801, who came to the aid of Kenkado when he was forced to forfeit the fortune he had amassed as a sake merchant due to a breach of the production code. Inviting Kenkado to Nagashima for two years, Maruyama helped him revive his former wealth, a kindness extended due to the Chinese ideals they held in common — ones that dissolved the class barriers that could conventionally have kept the two remote.

The more pure Sinicization in Osaka paintings was in contrast to early literati painters such as Ikeno Taiga and Yosa Buson, who blended Chinese and Japanese painting idioms. This refinement of Chinese styles was brought about by the increasing availability of Ming and Qing period paintings in late 18th-century Japan.

Okada Hanko developed a rich and conservative aesthetic based on his study of Qing dynasty (1644-1912) painting. Though Hanko in his own lifetime was the more celebrated than his father, in the 20th century Beisanjin has garnered more acclaim for bold and gestural landscapes such as "Literati Studio"(undated). But, as is often the case, the present values the past for different things, and even imposes on it meanings it may not actually have possessed. Up to now, Osaka painting circles have not only been overlooked in the formation of a Japanese canon of art, they have suffered a decline in patronage as Japan moved its aesthetic orientation away from China. Perhaps it is time for a new look at the genre.

The Japan Times

"maggots in the rice"

Case Study:
Female Infanticide  

(1) India
(2) China

Summary

The phenomenon of female infanticide is as old as many cultures, and has likely accounted for millions of gender-selective deaths throughout history. It remains a critical concern in a number of "Third World" countries today, notably the two most populous countries on earth, China and India. In all cases, specifically female infanticide reflects the low status accorded to women in most parts of the world; it is arguably the most brutal and destructive manifestation of the anti-female bias that pervades "patriarchal" societies. It is closely linked to the phenomena of sex-selective abortion, which targets female fetuses almost exclusively, and neglect of girl children.

The background

"Female infanticide is the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and from the low value associated with the birth of females." (Marina Porras, "Female Infanticide and Foeticide".) It should be seen as a subset of the broader phenomenon of infanticide, which has also targeted the physically or mentally handicapped, and infant males (alongside infant females or, occasionally, on a gender-selective basis). As with maternal mortality, some would dispute the assigning of infanticide or female infanticide to the category of "genocide" or, as here, "gendercide." Nonetheless, the argument advanced in the maternal mortality case-study holds true in this case as well: governments and other actors can be just as guilty of mass killing by neglect or tacit encouragement, as by direct murder. R.J. Rummel buttresses this view, referring to infanticide as

another type of government killing whose victims may total millions ... In many cultures, government permitted, if not encouraged, the killing of handicapped or female infants or otherwise unwanted children. In the Greece of 200 B.C., for example, the murder of female infants was so common that among 6,000 families living in Delphi no more than 1 percent had two daughters. Among 79 families, nearly as many had one child as two. Among all there were only 28 daughters to 118 sons. ... But classical Greece was not unusual. In eighty-four societies spanning the Renaissance to our time, "defective" children have been killed in one-third of them. In India, for example, because of Hindu beliefs and the rigid caste system, young girls were murdered as a matter of course. When demographic statistics were first collected in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that in "some villages, no girl babies were found at all; in a total of thirty others, there were 343 boys to 54 girls. ... [I]n Bombay, the number of girls alive in 1834 was 603."

Rummel adds: "Instances of infanticide ... are usually singular events; they do not happen en masse. But the accumulation of such officially sanctioned or demanded murders comprises, in effect, serial massacre. Since such practices were so pervasive in some cultures, I suspect that the death toll from infanticide must exceed that from mass sacrifice and perhaps even outright mass murder." (Rummel, Death by Government, pp. 65-66.)

Focus (1): India   (cut)  Read at Female Infanticide 

Focus (2): China

"A tradition of infanticide and abandonment, especially of females, existed in China before the foundation of the People's Republic in 1949," note Zeng et al.. ("Causes and Implications," p. 294.) According to Ansley J. Coale and Judith Banister, "A missionary (and naturalist) observer in [China in] the late nineteenth century interviewed 40 women over age 50 who reported having borne 183 sons and 175 daughters, of whom 126 sons but only 53 daughters survived to age 10; by their account, the women had destroyed 78 of their daughters." (Coale and Banister, "Five Decades of Missing Females in China," Demography, 31: 3 [August 1994], p. 472.)

According to Zeng et al., "The practice was largely forsaken in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s." (Zeng et al., "Causes and Implications," p. 294.) Coale and Banister likewise acknowledge a "decline of excess female mortality after the establishment of the People's Republic ... assisted by the action of a strong government, which tried to modify this custom as well as other traditional practices that it viewed as harmful." (Coale and Banister, "Five Decades," p. 472.) But the number of "missing" women showed a sharp upward trend in the 1980s, linked by almost all scholars to the "one-child policy" introduced by the Chinese government in 1979 to control spiralling population growth. Couples are penalized by wage-cuts and reduced access to social services when children are born "outside the plan." Johansson and Nygren found that while "sex ratios [were] generally within or fairly near the expected range of 105 to 106 boys per 100 girls for live births within the plan ... they are, in contrast, clearly far above normal for children born outside the plan, even as high as 115 to 118 for 1984-87. That the phenomenon of missing girls in China in the 1980s is related to the government's population policy is thus conclusively shown." (Sten Johansson and Ola Nygren, "The Missing Girls of China: A New Demographic Account," Population and Development Review, 17: 1 [March 1991], pp. 40-41.)

The Chinese government appeared to recognize the linkage by allowing families in rural areas (where anti-female bias is stronger) a second child if the first was a girl. Nonetheless, in September 1997, the World Health Organization's Regional Committee for the Western Pacific issued a report claiming that "more than 50 million women were estimated to be 'missing' in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing's population control program that limits parents to one child." (See Joseph Farah, "Cover-up of China's gender-cide", Western Journalism Center/FreeRepublic, September 29, 1997.) Farah referred to the gendercide as "the biggest single holocaust in human history."

According to Peter Stockland, "Years of population engineering, including virtual extermination of 'surplus' baby girls, has created a nightmarish imbalance in China's male and female populations." (Stockland, "China's baby-slaughter overlooked," The Calgary Sun, June 11, 1997.) In 1999, Jonathan Manthorpe reported a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, claiming that "the imbalance between the sexes is now so distorted that there are 111 million men in China -- more than three times the population of Canada -- who will not be able to find a wife." As a result, the kidnapping and slave-trading of women has increased: "Since 1990, say official Chinese figures, 64,000 women -- 8,000 a year on average -- have been rescued by authorities from forced 'marriages'. The number who have not been saved can only be guessed at. ... The thirst for women is so acute that the slave trader gangs are even reaching outside China to find merchandise. There are regular reports of women being abducted in such places as northern Vietnam to feed the demand in China." (Jonathan Manthorpe, "China battles slave trading in women: Female infanticide fuels a brisk trade in wives," The Vancouver Sun, January 11, 1999.)

Since the first allegations of widespread female infanticide in China connected to the government's "one-child" policy, controversy has raged over the number of deaths that can be ascribed to infanticide as opposed to other causes. Zeng et al. argued in 1993 that "underreporting of female births, an increase in prenatal sex identification by ultrasound and other diagnostic methods for the illegal purpose of gender-specific birth control, and [only] very low-level incidence of female infanticide are the causes of the increase in the reported sex ratio at birth in China." (Zeng et al., "Causes and Implications," p. 285.) They add: "Underreporting of female births accounts for about 43 percent to 75 percent of the difference between the reported sex ratio at birth during the second half of the 1980s and the normal value of the true sex ratio at birth" (p. 289). The authors contended that "sex-differential underreporting of births and induced abortion after prenatal sex determination together explain almost all of the increase in the reported sex ratio at birth during the late 1980s," and thus "the omission ... of victims of female infanticide cannot be a significant factor." Moreover, "Both the social and administrative structure and the close bond among neighbors in China make it difficult to conceal a serious crime such as infanticide," while additionally "Infanticide is not a cost-effective method of sex selection. The psychological and moral costs are so high that people are unlikely to take such a step except under extreme circumstances" (p. 295). They stress, however, that "even small numbers of cases of female infanticide, abandonment, and neglect are a serious violation of the fundamental human rights of women and children" (p. 296). (2002 update: A recent article by John Gittings of the UK Guardian cites national census results released in May 2002 that show that "more than 116 male births were recorded for every 100 female births," but claims the cause is overwhelmingly sex-selective abortion: "Female infanticide, notorious in China's past as a primitive method of sex selection, is now thought to be infrequent." See Gittings, "Growing Sex Imbalance Shocks China", The Guardian, May 13, 2002.)

In a similar vein, in April 2000, The New York Times reported that "many 'illegal' children are born in secret, their births never officially registered." And "as more women move around the country to work, it is increasingly hard to monitor pregnancies ... Unannnounced spot checks by the State Statistics Bureau have discovered undercounts of up to 40 percent in some villages, Chinese demographers say." (See Elisabeth Rosenthal, "China's Widely Flouted One-Child Policy Undercuts Its Census", The New York Times, April 14, 2000.)

Johansson and Nygren attracted considerable notice with a somewhat different claim: "that adoptions (which often go unreported) account for a large proportion of the missing girls. ... If adopted children are added to the live births ... the sex ratio at birth becomes much closer to normal for most years in the 1980s. ... Adding the adopted children to live births reduces the number of missing girls by about half." (Johansson and Nygren, "The Missing Girls of China," pp. 43, 46.) They add (p. 50): "That female infanticide does occur on some scale is evidenced by reports in the Chinese press, but the available statistical evidence does not help us to determine whether it takes place on a large or a small scale."

Even if millions of Chinese infant girls are unregistered rather than directly murdered, however, the pattern of discrimination is one that will severely reduce their opportunities in life. "If parents do hide the birth of a baby girl, she will go unregistered and therefore will not have any legal existence. The child may have difficulty receiving medical attention, going to school, and [accessing] other state services." (Porras, "Female Infanticide and Foeticide".)

Likewise, if a Chinese infant girl is turned over for adoption rather than being killed, she risks being placed in one of the notorious "Dying Rooms" unveiled in a British TV documentary. Chinese state orphanages have come in for heavy criticism as a result of the degrading and unsanitary conditions that usually pervade them. In one orphanage, documentary producer Brian Woods found that "every single baby ... was a girl, and as we moved on this pattern was repeated. The only boys were mentally or physically disabled. 95% of the babies we saw were able-bodied girls. We also discovered that, although they are described as orphans, very few of them actually are; the overwhelming majority do have parents, but their parents have abandoned them, simply because they were born the wrong sex." Woods estimated that "up to a million baby girls every year" were victims of this "mass desertion," deriving from "the complex collision of [China's] notorious One Child Policy and its traditional preference for sons." (See Brian Woods, "The Dying Rooms Trust".)

The phenomenon of neglect of girl children is also dramatically evident in China. According to the World Health Organization, "In many cases, mothers are more likely to bring their male children to health centers -- particularly to private physicians -- and they may be treated at an earlier stage of disease than girls." (Cited in Farah, "Cover-up of China's gender-cide".)

The Chinese government has taken some energetic steps to combat the practice of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion of female fetuses. It "has employed the Marriage Law and Women's Protection Law which both prohibit female infanticide. The Women's Protection Law also prohibits discrimination against 'women who give birth to female babies.' ... The Maternal Health Care Law of 1994 'strictly prohibits' the use of technology to identify the gender of a fetus." However, "although the government has outlawed the use of ultrasound machines, physicians continue to use them to determine the gender of fetuses, especially in rural areas." (Porras, "Female Infanticide and Foeticide".)

How many die?

Gendercide Watch is aware of no overall statistics on the numbers of girls who die annually from infanticide. Calculations are further clouded by the unreliability and ambiguity of much of the data. Nonetheless, a minimum estimate would place the casualties in the the hundreds of thousands, especially when one takes into consideration that the phenomenon is most prevalent in the world's two most populous countries. Sex-selective abortions likely account for an even higher number of "missing" girls.

Who is responsible?

As already noted, female infanticide reflects the low status accorded to women in many societies around the world. The "burden" of taking a woman into the family accounts for the high dowry rates in India which, in turn, have led to an epidemic female infanticide. Typical also is China, where

culture dictates that when a girl marries she leaves her family and becomes part of her husband's family. For this reason Chinese peasants have for many centuries wanted a son to ensure there is someone to look after them in their old age -- having a boy child is the best pension a Chinese peasant can get. Baby girls are even called "maggots in the rice" ... ("The Dying Rooms Trust")

Infanticide is a crime overwhelmingly committed by women, both in the Third and First Worlds. (This contrasts markedly with "infanticide in nonhuman primates," which "is carried out primarily by migrant males who are unrelated to the infant or its parents and is a manifestation of reproductive competition among males." [Glenn Hausfater, "Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives," Current Anthropology, 25: 4 (1984), p. 501.] It also serves as a reminder that gendercide may be implemented by those of the same gender.) In India, according to John-Thor Dahlburg, "many births take place in isolated villages, with only female friends and the midwife present. If a child dies, the women can always blame natural causes." (Dahlburg, "Where killing baby girls 'is no big sin'.") In the United States, "every year hundreds of women commit neonaticide [the killing of newborns] ... Prosecutors sometimes don't prosecute; juries rarely convict; those found guilty almost never go to jail. Barbara Kirwin, a forensic psychologist, reports that in nearly 300 cases of women charged with neonaticide in the United States and Britain, no woman spent more than a night in jail." Much of "the leniency shown to neonaticidal mothers" reflects the fact that they are standardly "young, poor, unmarried and socially isolated," although it is notable that similar leniency is rarely extended to young, poor, and socially isolated male murderers. (Steven Pinker, "Why They Kill Their Newborns", The New York Times, November 2, 1997.)

A number of strategies have been proposed and implemented to try to address the problem of female infanticide, along with the related phenomena of sex-selective abortion and abandonment and neglect of girl children. Zeng et al.'s prescriptions for Chinese policymakers can easily be generalized to other countries where female infanticide is rife:

The principle of equality between men and women should be more widely promoted through the news media to change the attitude of son preference and improve the awareness of the general public on this issue; the principle should also be reflected in specific social and economic policies to protect the basic rights of women and children, especially female children. ... Government regulations prohibiting the use of prenatal sex identification techniques for nonmedical purposes should be strictly enforced, and violators should be punished accordingly. The laws that punish people who commit infanticide, abandonment, and neglect of female children, and the laws and regulations on the protection of women and children[,] should be strictly enforced. The campaigns to protect women and children from being kidnapped or sold into servitude should be effectively strengthened. Family planning programs should focus on effective public education, good counseling and service delivery, and the fully voluntary participation of the community and individuals to increase contraceptive prevalence, reduce unplanned pregnancies, and minimize the need for an induced abortion. (Zeng, et al., p. 298.

Gendercide Watch: Female Infanticide

Hanfu

            Chinese Clothing - Five Thousand Years' History

The History of Chinese Clothing

Each dynasty in China had its own memorable culture. The many facets of colour and design that emerged during a dynasty’s reign were marvellous and made every aspect of Chinese culture, including their wearing apparel, - highly acclaimed works of art.

The costumes of ancient China were emblems of Chinese tradition, as well as an essential element in the history and culture of each dynasty. Costume maintained an important place in Chinese culture for more than three thousand years. The culture of China is ancient and well established, brilliant and resplendent. The costumes are likewise magnificent and colourful. There were many dynasties throughout China’s history, each having its own unique style of dress. And each style would change or disappear as its dynasty changed, declined, or was replaced. With the advent of each new dynasty and the progression of time, costumes were revolutionised. The style was classical and conservative in the Qin and Han dynasties, luxurious and glamorous in the Tang dynasty, delicate and exquisite in the Song dynasty, graceful and magnificent in the Ming dynasty, and very intricate in the Qing dynasty. Stylised costumes first appeared in the Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun periods. Chinese characters were invented during the ancient Yin Shang period. Although eighty percent of the characters were pictographic drawings, they were quite sufficient for writing and had special pronunciations. The inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells in the Shang dynasty, from about the 16th to 11th century B.C., show characters representing the social classes at the time, including wang (monarchs), chen (officials under a feudal ruler), mu (shepherds), nu (slaves), and yi (tribesmen). There were also words that related to dress and personal adornments, such as as yi (clothing), lu (shoes), huang shang (skirts), and mei (sleeves). Ornaments of varying value, like jade pendants, jade rings, earrings, necklaces, combs, silk fabrics, burlaps, and copper decorations, have been found on excavated statues. Valuable, exquisite items belonged to the aristocrats exclusively, not slaves or tribesmen. With the developments and advances made regarding textiles, articles of clothing for different functions began to appear, such as dresses, skirts, crowns, footwear, hats, and stockings. Costume styles evolved from simple and practical to ornamental. This is reflected in the invention of “twelve designs of symbols.” Looking at the patterns and styles of clothes in history books such as The Rites of the Zhou, Book of Rites and Rites, you can see that Chinese clothing evolved from nothing to very simple and functional styles, and then to styles that were quite complex. During the Ying Shang period, the etiquette, music, rituals, and clothing showed no evidence of any distinction among different social classes. Starting in the Western Zhou dynasty, however, class distinction became apparent, as evident in the differences in clothing and personal adornment. More and more variety in clothing also appeared, depending on the occasion. For example, paying respects to the gods and making obeisance to heaven and earth at the palace temples required special clothing. Special clothes were worn for grand ceremonies. There were army uniforms, wedding ceremony outfits, bereavement clothes, and so on. Clothing at the time was still made in accordance with old systems and thus had dark tops and yellow bottoms, but official garb included four-inch-wide sashes made from silk or leather that were worn over the lapels. Other costumes included jade adornments on the waist belt linked together with silk ribbons. In addition, clothing of different colours indicated different social classes. During the Warring States, the costume of the seven dukedoms of Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei and Qin, each developed changes accordingly. The so-called “skirt around the front of the body" style actually referred to loose-cut cloth with wide rims that was wrapped around the lower body. The ancient designers wrapped the cloth ingeniously from the front of the upper body to the back, making full use of horizontal and diagonal lines to complement space and achieve both quietude in motion and motion in quietude. Materials were light and thin, and stiffer brocade was used to embroider the borders with wavy patterns that reflected the wisdom and intellect of the designers.

Qin and Han Dynasties

During the Qin and Han dynasties, changes in the style of dress were dramatic. The Emperor Qin, who was influenced by the concept of Yin and Yang as well as the theory of the Five Elements, believed that the Qin dynasty would subdue the Zhou dynasty like water extinguishes fire. Therefore, because the Zhou dynasty was "fire superior to gold, its colour being red," the favourite colour of the Qin dynasty was black, since the colour black was associated with water. Thus, in the Qin dynasty, black was the superior colour to symbolise the power of water, so clothing and adornments were all of the colour black. During the two hundred years of the Western Han dynasty, the “dark style” continued for clothing and personal adornment. Its characteristics were: cicada-like hats, red clothing, square sleeves, sloping necklines, jade hanging decorations, and red shoes. The general term for this style of clothing was “Buddhist clothing” and is basically a one-layer coat. Court dress was black in colour. As for the formal dress used in performing sacrificial rites, it was edged with red. The only way to tell a person’s rank or position in society was by the colour and quality of his clothing — there was no difference in the style of the clothing worn by government officials and ordinary people. There were two types of robes, classified according to the style of the front of the robe. One style had a front with a diagonal opening, where the material was wrapped on a diagonal from the collar to under one arm, and the other had a straight opening down the front. Because this style of clothing was long and loose, it was a popular style for men.

The Eastern Han dynasty started from 25 A.D. and ended in 200 A.D. During the period of the Guangwu emperor, red was regarded as the most respectful colour, as it displayed the Han dynasty’s “fire virtue.” Until the second year of Yongping period, red was still the popular colour, but a white inside layer had to be worn when performing sacrificial rites. This white layer was edged with red, which matched the red socks and shoes. Government officials dressed in colours that were appropriate for the seasons, according to the theory of Five Elements. They held ceremonies to pray according to the four seasons. At the beginning of spring, they would hold a ceremony in the eastern suburbs, and carriages and clothing would be a gray-green colour. At the beginning of summer, the ceremony would be held in southern suburbs, and both carriages and costumes would be red. At the beginning of autumn, carriages and dress would be yellow, and at the beginning of winter, everything would be black. According to History of the Song Dynasty, “The Han dynasty inherited the style of the Qin dynasty. There were thirteen different types of hats. Since the Wei-Jin dynasty people still used these hats, such as, law hats, high hats, hats for skilled craftsmen, mountain-like hats, square hats, Jian-Hua hats, Que-Di hats, swordsman’s hats, Que-Fei hats, Jin-Xian hats, and many others.” In the Han dynasty, a man’s rank and status was indicated by the style of his crown. In the Han dynasty, a woman wore a short jacket and a long skirt, and a decorative belt hung down to the knee. A man always dressed in a short jacket, trousers in the style of calf’s nose, with a short cloth skirt outside. This style was the same for everyone — workers, farmers, businessmen, and scholars. During the Wei-Jin period, court dress was red, and casual clothing was purple. In the ancient book History of the Wu Empire -- The Story of Lu Meng, it says, “ask the people who wear white clothing to be businessman’s servant.” From this description, we can tell that white was the colour for ordinary people. During this period, the emphasis was on the jacket and skirt. A coat was considered informal dress. Women’s adornments were particular delicate, including golden earrings, silver rings, and bracelets. There was a big difference in quality for women’s accessories worn inside and outside the imperial palace.

 

Left: A lady with a flowery hairpin; Tang dynasty
Center: Women colouring fabrics; Tang dynasty
Right: A gentlewoman in a court-style costume; Tang dynasty

Read more at Cultural Essentials

SOME CHINESE GHOSTS

BY LAFCADIO HEARN

                             Copyright, 1887, by ROBERTS BROTHERS

 

To my friend

HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL

THE MUSICIAN

WHO, SPEAKING THE SPEECH OF MELODY UNTO THE
CHILDREN OF TIEN-HIA,—
UNTO THE WANDERING TSING-JIN, WHOSE SKINS
HAVE THE COLOR OF GOLD,—
MOVED THEM TO MAKE STRANGE SOUNDS UPON THE
SERPENT-BELLIED SAN-HIEN;
PERSUADED THEM TO PLAY FOR ME UPON THE
SHRIEKING YA-HIEN;
PREVAILED ON THEM TO SING ME A SONG OF THEIR
NATIVE LAND,—
THE SONG OF MOHLÍ-HWA,
THE SONG OF THE JASMINE-FLOWER

PREFACE

I think that my best apology for the insignificant size of this volume is the very character of the material composing it. In preparing the legends I sought especially for weird beauty; and I could not forget this striking observation in Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad": "The supernatural, though appealing to certain powerful emotions very widely and deeply sown amongst the human race, is, nevertheless, a spring which is peculiarly apt to lose its elasticity by being too much pressed upon."

Those desirous to familiarize themselves with Chinese literature as a whole have had the way made smooth for them by the labors of linguists like Julien, Pavie, Rémusat, De Rosny, Schlegel, Legge, Hervey-Saint-Denys, Williams, Biot, Giles, Wylie, Beal, and many other Sinologists. To such great explorers, indeed, the realm of Cathayan story belongs by right of discovery and conquest; yet the humbler traveller who follows wonderingly after them into the vast and mysterious pleasure-grounds of Chinese fancy may surely be permitted to cull a few of the marvellous flowers there growing,—a self-luminous hwa-wang, a black lily, a phosphoric rose or two,—as souvenirs of his curious voyage.

L.H.

New Orleans, March 15, 1886.

 

CONTENTS

• The Soul Of The Great Bell
• The Story Of Ming-Y
• The Legend Of Tchi-Niu
• The Return Of Yen-Tchin-King
• The Tradition Of The Tea-Plant
• The Tale Of The Porcelain-God
• Notes
• Glossary

The Soul of the Great Bell

She hath spoken, and her words still resound in his ears.

Hao-Khieou-Tchouan: c. ix.

THE SOUL OF THE GREAT BELL

The water-clock marks the hour in the Ta-chung sz',—in the Tower of the Great Bell: now the mallet is lifted to smite the lips of the metal monster,—the vast lips inscribed with Buddhist texts from the sacred Fa-hwa-King, from the chapters of the holy Ling-yen-King! Hear the great bell responding!—how mighty her voice, though tongueless!—KO-NGAI! All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven perches; all the hundred little bells of the pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-NGAI!—all the green-and-gold tiles of the temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish above them are writhing against the sky; the uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the heads of the worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-colored tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver,—as though a woman should whisper, "Hiai!" Even so the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five hundred years,—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous clang, then with immeasurable moan of gold, then with silver murmuring of "Hiai!" And there is not a child in all the many-colored ways of the old Chinese city who does not know the story of the great bell,—who cannot tell you why the great bell says Ko-Ngai and Hiai!

---

Now, this is the story of the great bell in the Ta-chung sz', as the same is related in the Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, written by the learned Yu-Pao-Tchen, of the City of Kwang-tchau-fu.

Nearly five hundred years ago the Celestially August, the Son of Heaven, Yong-Lo, of the "Illustrious," or Ming, dynasty, commanded the worthy official Kouan-Yu that he should have a bell made of such size that the sound thereof might be heard for one hundred li. And he further ordained that the voice of the bell should be strengthened with brass, and deepened with gold, and sweetened with silver; and that the face and the great lips of it should be graven with blessed sayings from the sacred books, and that it should be suspended in the centre of the imperial capital, to sound through all the many-colored ways of the City of Pe-king.

Therefore the worthy mandarin Kouan-Yu assembled the master-moulders and the renowned bellsmiths of the empire, and all men of great repute and cunning in foundry work; and they measured the materials for the alloy, and treated them skilfully, and prepared the moulds, the fires, the instruments, and the monstrous melting-pot for fusing the metal. And they labored exceedingly, like giants,—neglecting only rest and sleep and the comforts of life; toiling both night and day in obedience to Kouan-Yu, and striving in all things to do the behest of the Son of Heaven.

But when the metal had been cast, and the earthen mould separated from the glowing casting, it was discovered that, despite their great labor and ceaseless care, the result was void of worth; for the metals had rebelled one against the other,—the gold had scorned alliance with the brass, the silver would not mingle with the molten iron. Therefore the moulds had to be once more prepared, and the fires rekindled, and the metal remelted, and all the work tediously and toilsomely repeated. The Son of Heaven heard, and was angry, but spake nothing.

A second time the bell was cast, and the result was even worse. Still the metals obstinately refused to blend one with the other; and there was no uniformity in the bell, and the sides of it were cracked and fissured, and the lips of it were slagged and split asunder; so that all the labor had to be repeated even a third time, to the great dismay of Kouan-Yu. And when the Son of Heaven heard these things, he was angrier than before; and sent his messenger to Kouan-Yu with a letter, written upon lemon-colored silk, and sealed with the seal of the Dragon, containing these words:—

"From the Mighty Yong-Lo, the Sublime Tait-Sung, the Celestial and August,—whose reign is called 'Ming,'—to Kouan-Yu the Fuh-yin: Twice thou hast betrayed the trust we have deigned graciously to place in thee; if thou fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head shall be severed from thy neck. Tremble, and obey!"

---

Now, Kouan-Yu had a daughter of dazzling loveliness, whose name—Ko-Ngai—was ever in the mouths of poets, and whose heart was even more beautiful than her face. Ko-Ngai loved her father with such love that she had refused a hundred worthy suitors rather than make his home desolate by her absence; and when she had seen the awful yellow missive, sealed with the Dragon-Seal, she fainted away with fear for her father's sake. And when her senses and her strength returned to her, she could not rest or sleep for thinking of her parent's danger, until she had secretly sold some of her jewels, and with the money so obtained had hastened to an astrologer, and paid him a great price to advise her by what means her father might be saved from the peril impending over him. So the astrologer made observations of the heavens, and marked the aspect of the Silver Stream (which we call the Milky Way), and examined the signs of the Zodiac,—the Hwang-tao, or Yellow Road,—and consulted the table of the Five Hin, or Principles of the Universe, and the mystical books of the alchemists. And after a long silence, he made answer to her, saying: "Gold and brass will never meet in wedlock, silver and iron never will embrace, until the flesh of a maiden be melted in the crucible; until the blood of a virgin be mixed with the metals in their fusion." So Ko-Ngai returned home sorrowful at heart; but she kept secret all that she had heard, and told no one what she had done.

---

At last came the awful day when the third and last effort to cast the great bell was to be made; and Ko-Ngai, together with her waiting-woman, accompanied her father to the foundry, and they took their places upon a platform overlooking the toiling of the moulders and the lava of liquefied metal. All the workmen wrought their tasks in silence; there was no sound heard but the muttering of the fires. And the muttering deepened into a roar like the roar of typhoons approaching, and the blood-red lake of metal slowly brightened like the vermilion of a sunrise, and the vermilion was transmuted into a radiant glow of gold, and the gold whitened blindingly, like the silver face of a full moon. Then the workers ceased to feed the raving flame, and all fixed their eyes upon the eyes of Kouan-Yu; and Kouan-Yu prepared to give the signal to cast.

But ere ever he lifted his finger, a cry caused him to turn his head; and all heard the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet as a bird's song above the great thunder of the fires,—"For thy sake, O my Father!" And even as she cried, she leaped into the white flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace roared to receive her, and spattered monstrous flakes of flame to the roof, and burst over the verge of the earthen crater, and cast up a whirling fountain of many-colored fires, and subsided quakingly, with lightnings and with thunders and with mutterings.

Then the father of Ko-Ngai, wild with his grief, would have leaped in after her, but that strong men held him back and kept firm grasp upon him until he had fainted away and they could bear him like one dead to his home. And the serving-woman of Ko-Ngai, dizzy and speechless for pain, stood before the furnace, still holding in her hands a shoe, a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls and flowers,—the shoe of her beautiful mistress that was. For she had sought to grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the pretty shoe came off in her hand; and she continued to stare at it like one gone mad.

But in spite of all these things, the command of the Celestial and August had to be obeyed, and the work of the moulders to be finished, hopeless as the result might be. Yet the glow of the metal seemed purer and whiter than before; and there was no sign of the beautiful body that had been entombed therein. So the ponderous casting was made; and lo! when the metal had become cool, it was found that the bell was beautiful to look upon, and perfect in form, and wonderful in color above all other bells. Nor was there any trace found of the body of Ko-Ngai; for it had been totally absorbed by the precious alloy, and blended with the well-blended brass and gold, with the intermingling of the silver and the iron. And when they sounded the bell, its tones were found to be deeper and mellower and mightier than the tones of any other bell,—reaching even beyond the distance of one hundred li, like a pealing of summer thunder; and yet also like some vast voice uttering a name, a woman's name,—the name of Ko-Ngai!

---

And still, between each mighty stroke there is a long low moaning heard; and ever the moaning ends with a sound of sobbing and of complaining, as though a weeping woman should murmur, "Hiai!" And still, when the people hear that great golden moan they keep silence; but when the sharp, sweet shuddering comes in the air, and the sobbing of "Hiai!" then, indeed, all the Chinese mothers in all the many-colored ways of Pe-king whisper to their little ones: "Listen! that is Ko-Ngai crying for her shoe! That is Ko-Ngai calling for her shoe!"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16261/16261-h/16261-h.htm#The_Soul_of_the_Great_Bell

Curse of the Terracotta Army: How those who discovered relic suffered ruined lives

In modern China with its brutal pace of development, it was an unremarkable death.

Racked with disease and with no money to pay for medicine, peasant farmer Wang Puzhi waited until his family were out, slipped a rope around his neck and ended his suffering.

Before his suicide, however, Wang's life was far from unremarkable.

He was one of a seven-strong team of workers who, while digging a well on their communal farm in Yang village in 1974, stumbled across the most priceless archaeological discovery of modern times: the 2,200-year-old Terracotta Army.

The famous Terracotta Army brought wealth and glory to many, but not the poor villagers who found it

Their discovery has brought millions of tourists to Xi'an in north-western China and made many businessmen and, it is claimed, officials rich.

But for the farmers who found the buried army, the warriors have proved more a curse than a blessing.

On the eve of a sensational exhibition at the British Museum - the largest ever display of the soldiers outside China - The Mail on Sunday tracked down the survivors from the group who discovered the figures.

But instead of reaping the rewards of finding the treasures, they are bewildered at the greed and destruction the warriors brought to the surface with them.

Their farmland was claimed by the government.

Their homes were demolished to make way for exhibition halls and gift shops.

Their 2,000-year-old village has all but disappeared.

Within three years of 60-year-old Puzhi's suicide in 1997, the two youngest members of the team who found the warriors - Yang Wenhai and Yang Yanxin - died in their 50s, jobless and penniless.

Today, the four remaining men 79-year-old Yang Quanyi, 78-year-old Yang Peiyan and 69-year-olds Yang Zhifa and Yang Xinman - earn £2 a day to sit in official souvenir shops at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and sign books for tourists.

"Officials and businessmen have made a lot of money from the Terracotta Army, but not us," said Quanyi, who has been signing the books for nine years, having spent three months learning how to write his own name.

"We got nothing for the discovery.

"It was the days of collective farms and we were given ten credit points by our brigade leader for finding the warriors. That was the equivalent of about one yuan [5p]."

There had always been rumours of buried treasure in the farmers' village.

Then, in March 1974, while digging a well, one of the farmers, Zhifa, struck something about 15m down.

"At first all we saw was the top of a head," said Quanyi.

"Then as we dug further we saw the whole head."

Thinking he had found a bronze relic that the villagers could sell for the price of a few packets of cigarettes, Zhifa used a hammer to break it off and brought it back to the village. "Everyone was afraid to touch it," said Quanyi.

"We thought it was a temple statue - a buddha perhaps.

"We were frightened that the buddha would punish us."

Yang Quanyi, one of the seven men who found the ancient treasure

In fact the farmers had found one of more than 8,000 terracotta foot soldiers, archers and charioteers that had been buried with Qin, the First Emperor of China, in 221 BC in a mausoleum covering several square miles.

Officials and archaeologists poured into the village and began to excavate the tomb.

Over the next few years, land that for centuries had provided the village with its livelihood was claimed by the state.

Villagers say almost all the compensation paid by the government was siphoned off by officials.

With China still a relatively closed country and the tourism boom still years off, they sank deeper into what was to prove fatal poverty for three of the seven.

"Families here are too poor to afford medicine," said Quanyi.

"Yang Yanxin died of a skin disease that caused his body to rot away. Yang Wenhai died in great pain at home."

The family of Wang Puzhi, who hanged himself in 1997, are still upset at his death.

"He had acute heart disease,' said Yang Lou Cheng, his stepson.

"He couldn't bear the suffering and he didn't want to be a burden to my mother and me. So one day when he was alone in the house he hanged himself.

My mother died a short while later."

In recent years, as China has opened its doors to tourists, the site at Xi'an has been expanded.

Families were forced to move to new homes a mile away and had to pay £525 per person for the construction.

"The government has taken away our land and our livelihoods," said one villager who didn't want to be named.

"People in Yang village are simple farm-ers.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480757/Curse-Terracotta-Army-How-discovered-relic-suffered-ruined-lives.html#ixzz1TKjDVpGD

Terracotta Warriors (Video)

Terracotta Warriors

Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

Emperor Qin's Terra-cotta army pits are the large attendant pits, located about 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) east of the Emperor QinShihuang's mausoleum, symbolizing the main defending force that guarded the capital before Emperor Qin died. The Terracotta soldier pits were never mentioned in the historical records until Pit 1 was discovered in March 1974 by local Chinese farmers while drilling a well. Then archaeologists began the explorations and excavations of the Terra cotta Army. On October 1, 1979 Emperor Qin's Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses Museum was opened to the public about 22 miles (35 kilometers) East of Xian, China. The Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum receives over 2,000,000 Chinese and Foreign Tourists a year with an annual ticket income of around 150 million yuan (2005).

Pit 1, the largest pit that has been found. Terracotta Army Pit 1, originally uploaded by gds.

Facts about Terra Cotta Army - Pit 1

Pit 1 is the largest of the three pits. It measures 755 feet (230 meters) long from east to west, 203 feet (62 meters) wide from north to south, covering an area of 153,493 square feet (14,260 square meters). Up to now, about 2,000 clay warriors and horses, 20 wooden chariots have been unearthed with in an area of 43,056 square feet (4,000 square meters). It's assumed that more than 6,000 terracota warriors and horses, and 50 chariots were buried in Pit 1.

Making the Terra Cotta Warriors

All pottery warriors and horses were made using local clay, then baked in the kiln. After firing the figures were completed with painted detail. The Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses were made in life-size.

The Construction of Pit 1

Pit 1 is a subterranean earth and wood structure. Eleven corridors, divided by ten earth-rammed partition walls, are paved with pottery bricks on which the teracotta figures were placed. The earth walls sustained wood roof that was composed of huge and strong rafters. The roof was covered with layers of fiber mats on which fine soil was filled.

Bronze Horses and Chariot, originally uploaded by galaygobi.

The Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor was included as a World Heritage Site on the basis of Cultural Criteria I, III, IV and VI.

Criterion I.  Because of their exceptional technical and artistic qualities, the terracotta warriors and horses, and the funerary carts in bronze are major works in the history of Chinese sculpture prior to the reign of the Han dynasty.

Criterion III.  The army of statues bears unique testimony to the military organization in China at the time of the Warring Kingdoms (475-221 B.C.) and that of the short-lived Empire of a Thousand Generations (221-210 B.C.). The direct testimony of the objects found in situ (lances, swords, axes, halberds, bows, arrows, etc.) is evident. The documentary value of a group of hyperrealistic sculptures where no detail has been neglected from the uniforms of the warriors, their arms, to even the horses' halters- is enormous. Furthermore, the information to be gleaned from the statues concerning the craft and techniques of potters and bronze-workers is immeasurable.

Terracotta Warriors in unrestored condition, originally uploaded by rpoll.

Criterion IV.  The mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is the largest preserved one in China. It is a unique architectural ensemble whose layout echoes the urban plan of the capital, Xianyang, with the imperial palace enclosed by the walls of the city, themselves encircled by other walls. This capital of the Qin (to which succeeded on the present site of Xian the capitals of the Han, Sui, Tang, Ming and Qing dynasties) is a microcosm of the Zhongguo (Middle Country) that Qin Shi Huang wanted both to unify (he imposed throughout the land a single system of writing, money, weights and measures) and to protect from the barbarians that could arrive from any direction (the army which watches over the dead emperor faces outward from the tomb).

Criterion VI.  The mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is associated with an event of universal significance: the first unification of the Chinese territory by a centralized state created by an absolute monarch in 221 B.C.

 Xi’an Terracotta Warriors Museum Pit 1 , originally uploaded by rpoll.

Terracotta Warriors Museum Plaza , originally uploaded by colinedwards99. Emperor QinShihuang's Terra-cotta Museum was opened to the public in 1979. The museum consists of Pit 1, 2 and 3, which house the Terra-cotta Warriors and Terra-cotta Horses. In addition to the pits, there is another exhibition hall containing the bronze chariots and horses, as well as many other historical relics. Approximately 8,000 Terra cotta Warriors, horses and thousands of bronze weapons were discovered here. The Terracotta Warriors Museum on the left above is the entrance to Pit 1. The top two large pictures at the top of this page are from Pit 1. The Terra cotta Warrior Museum Plaza is on the right.

The Terracotta Warriors - Pit 3 Originally uploaded by einalem. The Terracotta Warriors - Pit 2 Originally uploaded by colinedwars99.

Facts about Pit 2

Located 66 feet (20 meters) to the north of Pit 1 at the eastern end, Pit 2 is in an "L" shape. This pit was discovered in April 1976, covering an area of 64,583 square feet (6,000 square meters). It measures 407 feet (124 meters) long from east to west, 322 feet (98 meters) wide from north to south and 16 feet (5 meters) deep. Different from Pit 1, Pit 2 consists of mixed military forces in four arrays, archers, war chariots, cavalrymen and infantrymen. The four arrays seemed to exist independently, but could be assembled immediately to constitute a complete battle formation during the war times. This reflects the unique strategy of Qin military affairs.

The excavation work of Pit 2 is still continuing. At present a large area of the remnants of the roof beams and a small part of the pottery warriors and horses are being exhibited in the pit. It is a rare chance for visitors to enjoy the archaeological digging at the site.

Information about Pit 3

Pit 3 was discovered in June 1976, located north of Pit 1 at the western end. It is 82 feet (25 meters) to the south of Pit 1 and 394 feet (120 meters) to the east of Pit 2. It is of U-Shape about 5597 square feet (520 square meters), measuring 92 feet (28 meters) long from east to west, 79 feet (24 meters) wide from north to south and about 16 feet (5 meters) deep. Investigation shows that Pit 3 has been seriously damaged over the years. Only 68 pottery figures, one chariot and 34 weapons were unearthed from this pit. Pit 3 is now know as the command center of Pit 1 and Pit 2.

Read and view more at Terracotta Warrior

JAMES HUDSON TAYLOR (1832–1905) Founder of the China Inland Mission

 

Born at Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, May 21, 1832; died at Changsha, China, June 3, 1905. His father was an eloquent and able Methodist local preacher and his mother a woman of more than ordinary sweet and patient spirit. Hudson Taylor combined the ability of his father with the gentle disposition of his mother. He was converted through the reading of a tract at the age of fifteen, and not long afterward passed through a remarkable experience, at which time he dedicated himself to God for whatever service might be appointed. Unknown to himself, his father, who had been deeply interested in China, had prayed that his son might go to that land as a missionary, and very early, through the reading of Walter Henry Medhurst's China (London, 1838), the thoughts of young Taylor were directed to that country.

With a view to preparing himself for his life-work, he became an assistant to a physician at Hull, and subsequently studied medicine at the London Hospital. The great interest awakened in China through the Taiping rebellion, which was then erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by Carl Friedrich August Gutzlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of the China Evangelization Society, to the service of which Hudson Taylor offered himself and on Sept. 19, 1853, he sailed for China before the completion of his medical studies. The six years from 1854 to 1860 were spent in Shanghai, Swatow, and Ningpo, working sometimes in company with older missionaries of other societies and especially with William Chalmers Burns of the English Presbyterian Mission. During this period he retired from the China Evangelization Society, which subsequently ceased to exist, and continued as an independent worker, trusting God to supply his need. His experiences of God's faithfulness in meeting his own personal needs and the needs of a hospital at Ningpo, of which he had taken charge, had much to do with the subsequent step of founding the China Inland Mission. While at Ningpo he married Miss Maria Dyer, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Dyer of the London Missionary Society. Two of their children also worked as missionaries in China.

Poor health caused him to return to England in 1860 where he spent the next five years. In company with the Rev. Frederick Foster Cough of the Church Missionary Society, he completed the revision of a version of the New Testament in the colloquial of Ningpo for the British and Foreign Bible Society, and also finished his medical course. To arouse interest in the great Middle Kingdom he published a book entitled China, its Spiritual Need and Claims (London, 1875, 8th ed., 1890), which has been much used in calling forth sympathy for China and volunteers for the field, who began to go out in 1862, the first being James J. Meadows. In 1861, at Brighton, Taylor definitely dedicated himself to God for the founding of a new society to undertake the evangelization of inland China. In May, 1866, he, with his wife and children and a party of sixteen missionaries, sailed for China. Thus was definitely launched that organization which, on Jan. 1, 1911, had 968 missionaries (including wives) connected with it, and in the support of which more than £1,471,000 had been contributed in answer to prayer and without public or private solicitation of funds. From the founding of the mission in 1865 Taylor's time became more and more occupied as general director of a growing work. His duties necessitated extensive journeys in China and frequent visits to the home country. In 1888 a wider ministry was commenced through the formation of a home center in North America. This arose through Taylor's presence at the Northfield Convention. Two years later another center was founded in Australasia. Various visits to the continent of Europe led to the inception of associate missions, which recognized Taylor as their general director on the field. In Jan., 1911, these associate missions had 216 workers on the field.

Read more at tlogical

History of Christianity in China

The most widely accepted record of the earliest existence of Christianity in China is a stone stele dated 781 A.D. that detailed Christian missionaries’ activities and the propagation of the religion in China. Since being unearthed in Xi’an by accident in 1625, this stele has stood firm as the most authoritative piece of evidence relating to the earliest presence of Christianity in China.

The stele’s 1,900 word carvings describe a Syrian missionary monk Olopun’s arrival in the capital of China during the Tang Dynasty, Chang An (today’s Xi’an) in 635 A.D. It further states that the Gospel was translated in the imperial library and presented to the Emperor Taizong (599 – 649), who issued an imperial proclamation that says “having examined the principles of this religion, we find them to be purely excellent and natural…it is beneficial to all creatures, it is advantageous to mankind. Let it be published throughout the empire, and let the proper authority build a Syrian church in the capital…which shall be governed by twenty-one priests.”

Indeed, at least one large church was built outside of Xi’an, to which the stele was erected to commemorate. But the vulnerable sprout of Christianity soon faced virtual extinction as the most open chapter of Chinese history drew to a close. The Tang dynasty was in decline during the latter half of the ninth century. The once accommodating imperial court grew inward-looking and xenophobic. The headwind culminated when Emperor Wuzong (814 – 846), a zealous Taoist, decreed in 845 A.D. that all foreign religions be banned. In addition, the Silk Road, on which Olopun had traveled to reach China two hundred years ago, was taken over by Muslims, thus effectively shutting the path of Christian missionaries to China.

No record points to any notable Christian presence until four hundred years later during another period of cultural collision and integration in China, the Yuan dynasty (1271 – 1368). As the Mongol Empire extended westward to the Caspian Sea, Christian missionaries, this time directly commissioned by the Pope in Rome, came to China when the country fell to the rule of an invading people for the first time.
 Giovanni of Monte Corvine (1246 – 1329), a Franciscan missionary, arrived in the capital, Da Du (today’s Beijing) in 1294 A.D. Commissioned by Pope Nicholas to Father China, Monte Corvine had timing on his part. The Mongol emperor was tolerant to all forms of religion, Christianity included. Chinese society was finally enjoying peace and stability after years of turbulence. As a result, Monte Corvine was able to build churches around the capital and convert at least six thousand Chinese and Mongols.

His success so pleased the Pope that Clement V appointed him as Archbishop of Peking, and sent more missionaries to support him. Under Giovanni’s leadership, sizable Catholic communities thrived in the capital and in the southern port city of Quan Zhou.
The second emergence of Christianity in China featured a mixture of denominations. The Nestorian tradition, which had strong presence in Asia as attested by Marco Polo, co-existed with Catholicism and there seemed to be intense competition.

Like previous efforts, this round of missionary work was forced to stop. The short-lived Mongol Empire was crumbling with internal power struggles. Nearly a century of Mongol rule brewed anti-foreign bitterness among the Chinese population, who were treated as second-class citizens in their own land. Christianity was largely perceived as a foreign religion, with support from the Mongols and Rome. Therefore, as rebellions against the Mongols spread across the country, Christianity became a target. Moreover, the ruling Mongols, who were once favorable to Christians, were increasingly being converted to Islam. So one year after the establishment of the Ming dynasty by Han Chinese in 1368 A.D., all Christians — both the Catholics and Nestorians — were expelled from China. This is the second virtual extinction during Christianity’s long tortuous journey in China.

It would take more than two centuries before Christianity returned to China — and this time to settle. The New World had been discovered and the Protestant reformation was raging in Europe. Against such backdrop, both the denomination and the travel mode of the missions to China were significantly different. It was the highly educated Jesuits who arrived in Southern China via sea that would lift the curtain of the third emergence of Christianity in the Middle Kingdom.
The early part of this mission was defined by one of the mostly talented missionaries in history, an Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci.

After landing in the Portuguese trading enclave Macau in 1582, Ricci devoted himself to learning the Chinese language and culture. As he later moved into Southern China and then to the capital Peking, he translated Chinese classics and created the first Portuguese-Chinese dictionary. In theology, he adopted a more accommodating approach to Chinese traditions, trying to integrate Christianity into existing Chinese philosophy.
Ricci’s mission was a huge success culturally — he is commemorated as a cultural ambassador today.

By 1605, Ricci claimed there were more than one thousand Chinese converts. It grew to five thousand in ten years, a great number of them were court eunuchs and women. One of Ricci’s converts was the prominent scientist Xu Guangqi, who later was appointed grand secretary to the emperor and would be the first of many prominent Chinese Christians to come. The Cathedral of St. Ignatius or Xujiahui Church in Shanghai, which stands in the center of the city today, was built with Xu Guangqi’s help.

Like previous missionaries, the Jesuits sought to find an opening for Christianity through the Chinese imperial court. Ricci was granted access to the Forbidden City, though he did not meet with the Emperor Wanli. But Ricci’s fellow Jesuits, who carried on his work following his death in 1610, came close to converting the Chinese Emperor, Kangxi. Though never formally claimed being a Christian, Kang Xi wrote two poems that demonstrated his thorough understanding of the Gospel and affinity to Christianity belief.

But the Jesuits’ missionary success among the imperial and literary ruling class drew jealousy from other denominations, which were left to cultivate China’s lower classes. At the center of the issue was whether Chinese ancestor veneration was a cultural or spiritual phenomenon. The Jesuits believed that it was purely a cultural custom that did not conflict with the Christian faith. But other orders disagreed. The dispute had to be put before the Pope, who in the end publicly criticized the Jesuits for being too acquiescent to Chinese culture and compromising gospel truth.

When the Papal bull reached the emperor, Kangxi (who sided with the Jesuits on the issue) in 1715, it spelled disaster. Not accustomed to taking orders, Kangxi was infuriated. The goodwill built up by the Jesuits for more than one hundred years was replaced by vexation. Kangxi contemplated banning Christianity within China. His successor, Yongzheng, finally put it into law, issuing an edict of expulsion and confiscation in 1724. China’s three hundred churches were destroyed or confiscated. With no place of worship, the number of Chinese converts, estimated at 300,000, gradually dwindled over the next decades, though some Catholic missionary priests continued preaching in China at the risk of death.

As the nineteenth century dawned, protestant missionaries arrived in China for the first time. Despite its unpromising beginning, their missionary effort would shake the whole country with a number of prominent individual Christians. The first one is a Protestant convert Hong Xiuquan, who started the Taiping Rebellion from 1850 to 1864 that nearly toppled the Qing government.

Another individual is an English Protestant missionary, Hudson Taylor, who revolutionized Christian missions in China. As noted above, previous Christian missionaries sought to work among the ruling literal class. But Taylor had an audacious idea. He founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) with the aim to take the Gospel into the hearts of Mainland China. It was the first massive grassroots missionary effort ever taken place of this type in China. Taylor decided that CIM would be interdenominational and accepted single women as missionaries. It turned out to be a huge success. By 1895, there were 641 missionaries in every Chinese province except Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

As Chinese society struggled in turmoil at the turn of the twentieth century, Sun Yat-sen, an overseas Chinese Christian, rose to lead a revolution that gave birth to the Republic of China. The once unthinkable — that a Chinese leader would be a Christian — became a reality. Moreover, China’s next leader, Chiang Kai-shek, turned to Christianity in order to marry the future Madame Chiang Kai-shek (whose father was a Methodist) and Chiang was publicly baptized in 1930.
 Despite facing a deadly blow during the anti-foreign outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900s, Christianity’s presence in China is irreversible as its monarch rule came to an end.

The expulsion of foreign missionaries after 1949 opened a new chapter of Christianity in China as the Chinese government tried to gain full control of all religions. Over a thousand years since the Nestorian monks’ arrival in Xi’an, and against a culture (namely, Confucianism) that has no place for God, Christianity was playing critical roles in education, medicine, science and society. In 1949, Chinese Christians numbered approximately three million Catholics and around 800,000 Protestants. Today, China’s Christian population has grown to over one hundred million, combined, according to various unofficial estimates

Christians in China

Olopun

THE NESTORIAN TABLET

In the time of the accomplished Emperor Tai-tsung, the illustrious and magnificent founder of the dynasty, among the enlightened and holy men who arrived was the most-virtuous Olopun, from the country of Syria. Observing the azure clouds, he bore the true sacred books; beholding the direction of the winds, he braved difficulties and dangers. In the year of our Lord 635 he arrived at Chang-an; the Emperor sent his Prime Minister, Duke Fang Hiuen-ling; who, carrying the official staff to the west border, conducted his guest into the interior; the sacred books were translated in the imperial library, the sovereign investigated the subject in his private apartments; when becoming deeply impressed with the rectitude and truth of the religion, he gave special orders for its dissemination.

 In the seventh month of the year A.D. 638 the following imperial proclamation was issued:

 "Right principles have no invariable name, holy men have no invariable station; instruction is established in accordance with the locality, with the object of benefiting the people at large. The greatly virtuous Olopun, of the kingdom of Syria, has brought his sacred books and images from that distant part, and has presented them at our chief capital. Having examined the principles of this religion, we find them to be purely excellent and natural; investigating its originating source, we find it has taken its rise from the establishment of important truths; its ritual is free from perplexing expressions, its principles will survive when the framework is forgot; it is beneficial to all creatures; it is advantageous to mankind. Let it be published throughout the Empire, and let the proper authority build a Syrian church in the capital in the I-ning May, which shall be governed by twenty-one priests. When the virtue of the Chau Dynasty declined, the rider on the azure ox ascended to the west; the principles of the great Tang becoming resplendent, the Illustrious breezes have come to fan the East."

 Orders were then issued to the authorities to have a true portrait of the Emperor taken; when it was transferred to the wall of the church, the dazzling splendor of the celestial visage irradiated the Illustrious portals. The sacred traces emitted a felicitous influence, and shed a perpetual splendor over the holy precincts. According to the Illustrated Memoir of the Western Regions, and the historical books of the Han and Wei dynasties, the kingdom of Syria reaches south to the Coral Sea; on the north it joins the Gem Mountains; on the west it extends toward the borders of the immortals and the flowery forests; on the east it lies open to the violent winds and tideless waters. The country produces fire-proof cloth, life-restoring incense, bright moon-pearls, and night-luster gems. Brigands and robbers are unknown, but the people enjoy happiness and peace. None but Illustrious laws prevail; none but the virtuous are raised to sovereign power. The land is broad and ample, and its literary productions are perspicuous and clear.

 The Emperor Kau-tsung respectfully succeeded his ancestor, and was still more beneficent toward the institution of truth. In every province he caused Illustrious churches to be erected, and ratified the honor conferred upon Olopun, making him the great conservator of doctrine for the preservation of the State. While this doctrine pervaded every channel, the State became enriched and tranquillity abounded. Every city was full of churches, and the royal family enjoyed luster and happiness. In the year A.D. 699 the Buddhists, gaining power, raised their voices in the eastern metropolis; in the year A.D. 713, some low fellows excited ridicule and spread slanders in the western capital. At that time there was the chief priest Lohan, the greatly virtuous Kie-leih, and others of noble estate from the golden regions, lofty-minded priests, having abandoned all worldly interests; who unitedly maintained the grand principles and preserved them entire to the end. The high-principled Emperor Hiuen-tsung caused the Prince of Ning and others, five princes in all, personally to visit the felicitous edifice; he established the place of worship; he restored the consecrated timbers which had been temporarily thrown down; and re-erected the sacred stones which for a time had been desecrated.

 In A.D. 742 orders were given to the great general Kau Lih-sz', to send the five sacred portraits and have them placed in the church, and a gift of a hundred pieces of silk accompanied these pictures of intelligence. Although the dragon's beard was then remote, their bows and swords were still within reach; while the solar horns sent forth their rays, and celestial visages seemed close at hand. In A.D. 744 the priest Kih-ho, in the kingdom of Syria, looking toward the star [of China], was attracted by its transforming influence, and observing the sun [i.e., the Emperor], came to pay court to the most honorable. The Emperor commanded the priest Lo-han, the priest Pu-lun, and others, seven in all, together with the greatly virtuous Kih-ho, to perform a service of merit in the Hing-king palace. Thereupon the Emperor composed mottoes for the sides of the church, and the tablets were graced with the royal inscriptions; the accumulated gems emitted their effulgence, while their sparkling brightness vied with the ruby clouds; the transcripts of intelligence suspended in the void shot forth their rays as reflected by the sun; the bountiful gifts exceeded the height of the southern hills; the bedewing favors were deep as the eastern sea. Nothing is beyond the range of the right principle, and what is permissible may be identified; nothing is beyond the power of the holy man, and that which is practicable may be related.

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Assyrian Christian Missions in China 635 - 1550 AD

The Theology of the Church of the East has been stated briefly and clearly in the following “Hymn of Praise (TESHBOKHTA)?nbsp; Composed by Mar Babai the Great in the sixth century A.D.,
a noted theologian of the Church

One is Christ the Son of God,
Worshiped by all in two natures;
In His Godhead begotten of the Father,
Without beginning before all time;
In His humanity born of Mary,
In the fullness of time, in a body united;
Neither His Godhead is of the nature of the mother,
Nor His humanity of the nature of the Father;
The natures are preserved in their Qnumas*,
In one person of one Sonship.
And as the Godhead is three substances in one nature,
Likewise the Sonship of the Son is in two natures, one person.
So the Holy Church has taught.

* Qnuma, is an Aramaic word. The nearest equivalent is the Greek “hypostasis? in Latin “substantia?and in English “substance?

In the time of the Emperor Taitsung, in the year AD 635 an Assyrian man named Olopun arrived at Chang-an (Hsian-Fu), China and was received by the prime minister, Duke Fan Hiuen-ling. Olopun translated the holy book into Chinese, and in July 638 AD the emperor issued a proclamation ordering the publication and dissemination of this Chinese translation of the Holy Bible. The emperor also ordered the building of an Assyrian church in the capital of the I-ning May; this church was to be governed by 21 priests.

The next emperor, Kausung honored emperor Taitsung' proclamation. During his time churches were being built in every province in China, he also appointed Olopun as the great conservator of doctrine for the preservation of the state.

On January 7, 781 AD, the year of Kienchung of the Tang dynasty, the Assyrian christian (Nestorian) Monument was erected to commemorate the diffusion of christianity in China. The monument bore Syro-Chinese inscriptions composed by an Assyrian priest from Persia (Iran) named Adam, also known As Ching-tsing in Chinese, he was a monk of the Ta-ts'in monastery.

The Assyrian monk, Adam(Ching-tsing) is mentioned in a contemporary buddist work entitled Cheng-Yuan Hsin-ting shih-chiao-mo-lu, meaning, "The New Catalogue of the teaching of Sakya" in The period of cheng-yuan (AD 785-804).

Professor Saeki mentions that Japanese buddism borrowed the wedding religious ceremony from the Assyrians as well as the feast of departed souls, "Yu Lan P'en".

In AD 845 persecution of the Assyrian and Chinese Christians of the Assyrian Church of the East began by the emperor Wu-tsung. These persecutions lead to the burying of the Assyrian monument to save it from destruction. The monument remained burried untill February 1625 when some workmen digging a foundation at a place not far from His-an-fu came across a large stele burried underground.

A pagan friend of a Christian mandarin happen to witness the discovery of the monument. This pagan man sent a copy of the monument to his mandarin Christian friend, Leo, who lived in Han chow. It is believed that this Leo was none other than the celebrated Catholic letteratus, Li Chih-tsao (1570- 1670). Through him the news of the discovery of the Assyrian monument reached the Jesuits at Peking and elsewhere. Nicholas Trigault, a french Jesuit father visited the monument in October 1625 and soon after, the discovery was announced throughout China and Europe.

It was not till 1817 that the inscription of the Assyrian monument was for the first time made known to the Japanese. In that year, many books were imported from China and among them was a a book entitled "A great Collection of Inscriptions on stone and metal". This book was compiled by Wang Ch'ang in 1805 and it contained the inscription from the famous Assyrian monument. The Japanese Inspector-General of Publication Imported Books was Kondo Seisai and as soon as he read the Assyrian inscription, he concluded it had to do with Christianity, which was then strictly forbidden by the Shogun's law, and he consequently declared the whole book by Wang Ch'ang prohibited in Japan. Almost sixty years later in 1876, the London Bible and Tract Society published Dr. Martin's Chinese book entitled "T'ien Tao Su Yuan", meaning "The Way of Heaven Traced to its Origin". This book contained the Assyrian inscription from the Assyrian Monument and it contained Japanese reading marks added to the Chinese text. Twenty years later, Dr. Takakusu published a very interesting and valuable article in the well-known journal "T'oung Pao". In this article he wrote about his discovery of the name "Ching-ching", Adam, the name of the Assyrian priest from Persia (Iran) who composed the inscription. This article also speaks of the genuineness of the monument. The Honorable Mrs. E.A. Gordon set up the replica of the Assyrian monument at the top of Mount Koya, the holy land of Japan, on the 3rd of October 1911; she also wrote a very interesting article entitled "On Kobo Daishi and the Nestorians in China".

The name of the city "Hsi-an-fu" has been spelled and pronounced in so many different ways, here is a list of some of the other spellings and pronounciations:      Hsi-an, Si-an, Si-gan, Sengan, Si-ngan, Hsingan, Ching-chao yin, Yung-chou (Chung-chao), Shang-tu (Ching-chao-fu).

Hsi-an-fu is located at 109 30' longtiude and 34 17' North latitude. The eastern part of Hsi-an-fu, known as Hsien-ning there is a place known as "Pei-lin", meaning "Forest of Tablest", this is where the Chinese kept the precious stone monuments of the city. The Assyrian Monument was kept here since October 2, 1907, well protected from wind and rain. Just before it was moved to "Pei-lin", there was an attempt by some foreigner to buy the Assyrian Monument for 3,000 teals in order that he might sell it to the British Museum. This event startled the Governor of the Province of Shensi, that he ordered the moving of the Assyrian Monument to the forest of tablets, and it was ordered that no one without prermission from the proper government authorities was allowed to come near the monument. Later that year the Han-Kow Daily News had published an article regarding the attempt by one Danish journalist named Mr. Fritz Von Holm who after failing to purchase the original Assyrian monument had tried to get a replica and still failed.

Mr. Fritz Von Holm writes the following: I did everything in my power to obtain the original by applying to the local authorities in an indirect manner; but although the Chinese do not care more today for the stone than for any ordinary brick, they at once got suspicious; and I might as well have endeavoured to lift the Rosetta Stone out of the British Museum, or take the Moabite Stone from the Louvre, as to carry away the Ching-chiao-pei from Hsi-an!".

"This replica is one of the most beautiful pieces of Chinese workmanship I have ever seen. In the first place, there is not a measure, not a character, not a detail that differs from the original tablet, even the weight is the same. In the second place, this piece of art was executed by four native stone-cutters in eleven days, including polishing after the huge slabs had been brought from the Fu-P'ing quarries to Hsi-an. In the third place, the Chinese artisans have been able to accomplish the miracle of carving the Cross and chiselling the Syriac characters, which they did not of course know, to absolute perfection".

On the 16th of June, 1908, in accordance with the arrangement with Sir Purdon Clarke, Director, the replica was deposited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as a loan.

The second replica, made by Mr. Fritz Von Holm, was set up at the top of Mt. Koya, Japan on September 21, 1911 and was dedicated with full Buddhist ceremonial on Sunday, October 3, 1911. Annually, over one half of a million pilgrims of all ages and classes and from all parts of Japan climb the Holy Mountain to visit the tomb of Kobo Daishi in the Okuno-in, so that the Assyrian Monument is sure to speak aloud and strongly in God's due time!.

The Monument is ten feet high by 3,1/3 feet wide and just under one foot thick and it weighs two tons. It is made of a black, sub-granular oolitic limestone. The figure-head decoration of the tablet consists of an immense pearl between two creatures called "Kumbhira", described by Dr. Eitel as a monster with the body of a fish, but shaped like a snake and carrying pearls in its tail; others have described it as a four-footed crocodile over 20 feet long.

The pearl is called "hoshu" or "tama" in Japanese, and in Sanscrit chindamani; it is believed that the pearl symbol has a regular Assyrian (Nestorian) significance. Arthur John Maclean wrote in the "East Syrian Daily Offices:    "O illustrious martyr, Mar Sergius! A pearl wihtout flaw. A light hath shone in thy soul: thou hast bought it with they blood, and become rich thereby".

The "Kumbhira" design at the head of the stone is thoroughly Buddhistic. It is a Hindoo idea which the Assyrian Missionaries adopted; this "Kumhira" design was quite common at the time as seen in other monuments in Seoul in Korea.

In the center of the figured-head, right under the Pearl is the apex of a triangle, which forms a canopy over nine clearly carved large Chinese characters arranged vertically in three lines which form the "Titular Heading" of the stone. The literal translation of these 9 Chinese characters is "The Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Ch'in Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom.".

The Cross on the stone is not very clear and must be searched for to be seen. It is said that the form of the cross is a copy from the memory of the Roman Papal Cross of the sixth century; but it somehow resembles that on St. Thomas' tomb in Meliapo, south India. Beneath the Cross, there is the cloud, a characterstic symbol of Taoists as well as Muslims in China and beneath this cloud there lies a Lotus-flower which is a characteristic emblem of the Buddhists.

Below this comes an inscription consisting of one thousand nine hundred Chinese characters and about fifty Syriac words, besides some seventy Sryiac names in rows on the narrow sides of the stone with the corresponding Chinese characters denoting the Chinese synonyms or phonetics for the Syriac names.

There were three or four theories as to where this monument was discovered. Martini's theory insisted that the stone was first dug out at an old town called "San-Yuan" located 35 miles North of "Hsi-an-fu". Secondly, Lin Lai-Chai asserted that the monument was found in the suburb of "Hsi-an-fu". Thirdly, Pere Havret, in his book "La Stele Chrestienne d-Si-ngan-fou" concluded, the monument was discovered at or near "Chou-Chihi" which is 30 miles from "Hsi-an-fu". He supports his theory with quotes from some rare books on the monument as well as documents preserved at Rome by authors such as Kircher, Trigault, Bartoli, Thomas Ignace Dunyn-Szpot and Antoine de Gouvea. The fourth theory, that of Emanuel Diaz and Alvarez Semedo insist on the stone being found in the neighbourhood of "Hsi-an-fu". This theory is strongly supported by the writings of two of the most famous Chinese Christians of the time, Dr. Leon Li and Dr. Paul Hsu.

When the famous missionary Alvarez Semedo visited the Assyrian monument in "Hsi-an-fu" in 1628 AD, he could not decipher the curious foreign writing so he went to "Cochin-China" to consult Pere Antony Fernandez, knowing that he was well versed in reading the books of the Christians of St. Thomas (Assyrians). Fernandez assured Semedo that the writing was in the Syriac font of Estrangelo.

The Syriac text was translated into Latin by Nicholas Trigault, a member of the Society for Jesus. In 1628 A.D. an annonymous translation from Latin to French appeared and in 1631 A.D. a complete Italian translation was made from Protuguese, probably by Alvarea Semedo.

Translations into English were made much later by the historian Edward Gibbon and during the 19th century other translations were made such scholars as Dr. Bridgman in 1845, Alexander Wylie in 1854 and Dr. Legge in 1888.

The Syriac inscription indicates the time when the monument was first erected to be "in the days of the father of fathers, my lord Hanan-Ishu, Catholicos, Patriarch", "In the year one thousand and ninety-two of the Greeks", calculating to 781 A.D. Some argue that according to the great Assyrian Orientalist, J.S. Assemani that Patriarch Hanan-Ishu died in 778 A.D. However it is also accepted that in those days, news from Baghdad, where the official seat of the Assyrian Church of The East, to China would take a few years to travel.

In a book entitled "Spring and Autumn", compiled by Confucius in 481 B.C., it mentions of "the arrival of the white foreigners"; an indication that people from the Roman Empire, Persia or Assyria were already in China duirng this time.

In 845 A.D., an imperial edict ordered the destruction of the Buddist temples and monesteries and that foreign missionaries to return to secular life and cease their religious work. Assyrian Missions received a great blow from their imperial edict. Native-born Christians of the Assyrian Church in China, were integrated with the mass of the Chinese population and disolved. However they did not totally disappear, but remnanets of the Assyrian Christians were discovered in China. It is believed these Assyrians, later by the 14th century were absorbed with Chinese Muslims. As for those Assyrian Missionaries who survived Emperor Wu-Tsung's persecutions of 845 A.D., some remained in China, but most of them returned to western Turkey.

The Chinese Christians who did not join the Muslim body may be found among the "Secret Societies," of which about ten are known. (1) Fa-luChiao; (2) T'ai-yang Chiao; (3) Pai- yun Chiao; (4) Chao-kuan Chiao; (5) Wu-wie Chiao; (6) Chin-tan Chiao; (7) Pai-lien Chiao; (8) Pa-kua Chiao; (9) Tzumu-Chiao; (10) Shen-hsien Chiao.

http://www.edessa.com/history/monument.htm

Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang was the next to last of twelve children of a Chinese Presbyterian minister in a small town in the mountains, sixty miles inland from Amoy. He was educated in English at St John's in Shanghai. He studied at Tsinghua University from 1916 to 1919, during which time he encountered his Chinese heritage at its most concentrated.

His later education began in America, specifically at Harvard, where he worked under Bliss Perry and Milton Babbitt in the Comparative Literature Department. His third-person description of himself at Harvard reminds one of Thomas Wolfe's experience in that same library:

Things became financially tight. Lin's half tuition scholarship had been cut off, he was subsisting on personal loans from back home, and his wife had required surgery for acute appendicitis. The two of them left for France (he received his MA in absentia, in 1920) and Lin went to work for the YMCA, teaching basic literacy to the Chinese workers who had been brought to France during WW1. He discovered in the process the difficulties of mass education, of which in his own way he was to become a master. In 1921, assisted by the devaluation of the mark, he shifted to Leipzig, where he earned a PhD in linguistics in 1923, under Conrady (whose grasp of modern Chinese he found deficient). He returned to China, now fully accredited, as a professor at Peking National University (1923-1926) and Dean of Women's Normal College (1926).

And he wrote. He wrote effectively. His particular blend of sophistication and casualness found a wide audience, and he became a major humorous and critical presence in warlord China. Of the two literary factions in Peking, he headed one, and the other, slightly less opposed to the government, was led by his previous benefactor Hu Shr. He annoyed the warlords. One of them, whom he had ridiculed as the Dogmeat General, put him on a target list of intellectuals. Lin left, taking with him Lu Sywn, one of the writers in his faction, to Amoy University, where Lin became Dean of Arts. Notwithstanding his earlier criticism of the government, he briefly joined the Nationalist Government at Wuhan in 1927 as Secretary to the Foreign Ministry, but, as he later put it,"liked the revolution but got tired of the revolutionists." From the summer of 1927, he abandoned politics and devoted himself to writing for the popular press and editing three literary fortnightlies in Shanghai between 1929 and 1935. His linguistic studies were also done during this relatively quiet period in his life. As a journalist, chiefly in his column The Little Critic from 1930 on, he became famous as the principal voice of independent criticism in China. He further polished an intimate style, "the secret of which is, take your reader into confidence," that was sensationally effective. Pearl Buck became interested, and encouraged him to write a book explaining China to the West. To do this, he retired to the mountains in the summer of 1934. What he brought back from the mountains was the publishing sensation My Country and My People (1935), which hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Following this new path, Lin and his family moved back to America, where he produced a stream of articles for the New York Times and various magazines, and another book, The Importance of Living, in 1937. It was Lin's major statement of personal philosophy, a subject with he had wrestled all his life, and which had come to a focus with his study of Emerson under Emerson expert Bliss Perry. However abrasive Lin might be in advocacy, Lin greatly esteemed charm, and he was sensitive to charm in his own tradition. He thus rendered a Li Yw paragraph on the rules for an ideal home:

"Inside the gate there is a footpath, and the footpath must be winding. At the turning of the footpath there is an outdoor screen, and the screen must be small. Behind the screen, there is a terrace, and the terrace must be level. On the banks of the terrace there are flowers, and the flowers must be fresh. Beyond the flowers is a wall, and the wall must be low. By the side of the wall there is a pine tree, and the pine tree must be old. At the foot of the pine tree there are rocks, and the rocks must be quaint. Over the rocks there is a pavilion, and the pavilion must be simple. Behind the pavilion are bamboos, and the bamboos must be thin and sparse. At the end of the bamboos there is a house, and the house must be secluded. By the side of the house there is a road, and the road must branch off. At the point where the several roads come together there is a bridge, and the bridge must be tantalizing to cross. At the end of the bridge there are trees, and the trees must be tall. In the shade of the trees there is grass, and the grass must be green. Above the grass plot there is a ditch, and the ditch must be slender. At the top of the ditch there is a spring, and the spring must gurgle. Above the spring there is a hill, and the hill must be deep. Below the hill there is a hall, and the hall must be square. At the corner of the hall there is a vegetable garden, and the vegetable garden must be big. In the vegetable garden there is a stork, and the stork must dance. The stork announces that there is a guest, and the guest must not be vulgar. When the guest arrives, there is wine, and wine must not be declined. During the service of the wine, there is drunkenness, and the drunken guest must not want to go home." (p267-268)

It will emerge that the purpose of the home is not for the owner, but for the guest. This fresh way of looking at things, not merely exotic but sophisticated in an unfamiliar way, and formatted as an example of ancient but applicable wisdom, was a revelation to the English general reader. The poet Carolyn Kizer, who was given a copy of The Importance of Living in June 1938, by which time it was in its eleventh printing, not only marked certain passages in the margin, but made her own index of other passages in the back inside cover. Such was its impact on the already literate portion of the public.

WW2 began for China in July 1937, and Lin's subsequent publications sought to increase American support for China. His novel Moment in Peking (1939) gives a searing portrait of the Japanese invaders. With the American entry into the war in 1941, and foreseeing a Western victory, he became a critic of the West as the inevitable architect of the postwar world. This new posture did not sit well with his previous fans. The New York Times, long his friend and principal media channel, found Between Tears and Laughter (1943) to be "shrill, abusive, and vituperative." A return to China, intended to be for the duration of the war, ended after a month when his house in Chungking was destroyed by Japanese bombs. A second visit in late 1943 and early 1944 led to the book Vigil of a Nation, a tour of China at war, and a prediction that communism on the Russian model could never take root in China.

The book did not produce a negative reaction. It produced an uproar. It alienated everyone. It led to a break with Pearl Buck which in turn resulted in Lin's departure from his longtime publisher John Day (a firm owned by Buck's husband, Richard Walsh). For the period of the Chinese civil war that followed the end of WW2, Lin retreated from politics to the past.

In this new emphasis, he still remained a transmitter of the Chinese world to the West, a role which Lin shared with his contemporary Arthur Waley. Like Waley, he passed from extracts (including extracts from Confucius in 1938, plus Laudz and Jwangdz, which had made up several of his previous books) to full-length studies. He began with a biography of the brilliant and insouciant poet Su Dungpwo in 1947, a poet who was continually getting into trouble, in part through criticizing the government, and thus a congenial figure for Lin. He followed this, building on his earlier Laudz and Jwangdz extracts, with a complete Dau/Dv Jing in 1948, adding to its 81 chapters extracts from Jwangdz by way of commentary. Here for the first time he directly confronted Waley, whose complete DDJ had come out in 1934. Lin kept his independence, but he also kept his judgement. In a footnote to a line in DDJ 29, he says "I follow Waley's rendering, which conveys the meaning perfectly." And the first six lines of DDJ 30 conclude with this footnote:

These six lines are by Waley, for they cannot be improved upon.

It is the nod of one master to another. The rest of us get to stand by and watch

Read more here Sinologists

Chinese typewriter, part 2

On June 30, 2009, I wrote a post entitled "Chinese Typewriter". It's time now to do an update, because on March 9, 2011, I travelled to the University of Kansas to deliver the Wallace Johnson Memorial Lecture. So what do Wallace Johnson and the University of Kansas have to do with Chinese typewriters? It's simply that Wallace Johnson is the only Westerner I know who became proficient in the use of the kind of Chinese typewriter I wrote about in my 2009 post, and he happened to teach Chinese history at the University of Kansas from 1965 to 2007. I knew Wally Johnson because of his interest in Tang period law and because he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania under Derk Bodde, who was a good friend of mine.

When I went to Lawrence, Kansas last month to deliver a lecture in memory of Wally, aside from various scholarly and collegial activities, I was privileged to see the original rules for basketball written by Dr. James Naismith, which had recently been purchased for $4.3 million on behalf of the University by an alumnus, and I was greatly honored to see Wally Johnson's Chinese typewriter. The typewriter is kept in the office of Vickie Fu Doll, Chinese and Korean Studies Librarian in the East Asian Library of the University. When I arrived at her office, Vickie had brought out the typewriter and its many parts. She had them all laid out on a large library table. Let me tell you: I was in Chinese typewriter heaven!

(You can see more pictures of me playing with Wally's fabulous toy here.)

Vickie told me that I was the first person to type with Wally's typewriter since 1982 and added, "I don't expect any others to use it very soon."

As you can see, the typewriter is extremely complicated and cumbersome. The main tray — which is like a typesetter's font of lead type — has about two thousand of the most frequent characters. Two thousand characters are not nearly enough for literary and scholarly purposes, so there are also a number of supplementary trays from which less frequent characters may be retrieved when necessary. What is even more intimidating about a Chinese typewriter is that the characters as seen by the typist are backwards and upside down! Add to this challenging orientation the fact that the pieces of type are tiny and all of a single metallic shade, it becomes a maddening task to find the right character. But that is not all, since there is also the problem of the principle (or lack thereof) upon which the characters are ordered in the tray. By radical? By total stroke count? Both of these methods would result in numerous characters under the same heading. By rough frequency? By telegraph code? Unfortunately, nobody seems to have thought to use the easiest and most user-friendly method of arranging the characters according to their pronunciation.

For all of the above reasons, using a Chinese typewriter was (and still is!) an excruciating experience. To give Language Log readers almost palpably visual evidence of what it is like to type with a Chinese typewriter, I here present a precious photograph of Wally working at his typewriter:

To view more photos and watch videos, go to Language Log

Chinese Typewriter

June 30, 2009 @ 6:51 pm · Filed by Victor Mair

This (the machine invented by the famous Chinese author, Lin Yutang, and described on the first page [first four paragraphs] of the Wikipedia article here) is probably the closest the Chinese ever got to decomposing their script into an "alphabet" consisting of "letters" (recurrent graphemic elements that can be combined in a principled way to form all of the characters / morphemes in their writing system).  You'll note that it didn't really work during their presentation to the Remington Typewriter Company executives.  The press conference demonstration they had the next day was probably of the carefully rehearsed, staged, orchestrated sort designers of Chinese information processing / technology software and hardware often present (the kind documented by Li-ching Chang in her film made at a vocational high school in Beijing), not one prepared to respond spontaneously to tasks posed by the audience.  Judging from my own experience with Chinese software and information processing / technology developers over more than a quarter of a century, this may have been what went wrong when Lin presented his typewriter to the Remington executives:  they asked him (or his operator) to type something impromptu.  Incidentally, the development of this fatally flawed typing machine left Lin — whose books were bestsellers in America — bankrupt.

 The "typewriter" described on the second page (fifth paragraph:  "Another kind of Chinese typewriter") section of the Wikipedia article cited above is the only kind of machine for writing Chinese that achieved fairly widespread use.  (Most of the typewriters shown here are of this sort.)  It was basically a limited font of about two to three thousand of the most common characters, with hundreds or thousands of more obscure characters kept in boxes nearby, to be laboriously sought out when needed (most typists just wrote such characters in by hand [if they knew them; but usually they were simply copying from a printed page or somebody's handwritten draft anyway — even now, except with pinyin-inputting systems, Chinese have not benefited very much from touch-typing] rather than try to find them in the boxes).  The Wikipedia article claims that "good operators were able to type around 70 words per minute."  First of all, this probably means "characters," not "words" (which are largely disyllabic).  Secondly, this could only have been true of a highly skilled operator presenting a carefully prepared and practiced text without any unusual characters (i.e., beyond those in the main tray).  The typists I observed using these machines in Taiwan, China, and at the UN back in the 70s and early 80s — all professionals, not casual typists — seldom exceeded about 10-12 characters per minute under the best circumstances (only common characters found in the main tray, and working from clean drafts or copying from printed materials).

Many of the difficulties outlined above have continued even into the computer age, which accounts for the (should I avoid using "literally"?) thousands of different inputting systems that have been devised during the past three decades.  The vast majority of individuals, both for short text messaging and for word processing with computers, now use various types of romanized inputting, with those methods that take advantage of word segmentation being the most efficient.

Thanks to Michael Carr for the first Wikipedia reference.

Language Log

THROWING OFF ASIA II - WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1894-95

Symbolic “China”

Because racism in the age of imperialism is most commonly associated with “white supremacism” (and the smug rhetoric of a “white man’s burden”), this explosive outburst of Japanese condescension toward China and the Chinese seems all the more stunning. In the Western hierarchy of race, so-called Orientals or Asiatics or Mongoloids were lumped together—below the superior Caucasians and above the “Negroid.” In their inimitable way, the Japanese promoted these stereotypes where the Chinese were concerned, even while trying to demonstrate their own identity with the Caucasians.

What made this even more disconcerting was the intimate overlay of race and culture in the case of Japan and China. No non-Chinese society was more indebted to China. Japan’s written language, its great traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism, vast portions of its finest achievements in art and architecture—all came from China. In an abrupt phrase familiar to all literate Japanese, even in the Meiji period, China and Japan were culturally as close as “lips and teeth.”

But that, of course, was the point—and what made this outburst of anti-Chinese sentiment a very peculiar sort of racism on the part of the Japanese. The Chinese were contemptible because they were deemed inept. At the same time, however, “China” was symbolic and self-referential. “China,” that is, stood for “Asia.’ It stood for “the past.” It stood for outmoded “traditional values.” It stood for “weakness” vis-à-vis the Western powers. It stood, coming even closer to home, for “evil customs of the past” that Japanese leaders ever since the Meiji Restoration argued had to be eradicated within Japan itself if their nation—and Asia as a whole—were to survive in a dog-eat-dog modern world.

“Old” China was the Anti-West, the Anti-Modern (a notion China’s own Communist leaders would later embrace with a vengeance themselves). As a consequence, while the corpses were unmistakably and brutally Chinese, they stood for a great deal more as well.

To return to Fukuzawa’s famous phrase, killing Chinese amounted to “throwing off Asia” in every conceivable way. This was seen to be essential to Japan’s security, its very survival. It was deemed progressive. It amounted, when all was said and done, to embracing a “modern” kind of hybridization. Where the old Japan had been distinguished by enormous indebtedness to traditional Chinese culture, the new Japan would be distinguished by wholesale borrowing from the modern West.

At the same time, of course—as is true of nationalism everywhere—it was necessary to think oneself unique. In the Japanese case, this was accomplished by “reinventing” the mystique surrounding the throne and imperial family. It was not coincidental that the war against China coincided with the consolidation of a modern emperor system under the new constitution of 1890.

From the Japanese perspective, the denigration of the Chinese that permeates the Sino-Japanese War prints was really secondary to the obverse side of this triumphal new nationalism. It was secondary, that is, to the story of the surpassing discipline and self-sacrifice of Japanese from every level of society. That is why many of the most memorable war prints do not depict the enemy at all, but rather focus on the Japanese alone. Sometimes they are simply battling raw nature (the fierce blizzards and turbulent seas), sometimes simply shown in control of the powerful machinery of modern warfare. Always there is a celebration of brave men engaged in a noble mission—throwing themselves against an ominous, threatening, but also thrillingly challenging and alluring world.

Thus Gekkō, who often reveled in particularly grisly combat details, devoted one print to a serene depiction of “Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the Mountains of Port Arthur.” (That the sun rose in the east, the direction of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, intensified the ideological implications of such worship.) Another Gekkō offering focuses on the solitary figure of “Engineer Superior Private Onoguchi Tokuji, Defying Death,” and yet another on “the Famous Death-Defying Seven from the Warship Yaeyama” rowing through high waves.

“Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the
Mountains of Port Arthur” by Ogata Gekkō, December 1894

[2000.154] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Picture of the Second Army’s Assault on Jinzhoucheng: Engineer Superior Private Onoguchi Tokuji, Defying Death, Places Explosives and Blasts the Gate of the Enemy Fort” by Ogata Gekkō, 1895

[2000.407] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

         “Illustration of the Death-Defying Squad of Captain Osawa and Seven Others from the Crew of the Warship Yaeyama Pushing Forward in Rongcheng Bay” by Ogata Gekkō, 1895

[2000.408a-c] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Read more and view woodblock prints at MIT VISUAL