University of Macau / Faculty of Law

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of History

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This thesis investigates various representational modes and strategies in the Shanghai courtesan illustrations in Dianshizhai Pictorial. The aim of the study is to examine how Shanghai's early modern identity was imaged, imagined and contested through the courtesan figure. I argue that by establishing a new urban iconography, Dianshizhai Pictorial transformed the Shanghai courtesan from a traditional archetypical meiren to a universal image of the urban beauty. On the one hand, the modern city, previously an alien concept, was made familiar and acceptable through the image of the Shanghai courtesan. On the other hand, the ambivalence of the courtesan's new image mirrored a mixed feeling of fear, anxiety and disdain towards the emerging metropolis. The courtesan illustrations, hence, served as an important domain where different public understandings of the city were negotiated and expressed in pictorial terms.

The following paper will deal with the actantial place of memory and history in the works of Ge Fei, a so-called avant-garde writer in China. Analyzing his three major novels published in the nineteen-nineties, as well as an earlier short story, the paper will discuss how Ge Fei renegotiates the status and place of the literary subject as configured through the act of writing, and its close relationship with the medium of memory and history. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, the avant-garde experiment in Ge Fei's works does not intimate the dissipation of the subject, but rather assists in reconfiguring it in an entirely new and dynamic conceptualization. Instead of a figural e/End and vulgarization of literature in the nineties, Ge Fei's experimentation with the acts of writing and reading, as well as his play with language, open up new possibilities for the writing of new literatures in contemporary China.

This thesis explores the changing environment of the middle and lower Yellow River basin from the Zhou to the reign of Han Emperor Wu (ca. 1045-87 B.C.), a period characterised by an increase of government control over the land along with an intensification and expansion of agriculture. The second chapter employs palaeoecological sources to look at the early environment of the region, arguing that the eastern plains were mixed forest-steppe, and that the regions to the west were mostly steppe. The third chapter uses archaeological sources to explore the rise of civilisation, the fauna of the region in the Shang period and the spread of iron tools. The fourth chapter is divided into two sections, the first of which looks at what can be learned from the texts of the period concerning agriculture, land clearance, deforestation, hunting, fishing and economic geography. The second half concerns the intensification of state power in regulating and transforming natural environments through legal measures and water control projects, as well as the development of a market economy.

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Even though there has been no lack of scholarly attention to Chinese epistolary texts as a source of information, discussions of the functions and practices of letter writing in imperial China are very limited. This thesis deals with how elites in Song dynasty (960-1279) China exchanged personal and political information by writing and sending letters to each other, and how the genre of letters functioned in its various forms throughout the socially transformative and culturally active period. Through contextualizing epistolary material - such as letters in manuscript and print form, letter collections, and epistolary manuals, as well as sources in other genres that describe letter writing practices - I explore the multifaceted uses of letter writing for literati officials. The study provides a systematic view of the functions of Song letter writing in political, social, and cultural realms by investigating its complex practices. Using letters in several sub-genres by important literati figures such as Mi Fu, Li Gang, and Sun Di, it illustrates the main aspects of letter writing, including format, rhetoric, topical content, and handwriting. In view of the roles played by letters exchanged among Song scholars, this research on literati correspondence provides a window on how interpersonal relationships were conducted by written exchanges during that period. It also sheds light on how epistolary culture was transformed by the literati community during one of the key periods of Chinese civilization. These insights will contribute to the research of Chinese literati culture and related fields, such as the social history of middle period China, and will also be useful for comparing China's epistolary culture with the world's other letter writing traditions.

Between 1919 and 1934, as members of China's Guomindang (Nationalist Party) struggled to take control of and transform the country, they increasingly appropriated language and symbols associated with the fallen Qing Dynasty. At the same time, these were accompanied in party discourse by radical appeals that included strong critiques of China's past. In this they were far from unique: studies of nationalisms around the world have found them to combine appeals to the new and the old. Yet in China this combination incited particular controversy, as Guomindang members and others, wrestling with the cultural legacy of the empire, put forward powerfully radical critiques not only of the culture of the past but also of traditionalist appeals to it. The result was distinctive textual practices I term 'revolutionary traditionalism', which appropriated cultural elements of the imperial orthodoxy while reconciling these appropriations with radical language. Yet this revolutionary traditionalism could not unproblematically form a unified modern nationalist orthodoxy. Radical and traditionalist positions in regard to culture recurred through power struggles within and beyond the party. Through these struggles, by the end of the 1920s revolutionary traditionalism came to characterise the new Nationalist Government formed by Guomindang members in Nanjing. While like other nationalists Guomindang members reinvented the language and symbols to which they appealed, however, the case of Confucius shows that they could not unilaterally control these reinterpretations. The central place of Confucius in national culture was established through a process of negotiation, as groups identifying themselves as 'Confucian' petitioned the state, appropriating its own traditionalist discourse, for recognition and commemoration. Yet these Confucians, pursuing their own often religious agendas, also cast doubt on the authenticity of the state's commitment. Revolutionary traditionalism thus remained unstable, repeatedly challenged both from radical and traditionalist positions.

The thesis searches for the roots of the Chinese appreciation for the concepts contained in the early Mādhyamika texts in the currents in Chinese philosophy and the political climate in China during the Eastern Chin and Liu Sung periods. We also seek to account for the characteristic emphasis in hsüan-hsüeh thought on descriptions of a hypothetical sage-ruler and of "Non-being" (and in Buddhist thought on the divine saviour and the eternal life of the "spirit") in the social/political situation in China during this period. We examine the many points of correspondence and similarities between Taoist philosophy and concepts originating in the Prajnāpāramitā texts. Selected translations from the Ming-fo-lun (Treatise Illuminating the Buddha) by Tsung Ping (375-443) are used as examples of a Chinese layman's appraisal of the Buddhist "Path" vis-a-vis those of the philosophical Taoists and Confucianists and to give an overall picture of the philosophical climate of the period. The thesis concludes that there is a wealth of similarity between the Buddhist ideas being introduced to Chinese in the Post-Han period, and China's own philosophical output before and during this period. A continuity is identified between the tenets of hsüan-hsüeh and these Buddhist ideas. We further conclude that the Chinese interest in the limitless powers of the Buddha--like the emphasis in hsüan-hsüeh thought on the qualities of the sage-ruler--can be attributed to the social strife in the period and the erosion of faith in mundane political philosophies. The life of the "spirit" and the countenance of the Buddha offered truly lasting stability and reassurance which the more worldly doctrines had been unable to provide. As a final note, the thesis considers the common appreciation for Buddhism among Indians and Chinese as indicative of universal features of religious systems. We conclude that as common components of the Mādhyamika system practiced in India and China, the recognition of an all powerful deity and transcendent realm coupled with the idea of men's potential to interact and identify with these may be acknowledged as two of the fundamental features of a particular religious doctrine shared for a time by these two ancient civilizations. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate