St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 1
John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview
James St. André
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Paper based on presentation at symposium “The Life and Work of John Bradby Blake”
Oak Spring Garden Foundation
30 April – 3 May 2017
To be submitted to Curtis’ Botanical Magazine as part of a special issue devoted to Blake
Introduction
In this paper I perform a close reading of one of the items in the John Bradley Blake collection at the Oak Spring Foundation Library, the “Chinese‐English Vocabulary”1 (hereafter
“Vocabulary”). I will first describe the composition of individual entries and discuss the arrangement of those entries in the Vocabulary, then situate it in the history of Chinese language learning and the more general history of bilingual wordlists so as to be able to appreciate better its unique features and discover what it has to teach us about the worldview
of its authors and mid‐Qing intellectual knowledge exchange between British and Southern
Chinese.
Physical Properties
The manuscript is a bound volume 20cm wide and 22.3cm high, bound in silk cloth. It contains fifty pages of thin Chinese paper, each of which is divided by straight‐ruled black lines into four St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 2
columns and three rows on one side of the page only. The rows are 7‐8cm high, while the columns alternate from right to left between wide (7cm wide) and narrow (2‐2.5cm) ones, and form six pairs of boxes, each of which constitutes a single entry of the Vocabulary, so that there
are six items per page. There are thus 300 illustrated entries. Each of the larger boxes contain an illustration done in a combination of ink and watercolor, with a wide range of colors but an especially striking use of strong, bright red, blue, green and orange, along with a range of lighter‐toned purple, yellow, ochres, greens, and flesh tones, done in a fine hand that allows for, in a few cases, legible Chinese characters of only a few millimeters in height.
Given the way in which the writing disappears into the binding, the sheets must have first been
prepared separately and then only after being completed bound together (as opposed to someone using a pre‐bound notebook or ledger book).
Composition of individual entries
Each individual entry contains up to seven different parts, some being present in all cases, others only present in some. First, all entries have an illustration in the larger, almost square rectangle. Second, each illustration is accompanied by one or more main Chinese characters written vertically in the narrower column to the left of the illustration. The Chinese characters are well‐formed and of a uniform style, so presumably all were done by one person who was proficient in Chinese. Third, all entries have a main Cantonese pronunciation, written in a fine hand. Fourth, in approximately half of the entries there is also a secondary Cantonese St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 3
pronunciation written elsewhere. Fifth, in all but eight cases (8e, 9b, 9c, 9e, 9f, 10a, 10c, 10e)2 there is an English translation, sometimes in the form of an equivalence (see 1a 日, Cantonese
“yat”, English “sun”), sometimes in the form of a definition (see 3c 袍 Cantonese “pho”, English
“an upper mens garment”). Sixth, in approximately one‐third of the cases there are explanatory notes, usually in English but also occasionally in Latin and, in one case, (10f) Japanese. Some of the notes are references to the plates in the four bound albums of botanical plates also in the
Blake Collection found in the Oak Spring Foundation Library. Finally seventh, in a small number of cases there are also secondary Chinese characters found either as part of the illustration
(eight cases of words written on: a wall [2a], coins [12b], lamps [13d and 20c], ink sticks [15c], scrolls [17d and 27e] and chess pieces [45a]); or in two cases, secondary entries written in a different hand below the main Chinese character(s) in the left‐hand column (48a and 49d).
The Chinese characters and illustration both have their own well‐defined space, with the illustration centered in the right‐hand box while the Chinese characters uniformly begin one‐ quarter of the way down from the top of the page in the narrower left‐hand column. Of the
remaining elements, the main Cantonese pronunciation has a fairly fixed location to the right of the main Chinese characters, but it sometimes crosses the line between the space for the
Chinese characters and the space for the illustration (see 1f) or is located entirely within the
space for Chinese characters when the illustration demands it (see 2e). By way of contrast, the secondary Cantonese, the English translation, and the notes are entered in a more haphazard fashion, seemingly dependent upon available white space, but with a preference for upper right corner of illustration for Cantonese and bottom center for English. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 4
Both ink and handwriting for the secondary Cantonese and English are notably different from
the main Cantonese entry. Coupled with the fact that there are some mistakes in the main
Cantonese pronunciation, it seems reasonable to believe that the main Cantonese was done first, and that the secondary Cantonese pronunciation was added as a correction in many cases, for example (8e), where the main Cantonese is actually the word for “butterfly” rather than
“moth,” and this has been corrected in the secondary Cantonese.
When we turn to the English translations, a careful examination of the entries reveals that in many cases there is a closer relationship to the illustration, the secondary Chinese characters, and/or the secondary Cantonese, rather than to the main Chinese character entry or the main
Cantonese entry. In (1c), for example, the English translation “7 stars” corresponds both to the secondary Cantonese (sat sing) and to the illustration (which is an image of 7 stars), whereas the main Chinese character entry (星) and the corresponding main Cantonese entry (sing) mean merely “star(s).” Turning to the second page, in item (2a), the main Chinese character (城) and main Cantonese (shing) mean “wall,” referring originally to one made of beaten earth to enclose a town or city and therefore gradually by extension coming to mean “town” or “city,” especially in the compound 城市. When we turn to the English, however, we are given “a city gate and watch house.” This definition corresponds to the secondary Chinese characters 城門, written within the illustration, which is of a wall with a gate and a guardhouse rising up behind the wall immediately over the gate. In the first of these two examples the English, secondary
Cantonese and illustration coincide, but in the second example the English definition encodes St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 5
information (watch house) that is only found in the illustration, but nowhere found in the various Chinese‐language materials.
There are many other examples of both types of situations. In (31b) the main Chinese entry is the word for “spoon” (調羹), but the picture shows a spoon sitting in a bowl, and therefore the
English has “a bason and spoon, used for eating broth.” Here we see the English both reflecting the illustration rather than the Chinese text and also adding additional explanatory information regarding the use of the object depicted. Another example is the case of two entries (15a and
27f) that have identical Chinese characters (畫) and main Cantonese (waw), but where the
illustration is different and therefore the English is different. In the first case (15a) the illustration shows a scroll painting that is rolled up and the English reads “a roll of paintings;” in the second case (27f) the illustration shows a painting hanging on the wall and the English reads
“paintings.”
Based on the above observations, I propose a multi‐layered process of composition for the wordlist. The first step is the illustration and main Chinese characters. The second step is the main Cantonese; the third step is the secondary Cantonese (if any) and the English translation; the fourth step are the annotations. We can see this fairly clearly in one rather special entry
(48a). Here the image is of a pair of scissors and the main Chinese character entry gives the word for it (剪刀). However, the main Cantonese entry, written immediately to the right of the
Chinese characters, does not match them, and instead is the phonetic transcription
(?kawau/kaauau? tsien) of a verb form “to cut [with scissors].” The main Cantonese entry also St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 6
shows signs of uncertainty, with the vowels for the first character being overwritten (which is
why I enclose it in question marks). Third, a secondary Cantonese entry in the upper‐right‐hand corner correcting the first entry has been added (tsien too), this time correctly corresponding to the main Chinese characters, and a translation “sheers or scissors” has been added below the
illustration. Fourth in this case, but perhaps done at the same time as the secondary Cantonese and English, a third Cantonese transcription has been added immediately below the main
Cantonese and corresponding to it (kaa:ou tsien), while to the left of it in the column reserved for the main Chinese characters, we see the Chinese characters that correspond to the
Cantonese pronunciation (較剪) but with the first character having an added component not normally used in the standard form of the character (the radical for metals, especially gold 金).
These two Chinese characters are in a different style from all of the main Chinese entries, and are similar to those in the notebook devoted to Bradby Blake’s notes on the Chinese materia medica texts that he had acquired.3 Finally, at the very bottom of the entry there is an English translation of this verb form: “to cut cloth or silk &c.” The differences in meaning between the main Chinese characters, main Cantonese, and second Cantonese clearly indicate that this one
entry involved at least three, possibly four steps, and that different people with different competencies were involved.4
I would argue that the vocabulary was therefore a joint production between at least two different people, first a native Cantonese speaker and then at least one native English speaker, but probably two. The Chinese “layer” of the Vocabulary is the primary one and, as I will show below, in terms of layout on the page, style of the illustrations, and organization of the subject St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 7
matter, it presents a Chinese worldview. The various Cantonese transcriptions, English translations and notes are later additions that are fit into the white space, mainly within the box containing the image. It is possible that they were added much later, even after they had arrived in England, although the more likely scenario is that the pages were given unbound to
Bradby Blake as a present by whoever made them, and then Blake added at least one layer of the Cantonese and English to it before having it bound.
Organization of the entries
From the above description of the individual entries and the hypothesis that the first layer of
information in the text is Chinese, it should come as no surprise that the Vocabulary is laid out according to Chinese principles, not English ones, i.e. top to bottom, right to left, starting at what Europeans would see as the back of the book. This interpretation has the book beginning with the sun, moon and stars, followed by man and the earth, which is typical of onomasaical or thematic dictionaries and encyclopedias,5 and in general there is a thematic organization to items, with objects and people being grouped according to subject knowledge (six brass musical instruments on page 36, for example) and/or spatial proximity (items found inside of a kitchen spread over pages 22‐25). Such topical arrangement provides clues in some cases as to the
meaning of individual entries through context, as I will demonstrate below in my discussion of
item 30d. In a few cases items are grouped together by a linguistic category such as page 26, which features containers of various sorts as indicated by the suffixes of the main Chinese
character entries: 箱 “song” (box), 包 “paw:o” (pocket), 口 “hau” (purse), 袋 “dai” (twice: case, St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 8
bowl [of a pipe]), and 筒”tong” (bag or purse). On this page the one item that at first glance might not appear to be a container to a British eye, “smoking pipe,” in Chinese is referred to as
“container for smoking”, i.e., the tobacco is put into the container‐like bowl of the pipe to be smoked. Thus the placement of this item on this page seems at least partly motivated by the inter‐relation between the main Chinese character entries, which are all compounds whose final character indicates the shape of the container.
Besides topical principles, however, there are also aesthetic and geometric principles active in the organization and layout. Most obvious is the recurrent use of a geometric pattern. If we put side by side the second column of page 1, the entirety of page 2 and the first column of page 3, we see a checkerboard pattern with human beings of various walks of life interspersed with first the natural world (mountains, which link back to the sun moon and stars), then exterior views of buildings (a wall, a bridge, a multi‐storey house, and a “Chinese church” [today we would say temple]). At the bottom of the first column on page three we get an item of clothing, which continues the pattern on the next page on the topic of clothes and shoes. Page 17 also features this layout, with the intertwining of three people (discussed in more detail in the final section) and three foliage plants.
A third organizing principle is one of hierarchy, with prominence being given to the entries at the top right‐hand corner. This is most easily seen on the pages featuring objects from the natural world. The very first page thus begins with the sun, the most important object in the heavens, followed by the moon and then the stars. The fifth page, which is the first of three St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 9
pages featuring animals and birds, begins with the dragon, while the sixth page begins with the lion. Finally the eighteenth page begins with the Qilin or Kirin, an important mythological creature. All three animal illustrations feature a distinctive use of dark blue color for the animal body that contrasts with the colors of all other animals, which are generally depicted in more realistic flesh tones and browns, as well as being smaller in size. Likewise for the two pages that feature plants, page 9 has a willow tree in the first position, which stands out from the flowering trees that follow by the heavy use of green and the massing of the foliage, as opposed to the rather sparse branches and leaves of the other flowering plants and fruit trees.
On page 10 likewise the lotus leaf in the first position dominates by the large and solid dark green leaf with orange fringe. Visually these are both striking.
Finally, another pattern we see is from simple to complex as we progress through the
Vocabulary: simpler characters (i.e. fewer brush‐strokes) to more complex characters (more strokes); from short single‐character entries on the first few pages to later pages that have mostly two‐character and even three‐character compound words; and from more commonly used words to more specialized vocabulary.
The illustrations
Again, given the primacy of the Chinese layer of information, it should be no surprise that the style of the images is Chinese rather than European. If we compare the images of plants found in the wordlist to the plates in the botanic albums from the Blake collection, for example the St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 10
lychee (9f),6 the differences are striking. In terms of content, the cultural‐specific objects are all
Chinese, i.e., there are only Chinese musical instruments, Chinese clothing, Chinese household implements, etcetera, but not English musical instruments, clothing, or household implements.
There are chopsticks (31a) but no forks. Items in common between the two cultures are
Chinese‐style, such as the pillow (29f), which is a Chinese‐style ceramic pillow, or even the lion
(6a), which resembles the stylized carved lions found in front of public buildings or the larger‐ than‐life puppets used for lion dances at the Chinese New Year. Even when it is possible to find
English depictions of Chinese objects, such as the boats featured in Chambers’ book,7 or the
laborer with bamboo pole,8 there are clear stylistic differences. We can find books where six
cartouches are used to provide illustrations of Chinese objects or people in Europe,9 but layout and style are again totally different.
Turning to Chinese art, specifically illustrated books, it is by comparison extremely easy to find illustrations that closely match those found in the vocabulary. The illustrations on page nineteen of the vocabulary, for example, are all related to war, featuring a case for a rider to
store a bow (mistakenly labeled as arrow case in English), a battleaxe, a military flag, a spear,
two types of bows and a sword. All of these items can be found in Chinese illustrated military manuals, for example the 武經總要 (Encyclopedia of Weaponry),10 which in volume thirteen
features a wide variety of hand‐held weapons. Bows matching those in the vocabulary can be found on pages one and two, a bow case on page four. Perhaps the most convincing example for weaponry is the shield (Vocabulary item 40e) as compared to the shield found on page twenty‐three of the military manual.11 St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 11
The above remarks regarding the layout and composition applies to the base layer of information, i.e., the illustrations and the main Chinese characters. When we turn to the
Cantonese and English, however, there is evidence that other organizing principles may have been operating.
First let us examine four entries on page 23 that all share one Chinese character 鍋 (Cantonese
“whook,” Mandarin “guo”) today known in English as a wok, a cooking pan with sloped sides.
The entries are 23a, 23b, 23d and 23e; in other words, the four entries at the top and middle of the page. For both 23a and 23d, the syllable “thieh” is written next to the character. In 23d, that word is crossed out and “whook” is written in above (in the same handwriting); in 23a, where the syllable “whook” is written erroneously next to the first character (iron 鐵), dotted lines are drawn to show that the syllable “whook” should go with the second character, while
“thieh” should go with the first one. In 23b and 23e, however, “whook” is correctly written next to the Chinese character 鍋. The only logical conclusion is that someone was confused about the pronunciation of the characters while writing out the Cantonese for the first row on the page, and that somehow they were corrected before writing in the information for the second row, whereas the primary layer of information was laid out in columns.
The second mistake that is instructive occurs on page thirty, where 30d, a spittoon (痰盒), is
erroneously labeled “yeem hop,” which corresponds to the English “salt seller [sic].” The illustration is rather simple, and without a label the average reader would probably not be able St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 12
to identify it. If we were to assume that the Cantonese labeling was being done in the same order as the illustrations and main Chinese characters, this is an extremely odd mistake, as the other items that occur on this page are all related to the bedroom or to cleaning (bamboo
bolster pillow, side pillow, dusting brush, shoe brush, and chamberpot). However, if we turn to page thirty‐one, we discover six items that would all be found on a dinner table: chopsticks, spoon, bowl, washbasin (for hands and face before or after the meal), warming dish, and samshu (wine) bottle. If the person writing in the Cantonese pronunciation treated the book as
an English one, then the spittoon is the first item on page thirty that she or he would be annotating after having just done six items on the previous page related to the dinner table, before encountering the items relating to the bedroom.
In both these cases, it appears that whoever was writing in the main Cantonese pronunciation was not a native speaker of Cantonese; it is highly unlikely to suppose that a native Cantonese speaker would transpose the syllables for iron wok (thieh whook) and write wok iron (whook
thieh), as this is nonsensical in Cantonese. Moreover, they seem to have been working through the material in English‐style (left to right, top to bottom), rather than the Chinese order of the illustrations and Chinese characters. Coupled with the fact that the penmanship for the main
Cantonese is quite fine, it seems that these were written by a native speaker of English, not
Chinese, and therefore someone who was learning Cantonese but not yet proficient.
Similarly, there are good reasons to suppose that the supplementary Cantonese, English, and notes were written by an English‐speaker, not a Chinese speaker. The “salt seller” already St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 13
mentioned is one example; another on page 19, already alluded to earlier, has a bow case erroneously labeled as “arrow case” in English. Here the fact that the primary Cantonese is correct while the English is incorrect provides additional evidence that the information in the wordlist was added in layers by different hands, i.e, there were probably at least two different
British authors involved, one for the main Cantonese, another for the secondary Cantonese and
English translations.
Function
Given all of the above, I conclude that the wordlist was designed by a Chinese speaker for an
English speaker to learn formal written Chinese, spoken Cantonese, and Chinese culture. The consistent placement of Chinese characters and their use as essentially headwords for the wordlist entries; the fact that in every case there is a single Chinese word for the entries but the
English is often a definition or explanation rather than a name for the object; the addition of
Cantonese pronunciation which sometimes departs from the Chinese characters in order to give vernacular usage; and the choice of objects, which are always either common to both cultures or specific to Chinese culture all point to this conclusion. Moreover, we can say further that the vocabulary list is designed primarily for passive, not active use;12 in other words, it teaches comprehension of these things, rather than the ability to talk about them, since virtually all are nouns or noun phrases except for items 11a, 17b, and 48d.
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 14
Relation to other early Chinese‐English vocabularies
A comparison with earlier and later Chinese‐English vocabularies suggest that the choice of
words is not typical of either British or Chinese interests, which were mainly commercial or scientific.
The earliest extant Chinese‐English wordlist was drawn up by Peter Mundy, who journeyed on the Weddell expedition, which was in the Canton area from July to December 1633. In his diary,
Mundy includes a short list of vocabulary items that begins with numbers, but also includes trade and commerce, place names, weights and measures, coinage, ranks and titles, peoples and races, ships and shipping, and food and drink.13
Wordlists that post‐date the Blake manuscript in the early nineteenth century similarly contain words relating to trade and commerce; one finds terms like “beaver pelt” because it is an import item, but not the terms for Chinese musical instruments; one finds detailed names of all islands and channels in the river system around Canton and Macao, but not the words for sun and moon.14
Similarly, the earliest surviving vocabulary lists for Chinese to learn Portuguese and (Pidgin)
English are oriented toward vocabulary needed to work for foreigners, either as servants or as go‐betweens for merchants. Uchida and Shin reproduce eight such vocabularies.15 Six of them begin with numbers, as did Mundy’s word list, which suggests that there may already have been some sort of early Chinese‐Portuguese vocabulary circulating by the time of his visit in St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 15
1633 (Macao having been ceded to the Portuguese in 1557). All of them contain words and phrases for conducting business with, or working as an employee for, foreigners based in
Canton and Macao (either in the factories or as domestic servants). None are illustrated, and none contain the names of Chinese culturally specific objects except for those that would be involved in the trade or would be needed by foreigners (for example, foodstuffs).
The other class of books or manuscripts which the Vocabulary list bears some resemblance to are Chinese illustrated encyclopedic works. There are a wide range both in terms of content and of quality. To take botany as one example, the Bencao Gangmu (本草綱目 Chinese Materia
Medica), of which Blake had acquired a copy, was available in dozens of different editions that varied from cheap, almost chapbook style printing to fine editions with lavish illustrations. Such works often featured a mixture of illustrations and text, but normally the text predominated. In discussing the illustrations I have already mentioned the close relation between the style and presentation of the images of weaponry in the wordlist and the Chinese Encyclopedia of
Weaponry.
There are other works that bear closer resemblance to the Vocabulary, notably various Chinese primer texts such as the fifteenth‐century 新編對相四言 (Illustrated Chinese Primer),16 which contains 306 entries of an illustration paired with a Chinese term (either one or two characters), many of which overlap with the Vocabulary; and the later 全補幼學須知雜字大全
(Comprehensive Children’s Character Primer, revised and expanded),17 which contains simple
monochrome illustrations with Chinese characters written next to them, as well as additional St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 16
explanatory text underneath. If we are looking for bilingual illustrated dictionaries, there is the
Chinese‐Japanese Great Illustrated Encyclopedia,18 selections from which were copied/adapted by Kaempfer.19 All of these works aim to be fairly comprehensive and contain hundreds or even
thousands of entries arranged topically, but the primary audience is children, not adults.
Finally, Peter Crane kindly drew my attention to a manuscript in the Hunt Library, catalogued simply as “Chinese Herbal”.20 This item bears striking similarities to the Blake Vocabulary, featuring four illustrated entries per page in a similar style, complete with Chinese and English
(partial) translation, but it is restricted to plants, and so again may be seen as utilitarian.
In sum, unlike other Chinese‐English wordlists composed before or after it, it is neither commercial nor scientific (botanical), but rather concerned with culture, and aimed at an adult foreign audience. This makes it unique in the history of early Chinese‐English vocabulary lists and affiliates it with the Chinese encyclopedic dictionary tradition, but in comparison to most extant versions of those texts the Vocabulary is still distinctive in terms of the incorporation of
Cantonese and the quality of the illustrations.
Content
In terms of content, the Vocabulary is nowhere near as comprehensive as the Chinese encyclopedic dictionaries mentioned above, containing as it does only 300 entries. The choice of items for inclusion is, however, revealing. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 17
It begins, as already noted, with names of heavenly bodies, and together with these we can group geographic features (mountains), animals (both real and imaginary),21 fish, birds, insects, and plants (decorative and fruiting). Together these make up the natural world, consisting of fifty‐two entries (fifty‐three if we include crickets [45e], which are under ‘games’ because
Chinese raise them for fighting matches, like cocks),22 or just over one‐sixth of the total.
Since the Vocabulary is part of the Blake collection, with Blake being an amateur botanist who collected both seed and plant specimens, as well as commissioning over one hundred botanical drawings, I want to compare the plants found in the Vocabulary with those found in the
botanical plates. First, only seven of the fifteen plants in the Vocabulary are found in the botanical drawings (helpfully cross‐referenced with notes), partly because some of the plants in the Vocabulary are from the middle or north of China, but also because the Vocabulary contains
only culturally‐important trees and plants, whereas the botanical plates concentrate on plants that are useful for one reason or another. By culturally important, I mean that they either are taken to have special symbolic meaning, or are taken up and referenced repeatedly in literary and historical texts for their association with particular people. For example, bamboo (17a) is
often used as a metaphor for the desirable qualities of a gentleman, perhaps most famously expressed by the poet Bai Juyi (772‐846) in an essay “Growing Bamboo” (養竹記).23 In a rather different vein the lychee, which is featured twice in the vocabulary, was immortalized in a story of Emperor Tang Xuanzong’s (685‐762) imperial consort Yang Guifei (719‐756), who loved the fruit so much that the emperor, who was besotted by her, arranged for a special relay service of St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 18
horse riders to rush fresh lychees at great expense from the south where they grew to the north where the palace was located. Other plants are associated with particular authors, such as the chrysanthemum, celebrated in a series of poems by Tao Yuanming (365?‐427), or with a particular religion, as the lotus is associated with Buddhism and symbolizes purity. Likewise,
Nick Menzies in this issue of the journal gives an extensive discussion of the role of the camellia flower in Chinese culture.
Additionally, there is no correlation between the order of the plants in the vocabulary as compared with the arrangement of the botanical drawings in the albums as we now have them.
Given the rather loose overlap in content (seven out of fifteen items) and the fact that the overlap is often not exact (the Vocabulary has “錦菊” for chrysanthemum, a general term for any with large flowers, while the botanic plates have three specific cultivars in volume two, pages 14‐16), the Vocabulary does not seem to have been conceived particularly for someone with an interest in botany, unlike the Chinese Herbal in the Hunt Collection mentioned above.
Any relationship between the albums and the Vocabulary is thus an incidental one, not
planned.
Returning to the content of the Vocabulary, there are six human figures near the beginning that represent different classes in Chinese society – degree holder (1d), husbandman (1f), labourer
(2b) merchant (2d), scholar (2f) and priest (3b) – where we see that the literati class is uniquely represented by two figures, one at the beginning of the process (scholar) and one at the end
(degree holder). Moreover, the order of the first four (scholar, farmer, labourer, merchant) St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 19
represents the traditional Confucian social hierarchy, which places the literati at the top, people who produce material goods (food, crafts) in the middle, and the merchant, who creates nothing, at the bottom; some lists added Daoist and Buddhist monks after merchants,24 as we see here with one [Daoist] priest, but military occupations are completely unworthy of mention.25
Clearly related to such figures, clothing and accessories for the human body make up twenty‐ seven entries, which move from the general to the specific and from male to female: the first being general terms (trousers, shirt, shoes, hats, ten items), several rather specific terms for items worn by officials (seven), by priests (one), two sets of raingear (four items) and finally items of dress specific to women (five). There are also a number of items that could be classified as ornaments or accessories and which often appear associated with these clothing entries, for example a pearl necklace “worn by great men” (38a) or, along with women’s clothing, we find toiletries (41a‐f and 42a).
The rest of the entries can be divided roughly into two categories. First there is the built environment, which moves from four externally‐viewed objects (city walls and gate, bridge, multi‐storey house, temple), through modes of transportation to reach them (sedan chair and rickshaw, 4d and 4e), to the objects which fill such spaces. Here household furnishings and, in particular as a sub‐category, kitchen implements (twenty‐three entries) give details of the type of furnishings one could observe either in a Daoist temple (there are no references to Buddhism St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 20
in the Vocabulary), the publically‐accessible areas of an official’s office (yamen), or various areas of a house (reception area, kitchen, bedroom, dining area).
The second category is urban life. Here we find players and jugglers, various types of entertainment, musical instruments (well represented with seventeen items, plus four types of
bells and three wooden percussion instruments used in temples), games (six items), instruments of war (eight) and instruments of punishment (fourteen; which could alternately be classified under objects found in an official’s yamen, two being ceremonial weapons used when an official was parading through the streets).
In total, there are over 230 entries, or almost eighty percent, that are man‐made objects, many
of which are culturally‐specific to China at this time.
What we do not see is anything relating to life outside the city. Agriculture is represented by a single plough (21a) and type of harrow (21b), but there are no representations of crops (staples such as rice or wheat), animal husbandry, sericulture, cotton, or irrigation works. Trade and industry are likewise neglected; there is nothing about silk, cotton or porcelain manufacture.
We see examples of clothes and cloth made from silk and cotton, we see porcelain tableware, but there is nothing about how these items are created. There is not even anything about tea plant cultivation, picking, or curing, although items related to the consumption of tea within the city are pictured (teapot 47e, teacups 47d, tea tray 47b and tea canister 47f).
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 21
Finally, there is a rather predictable gender bias in the images. First, all the images of people are male, with the exception of 17b and 17f, yet even here the English translation claims that the person depicted is a boy dressed as a woman. Clothing begins with men’s and ends with
women’s, and the few items specifically associated with women are mostly toiletries. The only
two animals that have an identifiable sex (lion and deer) are male. Slightly more interesting is
the gendering of what in Chinese is referred to literally as simply a piss‐pot (尿壺) but in English
is translated as “mens chamber pot, vide [see] pipe.” Here the fact that the image of the pot has a spout on one side seems to have led the English commentator to gender the object; there are no comparably gendered “women’s” objects in the vocabulary.
The vocabulary, then, provides what I would like to call an “offer of information” that
represents a significant slice of life in a large urban center such as Canton would have been at that time. Places and objects that might have been observable by, and therefore of interest to, a resident of the British factory are displayed according to a multi‐layered ordering system that, in itself, already encodes quite a bit of information for the viewer. This information includes the relative social status of various classes of people, the location that many objects are used at (for example, that certain types of musical instruments are used in temples, not for theatrical
performances or wedding processions), and the social use to which certain natural objects are put (crickets are pictured along with board games on page forty‐five because people raise them in order to bet on the outcome of cricket fights, just as people bet on the outcome of board games).
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 22
British reaction
At the same time, the English translations and notes show that whoever was writing this later information was not simply passively receiving whatever the Chinese originator has offered, but rather in many cases is adding, modifying, deleting and substituting both information and judgment of the materials.
First I would like to consider entries where the English translator/annotator adds a judgment of the information provided by the Chinese. In four of the animal entries, dragon (5a), lion (6a), qilin (18a) and phoenix (18c), the English has the word “imaginary,” signaling that the object depicted does not exist. In the case of the lion, which of course is an animal known to the
British, the note draws attention to the specific element that is not true to life, the color; the entry reads “blue imaginary.” Likewise, entry 35f, 風火扇 “Fong Fo Sheen,” is described as “An ancient superstition that the gods used this fan to raize [sic] wind and fire,” where the word
“superstition” performs the same function as imaginary, providing a negative judgment on this belief.26 The English reader, then, was not disposed to take all information presented as equal, and can on occasion be quite judgmental.
The English text also shows a great concern for manmade objects as signs of social status. I counted eighteen items where the English explained that an object was a sign of high status, often specifying that an object was worn or used only by royalty (12c, 33a, 33d, 37b), “great officials” (14b, 37d, 37e, 38a, 38b, 38c, 38e, 38f, 40d), “scholars” (33b, 33c), a “lady of St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 23
distinction” (43e), a “head priest to show his dignity” (35d) or only found in “churches and great houses” (44d). These are contrasted with a small number of low‐status items, for example 4d
“sedan chair – common,” 13e “common fan,” and 21f “common hat to wear in rainey weather;” or in at least one case, by juxtaposition of two objects, one being labelled as higher status than the other (43d is simply a “womans head dress” but 43e is “a lady of distinction’s head dress”).
There are also examples where objects serve to differentiate social classes in terms of function, for example 24e, “a tray basket to carry meat and provisions from market; several of these hung on a pole by the Compradore and carried by the Cooley.” Here we see that the compradore (managerial) is of a higher status than a coolie (laborer), as demonstrated by who does what with the object.
Value‐added: the real
In many entries, the English translation includes an explanation that goes beyond any information encoded in the image, the Chinese characters, or the Cantonese. Since in virtually all of these examples the information added is factual, I call this the “real value added.”
For example, in entry 40c, the Chinese consists of a single character “kar” (枷). The English gives: “A Pillory – fixt on the shoulders for 1, 2, or 3 Months of various weights — .” Here we see the establishment first of an equivalence, kar = pillory,27 followed by information about the
manner in which it is used, the fact that the duration of use may vary, and that the weight may vary. None of this information is available either from the Chinese character or the illustration.
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 24
I counted a total of seventy‐nine entries that contained such additional information.28 In addition, there were another ninety‐five entries which, rather than give an equivalence (kar = pillory), gave definitions for the object, usually because no simple equivalent word existed in
English to describe the object – in fact, only 157 items in the Vocabulary have equivalences listed in English.29 These definitions also often contain information not explicitly encoded in the
Chinese entry, although in at least some cases one could argue that to understand the meaning of the term in Chinese would be to know the information presented.30
Beyond adding factual detail, a certain number of these entries contain reflections upon
Chinese manners and customs. In 3b, we learn that the person depicted is a priest of a “sect that marry” (and so are more like Protestants than Catholics). In 14c we learn that when eating in public, some people have screens placed before them to shield them from view; in 21e we learn that bridegrooms are presented with a fowl coop by friends; in 27e we learn that inscriptions are often placed over doors by way of ornament. 33f is an object used at funerals and in churches, while 34a teaches us that presents are often sent on a table covered with a decorative cloth, as well as on special social occasions such as weddings and funerals; in 45b we learn that the Chinese raise fighting birds and place bets on them (as with crickets found on the
same page).
None of this information is encoded in the images, and so we can only imagine that it emerged either out of books (such as Du Halde’s magisterial General History of China31) or, what is more
likely given the context, out of conversation with Chinese in Canton and first‐hand observation. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 25
There is even an indication in at least one entry that the English annotator was interested in how the Chinese language works; item 20f is the single character 蝦, a general term for lobsters, crayfish and shrimp. The English annotation tells us that Chinese forms compounds with this character to differentiate different types from one another.
By contrast, examples of where detailed factual information contained in the Chinese is missing from the English entries occurs in only fourteen instances. First, there are five entries that contain no English translation: 8e (moth), 9b (plum), 9c (chrysanthemum), 9e (peony), and 10a
(lotus). 22d tells us that the container is used to measure rice (by volume) but does not tell us the exact volume of the container;32 29a does not mention that the “bed curtain” is designed to
keep out mosquitos; 33d does not mention that it is a lantern; 39f and 40b fail to specify that these items are both made of leather; 41d fails to mention what the colour is used for (the lips, not the cheeks); 46c “cloke” does not specify its function as a rain cloak; and 46f does not specify that this “die” is specifically for casting silver ingots. In several of these cases the omission is either trivial (leather whip versus whip) or the function may be thought implied (a cloak is worn in bad weather to keep off rain and/or keep warm).33
Value subtracted: the imaginary
There are also a small number of vocabulary entries where information that was judged to be contrafactual was omitted from the English. All of these examples are interesting in different ways.
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 26
The very first two images in the vocabulary both contain such information. The image for the sun in 1a clearly contains within it the image of a bird, yet no allusion to it can be found in the
English translation. It is in fact a feng, generally translated as “phoenix,” the bird that on page
eighteen is labelled by the English notes as “imaginary.” The association between phoenix and the sun is well attested in Chinese mythology, and the fact that the association is delineated
pictorially is an “offer of information” on the part of the Chinese artist who drew the image.
Likewise, the image of the moon in 1b contains within it the image of an animal. If it were not clear to the English annotator what exactly the animal was, he had only to turn to page six, where amongst the animals he would find a rabbit that, in terms of iconography, is almost identical to the one depicted inside the moon. The image of the rabbit here evokes the legend of the jade rabbit, who prepares an elixir of immortality by the use of a mortar and pestle; it is also often linked to the legend of Chang’e, a Daoist immortal reputed to live on the moon.34
Again the English text passes over this offer of information in silence, while it is well attested to in Chinese sources.35
In the case of 42e (紙錢), the English gives “a sort of paper burnt to the Idols.” Here the specific information that the paper represents paper money or bills which, after burning, are transformed into spiritual cash that can be spent by whomever it has been offered to (deceased
family members, gods, or spirits) is omitted. Likewise the entry that immediately follows, 42f
(元寶), “gold paper burnt as above” omits the information that these pieces of paper represent real gold (often folded into the shape of an ingot) that again would become currency that circulated in the spirit world after burning. In addition, the use of the word “idols” adds of St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 27
course a negative judgment on the part of the English annotator, as was the case with the labels “imaginary” and “superstition” discussed earlier.
Value exchanged: the real substituted for the imaginary
In three cases, information of the real is substituted for information about the imaginary, which is omitted; these form a set on page seventeen, and have already been alluded to above.
The first figure I would like to discuss is 17d. We are presented with the image of a man in
official dress, holding up a scroll upon which are written four words 天宮賜福, the first two of which match the two characters in the main Chinese entry in the column to the left, and are one of the names used to describe the Jade Emperor, who is the ruler in Chinese Heaven. The second two characters mean “bestow blessings” and so the scroll reads “The Jade Emperor bestows blessings.” The iconography of the image is stereotypical of a wide variety of popular images of the Jade Emperor, often pasted up on walls for good luck; he is particularly associated with the Lantern Festival, which occurs on the first full moon after the Lunar New
Year. A search using Google images will return dozens of contemporary ones that are almost identical to the image in the Vocabulary in terms of dress, hat, beard, posture and display of the scroll. The English translation, however, mentions nothing of who the figure is, but rather states
“a player in the vacation season paying compliments to get money.” All information relating to
Chinese religious belief systems has been erased, and instead we are told that this is an out‐of‐ work actor dressing up in a role and saying flattering things in order to get tips. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 28
The second image is 17b, which figures a figure dressed in brightly‐colored clothes squatting on a swing, which is in motion. The diminutive feet suggest that this is a woman, as does the headdress, but the main Chinese entry gives no information about the person and instead is a
rare instance of a verb‐object formation, “to swing on a swing.” Instead of translating this phrase, the English gives “a tumbling boy in girls clothes.” Here we see what is beginning to emerge as a pattern for the three figures on this page (the other three images are trees): again the figure is interpreted by the English annotator as representations of actors, it being well known that acting and opera troupes at this time were all male, something that a British person is far more likely to have seen than an actual woman on a swing.36
Finally, the third image, which is related to the other two, occurs in position 17f. Here we are presented with the image of a woman with a hoe slung over her right shoulder, from which hangs a basket with some sort of organic products, and holding up something else in her left
hand, also organic, that looks like it might be a flower. The main Chinese characters 麻姑, it turns out, give us her name, romanized in the entry as “Maw Koo.” Maw Koo (or Ma Gu in modern Mandarin) is a minor figure in the Daoist canon, a transcendent or immortal (仙). She
appears in various stories as early as Ge Hong’s (283‐343) Tradition of Divine Descendents (葛
洪，神仙傳),37 and is associated with the Mid‐Autumn Festival (which usually falls in
September). Of particular interest is the fact that she is also associated with Penglai, a mythical island of the coast of China (sometimes identified with Taiwan), to which she travels in order to harvest plants (peaches, peony and the lingzhi fungus) that enable her then to compound the St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 29
elixir of immortality, which she presents to her mistress the Queen Mother of the West 西王母 on her birthday, the third day of the third lunar month (usually in April). Many paintings of her in a similar pose can be found from the late Ming through the present day, where it is evident that the item she holds in her left hand is not a flower but rather the lingzhi fungus, while in her basket we can see the peaches of immortality and peonies.38 Today she still lives on in popular culture, for example the Cantonese opera, “Maw Kow Presents Birthday Wishes” (麻姑獻壽).
Given Bradley Blake’s mission to collect seed and plant specimens in the Canton area to be shipped back to London, where he hoped they would be of commercial and, in particular,
medicinal use, it is perhaps not an accident that a Daoist transcendent associated with voyaging to distant lands to collect valuable plant specimens for medicinal purposes has been included in the Vocabulary.
The discrepancies between the Chinese and English are thus instructive in a number of ways.
They reveal an essentially materialistic and this‐worldly orientation, rejecting contrafactual but culturally‐important information. At the same time, a real curiosity concerning the day‐to‐day lives of urban Chinese is also obvious along with a desire to interpret the outward signs of social status.
Conclusion
The early record of Chinese‐British interaction is full of one‐sided accounts: what the British thought of the Chinese, what the Chinese thought of the British. Even when sources describe a meeting or dialogue, it is post‐facto and usually heavily biased, a re‐interpretation filtered St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 30
through the eyes of one or the other side. Here, in the Vocabulary, we have perhaps the first detailed record of how Chinese and British exchanged cultural information where we have both voices. In the layers of the Vocabulary we can see an attempt at cross‐cultural exchange, with equivalences being proposed, explanations offered, and meaning contested. Although we can find various types of precedents and related material, it is unique in the history of Chinese‐
English lexicography, and we must be grateful to the accidents of history which resulted in its preservation.
St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 31
Notes
1 OSGL Record #: M‐152, Blake Collection, Oak Spring Foundation Library. Contains:
Four volumes of botanical plates;
“Description of a Five Volume Chinese Herbal”;
“Chinese‐English Vocabulary”.
2 I have indexed all entries by page number and then position on the page vertically, “a” being the top right‐hand corner and “d” being top left corner.
3 “Description of a Five Volume Chinese Herbal,” part of OSGL Record #: M‐152.
4 In addition to the primary Cantonese containing a certain number of mistakes as in 48a, there is also an interesting phenomenon whereby in fifteen entries the Cantonese uses a colloquial term that is synonymous to the Chinese characters, in cases where the written form (in the main Chinese entry) is rarely used in spoken Cantonese. For example in (26f) the Chinese characters are 鑰匙筒 but the first syllable of the Cantonese pronunciation, “So Shee Thong” does not correspond to the first Chinese character. Instead it corresponds to the character 鎖, where 鎖匙 and 鑰匙 are synonyms, both meaning key(s). In most of these cases, the main
Cantonese entry corresponds to the preferred colloquial (spoken) form still in use today. Thus the purpose of the main Cantonese seems to be to teach someone how to communicate orally in Cantonese, rather than how to pronounce the Chinese characters. In several cases the secondary Cantonese continues this practice; it is only when the main Cantonese entry is completely wrong (as in the mistake of “butterfly” for “moth” in 8e) that the secondary
Cantonese offers an alternative. Otherwise, the secondary Cantonese is often only a slightly St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 32
different spelling, which could be due either to different transcription systems or to dialectal variation in Cantonese (there being contemporary reports of significant differences between the Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou and Macau).
5 See Werner Hüllen, English Dictionaries 800‐1700: The Topical Tradition, Oxford, 1999, pp. 35‐
7.
6 See vol. 1 of four volumes of botanical plates, part of OSGL Record #: M‐152, pp. 9‐13.
7 See Chambers, Design of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machinese and Utensils.
London, 1757, p. 43; compare vocabulary item 20c.
8 Chambers, Design of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machinese and Utensils, p. 46;
compare vocabulary item 2b.
9 See Athanasius Kircher, China Monumentis…., 1667, illustrations following p. 112.
10 Zeng Gongliang (曾公亮) and Ding Du (丁度), Encyclopedia of Weaponry, in 40 volumes (武
經總要 [前集 20 卷, 後集 20 卷]), circa 1050; modern reprint: Shanghai (上海), 1934.
11 It would be tedious to track down examples for all items in the Vocabulary, but later in the article I will consider in particular two iconographical images on page 17; the reader may also consult works such as Wang Qi’s (王圻) Comprehensive Illustrated Encyclopedia in 156 volumes
(三才圖會: 一百六), circa 1565, of which there are numerous editions [modern reprint:
Liouying Township, Tainan County (臺南縣柳營鄉), 1995].
12 See Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, second edition,
Cambridge, 2001, p. 9.
13 See Kingsley Bolton, Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 143.
There is a modern reprint of the journals (Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 33
and Asia, 1608‐1667, In five volumes, Works Issued by The Hakluyt Society, Second Series,
1919), but although the preface notes the existence of the Chinese vocabulary list, the editor decided not to include it. I have not had the opportunity to examine the original manuscript copy kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
14 These examples are taken from Sir John Francis Davis, A Commercial Vocabulary, Containing
Chinese Words and Phrases Peculiar to Canton and Macao, and to the Trade of those Places,
Macao, China, 1844. Later, there are similar vocabularies; see R. Morrison, A Chinese
Commercial Guide, Consisting of a Collection of Details and Regulations Respecting Foreign
Trade with China, second Edition, Macao, 1844 and Wells S. Williams, A Chinese Commercial
Guide, Consisting of a Collection of Details and Regulations Respecting Foreign Trade with
China, Sailing Directions, Tables, &c, fourth Edition, revised and enlarged, Canton, 1856.
15 Keiichi Uchida (内田慶市) and Kokui Shin (沈国威), 言語接触とピジン : 19 世紀の東アジア
(研究と復刻資料) Gengo sesshoku to pijin: 19seiki no higashiajia kenkyu to fukkoku shiryo.
[Language contact and Pidgins: Studies and materials relating to nineteenth‐century East Asian
Pidgins], Tokyo, 2009, pp. 183‐383.
16 Carrington L. Goodrich (eds.), Fifteenth century illustrated Chinese primer. Facsimile
reproduction with introduction and notes by L. Carrington Goodrich (新編對相四言), Hong
Kong, modern reprinted in 1967.
17 Anonymous, Comprehensive Children’s Character Primer, revised and expanded (增補幼學須
知雜字大全), s.n, 1678.
18 Tekisai Nakamura, Kinmo zu‐i (Great Illustrated Encyclopedia), 14 volumes, Japan, 1666.
Numberous reprints, often with an expanded title. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 34
19 Engelbertus Kaempfer, The history of Japan: giving an account of the ancient and present
state and government of that empire; of its temples, palaces, castles and other buildings; of its
metals, minerals, trees, plants, animals, birds and fishes; of the chronology and succession of
the emperors, ecclesiastical and secular; of the original descent, religions, customs, and
manufactures of the natives, and of their trade and commerce with the Dutch and Chinese.
Together with a description of the kingdom of Siam ... With the life of the author, and an
introduction. Translated by John Gaspar Scheuchzer, London, 1727.
20 Anonymous, “Chinese Herbal”, C. 1800, Hunt Library.
21 This includes all twelve Chinese “zodiac” signs (eleven animals and one bird), although not in their traditional order. The animals, birds, and fish also have a heavy emphasis on what is edible.
22 This is an excellent example of how the arrangement of entries provides information about how the objects were viewed and classified by the Chinese compositor. Despite the fact that the image of the crickets can be shown to observe stereotypical norms of how insects are represented in Chinese illustrated encyclopedias, where they are normally portrayed alongside other insects (compare the illustrated Erya 爾雅音圖, section 14 bugs [蟲], where crickets and grasshoppers are portrayed with various other [see Guo Pu (郭璞), Erya yintu (爾雅音圖),
Beijing (北京), 1985, pp. 192]), the decision to place them here with games rather than earlier with bees, moths and butterflies indicates that the organizer of the Vocabulary is making decisions based on the role of crickets as a form of entertainment.
23 Bai Juyi (白居易), Collected works of Bai Juyi in two volumes (白居易全集全二冊). Edited by
Liu Mingjie (刘明杰点校), Zhuhai (珠海), 1996. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 35
24 See Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China,
Berkeley, 1998, pp. 72‐3.
25 The Illustrated Chinese Primer (see Carrington L. Goodrich (eds.), Fifteenth century illustrated
Chinese primer. Facsimile reproduction with introduction and notes by L. Carrington Goodrich,
Hong Kong, modern reprinted in 1967, pp. 6) has seven terms: literati, farmer, laborer,
merchant, scholar, Buddhist monk and Daoist monk, almost exactly the same as the
Vocabulary, except for the addition of the Buddhist monk. Other groupings such as wasp, butterfly and moth in that work (compare Vocabulary 8d, 8e and 8f), suggest that such a primer may have been a principal source of inspiration for the Vocabulary in terms of head words.
26 The fan in 35f is not the only item that is described as “ancient” in the English notes. In fact four other objects are so classified: 33a, 38c, 44a, and 44b. 33a 紗帽 is an illustration of the sort of hat worn by officials in the Ming dynasty, but discontinued in the Qing; 38c 如意 is described
as being the ancient equivalent of the item immediately preceding, an object held up in front of the face when an official is holding audience; and finally 44a 魚鼓 and 44b 簡版 are both described as ancient musical instruments used in temples.
Why such items should be included in a vocabulary list for foreigners is a bit of a mystery. If a foreigner were to see such objects anywhere, it would probably be at the performance of plays, either in front of temples during festivals, or at the houses of the Hong merchants as
entertainment, many of which would have featured historical subjects. They might also have been seen in paintings or (perhaps least likely) illustrated books. The vocabulary thus provides some indirect evidence that British EIC employees were engaged in a fair amount of socializing with Chinese (see also May‐bo Ching’s paper on chopstick dinners in this issue). St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 36
27 Today usually translated as “cangue,” a word borrowed from Portuguese and perhaps ultimately from Cantonese.
28 3b, 4a, 5a, 6a, 6d, 11a, 11c, 11d, 11f, 12b, 12d, 12f, 14b, 14c, 14f, 15b, 15f, 16a, 16b, 16c,
16e, 17b, 17d, 17f, 18a, 18c, 18d, 19b, 20c, 21a, 21e, 24a, 24b, 24e, 25f, 27e, 30f, 31a, 31b, 33a,
33d, 33f, 34a, 34c, 34d, 34e, 35a, 35c, 35f, 36d, 36e, 36f, 37d, 37e, 38a, 38b, 38c, 38e, 38f, 40c,
40d, 41c, 41d, 41f, 42d, 42e, 42f, 43a, 43e, 44a, 44b, 44d, 45b, 45e, 46e, 48b, 48c, 49a, 49d.
29 Items with English equivalences: 1a, 1b, 1c, 1e, 1f, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2f, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e, 4a, 4c, 4e, 4f,
5a‐f, 6a‐f, 7a‐f, 8a‐d, 8f, 9a, 9d 10b, 10d, 10f, 11a, 11b, 11d‐f, 12b, 12d, 12f, 13c, 13d, 13e, 13f,
14b, 14c, 14e, 14f, 15b, 15c, 15d, 15e, 16d, 16e, 17a, 17e, 18b, 18c, 18e, 18f, 19a‐f, 20a, 20b,
20c, 20e, 21a, 21b, 21d, 21e, 22b, 22c, 22f, 23a, 23c, 23f, 24a, 24c, 25a, 25c, 26a, 26c, 26d, 27a,
27c, 27f, 28a, 28d, 28f, 29a, 29b, 29d, 29e, 29f, 30d, 30e, 31a, 31b, 31c, 31e, 31f, 32b, 32c, 35a,
35b, 36a, 36b, 36e, 36f, 37d, 38e, 39d, 40a, 40c, 40e, 40f, 41a, 42a, 42c, 43f, 44e, 45a, 45c, 46a,
46c, 46d, 46f, 47a, 47b, 47c, 47e, 47f, 48a, 48d, 48f, 49a, 49c, 49e, 49f, 50d.
30 Items with definitions: 1d, 2a, 2e, 3a, 3f, 4b, 12a, 12c, 12e, 13a, 13b, 14a, 14d, 15a, 16f, 19d,
19f, 21c, 21f, 22a, 22d, 22e, 23b, 23d, 23e, 24c, 24f, 25b, 25d, 25e, 26b, 26e, 26f, 27a, 27b, 27d,
28a, 28b, 28c, 28e, 29c, 30a, 30b, 30c, 31d, 32a, 32d, 32e, 32f, 33b, 33c, 33e, 34b, 34f, 35d, 35e,
36a, 36b, 36c, 37a, 37b, 37c, 38d, 39a, 39b, 39c, 39e, 39f, 40a, 40b, 41b, 41e, 42b, 43b, 43c,
43d, 43f, 44c, 44e, 44f, 45d, 45f, 46b, 46f, 47b, 47c, 47d, 48e, 48f, 49b, 50a, 50b, 50c, 50e, 50f.
31 Jean Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China: Containing a geographical, historical,
chronological, political and physical description of the empire of China, Chinese‐tartary, Corea,
and Thibet; including an exact and particular account of their customs, manners, ceremonies,
religion, arts and sciences, translated by Richard Brookes, London, 1736. St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 37
32 Such measurements would not necessarily have had a national standard at this time, but there certainly would have been a regional standard in Canton, probably roughly equivalent to one peck.
33 Here it is instructive to contrast the Chinese Herbal in the Hunt Collection mentioned earlier, which in the English translation omits large amounts of information found in the Chinese text for almost every entry.
34 This is supposed to be based on an identification of lunographic features that resemble a rabbit.
35 For example, the illustrations for sun and moon in one of the Chinese primers (see
Anonymous, Comprehensive Children’s Character Primer, revised and expanded, s.n, 1678, vol.
2, pp. 1) clearly show a phoenix in the sun and a rabbit in the moon.
36 I have not yet been able to confirm my suspicion that this image is as stereotypical as the other two images on this page, but women on swings were a trope in late imperial literature, associated with the mid‐Autumn festival (see Hsieh Bao Hua, Concubinage and Servitude in Late
Imperial China, Lanham Maryland, p. 195).
37 Robert F. Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge
Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents, Berkeley, 2002.
38 See the painting originally attributed to Ma Hezhi (fl. 1131‐1189) 畫麻姑仙像 (image of the transcendent Ma Gu) but now thought to be late Ming or early Qing (1580‐1680) where all three items are in the basket instead (now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei Taiwan); see also the painting from the eighteenth century, 麻姑獻壽 (Ma Gu presents birthday wishes), St. André, “John Bradley Blake's multimedia dictionary: From wordlist to worldview” 38
which has her holding the lingzhi fungus, with peonies in the basket, but the hoe transformed into a branch of the peaches of longevity (which still hang from it).