Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950 Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access China Studies published for the institute for chinese studies, university of oxford Edited by Micah Muscolino (University of Oxford) volume 39 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/chs Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950 Understanding Chaoben Culture By Ronald Suleski leiden | boston Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc License at the time of publication, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Cover Image: Chaoben Covers. Photo by author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Suleski, Ronald Stanley, author. Title: Daily life for the common people of China, 1850 to 1950 : understanding Chaoben culture / By Ronald Suleski. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Series: China studies ; volume 39 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018010088 (print) | lccn 2018035488 (ebook) | isbn 9789004361034 (ebook) | isbn 9789004361027 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: China–Social life and customs–1644–1912. | China–Social life and customs–1912–1949. | China–Social life and customs–1949–1976. Classification: lcc ds754.14 (ebook) | lcc ds754.14 .s85 2018 (print) | ddc 951.03–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010088 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-1344 isbn 978-90-04-36102-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36103-4 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Ronald Suleski. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Dedicated to Jonghyun Lee 李鍾玄 and His Excellency the Jade Emperor Yuhuang Dadi 玉皇大帝 ∵ Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Contents Acknowledgments xi List of Figures xiv Introduction 1 1 Contextualizing Chaoben: On the Popular Manuscript Culture of the Late Qing and Republican Period in China 11 2 Apologia in Chaoben 65 3 Written in the Margins: Reading into Texts 110 4 Teacher Xu: Entering a Classroom in Late Qing China 143 5 A Qing Dynasty Astrologer’s Predictions for the Future 173 6 Constructing the Family in Republican China: Shandong 1944 199 7 Mr. Bai and Mr. Qian Earn Their Living: Considering Two Handwritten Notebooks of Matching Couplets from China in the Late Qing and Early Republic 226 8 The Troublesome Ghosts: Part 1 273 9 The Troublesome Ghosts: Part 2 327 10 Concluding Remarks 358 Appendix a. A List of Chaoben in the Author’s Personal Collection Used in This Study 369 Appendix b. Various Categories of Chaoben Not Discussed in the Text 398 Appendix c. Korean and Japanese Chaoben 411 Appendix d. Full Translation of Fifty Days to Encounter the Five Spirits 417 Bibliography 431 Index 447 Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access Acknowledgments Many people have helped me in preparing this study. They have offered insights, answered specific questions, and provided suggested translations. I take final responsibility for the information presented in this book, but I am pleased to gratefully acknowledge assistance from many colleagues and friends. My first “teacher” in learning how to understand chaoben was He Zhaohui 何 朝暉. We met in 2006, when he joined the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow. He served as a specialist in rare books at the Peking University Library and has been teaching since 2008 at the Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies at Shandong University. We have met in Beijing and at the Shandong University campus. Reviewing with me a number of chaoben I had bought, he helped to put those manuscripts in the context of the times in which they were produced. He also pointed out how valuable and interesting the comments, stories, and poems written in the margins as an afterthought by the copyists could be. He gave me good ideas on how to identify the handmade paper used in chaoben. He was always willing to look at my materials and to answer questions. In 2009 we enjoyed the experience of finding a number of old handwritten and woodblock-print books in Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. We divided the treasures we had found to our mutual satisfaction. My second “teacher” was Li Renyuan 李仁淵. I met him later that year while he was working on his Ph.D. and was a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He was also familiar with chaoben and was interested in the materials I was collecting. He visited me a few times at my home in Cambridge, offering several hours of excellent tutoring in how to “read” chaoben by locating critical points in the text, how to appreciate the expressions used by the writers, and even how to become comfortable with the nonstandard characters that occurred every so often. He clued me in to the idea that the particular expressions used by the chaoben writers could be seen as expressions of their social status and world- view. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 and is now at the Academic Sinica in Taiwan where he continues his fieldwork in the villages of Fujian. In order to make sense of the wide range of materials I was collecting, I chose a few topics to concentrate on in more detail. I prepared that material in the form of PowerPoint presentations and wrote up a few articles that were then published. Along the way, and continuing until the preparation of this book, I regularly consulted with colleagues, specialists, and fellow scholars, all Ronald Suleski - 978-90-04-36103-4 Downloaded from Brill.com04/05/2019 09:12:12AM via free access xii acknowledgments of whom I consider friends. Space limitations prevent me from listing all of their accomplishments and affiliations, as I would have liked. In lieu of that, I ask them to accept my gratitude for their help and here list them only by name, in alphabetical order. The many colleagues and professionals who have helped me were: Mark Byington, Adam Yuet Chau 周越, Chen Shi 陳實, Du Yuping 杜玉平, Du Zuxun 杜澤遜, Ge Huanli 戈煥禮, He Jun 何俊, He Wumeng 何無夢, Wilt Idema, Alister Inglis, Kawaguchi Toshiaki 川口敏明, Sunjoo Kim 金善珠김선주, Ronald Knapp, Kobayashi Tadao 小林忠夫, Jonghyun Lee 李鍾玄, Li Linxiang 李林祥, Li Zhisong 李志松, Lin Yiping 林一平, Liu Xiaoli 劉曉麗, Lü Shuxian 呂淑賢, Noji Kaeko 野地香惠子, Osawa Akihiro 大澤顕浩, Qu Xiaofan 曲曉范, Paul Ropp, Shao Yunfei 邵韻霏, Sun Yan 孫嵒, Michael Szonyi, Robert Weller, Ming Wong (Huang Ming) 黃明, Yang Liu 楊柳, Yu Chao 于超, Zhang Zhicheng 張志 成, Zhai Wenjun 瞿文君, Zhang Weiqi 張偉奇, Zhang Zhiqiang 張志強, Zheng Da 鄭達, Zhou Guixiang 周桂香, Zhou Donghua 周東華, and Zhou Xuanyun 周玄雲. Since I arrived at Suffolk University in Boston, I have been helped by a number of graduate and undergraduate students. Most are native speakers of Chinese. They have made initial translations of some material and have offered their opinions on wording and usage. Most of them now work in China or in the United States for major companies. Among these capable students are: Cui Yixuan 催毅鉉, Li Donglin 李棟琳, Li Yunjie 李雲傑, Noji Kaeko 野地香惠子, Belal Sohel, Yang Xi 楊曦, and Zhang Yu 張于. William Leete was a New Englander who graduated from Yale Divinity School. He went to China as a Christian missionary and lived there from 1913 until his death in 1952. During that time, he often carried a box camera and took thousands of pictures. He was most interested in the common people he encountered on the streets and in the villages. He photographed them while they were engaged in their daily routines and activities. The photos capture the sense of energy and the atmosphere of a time and place that no longer exist.