Panel 22: China's Local Histories

Chair: Tarryn Chun, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Yuheng Cao, independent scholar, “Between the War and Peace: The Great Wall Region from the Qin-Han Period to the Ming Dynasty”

This project explores the cultural and political meanings of the Chinese Great Wall in the fourth and fifth centuries by crafting a collective narrative extracted from the official historical records during that period. Specifically, through the analysis of the material grounded in the construction of the Great Wall, historical evidence and documents about the fourth and fifth centuries in China, I will argue how the Great Wall played an important role in not only a military defensive system but also economic and cultural domains.

In most periods, except for some critical moments like wars, the Great Wall worked by no means as a military or economic blockade. It was also a region where different ethnic groups lived together. As the first period when multiple ethnic groups lived together, and Non-Han Chinese governed the Great Wall region, the Northern and Southern dynasties, which existed from the fourth to the sixth, could perfectly explain the Great Wall’s different functions and historical meanings in various timelines. From wartime to peace, the Great Wall was mainly used to defend, while during peace, the Great Wall was a region where nomadic tribes mingled with the Han people in military, economic, and cultural fields. At the same time, two different modes of economy and living, nomadic and farming, also merged here. Farming and nomadic cultures intertwined with each other in the Great Wall region, and the two sides continued to absorb each other in the process of political, military, economic, and cultural interactions.

Wanze Ma, Zhejiang University, “Information Matters: A History of the Lu Lineage”

Lu Xiufu, a renowned official of the Song dynasty, died in Guangdong, though his ancestral roots were in Yancheng, Jiangsu. In the Ming Dynasty, information about his descendants living in Guangdong reached Yancheng, prompting local officials to search for his descendants, which manufactured the worship of Lu Xiufu in Yancheng. Then the Lu lineage of Yancheng strategically shared favorable information about them with the government, making their leader a hereditary official responsible for the sacrifice of Lu Xiufu. In the Qing dynasty, accounts and details of the Lu lineage of Guangdong spread into Jiangsu, challenging the Lu lineage of Yancheng’s genealogy. But they managed to maintain their lineage structure. Post-1978, with increased information exchange between Guangdong and Yancheng, the two lineages integrated their genealogies while retaining distinct historical memories. This paper demonstrates how the influx of diverse information through interactions and book circulation can both challenge and facilitate lineage stability and construction. The state controls lineages by selectively acknowledging and spreading information, whereas lineages establish their legitimacy by conveying certain kinds of information to the state.

Wenjie Hua, Wuhan University, “Invoke Immortals: A Social History of Jianghuai Built on Divination and Techniques (1900–1949)”

This essay examines two sets of newly discovered manuscripts from 1900 to 1949 in China, thus constructing a foundation for the science and beliefs of the non-elite class in rural Jianghuai while social transforming. The first set, which we define as a compendium of miscellaneous divination, covers methods and theoretical systems such as prophecy, numerology, five-element system, divination for founding stuff, etc. The second set is a rare unabridged version of Gui Sui Ri You Fang 鬼祟日遊方, which records various diseases treatments, and methods of catching ghosts, as people in Jianghuai at that time commonly believed that illnesses were related to different ghosts.

By comparative reading, this essay argues that these two sets of manuscripts share many similarities with ancient Chinese numerological classics. As for Xianghuo 香火, a collective name of the owner of these manuscripts, the techniques they employed represent the scientific system of the people in Jianghuai at that time, and the ceremonial beliefs and pantheistic faith in Jianghuai are likewise related to their existence. Lastly, the essay restores, through oral history, the several man-made shocks to the science and belief foundations outlawed by Xianghuo, as well as its remnants today, which is a hidden discourse net in today’s Jianghuai.