The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath

Acknowledgments

vii Acknowledgments Istill remember how I first stumbled upon this remarkable latenineteenth -century manuscript. When I was browsing a catalogue of Qing dynasty manuscripts that have never been printed, the title—The World of a Tiny Insect—caught my eye. Thinking that it might be a rare work of entomology from premodern China, I sought it out and opened its pages. Little did I expect that it would turn out to be another kind of rare work; it grabbed me immediately, with its violence, its pain, and its profound compassion for human cruelty and foolishness. From then on, I embarked on a journey retracing the footsteps of the “tiny insect” in his labyrinthine passage through time and space. While the discovery was serendipitous, my work on this manuscript related closely to my long-term research interest in travel writing, memory, trauma, and manuscript culture. Subsequently, I gave a presentation on my finds at the Manuscript Culture Conference I organized at Harvard University in May 2010. I am grateful to the participants of the conference for their input, especially Waiyee Li, for giving an illuminating discussion of my paper, and Judith Zeitlin, for her astute insights. I am much obliged to Professor Xia Xiaohong of Beijing University for helping me search for the excerpted manuscript copy in the library collection of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Although the search did not turn up the manuscript, I appreciate Professor Xia’s time and efforts in the scorching summer of Beijing. I thank Hannibal Taubes, senior student of Harvard College majoring in East Asian Studies, for being one of the first readers of my draft translation, and for his enthusiastic, helpful comments, in an Indepen- viii Acknowledgments dent Study course on Chinese travel literature we did together in the fall semester of 2012. We both learned a great deal in that course. A special note of appreciation is due my colleague Peter K. Bol for his generous offer of help in creating the map that graced this book, at a particularly busy time right before a new semester began. Occasional grumbling could never conceal Peter’s chivalrous nature, for which I am thankful as much as for his expertise in GIS. I am grateful to the two anonymous readers for their detailed reports, which were extremely helpful in my revision of the manuscript. I am also deeply indebted to the superb editorial team at the University of Washington Press: Kerrie Maynes, Mary C. Ribesky, Marilyn Trueblood, Tim Zimmermann, Rachael Levay, and, last but not least, Lorri Hagman, whose warm encouragement and sage advice were instrumental in bringing this book to print. While one’s family always deserves thanks for enduring a time-consuming project, I want to thank my husband Stephen Owen especially for always being available for consultation on a better turn of phrase, and for reading through my translation and offering feedback. When I was working on this project during a sabbatical leave in the fall of 2011, my infant son, George, kept me company every day and opened up a new world of wonder and love to me that I could never have imagined possible without him: I am forever in his debt. X.F.T. The World of a Tiny Insect ...