Notions et Perceptions du Changement en Chine: Textes Présentés au IXe Congrès de l'Association Européenne d'Études Chinoises (Notions and perceptions of change in China: Texts presented to the IXth Congress of the European Association of Chinese Studies) (review)

Reviews 351 Viviane Alleton and Alexeï Volkov, editors. Notions etPerceptions du Changement en Chine: Textes Présentés au IXe Congrès de l'Association Européenne d'Études Chinoises (Notions and perceptions ofchange in China: Texts presented to the IXth Congress ofthe European Association ofChinese Studies). Mémoires de l'Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, vol. 36. Paris: College de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1994. xxvi, 267 pp. Paperback Fr 120, isbn 2-85757-052-x. The cover ofthis volume of selected essays from the ninth meeting of the European Association of Chinese Studies in Paris in September 1992 depicts a cosmic diagram from the twelfth-century which centers on a stylized version of the character yi (change). The volume's eighteen revised conference presentations—selected for their proximity to the conference theme of "change and ideas of change in China"—manifest the continued vitality of European sinology. Topics ranging from comparative literature and medicine to classical ritual, philosophy, and urban political organization weave through the book, with the greatest attention given to the classical (eighth century b.c. to a.d. second century) and the recent (late nineteenth and twentieth centuries) periods of China's past. At least a halfdozen other conference presentations have already been printed elsewhere (see pp. xxv-xxvi n. 10). The European-wide pool ofauthors and the prompt publication ofthese proceedings have meant that although the volume has a French tide and was published in Paris, fourteen of the essays are written in English, with the remaining four in French. Viviane Alleton's substantial preface (pp. xi-xxvi) situates each essay in relation to the general theme ofthe congress. She and Dr. Volkov have organized die book into two parts. Part 1 (five essays) focuses on "China's ideology ofchange" and relies mosdy on ancient texts and traditions for its reference points. Part 2 (thirteen essays) details the ways that change has been perceived in China both past and present, emphasizing the twentieth century most. Part 2 is further subdivided into two sections, one devoted to history and the other to literature. Most ofthe essays deal with intellectual or literary history, broadly conceived, grounding diemselves in Europe's strong philological traditions, while frequentiy making innovative methodological suggestions. Besides lacking studies on China's "middle period" (mid-eighth to mid-sixteenth centuries), papers on economics, linguistics , and religion, as well as reflections on China's long and changing engagement witii Marxism, are also missing. An index ofproper names in roman letters closes the volume, while Chinese characters are included at tiieir first occurrence in each essay. Quality editorial work has meant that the volume contains few typographi- 352 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 cal errors. In what follows I will briefly describe each essay, to allow readers a glimpse at the volume's diversity. Divinatory practitioners in ancient China translated the world's changing configurations into modulating hexagrams. Jacques Gernet (pp. 1-12) emphasizes in his essay the complementarity between the flux ofphenomena and regular patterns ofchange in the hexagrams. This mode ofthinking meant that effective human action could only be understood when one placed it within its possible modulations. In the eleventh and twelfth century, under the influence of Buddhist philosophy, new forms of ethical thought arose that contributed to die emergence ofa "kind ofcommunication or equivalence" between impermanent phenomena and the regularities of the absolute. When Anne Cheng reflects upon Wang Bi's (226-249) commentary to the Yijing (Canon ofchanges) on the character yi (pp. 13-20), she stresses Wang's philosophical and political search for "apprehending the genuine as it is, which is to say in constant mutation, seeking to anticipate change in order to be able to govern." Wang supplemented earlier Han interpretations by weaving the concept of Ii (a humanly comprehensible intrinsic order in things) into his explanations, and thereby underscored the homomorphic relation between yi (alteration, change) and Ii (intrinsic pattern) in a manner betokening that of the later, "Neo-Confucian ," philosophers. Harro von Senger (pp. 21-28) considers the "Arts of Cunning," from a late Ming or early Qing technical treatise called the Sanshiliuji (Thirty-six strategems), which is based on...