News Notes

103 NEWS NOTES COXINGA CONFERENCE Cultural organs of Fujian Province organized a Research Conference on Zheng Chenggong ^f ¿6 *£> M "& "7 4 # ¿* ? at Xiamen University /| ? 'i f July 25-August 1, 1982. Americans attending were John Wills, Greg Guldin (anthropology, Pacific Lutheran College), and Tsing Yuan (history, Wright State University). Four Japanese scholars also attended. Over eighty Chinese scholars attended, and over fifty papers were given. Many of the Chinese attending were from Fujian, but there also were quite a few from Beijing and Shanghai. Before and during the conference I visited historic sites and talked with scholars in Fuzhou ^-gj ·\\\ , Quanzhou % 'HI , and in and around Xiamen; some of the observations that follow draw on these visits and discussions. The conference was announced as commemorating the 320th anniversary of Zheng Chenggong' s conquest of Taiwan. There were interested and friendly references to the work of scholars on Zheng and on Taiwan history in Taiwan, and a collection of articles by Taiwan scholars entitled £ 1% &P £c &] Z* iï tk *. &. was published by Fujian People's Publishing in connection with the conference. There was a considerable amount of discussion at the conference that seemed to assume that the unification of Taiwan with the rest of China was historically inevitable and then evaluated the motives and achievements of Zheng Chenggong and other leading figures in terms of their class and personal interests and their contributions to the unification of Taiwan with the mainland. Here we see a powerful combination of current political agendas, Chinese nationalism, Marxist historiography, and the amazingly persistent focus in Chinese historiography on "evaluation of personalities" ^- <0) ZT I Si These facets of the discussions were strongly emphasized in the reports 104 of the conference that appeared in the Chinese press; see Beijing Guangming ribao, August 16, 1982, p. 3. Although there were times when 1 and some of the Chinese participants became impatient with "evaluation of personalities," it was by no means the sole focus of interest. Although some papers used mostly sources well-known to students of Zheng, others used a wider variety of hard-to-find materials. Discussions revealed considerable interest in factual detail and in new sources, including the Western-language sources on which I reported. An excellent new edition, with corrections from a manuscript found in 1961, of the most important single source on Zheng Chenggong, Ì% H: % y ¿A ^ ^ ^ % now called jt ^- ^ ^ was given to conference participants. Several papers focussed on promising analytical topics, such as the organization and volume of Zheng-controlled overseas trade, Zheng Chenggong ' s military organization , his problems with military supplies, and his basic economic policies. Others dealt with aspects of the Zheng regime on Taiwan, including its relations with the aborigines and its policies of settling its soldiers as farmers in military colonies. There was not much effort to link the history of Zheng's regime with the politico-military history of the rest of the empire and of other centers of loyalist power; I noted only one brief discussion of Zheng's relation with Li Dingguo 3. Ä. L£J .It was particularly disappointing to see so little done with Zheng's relations with various power-holders in the Zhoushan Islands and the lower Yangtze, including those who responded to his Nanjing expedition of 1659. In my various visits and during the conference, I was especially interested to meet some of the people attached to local museums and Cultural Properties Management Committees ¿t $ty ^? i£ £. ^ % These people are the devoted custodians of local monuments and searchers 105 for inscriptions, sites, and records. They are quick to see the importance of any new source of information on their area, and frequently the best able to answer detailed questions about local sources and sites. It seems to me that historical scholarship in China in general is in an "early empirical" phase of revived interest in sources and facts, and that much of the real vitality of this trend lies in these local historians of modest prestige and visibility. I would encourage scholarly visitors to China to think in terms of getting to know the scholarly community of an area at all its levels, not just the university and academy people. Also, scholars who go with information about source materials available abroad will find that this information arouses a good deal of interest and opens a good many doors at all levels. This is not to deprecate exchanges on theoretical and interpretative issues, but it seems to me that these will develop relatively slowly. Exchange of information on sources and on regional and local histories is something we can do now, and when we bring word to the Chinese of important sources abroad we are being of genuine assistance to them without seeming to tell them how to understand their own history. I will be glad to answer inquiries from individuals about papers presented, scholars met, and sites and museums in coastal Fujian. John E. Wills, Jr. Department of History University of Southern California Los Angeles CA 90089-0034 * I am grateful to my colleague Stanley Rosen for calling my attention to a JPRS translation of this account. 106 SOVIET SINOLOGY A U.S .-U.S.S.R. Conference on Studies of Seventeenth-Century China was held in Moscow on June 15-17, 1982. The U.S. delegation consisted of John Wills, co-chair; Gilbert Rozman, Princeton; Andrew Plaks, Princeton; Joseph Fletcher, Harvard; and Daniel Overmyer, British Columbia. Soviet participants included L. P. Deliusin, co-chair, and the following, who are listed with the general areas of their papers (unless otherwise noted, all are members of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences, Moscow): A.A. Bokshchanin, Ming-Ch'ing foreign relations; N.I. Fomina, merchants and socio-economic history; A.N. Khokhlov, early Ch'ing legal codification; A. S. Martynov (Leningrad Branch, Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences), early Ch'ing state ideology; E. S. Stulova (also Leningrad Branch), pao-chüan and popular religion; D.N. Voskresensky (Moscow State University), Ch'ing fiction. Formal interchange centered on the papers was of uneven quality for a variety of reasons, including jet-lag and the incomplete carrying-out of plans for the pre-exchange of papers and information. More important, the atmosphere of the meetings and of the individual and group contacts that accompanied them was cordial and scholarly throughout. Several other members of the Moscow Institute attended some of our sessions and joined in the discussions, and we had a cordial discussion with members of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies on our visit to that city. We also had a brief session with scholars at the Institute of the Far East of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, which has a much more applied and contemporary orientation but where the work of V. S. Myasnikov and others reaches back to seventeenth-century Sino-Russian relations. 107 Several of us had interesting discussions with individual Soviet scholars with related interests, and were helped to find and see materials pertaining to our research in the Lenin Library in Moscow and the Library of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute. For the student of relations between China and Inner Asia, the manuscript collectioiis of that Branch and the collections of the great Hermitage Museum in Leningrad are very important resources. For further information on Soviet research institutions and on Soviet Sinologists and their research interests, Rozman is the best source of information in this country; see also the list of Leningrad personnel by Victor Mair in the March 1982 issue of the Newsletter of the Association for Asian Studies. Some very general observations: Soviet Sinology tends to be strongest in studies that can be based on a relatively limited body of texts, such as those of novels, of official codes, and of pao-chüan. Gazetteer-based work is very difficult there. Some are doing quite well in keeping up with recent publication in the People's Republic of China. The view of China from Inner Asia is a pervasive influence; their Old China Hands had experience in the north and west, not on the coast, and many younger researchers are interested in Chinese-Inner Asian relations. For us, keeping track of what is being worked on and published is not easy, but it is clear that respectable scholarly work is being done and that any foreign Sinologist who gets a chance to meet his counterparts in Moscow and Leningrad will find himself among genuine friends and colleagues. The most useful address for inquiries and contacts in Moscow is Chinese Department, Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Jdanov Street 12, Center, Moscow. I will 108 be glad to answer individual inquiries about our observations and contacts to the best of my ability, or to refer inquirers to others better qualified to answer. John E. Wills, Jr. Department of History University of Southern California Los Angeles CA 90089-0034 109 ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN STUDIES March 25-27, 1983 (SAN FRANCISCO) "The Legend of Li Yan and the Transition from Ming to Qing" Roger Des Forges (State University of New York, Buffalo) "Alternative Religions on the Frontier: The White Lotus Religion and Catholicism in Eighteenth Century Sichuan" Robert Entemnann (St. Olaf College) "Resident and Ruler: The Guangdong Coast from the Perspective of Region and Center" Dian Murray (Linfield College) "The Taiping 'Heavenly Capital' in Nanjing, 1853-1864" John L. Withers, II (Yale University) "The Authorship of The Dream of the Red Chamber: A Computerized Statistical Study of Its Vocabulary" Bing C. Chan (University of Iowa) "Redirecting Literati Commitment: Style and Substance, 1799-1839" Judith Whitbeck (University of Texas, Dallas) "The Dao-guang Political Crisis and the Redefinition of the Literary Personality" James Polachek (Princeton University) "State Ritual in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century China: Sacrificial Reality and the Ideology of Filial Piety" Angela Zito (University of Chicago) ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MID-ATLANTIC REGION OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN STUDIES, October 22-24, 1982 (PITTSBURGH) "Adoption in Ming and Early Ch'ing China: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives" Ann Waltner (Rider College) "The Organization and Development of Market Towns [in the Ming and Ch'ing]" Liu Shih-chi (Academia Sinica/Harvard University) "New Light on the Chinese Gentry" Keum-sung Oh (Harvard University) "Lineages and Land Tenure in Commercialized Huizhou, Anhwei" Mi Chu Wiens (Library of Congress) "The 1884 Hong Kong Insurrection: Anti-Imperial Protest during the Sino-French War" Jung-fang Tsai (College of Charleston) 110 ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN STUDIES, October 16-17, 1982 (PROVIDENCE) "The Broadening of Gentry Monastic Patronage in the Ming" Timothy Brook (Harvard University) "Changing Perceptions of Gentry Leadership Responsibilities in the Late Ming" Cynthia Brokaw (Harvard University) "Patrons of the Guandi Cult: Village Elites and the State in the Late Qing" Prasenjit Duara (Harvard University) CONFERENCE ON FAMILY AND KINSHIP IN CHINESE HISTORY January 2-7, 1983 (Asilomar, California) James Watson, Workshop on Anthropological Models for the Study of Chinese Kinship Steven Sangren, "Agnatic Groups in China: Beyond Traditional Categories" Patricia Ebrey, "Conceptions of the Family in the Sung Dynasty" Richard Barrett, "Historical Demography and the Study of Chinese Family and Kinship: A Preliminary Reconnaisance" Katherine Carlitz, "Family, Society, and Tradition in Chin P ' ing Mei" Patricia Ebrey, Workshop on Personal Accounts Jerry Dennerline, Workshop on Genealogies Ann Waltner, "The Loyalty of Adopted Sons in Ming and Early Ch'ing China" Richard Barrett, Workshop on Demography Charlotte Fürth, "Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy" Rubie Watson, "Illegitimacy and Inheritance Strategies in Southeastern China" Richard Davis, "'Protection,' Imperial Favor, and Family Fortunes in Sung China" Robert Hymes, "Local Marriage and Local Lineages in Sung and Yuan China: A Study of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi" Susan Naquin, "The High Road and the Low Road: Lineage Strategies of the Wangs of Yung-p ' ing Prefecture, 1500-1800" Ill Evelyn Rawski, "The Ma Landlords of Yang-chia-kou in Late Ch'ing and Republican Times" Harriet Zurndorfer, "Doing Business in Sixteenth Century China -- A Little Connection Goes a Long Way" Jerry Dennerline, "Marriage, Adoption, and Lineage Welfare in Wu-hsi County" EXHIBITION ON CHINESE POPULAR RELIGION An exhibition of artifacts relating to Chinese popular religion is being held from March 16 through June 30, 1983 at the San Mateo County Historical Museum, 1170 West Hillsdale Blvd., San Mateo, California (on the College of San Mateo campus). Of the approximately eighty objects on display, drawn from both public and private collections, half date from the nineteenth century. The exhibition was organized by the Chinese/Chinese American History Project and is co-sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America. ...