Representing Lives in China: Forms of Biography in the Ming-Qing Period 1368–1911 ed. by Ihor Pidhainy, Roger Des Forges and Grace S. Fong (review)

In Representing Lives in China: Forms of Biography in the Ming-Qing Period 1368–1911, editors Ihor Pidhainy, Roger V. Des Forges, and Grace S. Fong bring together contributors to explore biographical constructions and reconstructions in China from the thirteenth century to the twenty-first century. This volume covers a wide array of topics ranging from biographical accounts of the empresses in the Yuan (1271–1368) to the reception of Li Yan 李岩/巖 (d. 1644), a renowned advisor to the commoner rebel Li Zicheng 李自成 (1605? –1645); Yue Fei’s 岳飛 (1103–1142) descendants’ contribution to elevating his position to a superhero; the biographical writings and life stories of the Ming erudite literati; representations of fathers and sons in the Ming History (Mingshi 明史) and in painting; women biographers in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911); and social phenomena such as surname restoration petitions in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Responding to an increasing number of scholarly works pertaining to the lives of the rulers, scholars, officials, writers, elite women, and even revolutionaries in Chinese history published in recent years, this volume showcases a collective effort to exhibit the richness and significance of life representations in China based on a variety of source material.

Representing Lives in China opens with an introduction that reviews studies of biographical literature in China followed by eleven chapters divided according to “three analytical questions” clearly presented in the introduction (p. 11). The first part, “Searching for the Subjects,” includes the first four chapters and provides close readings of selected life stories and biographical accounts while discovering what “extant stories and biographies tell us about how the Chinese subjects actually lived their lives in those earlier times and places” (italics in original). The second part, “Understanding the Authors,” chapters 5 through 7, focuses on life stories in various media and explores how contemporary and later Chinese authors depicted people’s lives in prose, art, and poetry. Finally, the third part, “Following the Texts,” comprises the last four chapters and explores how the Chinese texts were “created, published, revised, and transmitted over time and space” (italics in original). The three questions guide the reader to the thematic focus of each part of the volume while effectively connecting the three parts by centering on chosen texts and other artistic works.

The editors not only organized the chapters in a logical manner but also paid attention to women’s roles in the biographical accounts, which is reiterated in the conclusion (p. 357) of the volume. For example, in chapter 1, George Q. Zhao presents a study of the Mongol ruler Khubilai Khan’s 忽必烈 (r. 1260–1294) two empresses—namely, Chabi 察必 (d. 1281) and Nanbi 南必—based on the standard Yuan History (Yuanshi 元史). Although some steppe women played important roles in politics in Chinese history, according to Zhao the sharp contrast between Chabi and Nanbi in official history has proven that their public personae were reconstructed by the historians depending on when they became Khubilai’s companions and whether they were involved in political conflicts. As Zhao has convincingly demonstrated, the brief information about Nanbi and the fact that the Yuan History presents a much less positive image of Nanbi than of Chabi urge researchers to pay critical attention to what is absent in the historical records and find the reasons for the silence or gaps.

Zhao’s chapter provides an excellent example of a close reading of the formal male-authored biographies of the empresses, whereas Yi Jo-Lan’s “From Female Martyrs to Worthy Mothers: The Shift in Exemplary Women’s Biographies in the Ming-Qing Dynastic Histories” focuses on the changing factors in the categorization of women’s biographies and...