The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe

Acknowledgments

vii Acknowledgments One of the theses of this book is that many texts emerge from multiple interactions and are ultimately the result of coauthorship, even if they carry the name of a sole author. The Interweaving of Rituals is likewise the outcome of many dialogues, and consequently it contains the voices of many people. In the first place, I thank my close colleagues at Leuven University who have providedanenthusiasticintellectualenvironmentoverthepastdecade.Iexpress my gratitude in particular to Carine Defoort, with whom I have had many stimulating conversations and who supported the project in many other regards, and to Ad Dudink, who as a long-term collaborator continuously encouraged me to go deeper into the matter. Both have critically and thoroughly read the whole manuscript. So too did Adam Chau, Dorothee Schaab-Hanke, and two anonymous readers; Eugenio Menegon read part of an earlier version during his stay in Leuven. I am grateful for their many suggestions, which have greatly improved the text. I also thank Noël Golvers, Pablo Alonso, and Hugo Roeffaers , who were always willing to help me with language problems. Timothy Brook, Susan Naquin, and Michael Nylan deserve special mention because of their encouragement and help to get this research published. Some sections of this book were delivered as lectures and conference talks at Beijing University, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Harvard University, Princeton University, Renmin University, Xiamen University, Fujen University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at a ritual workshop at Leuven in June of 2004. I thank among others Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Michael Puett, Antonella Romano, Sun Shangyang, Yang Nianqun, and Zhang Xianqing for creating these moments of dialogue. I am very grateful to the many scholars whose comments on those occasions have been helpful to the development of the ideas in this book. I express my gratitude to colleagues who were so kind to share fruits of their research and to provide me with primary and secondary sources: Liam Brockey, Claudia von Collani, Hilde De Weerdt, Michele Fatica, Ge Zhaoguang, Han Qi, Henrietta Harrison, Huang Xiaojuan, Wilt Idema, Catherine Jami, Roman Malek, and Erik Zürcher. I am also grateful to Benedicte Vaerman, acknowledgments viii Hanno Lechner, and Martin Heijdra for the help they provided to me as librarians . For finalizing the manuscript, I thank Els Ameloot, Marleen De Meyer, and the editors at the University of Washington Press, Lorri Hagman, Lenore Hietkamp, and Marilyn Trueblood. Support for this research was generously provided by Onderzoeksraad K.U. Leuven, FWO-Vlaanderen and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Finally, I express my deep appreciation to everyone whose friendship has been so important to me throughout this period. I think especially of my family members and companions, colleagues, and friends who encouraged me by smiling at the idea that someone could take pleasure in doing research on funerals in seventeenth-century China. the interweaving of rituals ...