A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan ( London: Routledge, 2009). You can’t assign it, since it is not in our databases and costs too much, and maybe would not work that way anyway. You can pull a lot of songs from it though. There is a short introduction (and plenty of explanatory footnotes) by Lewis, but mostly it is a translation of Soeda Azembo’s autobiography, with lots of lyrics and maybe more importantly, lots of stuff about the life of an enka singer in Meiji and Taisho. If you are interested in street level politics and culture this is a good book.
Some of the lyrics are standard protest stuff
From that hairpin adorning the locks of the nobleman ‘s
mistress
What so brilliantly shines?
Perhaps diamonds?
No,no
Just the greasy sweat from a darling peasant’s head
Among those worldly gentleman who love their liquor
What so brilliantly sparkles?
Perhaps champagne?
No,no
Just the bloody tears from the darling factory girl’s eyes
And decorating the jutting breasts of state ministers and
generals
What so brightly glitters?
Maybe the Medal of the Golden Pheasant?
No, no
Just the whitened skulls of our darling soldier boys (pgxxvii)
but the book does not really directly tie Azembo to “protest politics”, although he was for a while a connected to the Japan Communist party and was in trouble the the police pretty much all the time. Lewis sees him as an example of “Gramsci’s..organic intellectual” (p.xxix) This would probably apply to all the enka singers, who were definitely critical of “the Establishment” but not really lining up with the Movement for Popular Rights or the Minseito or whatever. They might roam the street rapping about how corrupt officials were.
If growing whiskers makes an official
Then rats and cats, one and all, officials be. p.xxii
or sing thinly veiled attacks on the delay in getting a constitution (which they were supposed to get in Meiji 17)
Her age, seventeen,
The peak time of connubial ripeness
At twenty-three, without doubt, the bloom will be off her rose
But her old man is difficult and won’t allow a teenage marriage
Ah well
What the Hell
I’ll just wait till she’s twenty-three. p.xx
but of course they also had lots of songs praising the military, lamenting the earthquake, singing the joys of a train ride, or instructing people on the importance of treaty revision or whatever.
It is a useful book for pointing out to students how a lot of the left/right dichotomies that they may be familiar with from American or European history don’t really work here. The book, published in 1940, opens with the song “Advance! New Order. Advance!”
Strike!
Iron is easily forged when hot And what has made our nation’s people align themselves in countless rows
Compliantly obedient to the reform?
The New Order of Imperial Rule Assistance!!
You, of course!
You are the byword of meaningful reform
You are the foundation root of guiding policies
The eminent spirit of Japan
Our totalitarianism
Our New Order built on the fusion on all creation
Did he tenkō? Well, he was not really a leftist to begin with. What he really was was a schemer and an entrepreneur and and a man with a plan. Well, I guess an organic intellectual, if you want to be Gramscian about it.
There were a number of songs about the heroic Lt. Colonel Fukshima Yasumasa, who heroically rode across Siberia to prove to some German officers that Japanese were great horsemen.
Now having distinguished himself draped around both shoulders
He wears garlands of his glory
Waiting to welcome our returning Lieutenant Colonel
At Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama
On the boulevards of Tokyo
His compatriots forty million strong
With cheers and applause they welcome him
At banquets overflowing with sincerity
A crown for fame so elevated
The sound of fireworks lifted high into the sky
The glory shines unto the five continents!
He sang these songs because they were popular, and he wanted an audience, of course. He was also swept up in the patriotic fever like everyone else.
One of his competitors was a bit “churlish”, however, and gave new lyrics to the tune to try and boost their popularity.
Behold! Behold! That magnificent feat of erudition!
Hail the Asahi Shinbun!
The newspaper of the Empire of Japan
A heavy burden upon our company’s shoulders
Yet our staff and workers bear it with pride
Our reporting gets the jump on all those other papers.
You might think that he would resent being replaced by new media, and he does, but when they send a team of a dozen or so employees in company jackets with a leader in a coat and hat with shining gold brocade, singing the new lyrics and handing out flyers…Well, he has to consider that a “brilliant business stratagem”. pg. 41
Anyway, there are a lot of interesting song lyrics in here that you can use in class, and if students get tired of them you can always threaten to sing them.
Below is the mid-term for my Modern Japan class. You can see the syllabus here.
I wanted to think about this a bit, because I am trying to do several things with it, and I am not sure how well it will work.
First a bit of background. I have usually liked take-home tests, since asking students to analyze history without looking at any sources is….1 less than ideal. I like tests and assignments in general because the point of a class, for me, is for students to be able to produce history on their own.
Of course nowadays some of the types of things you used to ask them don’t work any more. (Damn you AI!) (Damn you Wikipedia!) But just like the slide rule crew after the pocket calculator, we need to adjust.
In my case I also need to be more student centered, as my school is. This is actually not that difficult, since letting students choose what they want to do is not exactly new.
For this one I did an essay, analyzing a primary source, analyzing a secondary source, and the compare Chat-GPT and Wikipedia assignment I did last semester. That is too much, of course, so I am letting them pick how many sections to do, and thus how to weigh them.
My feelings about the sections are different.
-The essay is the one I find most problematic, since asking them to synthesize the readings and the stuff I have talked about it class more or less on their own is, for our students, pushing out of their limits. Still, I am something of a traditionalist, and some kids will like the challenge, and you do need to provide for them.
-They will have already turned in an assignment where they analyze an article/chapter2 In other classes I have them write a formal analysis of a primary source, but at in this one we at least discussed primary sources and how to analyze them in class. I think this helps because I already have the guidelines for this I can give them, and it encourages them to think of the things they are doing in each class as the same thing, just in different contexts. It also helps to get them to read something intensively, and ties what they are writing to a specific text, so they are not too much on their own.
-The Chat-GPT-Wikipedia assignment is basically the old ID paragraph. “Identify this thing and explain why it is important”. These used to be good for covering things that were not in the essay options you gave them, and also to focus more on events/people/concepts rather than being all Annals School all the time. These are the questions that are most broken due to AI. You can try to write essay question that are semi-AI proof, ( I tried ) and grade accordingly, but for the ID things you need a different approach. Well, I think so anyway. There are some things you can’t ask about, no matter how much you talked about them in class, since both Wikipedia and Chat-GTP are weak there.
Letting them pick how many sections they want to do is the most revolutionary part of this, at least for me. I may do a student survey after the exam to see how well this worked.
Actually good in some ways, since it helps to have some knowledge at your fingertips ↩
If I had thought about this exam before I did the syllabus they would have done this early enough that I did not have to stay up all night grading the first one so they could get feedback on how well they did it. ↩
For those of you who don’t follow American politics, the immigrant scourge is back. This time it is Haitian immigrants eating your pets which has gone from a crazy internet meme to the Republican candidate for Vice-President pushing it in his speeches. That actually is, I think, sort of new, in that this used to be more of a whispering campaign type of thing.
Well, it was is the U.S. anyway. The locus classicus of the Yellow Peril in Europe was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s dream of an Asian assault on European civilization by the godless Buddhists, which he had done up as a painting and distributed widely 1
One reason I find this interesting, of course, is that Haitians eating pets is an obvious echo of the racist stories about the Chinese eating cats and rats and whatever that were such a big part of the Yellow Peril in earlier US history.
Part of this is just cultural difference. They Chinese really do eat dogs, just like the French eat horses (another thing that causes problems with the Americans).. There are food associations with the fear of other outsiders in U.S. history of course, from the threat of “taco trucks on every corner” to German immigrants and their bier. The Chinese and what they eat (and may be serving to Real Americans) seem to stand out as most associated with food.
Of course it does not even matter if any of this is actually true. As Tchen and Young put it.
. In the contemporary Western world, to evoke Yellow Peril has become synonymous with a looming dread where the potential threat is as good as any actual violation. Today yellow perilism has become an omnipresent haze-a malaise that sometimes coheres around an actual event, a fictitious character, or something else deliciously dangerous to establishment norms2
J.D. Vance is already being credited with “backtracking” on his comments, although he did not really backtrack, but of course just getting it out there is all it takes.
The thing I find most depressing about this is that when I looked at my copy of Yellow Peril!
it has a blurb on the front cover telling us that the book is “Smart, funny, comprehensive and theoretically astute.”
Why funny? Well it is funny. It is hilarious the silly things people will believe, and laughter is the best medicine after all. Making fun of silly old racist things that people used to believe is always fun for students, and a good way to liven up class.
Of course it is not always fun and games. I remember reading, somewhere, about the early days of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, when they were organizing some of the first voter registration attempts in the South. They had a bunch of white college students down from the Northeast, and as part of the training there was a film clip of a southern sheriff telling the local TV station what he would do about voter registration. The volunteers of course roared with laughter at what a stereotypical hick he was. They had to clear the room so the African-American SNCC members could discuss if they could work with these volunteers at all, since for them this was not even a little bit funny.
Tchen, John Kuo Wei, and Dylan Yeats. Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear. London: Verso, 2014. pp 12-13 ↩
To all students! Below are some quotes from Chairman Mao Zedong, ripped shamelessly from their context, to help you in the research and writing of your essay.1
Approaching your Essay with the Right Attitude
“On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.”2
“What we need is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind and intense but orderly work.”3
“…One certainly cannot make an investigation, or do it well, without zeal, a determination to direct one’s eyes downward and a thirst for knowledge, and without shedding the ugly mantle of pretentiousness and becoming a willing pupil.”4
“The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you.”5
Get Organized and Stop Procrastinating!
“All loafers must be reformed into good citizens through participation in production.”6
“In any given place, there cannot be a number of central tasks at the same time. At any one time there can be only one central task, supplemented by other tasks of a second or third order of importance…It is part of the art of leadership to take the whole situation into account and plan accordingly in the light of the historical conditions and existing circumstances of each locality, decide correctly on the center of gravity and the sequence of the work for each period, steadfastly carry through the decision, and make sure that definite results are achieved.”7
“Don’t wait until problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them.”8
The sins of liberalism: “…To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction; to work perfunctorily and muddle along – ‘So long as one remains a monk, one goes on tolling the bell.’…to disdain minor assignments while being quite unequal to major tasks, to be slipshod in work and slack in study…To be aware of one’s own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself.”9
“Prepare a detailed outline for the investigation. A detailed outline should be prepared beforehand, and the investigator should ask questions according to the outline…make your own notes.”10
Be Realistic
“In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.”11
“…A careless military strategist bases his military plans on his own wishful thinking, and hence his plans are fanciful and do not correspond with reality.”12
“Studying Chairman Mao’s Works”
Dedication and Perserverence
“Both students and intellectuals should study hard. In addition to the study of their specialized subjects, they must make progress both ideologically and politically, which means that they should study Marxism, current events and politics. Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul”13
“…Cultivate a firm and correct political orientation, an industrious and simple style of work, and flexible strategy and tactics…It is in accordance with these essentials that the staff teaches and the students study.”14
“Many things may become baggage, may become encumbrances if we cling to them blindly and uncritically. Let us take some illustrations. Having made mistakes, you may feel that, come what may, you are saddled with them and so become dispirited; if you have not made mistakes, you may feel that you are free from error and so become conceited. Lack of achievement in work may breed pessimism and depression, while achievement may breed pride and arrogance. A comrade with a short record of struggle may shirk responsibility on this account, while a veteran may become opinionated because of his long record of struggle…All such things become encumbrances or baggage if there is no critical awareness.”15
“…direct your eyes downwards, do not hold your head high and gaze at the sky. Unless a person is interested in turning his eyes downwards and is determined to do so, he will never in his whole life really understand things in China.”16
“Complacency is the enemy of study. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency. Our attitude towards ourselves should be “to be insatiable in learning” and towards others “to be tireless in teaching”.”17
“All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”18
Engaging with the Historiography
“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.” 19
“…We must on no account reject the legacies of the ancients and the foreigners or refuse to learn from them…But taking over legacies and using them as examples must never replace our own creative work…Uncritical transplantation or copying from the ancients and the foreigners is the most sterile and harmful dogmatism in literature and art.”20
Delimit Your Claims and Don’t Overreach
“Knowledge is a matter of science and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse – honesty and modesty.”21
“Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle that you are not sure of winning…”22
Deploying Evidence and Using Theory
“Those experienced in work must take up the study of theory and must read seriously; only then will they be able to systematize and synthesize their experience and raise it to the level of theory, only then will they not mistake their partial experience for universal truth and not commit empiricist errors.”23
“If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.”24
“Now, there are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things that suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.”25
“Aimless theory is useless and false and should be discarded. We should point the finger of scorn at those who are fond of aimless theory.”26
“Even now, there are not a few people who still regard odd quotations from Marxist-Leninist works as a ready-made panacea which, once acquired, can easily cure all maladies. These people show childish ignorance. It is precisely such ignorant people who take Marxism-Leninism as a religious dogma. To them we should say bluntly, ‘Your dogma is worthless.'”27
The Quality of Writing Matters
“‘Fewer and better troops and simpler administration.’ Talks, speeches, articles and resolutions should all be concise and to the point.”28
“Let us now analyse stereotyped Party writing:…it fills endless pages with empty verbiage…it strikes a pose in order to intimidate people…it shoots at random, without considering the audience…it arranges items under a complicated set of headings, as if starting a Chinese pharmacy…”29
“What did Lu Hsun say? Altogether he set forth…rules of writing…’After writing something, read it over twice at least, and do your utmost to strike out non-essential words, sentences and paragraphs, without the slightest compunction’…’Do not coin adjectives or other terms that are intelligible to nobody but yourself.'”30
“…seek truth from facts. “Facts” are all the things that exist objectively, “truth” means their internal relations, that is, the laws governing them, and “to seek,” means to study. We should proceed from the actual conditions inside and outside the country, the province, county or district, and derive from them, as our guide to action, laws that are inherent in them and not imaginary, that is, we should find the internal relations of the events occurring around us. And in order to do that we must rely not on subjective imagination, not on momentary enthusiasm, not on lifeless books, but on facts that exist objectively”32
“Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world.”33
“We are Marxists, and Marxism teaches that in our approach to a problem we should start from objective facts, not from abstract definitions, and that we should derive our guiding principles, policies and measures from an analysis of these facts.”34
“”Have a head for figures.” That is to say, we must attend to the quantitative aspect of a situation or problem and make a basic quantitative analysis. Every quality manifests itself in a certain quantity, and without quantity, there can be no quality. To this day many of our comrades still do not understand that they must attend to the quantitative aspect of things – the basic statistics, the main percentages and the quantitative limits that determine the qualities of things. They have no “figures” in their heads and therefore cannot help making mistakes.”35
Cut the Bullshit
“No investigation no right to speak…There are many people who “the moment they alight from the official carriage” make a hullabaloo, spout opinions, criticize this and condemn that; but, in fact, ten out of ten of them will meet with failure. For such views or criticisms, which are not based on thorough investigation, are nothing but ignorant twaddle…”36
“To behave like “a blindfolded man catching sparrows”, or “a blind man groping for fish”, to be crude and careless, to indulge in verbiage, to rest content with a smattering of knowledge – such is the extremely bad style of work…”37
“You can’t solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before. Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to “find a solution” or “evolve an idea” without making any investigation. It must be stressed that this cannot possibly lead to any effective solution or any good idea.”38
“We must not pretend to know when we do not know.”39
Tackling Challenges Along the Way
“We must recognize difficulties, analyse them and combat them. There are no straight roads in the world; we must be prepared to follow a road that twists and turns and not try to get things on the cheap. It must not be imagined that one fine morning all the reactionaries will go down on their knees of their own accord. In a word, while the prospects are bright, the road has twists and turns.”40
“What is work? Work is struggle. There are difficulties and problems in those places for us to overcome and solve. We go there to work and struggle to overcome these difficulties. A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greater.”41
“Comrades, you must all analyse your own responsibility. If you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart! You will feel much better for it.”42
“Study Together”
Moving Beyond the Surface of Things
“When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing; this is the only reliable and scientific method of analysis.”43
“At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness, from existence to ideas…Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success…Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition…”44
“Lacking an analytical approach, many of our comrades do not want to go deeply into complex matters, to analyse and study them over and over again, but like to draw simple conclusions which are either absolutely affirmative or absolutely negative…. From now on we should remedy this state of affairs.”45
Considering Different Approaches and Identifying Shortcomings
“In this world, things are complicated and are decided by many factors. We should look at problems from different aspects, not from just one.”46
“In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. To be subjective means not to look at problems objectively, that is, not to use the materialist viewpoint in looking at problems. I have discussed this in my essay “On Practice”. To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly…. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest.”47
“To talk as though our work is good in every respect is at variance with the facts. It is not true that everything is good; there are still shortcomings and mistakes. But neither is it true that everything is bad, and that, too, is at variance with the facts. Here analysis is necessary.”48
Retain your Focus and Don’t Miss the Big Picture
“The way these comrades look at problems is wrong. They do not look at the essential or main aspects but emphasize the non-essential or minor ones. It should be pointed out that these non-essential or minor aspects must not be overlooked and must be dealt with one by one. But they should not be taken as the essential or main aspects, or we will lose our bearings.”49
“If in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to finding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.”50
“In approaching a problem a Marxist should see the whole as well as the parts. A frog in a well says, “The sky is no bigger than the mouth of the well.” That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well. If it said, “A part of the sky is the size of the mouth of a well”, that would be true, for it tallies with the facts.”51
The Role of Critique
“…All the propaganda work of our Party should be vivid, clear-cut and sharp and should never mutter and mumble…Since we want to teach the people to know the truth and arouse them to fight for their own emancipation, we need this militant style. A blunt knife draws no blood.”52
“All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.”53
“The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression.”54
“We must undoubtedly criticize wrong ideas of every description. It certainly would not be right to refrain from criticism, look on while wrong ideas spread unchecked and allow them to monopolize the field. Mistakes must be criticized and poisonous weeds fought wherever they crop up. However, such criticism should not be dogmatic, and the metaphysical method should not be used, but efforts should be made to apply the dialectical method. What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument.”55
“Truth develops through debate between different views. The same method can be adopted with regard to whatever is poisonous and anti-Marxist, because Marxism will develop in the struggle against it. This is development through the struggle of opposites, development conforming to dialectics.”56
Review and Revise your Work
“Conscientious practice of self-criticism is still another hallmark distinguishing our Party from all other political parties. As we say, dust will accumulate if a room is not cleaned regularly, our faces will get dirty if they are not washed regularly. Our comrades’ minds and our Party’s work may also collect dust, and also need sweeping and washing. The proverb “Running water is never stale and a door-hinge is never worm-eaten” means that constant motion prevents the inroads of germs and other organisms.”57
“We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking.”58
“The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone’s sensibilities; it is necessary to analyse and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better. This is what is meant by ‘learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones’.”59
Writing an Essay about China
“Contemporary China has grown out of the China of the past; we are Marxist in our historical approach and must not lop off our history…”60
“China’s problems are complicated, and our brains must also be a little complicated.”61
The images in this post come from the pages of the 1970s issues of the journal Chinese Literature which you can browse online here. Consider looking up some of these quotes to see what was excluded before, after, and sometimes in the middle of them as they were displayed here. Of course, this is one of the interesting features of the Quotations from Chairman Mao and shows how easily some banal extracted portions of such “odd quotations,” as Mao might put can be. This was not uncommon during the high Maoist period when quotations of him were deployed for all manner of self-help and daily use matters. ↩
Quotations Ch 3. “Introducing a Co-operative” (April 15, 1958). ↩
Quotations Ch 22. “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” (December 1936), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 211. ↩
Quotations Ch 23. “Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys” (March and April 1941), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 12. ↩
Quotations Ch 30. Talk at a meeting with Chinese students and trainees in Moscow (November 17, 1957). ↩
There are lots of things to keep in mind when working with texts by Mao Zedong. Many of the works that come to us today were speeches or notes on speeches that have undergone significant changes over time as Mao edited many of his best known works. In research on, say, the 1930s and 1940s, you may well want to know, to the degree this can be determined, what a given text or speech from that period looked like in its original form, or at least the form that was available to actors that are relevant to your research question.1 If, on the other hand, you are mostly interested in the post-1949 Chinese history through the Cultural Revolution, the versions of his works found in the first four volumes of Mao’s Selected Works (《毛泽东选集》) offer you a more stable canon of materials that were read by millions in China and, in Foreign Language Press translations, many others across the world.2 The individual texts in the volumes can be found on marxists.org here as well as downloads of PDFs of the volumes. If you are a student reading these texts because they were so widely circulated and read in Maoist times, quoted in thousands of other texts, and heavily influenced the discourse of the People’s Republic, I think these four volumes are a great place to set your primary focus.
These four volumes add up to a huge amount of material. Most students who encounter Mao’s works in a history class are likely to encounter a few of his texts in isolation in a course reader, online links, or via assigned sourcebooks such as Sources of Chinese Tradition or The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection or Sources in Chinese History: Diverse Perspectives from 1644 to the Present. Beyond Mao’s own work, there is now a wonderful variety of source material on the social and cultural history of modern China available in English translation. Good riddance, I say, to the days when when broader modern survey history classes almost exclusively assigned works by or about political leaders or the machinery of the state.
Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung
When it comes to studying the history of the Maoist period in depth (in, say, an upper year honours module or graduate course with only English language materials), however, I do think there is something valuable to be gained by spending more quality time swimming around in Mao’s world of most circulated texts to get a feel for the language, the repetition, the contradictions (and not just in the texts with that in the title), and the changes over time. Precisely because of the nature of Mao’s regime, and especially in the years of the Cultural Revolution, the discourse represented by this canon of texts echoes throughout Chinese society and many of our sources from the time. So, if the four volumes of the Selected Works are too much to ask but if we wanted to go beyond reading some half a dozen texts by Mao, what might we do? One option is Stuart Schram’s The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (1969) which has a wonderful array of texts, but besides being out of print, they are often a bit too fragmented. At the bottom of this post you can find other older sourcebooks like it. Of course, another obvious option is just to widen the selection of hand-picked materials based on their importance and build your own reader. But my point here is less about the need to read any particular key text, but to get the feel for the canon.
Another option with some advantages and disadvantages is the Foreign Language Press Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (1971) which is available as a PDF on Marxists.org. This is a translation of the (A) version (甲种本) from the 1965 second edition of《毛泽东著作选读》. Of course, the works chosen for inclusion and exclusion in this collection, as well as abridgements made of some the texts within are quite revealing of the particular moment in which collection emerged, and has the advantage of being a single volume that can be read in part or as a whole across a semester.
To see the benefits but also the limitations of Selected Readings From the Works of Mao Tsetung as a single volume option, we can consult the table and lists below. First I compare the Selected Readings selection with the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and then share a list of English translations of works by Mao found in various historical sourcebooks, many of them now long out of print, which is a shame since they contain a wealth of historical sources on modern China (well beyond the works of Mao listed here). You can browse the results below yourself, and I won’t further lengthen the post with more of my own reflections.
For this, the many volumes of the Japanese scholar 竹内実’s 《毛泽东集》or, in English translation, the ten volumes of Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949 have been most useful to me. ↩
Volume V was published in 1977 after Mao’s death and publication of it discontinued in the 1980s ↩
As is the tradition here, I am posting my syllabi so people can make suggestions, although I m doing so too late to take much advantage of your helpful advice.
Three classes this Fall
Drugs in Asian History (senior history capstone/research class)
Modern Japan 1850-Present (upper division history class)
Rise of Modern Asia –(Gen Ed class for non-majors, two sections)
Drugs in Asian History (HIST 495) is something I have done before, although this time they actually picked this topic, since I sent out a list of possible choices to the students and that was the most popular.
This version of it is a lot less “surveying the literature on the topic” and a lot more working with the students on their individual papers. As we become more and more student-centered I am cutting back a lot on the reading, and eliminating having them buy books as much as possible. Still, this is a good topic, with all sorts of things they can work on, so hopefully it will turn into a fun little research seminar.
Modern Japan (HIST 437) does have a textbook, McClain, since I think they need it, but rather than just assigning sections and hoping they read them there will be more specific textbook linked assignments. There is a lot less for additional readings and those that we do will all be split up and discussed in class. I toyed with the idea of using Perusall for this, but that may be a bit too complex, as much as I like that system. Ideally they will come out of it having actually read a good textbook and done at lest some stuff with primary sources and a bit of scholarly reading. This may be the first upper division class I have ever taught where they don’t have to read a monograph. I almost always have them select something to read and write on themselves. This time it will be two articles/chapters they find on JSTOR or wherever.
Rise of Modern Asia (HIST 198) is my contribution to our (soon to be revised) Gen ed. It is a mostly lecture class with on-line multiple choice tests. (No real writing.) I am keeping Glass Palace, since it is a nice survey of a lot of themes in Asian history and the students who read it really like it. It is also a widely enough taught book that there are plenty of summaries out there for those who don’t want to read it. I always used to try to put something more academic after that (usually Esherick’s Ancestral Leaves), but this time I am going to have them watch To Live, which also traces a family through time, and may fit better with them. We will see how this goes.
Via Sinologists list, a Chinese news item on a Tang tomb in Taiyuan
There is a nice scene of food prep, so if, for teaching purposes, you need a picture of a woman doing laundry? while keeping an eye on the stove, here it is.
From text
In the workshop scene, there are scenes of a man pushing a mill to hull grain, a woman pushing a stone mill to grind flour, a man making noodles, a man stepping on a pestle and pounding rice, and a woman fetching water with a water pulley.在生活作坊图上绘有男子推碾为谷物脱壳、妇人推石磨磨面粉、男子制作面食、男子踩碓舂米、妇人用桔槔取水等场景
One thing that I did in my final exam for Rice Paddies this Spring was to ask them to compare how how Wikipedia and Chat GPT did at explaining terms that in the past would have been ID questions. (exam posted below)
I think this worked OK. I am increasingly using exams to try and teach them things, rather than to test if they have already learned something. I don’t really care for in-class exams, since the basic concept “How well can you answer this question without looking at any sources” is sort of similar to “how well can you fix this engine if your only tool is a Phillips screwdriver”. Of course the internet and above all modern AI1 make a lot of the types of things you could do in the past for a take home more problematic. Chat GPT can generate a D+ answer on literally anything. Plus it is harder to prove that they used it, assuming you are willing to be anti student centered enough to accuse them of that.
ID questions (write a paragraph explaining why this matters) used to be a great way to toss a lot of stuff into your exam that was important, but that you had not done enough with to make part of an essay. They are also the easiest thing to do a lazy Chat GPT thing on.
This seems to have worked pretty well, in that I got some good answers that showed that the students were assessing both sources as if they were a person who had taken a class on this (which they were) and some of them seem to have learned something about analyzing sources. Some were less good, but those are the breaks. I might fiddle with the prompt to force them to pull a quote out of Wikipedia next time.
“Air policing” was a term the British seem to have come up with after the Great War. Although using the new technology to keep the natives down started almost as soon as men could fly, the development of the concept owed more to Churchill’s enthusiasm for a way to control the Empire on the cheap and Trenchard’s need to find a role for the RAF now that the war was over. Omissi is the standard source.1 He has all the stuff on the early efforts to intimidate Iraqis and Somalis and others from the air, as well as the early debates on how effective this could be. What I find interesting is how the technology’s role was fairly undefined at this point. Was the RAF supposed to morally intimidate primitives? Directly attack rebels (or people who looked like rebels from high altitude)? Map and survey remote areas? Drop leaflets? Would it work on the Irish? The line between war and policing, and domestic and colonial was not that clear. The RAF both delivered and dropped Conservative newspapers on British cities during the General Strike of 19262
This is something that has remained a debate down to the present. The promise that technology can control territory, hearts and minds gets made a lot. It also ties into a lot of bureaucratic politics. Do drones render the U.S. Air Force irrelevant? Of course not. How would we have Top Gun without an Air Force?
The reason I bring this up is that one of the most detailed studies of air policing is on Taiwan. 臺灣第一個航空隊——日治時期警察航空班的故事1919年~1927年的臺灣天空 This seems to be a school project, and may owe something to 曾令毅3
The project owes something to air enthusiasts’ love of things like identifying old airfields and collecting photographs.
It probably also owes something to the detailed and easy to access Japanese colonial records.
The purpose of the project is to show that air policing helped the Japanese to subdue the wild hill people of Taiwan, especially in the early 1920s
As with all the other cases of air policing, it seems pretty obvious that aircraft did in fact make it far easier for the state to see new places, and that it probably did have some psychological and even practical effects. I am not sure that the aborigines really saw the overflights as “allowing them to bathe in Imperial benevolence”4, no matter what the Japanese said. Mostly, it is interesting to see how easy it is to show the geography of this with modern tools.
Omissi, David E. Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939. Manchester: Manchester Univ Pr, 1990. ↩
Epitaph for Mme Ren, titled Lady of Virtue (shuren)
The Honorable Bao Deming, the Assistant Regional Military Commander for my province, lost his first wife. Prior to her burial, he came to me, saying: “My first wife attended to me most diligently. Now that she has died and left me, I wish to request her epitaph from you.” My epitaph is as follows: Mme Ren was the daughter of Wei Qing, of the Xinyang Guard Battalion. When she married the Assistant Commander, she was honored with the title Lady of Virtue. This Lady of Virtue exemplified womanly virtues in her person, and wifely deportment in her household. In managing the concubines, she was not jealous. In her treatment of the servants, she was not cruel. Indeed, she was a woman who behaved as a gentleman (junzi) would do. When the Honorable Bao became Assistant Commander, the Lady of Virtue was very supportive, and kept her household domain perfectly in order. She did not regard household matters, large or small, as requiring Bao’s attention. Bao managed his official domain, and the Lady of Virtue managed her domestic realm. In this way, Bao was able to devote his entire attention to the public realm, with no worries at all about domestic matters.”
Li Mengyang’s epitaph for his own wife
Weeping, I said to someone: “Only now when my wife has died do I know my wife!” This person asked how that might be? I replied: “Previously I studied and took office, and paid no attention to household matters. Now, nobody pays attention to things, and they don’t get done. When I had guests, food and drink suitable to their needs were supplied. Now no more guests come, or if they do, nothing is suitable. Previously, I used things without any attention to where they belonged. Now, everything gets thrown about and nobody puts anything away, but everyone’s good at breaking things! Previously, we never lacked for pickles and sauces and salted beans, but now, it’s not like before! Chickens, ducks, sheep, and pigs were all fed at the proper time — now, they’re not fed at the proper time and they’re all too thin! When my wife was alive, there was no whispering and giggling inside. If I went out, the door was not barred when I came back at night. Now the door is barred, and inside I hear that giggling! Before, I had no idea of what dirty clothes were. Now, if I don’t order them washed, they don’t get washed. My wife’s hands were constantly busy with sewing, cutting, drawing, and embroidering; now, no hands are busy. Formerly, when I wanted to groan about past and present but did not want to talk with friends, I could talk to my wife. But now when I come
home, I have no one to talk to. That’s why I say: only now that my wife is dead do I know my wife!
Both of these are somewhat problematic, since they both reinforce the idea that students come in with that the 19th century western model of the woman’s sphere is a historical universal. Still, the first one is a nice Confucian version of governing the family, and the second one a more practical version.
The one thing these texts only hint at, and that was taken very seriously as the greatest danger to the household, was the threat of jealousy between wives and concubines. Fortunately, this article also has a story about this.
Here is Li Mengyang talking about a family he knew.
Originally, Dong had taken a wife from the Li family, but as Mme Li was sickly and had no sons, he took another wife from the Chen family. Shortly thereafter Mme Li died, and Dong took Shen as the wife who would succeed her. Chen felt greatly wronged by this, and she protested vigorously, saying: “I am the daughter of a scholarly family! My father and brother only let me become your secondary wife because they knew that Mme Li was sick, and had no sons. Day and night they repeated that if Mme Li happened by some misfortune to die, I would succeed her. And now you’re marrying Shen, are you?” When Dong’s relatives and members of the community heard this, they worried on Dong’s behalf, saying that when Shen entered the household the two women were bound to compete.
Still, Shen’s wifely competence won the whole family over, and soon, says
Li Mengyang, Chen herself began to pay Shen the deference due to a principal
wife. The two became like sisters, and the relatives and community
members were all delighted, saying to each other that Dong was a happy
man to have obtained two such sage and virtuous wives. Shortly, however,
the process of Chen’s erasure began:
After about a year, Chen bore a son Lan. Shen held him in her arms, and treated him as though he were her own. Chen bore another son Run, and then a daughter. Shen treated them all as her own, and none of them knew that Shen was not their mother. Someone teased them, saying: “You are not really Shen’s children!” The children did not believe it, and when finally they did learn the truth, they felt all the more strongly that Shen was their real mother.
“Even I,” marveled Li Mengyang, who had been a close friend of the family,
“had no idea that these were not Shen’s children.”
If you are wondering why I am starting to post things like this, it is because I am toying with the idea of assigning way less reading (they never do it) and instead selecting snippets from articles and chapters and having them read them at the beginning of class and going from there.
from
-Kathrine Carlitz “Lovers, Talkers, Monsters and Good Women: Competing Imagesin Mid-Ming Epitaphs and Fiction” From Joan Judge and Ying Hu, Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women’s Biography in Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
It’s sheer coincidence, of course, that there’s a reboot of the classic tv miniseries Shōgun the semester I’m running my perennial Samurai: History, Literature, Mythology class, with the finale airing in these last weeks of class. I couldn’t have planned this if I tried. I haven’t watched it yet, myself, but fortunately I don’t have to (though I probably will before this event, just so I know what people are talking about) because some of my favorite scholars are tackling the question: https://mjha.org/event-5672414
• Mary Elizabeth Berry, Class of 1944 Professor of History Emerita, University of California, Berkeley • Eleanor Hubbard, Independent Scholar • Morgan Pitelka, Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Henry Smith, Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University
In the wake of the latest television remake of James Clavell’s celebrated novel Shōgun, a panel of distinguished historians of early modern Japan and England will consider what the shows and novel get right and wrong about history, examine how interpretations of the story and the source material have evolved over time, and look back on nearly 50 years of teaching with (and against) Clavell’s tale of an English sailor in late Sengoku Japan.
As I said to my students when I announced this as an optional event for our class, I noted
Mary Elizabeth Berry is one of my favorite historians, as I’ve probably said over the course of this semester, and getting to study with her in Berkeley is still one of the highlights of my career: she’s written on Hideyoshi, most famously, but also on 15th century Kyoto and 17th century Edo publishing culture. She once said that she really respects the people who make historical dramas, because they have to commit to things being a certain way, whereas historians can always fall back on ‘well, we don’t know for sure…’
Morgan Pitelka is an old online history blogging friend [and longtime Frog In A Well member!], and author of the book on samurai culture that I assigned for graduate reading.
Henry Smith is one of those people that gets called “the dean of American Japanese Studies” because of his work at Columbia over the course of the last sixty years or so. Most immediately relevant is his work as the organizer and editor of Learning from SHOGUN: Japanese History and Western Fantasy, a teaching text based on James Clavell’s original novel published right about the same time as the 1980 TV event. http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/
Eleanor Hubbard, I don’t know personally, but it looks like she’s a historian of 18th century English naval history, so she has some solid qualifications to talk about the non-Japanese side of this story.
And here is the commentary that I’m sharing with the class:
It’s a good thing, probably, that I have very little memory of watching the first TV version of Shōgun before my family went to Japan, so it really didn’t affect my experience living in Nagoya. I know I read Clavell’s novel at some point after that, but very little of it made an impression, except that it felt stilted and exaggerated. I was a sci fi kid, not a historical novel kid, and mostly I figured that it was historical fiction and not to be relied on. Professionally, as a historian and a teacher, my feeling about historical fiction is still mostly that it’s usually not good history and often not very good fiction.
I am not going back to reread Clavell, or rewatch the old series, or try to keep track of the historical figures that Clavell renamed to see if I could catch mischaracterizations. Personally, I think it’s hilarious that they kept Clavell’s pseudonyms for obvious historical figures: “historical” but also somehow not responsible for the blot on the family escutcheon. [That’s a Gilbert and Sullivan “Pirates of Penzance” joke, I don’t expect anyone to get it. I mean that using non-historical names means that Clavell, and his various derivative producers, are not bound by any factual rigor] This is, as so often happens, in contrast to the marketing (and internal signals) which bangs on about the authenticity of the period language (the Japanese, anyway, not the English and certainly not the Portuguese that everyone is supposed to be speaking when they’re speaking English) and costumes and architecture. All of that is true, and it’s even true that the values the characters profess constantly and loudly did exist in the literature and culture of the period, though it’s hard to believe that there was so much conflict between them on a daily basis.
Shogun is a romance, not a history. It needs a conflict of values to resolve, rather than a conflict of political economics or tactics. So the first part of the story is laying out the values and institutions that must come into conflict to frustrate the heroes. The second part of the story is the playing out of those conflicts and the various attempts to circumvent those strictures. The finale is the triumphal application of those values to the forces that block resolution, a reconciliation of culture with sentiment. That’s because it is, in classical terms, a comedy in which the heroes achieve success (but a modern one in which some do not survive and everyone is a little sad) rather than a tragedy in which the conflict of values and emotions is unresolvable and failure is inevitable. Clavell was not trying to tell the history of the founding of the Tokugawa Shogunate, or even to educate about the culture and values of Japan. Clavell was trying to set up a conflict in which his characters could strive, rise and fall, and give his readers an experience of adventure and emotional catharsis. This is why I don’t use historical fiction in my teaching, or enjoy it much outside of teaching.
For most of the other historical commentary, I’ll defer to Learning from SHOGUN and the roundtable Thursday night. The only thing I’ll say about the 2024 production is that the incessant use of shiny metallics in the clothing is very dramatic and probably not period authentic, and the opening credits remind me of nothing more than a Marvel cinematic universe series.
We talked about James Cahill’s. The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China. . New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 in class recently. You might be under the impression that Chinese artists (calligraphers, painters) lived only for Art and Truth, and disdained the material world. There was indeed a cult of the amateur artist that you can read about in the works of, well, James Cahill. He also wrote this book. Here is a quote from a friend on Zheng Min 鄭旼
The master immerses himself in old books, not caring whether it is cold or hot, living tranquilly, uttering few words, magnanimous in disposition, his mind fixed on distant goals [that is, unconcerned with day-to-day affairs]. All difficult questions in the classics and histories he can resolve. He is an accomplished seal carver, using the pre-Ch’in and Han [scripts] as models. His painting style is lofty and antique, completely following the ch’i-yin sheng-tung (“engendering movement through spirit consonance”) mode of expression. Accordingly, he can rival the Yuan masters. In the most refined of his works, whether feelings of sadness and melancholy or complaint and anger, if these were not aroused by his great talents then they must come from his own experience. Cahill Painter’s Practice p.g 4
A true artist. Here is one of his works
This is from an album of scenes of Huangshan He did two of these, one for a friend, and one for a friend of a friend. As he wrote in the inscription “In the future, after all his children get married, if Chuzhen ever travels there, I hope he will take this album with him to check against the actual sites. I will then become his tour guide.” This may make it sound like a gift of friendship, for a friend he has never met. As his diary shows, however, he sold art for money.
[1672] tenth month, fifth day: I did three fan paintings for Fu-wen.
Seventeenth day: cloudy. Yen-ch’ing and K’uan-chung “moistened my brush” [gave me money for painting] and I added bamboo and rock for them [to some previously done painting?]
Eleventh month, eighth day: I went into town and wrote a fan for Yen-ch’ing. . . Keng-yu summoned me, and I added to [retouched?] a painting by T’ang Yin for him …
(1673] sixth month, third day … Mu-ch’ien ordered a painting for Hsu Erh-ming, and I used the money for food.
(1674] second month, sixth day: cloudy. After supper I visited Tzu-yen, and entrusted him with three paintings to sell for me.
Sixth month, sixth day: I visited Hsiueh-hai, where the owner of the I-kuan [an inn ?] … Summoned me to do a painting for him.
(1676] first month, sixth day: rainy. Ssu-jo visited me to order a painting, bringing payment [lit. “moisture,” as above .]
Ninth month, eighteenth day: for my “elder brother“ Yin-nan I did a painting on satin. Also did five fans for . . . [names].
Twelfth month , fourth day: This line [of poetry] came to me: “To get through the year, I need the money from selling paintings.”
Twenty-ninth day. Snow has been falling for the whole month. Fortunately, I have managed to get through my New Year’s obligations with the small income from my paintings. I sit recalling that there are a great many really poor people now, and wish that I had a spacious, myriad-roomed house [to entertain them in]-an empty thought.
I am pretty sure that for enough cash Zheng Min would be your actual tour guide.
The book explains the business of art, but also less blatantly financial ways that art changed hands as gifts and favors. A talented painter who wants to keep eating needs to be able to both crank out the work and understand the social symbolism that his customers want to buy. A fine job for a failed scholar. These were the people who could crank out quick “parting paintings” for themselves or others. The perfect gift.
If you are not sure how to do one, well there are painting manuals for that. From a Japanese edition of Mustard Seed Garden
Of course the truly great artist could do amazing work while cranking things out on a deadline with a lot of patron meddling and pandering to the market. At a higher level you could get more bespoke work. Cahill talks about the symbolism of of a gift of a painting of plum blossoms, but I talked about orchids instead.
The orchid can grow in the wild, and so it is a good symbol of the under-appreciated scholar.
If an orchid grows in the deep forest, with no one present, is it not still fragrant? A gentleman cultivates the way and establishes his virtue and does not let his integrity whither although hard-pressed by poverty
Put an orchid in a pot and it is a symbol of the wild and free scholar who happens to have a job. This is probably how they are used in this portrait of Yinli, Prince Guo
As a Manchu prince, Yinli was not starving the forest,but he did like posing as a scholar. The inscription on the painting is a poem written by the prince:
Humbled that through my kinship to the throne,
I was allotted a scepter in the prime of life,
I shall hold fast to the Way of antiquity,
And hope to preserve it without transgression.
Availing himself of this fine white silk,
That my figure may be transmitted on it,
The painter was indeed a marvelous hand,
Who erred in neither ugliness or beauty,
What is stored within is displayed without,
He has captured here my character as well.
Refraining from any wanton extravagance,
I shall follow in the footsteps of the former sages,
And by the bright window, at my clean desk,
Thrice replace the worn-out bindings on my books.
(Translation by Stephen D. Allee)
Money may or may not have changed hands here. but the artist is clearly helping both the subject and himself function as an “entrepreneur of the self” (Cahill pg. 144) The artist is selling a sample of his skill and culture and the buyer is buying it.1 This is not the same as loading your calligraphy on a donkey and taking it to town and selling it to whoever and using the money for wine, but it is on the same continuum.
Posted so I can teach this point again someday. And now so can you.
This is not that different from Western art. Rembrandt is the comparison of the “entrepreneur of the self” Cahill uses here ↩
On 12 December, 1930, in Shanghai’s International Settelement, a police officer C.D.S. (Chinese Detective Superintendent?) by the name of Wong requested permission to hold a birthday party for his 70 year old mother at a restaurant on Canton road (today Guangdong road) and send out some 70 invitations.
Finding this in a police file in the fascinating collection of the Shanghai Munipal Police records (see this wiki on the SMP archive, with an index), my first thought was how sad it is that even police officers had to request permission to host a birthday party for one’s aging mother.
However, this heart-warming record of a celebration turned into a potential case of police corruption, something all too prevelant in the SMP. A memorandum from the day after the party includes a translation of the invitation for the party, and appeals written on the back of two of them. Apparently, street lottery operators and “every opium smoking den” had received “invitations” to the party asking for donations of $10, in the case of the former, or $6 each for the latter. Interestly, the lottery seller merely asked that the requested amount be reduced to $3 or $4. The amount doesn’t appear to have been on the invitation itself, as translated, which offers attendees a feast, but one can speculate that the recipients knew that a donation was strongly recommended, while attendance to the party not so much.
The memorandum’s introduction writes, “These things are getting more prevalent now. I suggest that some of these detectives should be punished for distributing invitations without permission first being obtained.” On the first of the new year, 1931, an inspector reports that they had interviewed the detective concerned who claimed that all in all 37 invitations were sent out to different detectives and that he denies allegations surrounding them. Rather than local lottery and opium dealers, he “assumed that some of the detectives sent [the invitations] to the [police] as a case of spite in order to get him into trouble.”
Another book I got for the holidays is Tim Brook. The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China. Princeton, 2023.
Oddly enough, I read the whole thing from cover to cover, which is not always how I read academic books. The thing that makes this one such a joy is that it is both a collection of interesting stories and facts about the economic and ecological history of Ming China, and a discussion of price history and the role of the Little Ice Age in the fall of the Ming.
The price history stuff is rather fragmentary, which makes sense since there are really no series of prices like Qing grain prices for the Ming. Instead you (well, Brook), need to comb through various sources looking for data. There are some good numbers on what things were supposed to cost for official purchases in the early Ming, and then a lot of price lists at the end of the Ming, when the wheels are coming off, and everyone was complaining about how much things cost nowadays. In between there are the occasional lists of prices like those compiled by the honest official Hai Rui.
For 1/100 of an ounce of silver (one cent) you could get a catty of cucumbers, 18 eggs, a porcelain soup bowl, 2 exercise booklets a catty of hemp rope or 10 catties of coal.
1/10 of an ounce of silver would get you a wok or a wooden bed, a catty of winter melon or fine tea, a bolt of linen cloth or a visit from a doctor.
A full tael of sliver (1.3 oz to us) would get you a stove, an inkstone, 100 sheets of letter paper, a Spanish style gun, 4 volumes of Tang poetry, two new year door gods paintings, or a boy singer. I should add that one tael is pretty cheap for a person. 4 to 10 taels was the range for domestic servants, according to the diary of a Shanghai resident of the 1590s, although he got a bargain, getting a housepainter and his wife for only two taels in the famine year of 1588. (pg40-45)
So how much money was that?
For the early Ming, 3 cents of silver a day (20-25 copper coins) or 10.2 taels per year was about the minimum wage. This is about what military laborers got. Silk weavers could get 4 cents a day, 6 if they had their own loom, and by the end of the dynasty 4 cents a day was the standard minimum wage (pp58-60) This is actually a large increase in bottom end wages over the time period. Sailors heading out into the South China Sea could make 20-30 taels a year. For a lot of these groups, (and above all for farmers) the cash wage was probably not the only source of income. The military laborers above were absconding all the time, in part because the pay was bad and the work hard, but also because there was no way to make extra money. Potters at Jingdezhen got 3 cents and 5 coppers a day, which was barely over minimum. They also got a grain allotment, however, which may have been worth 5 ½ taels a year, and would put them into the bottom of the respectable class. They may have also sold off porcelain on the side, which happened a lot at Jingdezhen. A prison warden (rank 9b, the bottom of the official scale) got 19.52 taels in 1567, although also with a great opportunity to collect bribes and fees.
As you can sort of see from the prices above, the costs of ordinary living were just barely within reach of the poor. Even “capital goods” like a (small) wok were only 1/10 tael. Four volumes of poetry for 1 tael? Mass education here we come. One tael was about the dividing line for tempting someone to commit a crime Ming stories.
Brook ”If we recall the earlier estimates of the cost of living (just over 14 taels for a family living close to subsistence, and just over 23 taels for a respectable family) and compare these with these wage data (a poor wage between 5 and 12 taels, a respectable wage of between 14 and 22 taels” (pg 60)
There was a very different level of living for the rich, however. Officials in Beijing in the Wanli era were said to spend 4-5 taels a month, and a top quality painting could cost 30 – 300 taels, which is far more than an ordinary family would spend in a year.
The painting point is kind of important. Although Brook does not say so, you can sort of see evidence for a growing mass prosperity in the Ming (and into the Qing). True, the first bad dip of the Little Ice Age creates a crisis, but the long-term increase of bottom end wages of about 33% is significant, and recorded prices for necessities are within the range of a lot of people. The price of art, however, especially good art, skyrockets.
Brook does not see the world silver trade as being the main driver of Late Ming inflation and economic chaos, and if you want a good recent summary of stuff on the silver issue this is it. True there were a lot of people lamenting the rising prices of things, but in non-famine years prices of many ordinary goods fell between 1368 and 1590, with rice and wheat remaining exactly the same. (see table below) Some of the things that went up, like firewood and rabbits, might indicate less “waste” land, which fits with the received picture.
Art was going up, maybe, because silver -was- flowing in from the New World, and it was driving up prices, but that was more at the top end of the market, where things like authentic Song paintings were in limited supply. The Ming elite may not have been going in for some of the same ways of showing off new fashions and such that European elites were. So maybe there was growing prosperity at the bottom and middle, with wild inflation at the top. Right where down on their luck scholars would write about it.
Regardless of what was happening in the late Ming, the Qing was convinced that the rural economy was on the brink of collapse form over taxation (See this post) https://froginawell.net/frog/2023/12/qing-taxation/ and thus agricultural taxes remained stable throughout the dynasty, and maybe the black-headed people did better than we used to think in the Qing.
Sorry this post is sort of a mess, but I am teaching about this tomorrow, and wanted to save the data points somewhere I could find them.
In May, 1939, while the Japanese military controlled the Chinese parts of the city, an “urgent report” was sent to the Louza Police Station (Laozha 老閘) in the International Settlement: “An appeal for your searching investigation of ‘Electric Projecting Killing Machine’”.
Supposed location of the said machine: It is said that in your Foreign Staff quarters of your Police Station. And it is further stated that the location of the said machine lies in the upper story east and north corner of the foreign staff square. Moreover it is heard that there are voices of more than eight or nine Chinese men and boy heard there. The voices of the men & boy are to be heard both day & night. That machine follow me estimate more than thirty years owing it can state my youthold story, the holder are all of your room boys I believe.
That machine is said to be a rarity in Shanghai, the projecting power is very strong, though there is no light or shade visible. It can kill any body’s life as soon as the projecting power gets in touch with him or her wherever one is on the boat or sleeping indoors or going outdoors no matter how far the distance is. To sum up it has the following killing powers:
It can get into human body and destroy the organs. It can make every body abnormal and kill one It can make his or her strains in their body feel inclined to drown in the water for death. It can transmit words through another man’s mouth in order to disturb speaking of others. It can make one’s intelligence fly away and become a stupid and no-minded person of usefulness. It can make film picture at a long distance and project its harmful power into human body in order to cripple one’s mind and actions. It can projecting the noise and voice to long distance It is said that the machine can make one walk and feel nothing particular after he or she has not taken anything or slept or drunk etc. for more than a week or few days. It can in other hand, however, still one immediately without allowing anybody to help or save him…
…My third daughter has died of the effect of the machine…my fourth daughter is nearly suffered to death on account of the effect of the machine. Most of my family members have more or less received harmful effects of the said machine…
…As it is the duty of your police to maintain peace and safety of the community, so I firmly request you to investigate and search carefully the machine in the foreign staff quarters…as the machine is concealed and carefully hidden there…
The report came from a Chinese man, a Mr. Sung/Seng/Sun (孫) living in a refugee camp dormitory attached to the Yufo temple (玉佛寺 Jade Buddha Temple) on Penang Road (now Anyuan lu 安远路) and is preserved in a 45 page Shanghai Municipal Police file. This file contains over twenty more similar letters, in the same neat handwriting or typed with its distinctive mix of alternating eloquent and awkward English phrasing. All were sent to the Louza station between 1939 and February, 1941, with the same urgent request for the police to investigate a dangerous hidden “Electric Projecting Killing Machine” believed to be located in the station’s grounds.
A Special Branch police report on the letter’s author, dated 19 May, 1939, describes the mental health challenges of the 35 year old from Pudong, said to be suffering from “partial mental derangement.” He apparently worked as a clerk for the American Asiatic Underwriters company (17 The Bund) for some eight years, when “he suddenly became mentally unbalanced” at the end of 1936. A few months later he was discharged. The report, written by one D.S.I. Liao Chung Chian, concludes by noting that a cousin of the affected man says that the “mental disease is not really serious and in fact for many hours during a day his condition is normal.”
In addition to the early report, there are two police replies included with the file.1 The first reply in June, 1940 says “The subject of your complaint has been thoroughly investigated without result, and I have to inform you that no further action can be taken in the matter” with a handwritten note, “Delivered by chit-book. I hope it will stop him.” A second and last reply in the file from the Divisional Officer, “A” Division, in August, says “I am satisfied that no such machine exists in Louza Police Station, therefore no further correspondence will be entertained.” Eight more letters will make their way into the file.
A few things about this case strike me. One is to once again marvel at the diversity of lived experiences to be found in these SMP police documents (browse an index of open access copies of them I’m working on here), even if they privilege an often problematic policeman’s gaze. Even when we get rich accounts from independent sources, as with these letters, they only allow us to read whatever was preserved by the police, and then later by the American OSS, which ended up with copies of some of the SMP files that, in turn, were preserved in the US National Archives CIA records (RG 263).
I am also drawn to the level of elaborate detail in the appeals of Mr. Sung (as he signs his letters). His death ray is equipped with far more than the usual lethal powers of the genre. In two letters he includes a dramatic illustration of the killing machine beaming its ray (see the first image in this post for one of them), while in several others he offers increasingly detailed drawings of the supposed location.2 In his early letters he appears to believe the machine is under the operation of a number of Chinese gangsters and a boy, or coolie, or servant operating out of a special room for the machine’s use. Later he will merely say that the “murderers” are hiding in the “Indian Police’s dwelling.” Louza station was predominantly staffed by a mixed force of Chinese and Sikh officers and a few Europeans but, despite the fact the latter were often depicted in unflattering terms by Chinese residents, I didn’t see anything detrimental said about either them or any of the police in Mr. Sung’s many letters.3
The centrality of the death ray in this man’s paranoid letters is a strikingly global feature of the case. Though H.G. Wells has a heat ray in The War of the Worlds (1898), William Fanning has argued that the 1920s and 1930s were the high point for interest in the idea of a killing ray in both fiction and supposedly non-fiction contexts.4 There are plenty of sources across these two decades that might have inspired Mr. Sung. Working as he was at an American company on the Bund, I imagine him picking up a copy of the August, 1936 issue of Popular Science in his work place, where he could have seen a depiction (displayed here) of a machine that bears a striking resemblance to one of his drawings. It is at the end of that year that his condition was said to have emerged.
One thing that puzzles me somewhat, however, is the fact that Mr. Sung is writing this stream of letters to a police station that is almost an hour walk away from his own place of residence. His temple is located in the western part of the international settlement inside the “Pootoo” police district. Even if he ignored the police station in his own area, walking towards Louza police station he would pass through the districts of two other police stations (Gordon and Sinza).
Why does he believe the electric projecting killing machine is in a station at some distance from himself? His letters often describe his reconnaissance efforts around the station, to pinpoint the exact location of the ray. It is possible, of course, that he has been writing these letters to several stations, and these are the only ones that got preserved in his file, and I suspect we will never know for sure. Perhaps it is just the centrality of the station, located as it is just off Nanking Road, or perhaps its historical infamy. The police station is known for one of the darker moments in Shanghai history, the May 30 incident, or “Shanghai massacre” of 1925 triggering the movement of that name (五卅运动). On that day, police officers of Louza police station opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing several of them and sparking widespread anti-foreign strikes and boycotts around China. If this had something to do with it, however, it is notable that the neither the police themselves nor foreigners are depicted as the villains behind Mr. Sung’s killing machine.
There is one more interesting connection between the idea of a death ray, the Louza station and the May 30 movement to be found in Richard W. Rigby’s history of the May 30 Movement. While I have not yet been able to track down the citation5 and read the original source, Rigby describes a story published in a memorial issue recalling the events of May 30, 1925:
The story, ‘The Light of China’, tells of a young man who shuts himself off from the world for ten long years, working on a project to avenge his fallen comrades. He successfully invents and perfects an electric ray, and on 30 May 1935 he emerges from his seclusion to turn it on the foreigners in Shanghai, leaving their persons unharmed but completely destroying all their weapons and warships. Before long, China’s new secret having been made known, the whole world is disarmed and a world government devoted to universal peace and harmony rules from Shanghai. Only Japan, refusing to face reality, stubbornly attempts an invasion, is of course defeated, and her premier publicly scolded. This achieved, our hero departs on his honeymoon, observing that it had all been made possible by science and organization.6
It is hard to see how the above rather optimistic plot, and the relatively benign effects of the story’s ray have much in common with Mr. Sung’s imagined insidious gangster ray, but it is evidence that ideas about electric rays in Shanghai were in the mind of more than one person. Perhaps it is this Chinese language story, and not Popular Science or any other international sources that is the immediate inspiration for Mr. Sung ideas around a powerful ray? Or perhaps Mr. Sung was, in fact, right all along? Perhaps operatives of the Green Gang, with their deep police ties were indeed operating a powerful killing machine out of the convenient central location of the Louza Police Station? Special branch may have buried Mr. Sung’s letters deep in their files, but we can only hope a Netflix special will someday bring the truth of this conspiracy back into the light. 😊
p24 and p28 of the file. https://archive.org/details/smpa-files-361 ↩
p17 and p32 of the file for the drawings, and p7, p9, p13, p19, and p21 for his maps. ↩
For more on Sikh police officers see Isabella Jackson. ‘The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai’. Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 06 (2012): 1672–1704. Cao, Yin. From Policemen to Revolutionaries: A Sikh Diaspora in Global Shanghai, 1885-1945. BRILL, 2017. ↩
Fanning, William J. ‘The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s’. Science Fiction Studies 37, no. 2 (2010), 253. ↩
Rigby cites Tu-li P’ing-lun no 10, May 30 memorial issue, 30/5/26; pp. 11-14 ↩
Emphasis mine. I only have Rigby’s 1975 dissertation at hand “The May 30 Movement: an Outline” Australian National University, pp316-7. However, google books suggests that the anecdote is also included in his book The May 30 Movement: Events and Themes, p164. ↩
Why does he believe the electric projecting killing machine is in a station at some distance from himself? His letters often describe his reconnaissance efforts around the station, to pinpoint the exact location of the ray. It is possible, of course, that he has been writing these letters to several stations, and these are the only ones that got preserved in his file, and I suspect we will never know for sure. Perhaps it is just the centrality of the station, located as it is just off Nanking Road, or perhaps its historical infamy. The police station is known for one of the darker moments in Shanghai history, the May 30 incident, or “Shanghai massacre” of 1925 triggering the movement of that name (五卅运动). On that day, police officers of Louza police station opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing several of them and sparking widespread anti-foreign strikes and boycotts around China. If this had something to do with it, however, it is notable that the neither the police themselves nor foreigners are depicted as the villains behind Mr. Sung’s killing machine.