The Scholar's Robe

-
My essay "The Scholar's Robe" is published on Frontiers of History in China. Check it out!

The Scholar's Robe will be published again in the conference volume of International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). I am quite impressed by its format. Click here to check it out!

A photo of all participants in Nichibunken conference, Kyoto, 2/19–2/21, 2016.

Comments

  1. Lilyan RockJune 18, 2017 at 11:19 AM

    “The Scholar’s Robe: Material Culture and Political Power in Early Modern China” by Minghui Hu explores the use of a specific robe, the Shenyi or long garment, as a symbol of schools of thought through various dynastic eras. The analytical essay is based primarily on works of Chinese scholars, examining the traditional robes in their own contemporary spheres, supporting the analysis in “The Scholar’s Robe” and allowing the reader to access the evidence firsthand. As a piece of academic writing, “The Scholar’s Robe” is easy to follow due to both structure and style and does not attempt to end the conversation about early modern Chinese cultural dress. The reader is instantly made aware that the conversation between academics and dress code has been up for debate for millennia and will not be terminated in this article, simply compounded upon. The essay is set along a timeline, after a briefing on the definitions of the garments themselves, then focuses on the works of 17th and 18th century scholars, Huang Zongxi and Jiang Yong, to illustrate the climax of the scholar robe debate: whether the usage of the long garment is politically significant due to Ming-era Ethnocentrism, or whether the robes are more powerful as a universal garment signifying the importance of Confucian antiquity.
    After political footing are set and the technicalities addressed, the next section, “Becoming Chinese,” gives historical context. The early modern era in Chinese history saw outsider domination, first through the Mongol conquest. The effect this had on the long garment debate is concisely put as an effort by the Ming emperor Zhu Yuangzhang who wished to reclaim the Han traditions after the Mongols were driven out. This adds yet another layer of meaning to the clothing as now it is a nationalist debate, much like the Hanfu issue today. It is easy to see this as the third leg of the support for the Huang-Jiang analysis to follow: they worked upon the knowledge of the classical definitions of the garments, the political implications of Confucianism, and the historical usage of long garments as a sign of “Chineseness.” Hu states the shift as one where “the private practice of a small group of intellectual elites did not catch on in their own times but later experienced a melodramatic success after the Mongols ruled China for nearly a century” bridging the gap between the start of this cultural identification in the Song era and the progression during the Ming (Pg. 352). While the historical context of the Ming emperor’s preference for the Shenyi and Ren garb is not the pivotal argument of the paper, placement of that information after the more crucial political content is not distracting from the course of the paper for multiple reasons. Chronologically this makes sense, as time goes on and history compounds upon itself. Additionally, this directly links to the argument in the very next section, that Huang Zongxi held, which is that preservation of Han Chineseness is of the utmost importance.
    The focus of the paper was never intended to be terminal, never meaning to arrive at an answer, so culminating in the final discussion between Huang’s and Jiang’s works is an appropriate place to leave the reader. The paper itself supplies enough background for non-scholarly readers to understand the gist of the argument, which states that the clothing continues to be a political statement, even while sorting through the nitty-gritty details. Hu’s historical analysis will continue to fan through this debate, not coming to a singular answer. Overall, “The Scholarly Robe” creates this effective analysis without poring too tirelessly over details and while keeping the vitality of the conversation, though many centuries old, interesting and accessible to the reader.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UCSC seminar on early modern China–Part 1

-
I am reading some recent scholarship with six graduate students in the fall quarter. The first set of readings includes Frederic Wakeman's  “ China and the Seventeenth-century World Crisis ," the first two chapters of Wai-yee Li's Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature , and James Frankel's chapter “Making Manchus and Muslims” in the edited volume Cosmopolitanism in China. The Chinese collaboration For the previous millennium (1000–2000), China was twice conquered by an alien minority. The first time was Mongol conquest and the second the Manchu. The Mongol Yuan dynasty was short-lived because, among other reasons, the Mongol rulers displaced the Chinese elites institutionally and deprived them of political power. The Manchu, on the other hand, shared power with the Chinese elites, kept their land and privilege , and promised them more. Wakeman provides the following statements regarding how the ethnic Chinese elites who worked for the new...
Read more

UCSC seminar–Part 2

-
The second set of readings includes the first chapter of Rosenthal and Wong's  Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe , John Elliott's "A Europe of Composite Monarchies," and the second part of R. Kent Guy's Qing Governors and Their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644-1796 . The Language of Union: Conquest, territorial management (such river work and transportation), ecological characteristics, and provincial governance (such as tax collection and disaster relief) all featured in Guy's  Qing Governors and Their Provinces . We only read the second half of the book. The first half is about the extraordinarily active appointment and dismissal of Qing governors, assessment of their competence, and central coordination of territorial control, tactical and logistical concerns of border defence, revenue collection for the imperial coffer, etc. Elite activism on behalf of the Qing stat...
Read more