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Banner Legacy
The Rise of the Fengtian Local Elite at the End of the Qing
Yoshiki Enatsu

The Eight Banners are increasingly recognized as a key institution of the Qing dynasty administration. In the Qing ancestral homeland, Manchuria, the banners came to include Mongol and Han contingents. In this study, Professor Enatsu argues that at the end of the Qing, as this region was placed under civil administration, many Han bannermen in the newly created Fengtian Province came to local prominence, first as landlords, then as power elites-active participants in provincial politics-throught the reforms of the late Qing and the early Republic. Key local leaders such as Yuan Jinkai, Zhang Rong, Zhang Huanxiang, Wu Jinglian, and Wang Yuquan may be traced to the rolls of the Han Banners.

This study shows how these local leaders rose to political power through opportunities made available to them as Han bannermen as well as the reforms implemented in the Qing's last attempts at survival. It provides a close look at the process of local political evolution in a peripheral region of China and highlights the complex relationship between central Qing officials and local elites. Drawing on classic Japanese and Chinese resources on the area as well as recent scholarship, Professor Enatsu presents a fine analysis of the interplay between historical Qing institutions and emerging modern political practices during this tumultuous period.

ISBN 0-89264-165-7 / Paper / $50.00

The Dianshizhai Pictorial

Ye Xiaoqing

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While twentieth-century Shanghai has received extensive scholarly treatment, the nineteenth century has remained understudied, even though it encompasses the first half-century of Shanghai's growth as a treaty port and the early years of Chinese-foreign contact. Published in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Dianshizhai Pictorial provides a record of the new urban popular culture that emerged in Shanghai's foreign settlements during this period.

Ye Xiaoqing has based this study on the Dianshizhai's detailed illustrations of everyday life at home, in commercial establishments, and in Shanghai's public areas. Her introduction to the more than one hundred drawings presented here points to the social background, lifestyle, and intellectual outlook of the Dianshizhai's literati writers and artists, the weakness of gentry control in the foreign settlements, and the commercialization and 'modern' material culture that made Shanghai distinctive.

.The drawings and commentaries of the Dianshizhai contrast the settlements with "traditional" culture and urban life in the adjacent Chinese city and vividly convey items of interest--from the quotidian to the bizarre--highlighting local fascination with and anxiety at the rapid changes in Shanghai's increasingly cosmopolitan society.

ISBN 0-89264-162-2 / Paper / $50.00

China's Revolutions and Intergenerational Relationships

Martin K. Whyte (Editor)

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This volume counters the widely accepted notion that traditional family patterns are weakened by forces such as economic development and social revolutions. China has experienced wrenching changes on both the economic and political fronts, yet from the evidence presented here the tradition of filial respect and support for aging parents remains alive and well.

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Based on collaborative surveys carried out in 1994 in the middle-sized industrial city of Baoding, and comparative data from urban Taiwan, the authors examine issues shaping the relationships between adult Chinese children and their elderly parents. The continued vitality of intergenerational support and filial obligations in these samples is not simply an instance of strong Confucian tradition trumping powerful forces of change.

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Instead, and somewhat paradoxically, the continued strength of filial obligations can be attributed largely to the institutions of Chinese socialism forged in the era of Mao Zedong. With socialist institutions now under assault in the PRC, the future of intergenerational relations in the 21st century is once again uncertain.

ISBN 0-89264-160-6 / Cloth / $60.00

Study Guide to China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future

Thomas Buoye

The Study Guide provides students direction in understanding course content and makes suggestions for integrating video and on-line resources. It includes a list of readings in the text, learning objectives, an overview of the materials, the key concepts in each unit, and review questions.

ISBN 0-89264-157-6 (non-series) / 150 pp / $12.00

China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future

T. Buoye, K. Denton, B. Dickson, B. Naughton and M.K. Whyte (Editors)

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It is not only ideal for courses on contemporary China but also an excellent supplement for courses in area studies, international affairs and economics, and women's studies.

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Each section, in addition to essay and excerpts, also includes a bibliography of additional topical works.

ISBN 0-89264-156-8 (non-series) / 600 pp / $37.00

Defining Modernity

Terry Bodenhorn (Editor)

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Over the course of the twentieth century, the Guomindang (KMT or Nationalists) articulated and marketed symbols, traits, and institutions crucial to a modernizing China. Understood as constituents of modernity, tangible elements (paper money, flags, national anthems), specific institutions (educational, governmental, and scientific facilities), and intangible qualities (nationalism, social trust, social discipline) all drew the attention and advocacy of Party members.

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This volume offers a reappraisal of Guomindang history based on a close analysis of cultural, ideational, and symbolic practices rather than the more common social, political, and economic frames. Chapters on education policies and practices, Party relations with Chinese Christian and missionary communities, the use of paper currency, political propaganda, and the construction of scientific institutions all provide fresh points of comparison with Chinese Communist ideas, practices, and dilemmas.

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The essays here highlight the complexities and range of creative possibilities confronting a nation-state bent upon the 'modernizing' mission.

ISBN 0-89264-161-4 / Cloth / $50.00

Peony Pavilion Onstage

Catherine C. Swatek

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This book explores responses to Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu from three distinct segments of this classic play's public-literati playwrights, who were also avocational performers of Kun opera; professional performers of Kun opera; and quite recently, directors and audiences outside China. Peony Pavilion is grounded in the most recent theoretical work on how best to tease information of social and cultural significance from textual sources.

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Professor Swatek first examines two adaptations of the play by Tang's contemporaries, which point to the unconventionality of the original work. She goes on to explore how the play has been performed and changed through adaptation up to its most recent productions by Peter Sellars and Chen Shi-Zheng in the U.S. and Europe.

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It is one of the few full-length studies in English of Chinese drama and the only one to focus on this pivotal work. Series: Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, No. 88.

ISBN 0-89264-136-3 / 440 pp / Cloth / $60.00

Screening China

Yingjin Zhang

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In the relatively young field of Chinese film studies, few books to date offer as comprehensive a survey of its relevant historical and contemporary issues as Screening China. Author Yingjin Zhang skillfully draws connections between the films of the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, proving that not only is there a distinctively Chinese cinema-but Chinese cinemas as well.

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Zhang begins by guiding the reader through the development of Chinese film criticism. He points out that Western critics have studied a comparatively small number of films from a much larger body of work, often with a unidirectional Eurocentric bias. The result has been that the few have influenced the many, perpetuating a cycle of production of films from China that bow to the Western notion of "Chineseness."

As a corrective, the author introduces readers to a much larger canon of film and proposes a multidirectional model of film studies, one that allows for a Western reading of Chinese film yet also recognizes Chinese cinema's own voice and its important role on the world cinematic stage.

ISBN 0-89264-147-9 / 400 pp, 22 Illustrations / Cloth / $50.00

Art and Aesthetics in Chinese Popular Prints

Ellen J. Laing

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Traditional woodblock prints preserve a Chinese folk art that has now nearly vanished. This book explores and explains the artistic and aesthetic bases of popular prints revealed in eighty-four late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prints belonging to the London-based Muban Foundation.

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Woodblock printing was the major method of producing inexpensive and colorful single-sheet images for mass consumption in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. These prints are known today collectively under the rubric "New Year pictures," but the term "popular print" more accurately describes these works, whose subjects include deities and tutelary spirits, illustrations to stories and operas, and even contemporary political or revolutionary messages.

The emphasis on the artistic aspects of these prints makes this publication uniquely appealing to Chinese art historians, as well as those interested in Chinese anthropology, popular religion, folk art, and traditional crafts.

ISBN 0-89264-154-1 / 206 pp, 84 Color Illustrations / Paper / $50.00

Shih-shuo hsin-yü

Liu I-ch'ing

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Shih-shuo hsin-yü (A New Account of Tales of the World), compiled by Liu I-ch'ing (403-444), is a collection of anecdotes, short conversations, and pithy observations on personalities who lived in China between about 150 and 420 A.D. Mather's classic translation incorporates the commentary of Liu Chün (461-521), adding invaluable information through citations from lost works of the third and fourth centuries.

The new edition introduces numerous revisions to this first complete English translation of the work.

ISBN 0-89264-155-X / 730 pp / Cloth / $75.00

Geographical Sources in Ming-Qing History

Timothy Brook

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First published in 1988 in response to the growing need for documentation concerning local history in the late imperial period, Geographical Sources provides bibliographical data regarding two distinct genres: route books, and topographical and institutional gazetteers. In its second edition, this essential research tool has been completely revised and expanded with close to two hundred new entries.

Each entry provides complete coverage of these important sources for research in Chinese social, cultural, and religious history. The separate introductions to the two genres introduce the student to the history and uses of these materials.

In addition to providing bibliographic data and noting variant editions, each entry provides locations where a work or its later editions can be found, whether in North America, Europe, China or Japan.

ISBN 0-89264-153-3 / 289 pp / Paper / $25.00
ISBN 0-89264-152-5 / 289 pp / Cloth / $60.00