Shi Qiande (Zhang Jing)
David Strand, Charles H. Dickinson College, USA Charles A. Dana, professor of political science, received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1979 and is the author of "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing: Citizens and Politics in the 1920s" and "The Unfinished Republic: An Example of Words and Deeds in Modern China." In a Chinese translation of Beijing's Rickshaw Pullers: Citizens and Politics in the 1920s, recently published by jiangsu People's Publishing House, Shi Qiande examines the political experiences of rickshaw pullers, policemen, workers, monks and other groups, revealing how the power of the times is deeply felt by ordinary people. Li Zhaoxu, assistant professor of the Department of History at Shenzhen University and translator of The Unfinished Republic, interviewed Professor Shi Qiande at the invitation of the Shanghai Review of Books.
"The Rickshaw Driver in Beijing: Citizens and Politics in the 1920s", by Shi Qiande, translated by Yuan Jian, Zhou Shuyao and Zhou Yumin, published by Jiangsu People's Publishing House in September 2021, 392 pages, 88.00 yuan
As a political scientist, how did you get involved in the study of history? Why study modern Chinese history?
Shi Qiande: I entered Columbia University in 1971 to pursue a Ph.D. and initially planned to study local politics in contemporary China. However, it was difficult for American scholars to come to China to do field research. In this context, I think it may be more convenient to shift the object of study from contemporary China to Chinese history. At that time, no scholar in the English-speaking academic community had yet written a monograph on the local politics and society of Beijing during the Republic of China. Paris, Tokyo, London and other large cities of the same size as Beijing have all had special studies, but Beijing did not.
My phD thesis looked at Beijing in the 1920s, but I wrote my dissertation using mostly American and Japanese archival materials, and I never went to Beijing! But shortly after I joined the political science department at Dickson College in 1980, I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from Peking University to go to Beijing for a year of archival research. During my time in Beijing, I was not only able to consult china's local archives, but also to walk around the bend and ride a bicycle to explore Beijing, and it was through these experiences that I was able to integrate social history research and political analysis into "The Rickshaw Driver in Beijing".
Shi Qiande skates on an unnamed lake, 1982
Who are the historians or historians who have influenced you the most?
SCH: I was deeply influenced by social historians, such as E. Schwarzenegger. P. Thompson (E. Thompson) P. Thompson) and George Rude, who studied the political ideas and behaviors of ordinary people in London and Paris during the Revolution, respectively. In Beijing in the 1920s, the most typical "ordinary people" were probably rickshaw pullers. Lao She's novel "Camel Xiangzi" fascinated me very much, and the story of Xiangzi is not only a portrayal of life in Beijing, but also a microcosm of the political and social changes during the Republic of China period. I also found that in the 1920s, social scientists in Beijing such as Li Jinghan had already pioneered this aspect of research, and their research results were also very valuable. During my PhD studies, the purpose of the study of the history of the Republic of China changed, and the historians began to regard the history of the Republic of China as an independent branch of the history of the Broken Dynasty, not just a chaotic era sandwiched between the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of the People's Republic of China. In addition, my colleagues are also studying other cities in China, including Shanghai, the most, and Guangzhou, Hankou, Chengdu and other cities. Their research results and opinions are also invaluable.
Movie "Shoko the Camel"
The rickshaw drivers in Beijing: Citizens and Politics in the 1920s are very interesting, how did you decide to study it? There are many "grassroots" groups born of modern urban life in the book, such as chambers of commerce, postal workers, printing workers, etc., why did you choose rickshaw pullers as the clue to the whole book?
Shi Qiande: Rickshaw pullers clearly do not belong to the traditional urban workers. They are not craftsmen in the traditional sense, in a way, they are somewhere between tradition and modernity. My research is largely influenced by Victor Turner's doctrine of "liminality": "The mediating phase" is a transitional social and psychological state that can produce more than one outcome. What attracted me to rickshaw pullers was this state of being between tradition and modernity, because in the 1920s, the general situation of Chinese cities was more or less the same. Given that rickshaws were the most common form of daily transportation in Beijing at the time, passengers, policemen, local elites, union organizers, journalists, and people of all stripes in the city could not hide from the phenomena brought about by rickshaw pullers, which I as a historian tried to explore. Therefore, I think that through the work of pulling rickshaws, we can get a glimpse of how the whole city operates politically, socially, economically, culturally, etc. During my research, I happened to read Sam Warner's book on the social history of American cities called Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston.
Compared with the study of major historical figures and events, the study of the daily life of the "grassroots" group often encounters problems such as scattered historical materials, small numbers, and thin content. How did you collect historical materials for rickshaw puller research?
Shi Qiande: Among the historical materials I use, the most important category is the local newspapers and periodicals in Beijing at that time. Peking University's newspaper collection in the 1920s is very rich, and reading day by day can unearth many stories, such as daily life, local characters, the ups and downs of the political situation, and so on. At first, the city life in the newspapers made me particularly confused; but over time, some main lines of research began to surface, such as the difficulty of living in the midst of economic and technological changes, and what it meant to be a citizen of the Republic of China, not a subject of the emperor. One day, I read (and I later wrote it in a book) that a rickshaw driver died at the hands of the police. At the time, I felt that the two parties were so real that I couldn't read anything for a whole day. I was so indignant. So I realized that what happened in Beijing in the 1920s was becoming more and more flesh-and-blood in my eyes. I hope to finally be able to convey such a sense of closeness to the reader.
When writing "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing," did you consciously use certain political science theories and methods to explain history? In addition to history and political science, do you refer to the theories and methods of other disciplines?
Shi Qiande: At that time, the greatest influence on me academically was not political science, but sociology and social history. Like most PhD students, my dissertation cites a lot of theories. However, in the process of perfecting my doctoral dissertation into a book, I focused on telling the stories of rickshaw pullers and their families, policemen, merchants, labor organizers, ordinary citizens, etc., rather than trying to prove any theory. At first, I did use the term "public sphere" to illustrate how protests, debates, scandals, and so on became routine practices for groups in an effort to preserve and deepen their own interests and opinions. Antonio Gramsci divided politics into "war of position" and "war of movement," and I was inspired by the taxonomist Ira Katznelson's analysis of the different stages of urban politics. The book ends with the "Trolley Boom" of October 22, 1929, which, in my opinion, is not only a typical escalation of transient conflict, but also exposes a deeper power structure.
In Beijing, 1918, two uniformed soldiers stood on the steps of the YMCA Army building, several rickshaws waiting in front.
"The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing" is considered to be one of the masterpieces that use the "public domain" theory to study modern Chinese history. Do you think there is a "public domain" in modern Chinese history? In what sense do you use this theory?
Shi Qiande: I cited the research of two scholars in "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing". One is the historian Mary Rankin, who explores the growing prominence of the idea of the "public" sphere in the discussion of public affairs in the late Qing Dynasty. The second is the German philosopher Habermas, who explored the development of the public sphere since the French Revolution, using the media and café debates as a vehicle, arguing that long before the elections were imposed, people could hold the government accountable. I believe that during the Republican period, although periodic elections disappeared after the first parliamentary elections in 1912-1913, a similar public sphere existed, consisting of various protests, news reports of various events and various public gatherings. However, some historians such as Frederic Wakeman do not agree with me. In An Unfinished Republic: Leading by Word and Deed in Modern China, I seek to show in more detail how the ways in which the new identity of the "national" continues to hold government accountable for its "for" and "fore". In other words, the success or failure of the speech is comparable to the success or failure of an election or referendum. I think that during the Republican period, there was a public sphere in which, as a citizen, one person could express his or her own views on an issue, and the applause of other citizens or the willingness to accept their views was a "vote" to measure their success. However, in order to express the views more clearly, I would also like to add that even if the "public sphere" exists in the Republic of China, it is not everywhere and is not evenly distributed. I admit that the "public sphere" of the Republic of China exists only in many places and at certain times in a state of looming.
You mention at the end of the book that China's cities could neither nurture revolutions nor produce a state capable of preventing them from rising in the countryside, but the political means, tactics, and emotions stored in the cities contributed to the revolution and state power around 1949. So, how do you understand the relationship between urban politics and rural politics in China during the Republic of China?
Schende: That's a good question! It is true that many rickshaw drivers came from the countryside, and the communist movement arose from Cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but it is not enough to examine the history of Beijing in the 1920s, or to study the history of the city alone, to show the complete history of the Chinese revolution. In this regard, "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing" has its limitations, as an example is that at that time I did not notice that there are many more Beijing citizens who participate in various religious activities every year in the vicinity of their homes or in Miaofeng Mountain on the outskirts of Beijing than in Political Activities. After the book was published, some scholars have corrected such omissions. Research that links urban-rural themes is essential to detail broader social change. In this book, in order to highlight the theme, I may be too limited to the scope of Beijing, resulting in the lack of obvious urban-rural connections and time continuity, and the causal logic is not clear enough. That's why, in the next book, The Unfinished Republic, I focused on political elites such as Sun Yat-sen and Tang Qunying, who were active not only in the cities, but also in the countryside, small towns, and foreign capitals.
I note that the phenomenon of rickshaw pullers spreading political messages is also mentioned in The Unfinished Republic. Was the inspiration for the book Unfinished Republic arising in the course of writing the book "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing"?
Shi Qiande: After writing "The Rickshaw Driver in Beijing," I wrote a number of articles on whether China in the early twentieth century had a "civil society" or a "public sphere." My view is "formed", but other scholars disagree. Then, somehow, I began to tire of this abstract discussion. "The Rickshaw Driver in Beijing" writes about all kinds of citizens, but they are all sloppy and have no space to really write about a specific character in depth. So, what was the childhood of these people? Do they have a childlike side? Where do their joys and sorrows come from? So I began to wonder whether the traditional method of biographical writing could more clearly reflect what public life was like for performers and onlookers on the political stage (some of whom, after being infected, would also do something or express their opinions and respond to what they saw and heard) in a period of great social change.
As I pondered this question about research methods, a conference proceedings on "Culture and The State in the Late Qing Dynasty" invited me to write an essay on Sun Yat-sen's political thought (in Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yu, eds. Culture and State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques, Stanford University Press, 1997）。 Although Sun Yat-sen failed to hold supreme power — neither did Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek, and other Republic leaders — Sun Yat-sen succeeded in getting the people to embrace his vision of a unified political community that would lay the foundations for a modern nation-state. Sun Yat-sen's success in this regard depended not only on his pen, but also on catching trains, taking ships, taking cars and even sitting in palanquins, and personally going among the people. I admire Sun Yat-sen very much, not only because of his writings and speeches (I think he was a high-ranking leader like Indian "Mahatma" Gandhi and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill), but also because he firmly believed that the revolution was to succeed and that talking about politics and national identity in new ways was as important as military power and political organization. In 1924, Sun Yat-sen delivered a long series of speeches in Guangzhou, expounding his outline of the founding of the country, essentially talking about how to build a new and stronger republic.
But instead of passing on the biography for Sun Yat-sen, I decided to use the method of combined transmission. At the same time as Sun Yat-sen, there were other figures who, in their own way, won popular support for their causes, and I decided to compare Sun Yat-sen with these figures. In the end, I selected Tang Qunying, a revolutionary who advocated women's rights, and Lu Zhengxiang, who served as a diplomat in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China government, together with Sun Yat-sen, as research subjects. I even found an event very similar to the "tram wave" in 1929, and wrote the first chapter of the book, "Slap on Song Jiaoren", of course, the scene of this conflict was not as fierce as the "tram wave", but the parties involved did move. On August 25, 1912, the newly reorganized Kuomintang held its inaugural meeting, at which two of Sun Yat-sen's young revolutionary comrades, Tang Qunying and Song Jiaoren, openly clashed over women's rights. At the time of the incident, Sun Yat-sen was also in Beijing, trying to maintain the quarreling Kuomintang of the revolutionaries on the one hand, and on the other hand, he was dealing with Yuan Shikai, a political opponent with powerful cultural and military forces, the new president of the Republic of China. On the same day, Tang Qunying forcefully expounded her claim for women's rights, but failed to win support from her gay men. Not discouraged, Tang continued to help lead the feminist movement and advocated for social reform. Sun Yat-sen was obstructed by Yuan Shikai and failed to take power, so he embarked on a lecture tour in the north, during which he continued to polish his "speech", not only laying the foundation for a series of speeches in Guangzhou in 1924, but also consolidating his political legacy. At the same time, Foreign Minister Lu Zhengxiang was hand-picked by Yuan Shikai as the new premier of the Republic of China because of his ability to handle words and documents as a diplomat, but his first speech to the Senate was a very personal self-analysis, which attacked the rules and customs of the officialdom at that time, and the people in the officialdom were the objects he sought to seek support. Lu Zhengxiang's speech was complained and ridiculed by the parliamentarians in the audience, and he himself was forced to resign. As a politician, being ridiculed is worse than being ignored. The fact that a person can step down because of a speech or come to power because of a speech shows the power of rhetoric in the early years of the Republic of China. There is also a situation like Tang Qunying, who lost the election but won a reputation at home and abroad, continued to advance and complete his political grand plan, and even left his "unfinished" cause to future generations to complete.
Both your Rickshaw Pullers in Beijing and The Unfinished Republic begin with the daily lives of individuals or "grassroots" groups, but these microscopic narratives always end up exploring the grand question of modern Chinese political culture and institutions. What kind of new understanding and perspective do you think these "small" perspectives in history provide for understanding modern China?
Shi Qiande: It is risky to put a single city like Beijing, or individual figures such as Sun Yat-sen, Song Jiaoren, Tang Qunying, Lu Zhengxiang, etc. under a microscope. What if there are other places or characters that are more important, and you just miss the key part? After all, sun yat-sen failed to unify the country, both by force and rhetoric. Song Jiaoren was an outstanding politician, but just as he was about to make a meritorious career, he was assassinated by Yuan Shikai's forces. Tang Qunying, with the help of many female comrades and some male allies, put the struggle for women's rights, including suffrage, on the agenda, but he never saw the day when women won votes in his life. Lu Zhengxiang was a successful diplomat, but the prime minister deserved a mess. But then, in 1919, China was treated unjustifiably at the Paris Peace Conference, sparking protests that Lu Zhengxiang, although initially reluctant, eventually supported the protests. I have tried to show that whether it is starting a career, starting a movement, or building a government, failure is as much a part of the process as success. Therefore, only by correctly measuring the success or failure of a person, a movement, and a government can we make a fair historical evaluation, especially for people and things during the Republic of China period. Failure to accomplish something is not the same as failure: as long as there are people who have the ability and the will to carry on the past, this thing has not failed. In my opinion, finally "unfinished" but not "unfinished", is a very touching and very respectful point of that era.
Thirty years after the Publication of the English edition of Rickshaw Pullers in Beijing, Chinese edition was published. Is there anything you would like to say to Chinese readers?
Shi Qiande: I saw Beijing for the first time in 1982, when Beijing was very different from the 1920s, when bicycles had replaced rickshaws. However, there are still many neighborhoods and neighbors that have not changed, many hutongs that have not changed, many historical buildings that have not changed, and many cities and natural landscapes that have not changed. I was pleasantly surprised and excited by these constant things. I wouldn't have written this book if I hadn't witnessed them with my own eyes. Do the readers who visit or live in Beijing today have any similarities with the Beijing of the 1920s presented in my book? Of course, the rickshaw is definitely gone. In addition, in the past, the floors of Beijing were not high, and one of the characteristics of this ancient capital was the large miscellaneous courtyards, and now many large miscellaneous courtyards no longer exist. Compared to the planning problems Facing Beijing today, the 1920s dispute over tram routes is insignificant. But, as in those days, technological change benefited some and others suffered. I wrote "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing" not to inspire nostalgia for the ancient capital, but to record the process of the formation of a new political world and the vitality and passion that people brought to this process. Like every other city, Beijing is still evolving today. But I do say that I miss Beijing, when I first visited 1982-1983, when the streets were full of bicycles; the "permanent" bike I was lucky enough to get back then, which was very durable, and I liked it.
In 1918, Beijing, a rickshaw puller waiting for guests on the side of the road.
Finally, would you like to tell us about your current research plan?
SKTID: I'm working on a monograph on the political ecology of parks and green spaces around the world, and the cases and illustrations are not only in China, but also in other countries such as the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Japan, and so on. Our Institute for East Asian Studies at Dickinson College received a grant to pioneer environmental research in East Asian studies and teaching. As part of this work, I spent a summer in Singapore studying a "linear park" newly built on an abandoned railway. In this regard, I published an article, which will also be included in the new book as one of the chapters. On the one hand, parks around the world share some of the common ideas embodied in the "linear park" model; on the other hand, like politics, parks reflect the characteristics of the location, such as local culture, social impact and natural environment. My wife and I are particularly keen on hiking and camping, so a significant portion of my research is outdoors. In addition, my courses at Dickinson College, "Politics in the Park" and "Urban Ecology in Asia," were also the inspiration for the book. In my opinion, from vast nature reserves to urban parks, community gardens and flower beds along urban sidewalks, green spaces are not only practical measures to respond to environmental crises, but also project aspirations for a better and better world.