Memory is not only a trace of the past, but also a tunnel to the future. Through the screening of things by memory, we save valuable fragments in our own brains, and books are undoubtedly the ones that can most affect the way we remember. Through history and social science books, we can remember the phenomena that have emerged in human society, through literary and art books, we can capture details and subtle emotions that are ignored, and through children's books and life books, we can gradually grow up in time.
"Mirror image of the late Qing Dynasty Officialdom"
Author: Qiu Jie
Edition: Social Sciences Literature Press
May 2021
Qiu Jie, author of "Mirror of the Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom", thanked him for the video.
Tribute
In the archives of the History Department of Sun Yat-sen University, a rarely asked diary is stored. Its owner, Du Fengzhi, a prefecture and county official in the late Qing Dynasty, only began his career at the age of 50, and for more than ten years, he truly recorded the official situation in the late Qing Dynasty from the private perspective of a local bureaucrat. Qiu Jie had a unique insight, and after a long period of in-depth reading, he fully excavated the value of this diary. Why did local officials in the late Qing Dynasty often deviate from the royal law to make judgments? How do officials interact on a daily basis, top to bottom? Is "imperial power" "not down to the county"? In view of this series of important issues, "Mirror Images of The OfficialDom of the Late Qing Dynasty" fills in many key facts and details that have not been fully paid attention to by predecessors on the basis of existing research on the history of the political system and legal system of the Qing Dynasty.
We salute Qiu Jie, who used his wisdom to contribute valuable new historical materials and new perspectives to an important field of historical research, and even more to pay tribute to him as a historian who practiced the research spirit of "sitting on the bench for ten years", and poured nearly twenty years of painstaking efforts into a work. We pay tribute to "Mirror Image of the Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom", which is a micro-knowledge, and uses the vivid daily life of grass-roots officials to reflect the political ecology of the late Qing Dynasty and its hidden worries. It looks at the living people in the abstract system and writes a "living institutional history", which shows a strong humanistic care.
Thank you
I am grateful to learn that this book won the "2021 Beijing News Annual Reading Recommendation". To a certain extent, this book is a by-product of my annotation of Du Fengzhi's diary. The diary has many details of the operation of the late Qing Dynasty officialdom that the academic circles did not pay much attention to in the past, and I wrote down these details or stories by hand, and later wrote this book. After the book was published, it was encouraged by many colleagues who studied Qing history and modern history. Several well-known book reviewers have made very professional and pertinent reviews. Someone also pointed out some of the things that needed to be improved in the book, and I thanked and admired it.
The publisher's editor told me that the book had been reprinted twice since it was published. Not many academic works were reprinted twice in the year of publication, and many people were willing to read the books I wrote, and of course I was happy as an author, but I also knew that maybe not because of the good writing, but because the content of Du Fengzhi's diary was really attractive. I hope this book will remind more researchers to pay attention to Du Fengzhi's diary.
--Qiu Jie
Qiu Jie is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of History of Sun Yat-sen University, whose main research direction is modern Chinese history.
01 This book
Beijing News: By studying Du Fengzhi's diary, how do you understand the historical value of the diary? What do I need to pay attention to when using diary historical materials?
Qiu Jie: With the further diversification of historical research, scholars have also paid more and more attention to diaries, especially du fengzhi's diaries, which are relatively large and have been recorded for many years. The diary is usually written down the same day (even if it is written for too long), and the memory error is less likely, and it will more realistically reflect the author's thoughts. Because of its privacy, the diary records facts that are not reflected in other literature. The diaries of important people, such as "The Diary of Chiang Kai-shek", are naturally more valued by researchers because they involve many major historical issues. Generally speaking, those who have a high status in politics, military, academics, etc., will foresee that the diary will be made public in the future, so they will consciously or unconsciously have some scruples when writing, and scholars must consider this factor when quoting.
Du Fengzhi is a petty official, he was 53 years old when he entered the career, he is also a more rational person, self-aware, knows that he will not be famous in history, and writing a diary is not to shape his own image to flow to future generations. At that time, there was no possibility of printing and publishing a million-word diary, and the diary recorded a large number of harsh comments on superiors, colleagues, subordinates and even close friends, and even wrote down some of his own privacy, indicating that Du Fengzhi did not intend to show the diary when he wrote the diary, but only wrote down what he saw, heard and personally experienced, and wrote down his observations and thoughts, at most just to vent his emotions by keeping a diary. Historically, this kind of "writing for the sake of writing" and the diary that is not engraved and published are more credible. As a prefecture and county official, Du Fengzhi's observations and records also have a special perspective.
But I don't think Du Fengzhi's diary is all true. My experience in reading the entire diary is that Du Fengzhi's accounts of his superiors' instructions, the discussions of his colleagues, and his own means of urging, indiscriminate torture, various expenditures, and property disposal are basically credible. However, his account and comment on the course of the incident, the truth of the case, and the Guangdong society and Guangdong customs must be one-sided or even untrue. The account of facts will also be selected and tailored due to interest, closeness, likes and dislikes, rumors and errors, improper judgment, and knowing one or the other. Therefore, the content recorded by Du Fengzhi in the diary cannot be simply regarded as a history of letters, but the mentality of Du Fengzhi reflected in the diary should be true.
For historians, how to use historical materials is a basic skill, since this diary historical material is of high value, as long as it is used in accordance with the norms of academic research, it will certainly be useful for the study of many topics.
Beijing News: What is the biggest difficulty encountered in the process of reading and sorting out the diary and writing this book? For the follow-up researchers of this diary, what are the questions that need to be further extended?
Qiu Jie: I am very grateful to all the readers for their love, especially to the readers and book critics who pointed out some of the shortcomings of "Mirror images of the Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom". The first major difficulty I encountered in compiling this diary was, of course, the problems of "recognizing words" and "recognizing people.". The diary is written in more cursive writing, which is very heavy, and the insertion and alteration are often in small characters with fly heads. Du Fengzhi's writing may not completely follow the cursive specifications, occasionally there are typos, many times the words can not be recognized, can only rely on the context of speculation, encounter people's names, place names written very sloppily, can not guess according to the context, it is more difficult. In addition to using various calligraphy reference books, I often consult friends who know calligraphy. Now there are many databases to search, as long as you come up with the right keywords, repeatedly try, many names, place names can be correctly written can be found. The characters mentioned in the diary rarely use their real names and full names, and most of them use font sizes, borrowed names, nicknames, or official names and abbreviations, making it even more difficult to find out "who is who".
I believe that scholars who study Qing history in the future will pay close attention to this diary. The diary's record of handling cases deserves particular attention. As far as I know, Professor Xu Zhongming of Sun Yat-sen University has carefully read all the diaries and believes that he and other scholars who study the history of the legal system of the Qing Dynasty will achieve very innovative results by using this diary.
Beijing News: From Du Fengzhi's personal account, what characteristics of the macro-political atmosphere of the late Qing Dynasty officialdom did you feel? What is the representative story of Du Fengzhi?
Qiu Jie: The diary reflects that until the late 19th century, the qing officialdom, that is, the political system of the Qing Dynasty, had not yet "come out of the Middle Ages", which was both a product of China's backward economic, political and social system at that time, and at the same time a great obstacle to China's "modernization". As a middle- and lower-ranking official in the Qing Dynasty, Du Fengzhi is not easy to judge how representative he is, but he is at least a "normal" Qing Dynasty prefecture and county official. I think his story reflects that most officials have no doubts about the "principle ethics" and the "rationality" of Qing rule, and they are very energetic as officials, so that the Qing political system can maintain "normal" operation on the old track. Although Du Fengzhi has also read some books introducing "Western studies", his thinking still has not "gone out of the Middle Ages". It can be seen from this that at that time, there was a great lack of social and ideological basis for political reform among the official community.
02 This man
Beijing News: Studying Du Fengzhi's diary, what new understanding does it have for you to understand the politics, culture and economy of Guangdong in modern times?
Qiu Jie: Reading a diary, it is difficult to gain too many new understandings of such a big issue as "the politics, culture, and economy of the modern Guangdong region" that subverts the past cognition. However, this diary provides many details that were not paid much attention to by previous generations, which can give us a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the "politics, culture and economy of the modern Guangdong region". From the late Tongzhi period to the early Guangxu period, Guangdong, like the whole country, was a relatively "peaceful" period in the late Qing Dynasty, and there were no "major events" of internal and external troubles, and Du Fengzhi's diary reminds us that there are many problems worth studying in Guangdong for so many years.
Beijing News: What new issues have you been paying attention to and studying recently? What are some of the books we would like to recommend to our readers in 2021?
Qiu Jie: Last year I wrote an article titled "Extrajudicial Considerations of County Officials in The Late Qingzhou Prefecture: Based on Du Fengzhi's Case Investigation", which may be published this year. I also want to write a book on this perspective. However, I lack the academic background of legal discipline education and research, and I have not communicated with scholars who study the history of the legal system in the past, even if this book is written, it will definitely be very different from the authentic legal history research works in terms of method, perspective, narrative and language, and my self-positioning, like "Mirror Image of the Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom", is a reading history note, but the content will not be repeated.
In recent years, because of my old age, I have been busy making annotations to "Du Fengzhi's Diary", and I have not read much and have not been attentive enough. In the new books in 2021, Lu Xiqi's "Research on the Ancient Chinese Township System", Chen Chunsheng's "Local Stories and National History - Social Changes in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Han River", Zhou Lin's "Business Travel anno - The Commercial System of Chongqing in the Qing Dynasty" and Peng Nansheng's "Merchant Society in the Neighborhood - Shanghai Road Business Federation (1919-1929)", because it is related to the books I am writing or the issues that I have always been interested in, I have read it more carefully and got a lot of inspiration. I hope more readers will be as interested in these books as I am.
Written by 丨 Liu Yaguang
Edited by 丨Qing Qingzi, Shen Chan, Xiao Shuyan
Proofreading 丨Xue Jingning, Li Ming