After this American left, can anyone overseas study Chinese history so thoroughly?

Wen Yu Gengyun

With the death of Shi Jingqian, a famous historian at home and abroad and an honorary professor at Yale University, the era of the "Three Masters of Sinology" in the United States officially came to an end.

At the age of 85, Shi Jingqian, who was once with Kong Feili and Wei Feide, was regarded as a representative figure of the American sinology circle after Fairbank, and had the reputation of "three masters of American sinology". Now that the "three masters" have passed away, the academic circles cannot help but be discouraged.

Born in London in 1936, He studied at the Universities of Winchester and Cambridge. In the 1960s, he was a Ph.D. student at Yale University, where he met two of his most important mentors. One was Rui Mary, a high-ranking disciple of Fairbank, and the other was Fang Zhaoyao, a historian of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The name "Shi Jingqian", which is rich in classical beauty, is exactly what Fang Zhaoyao coined, which means "study history and admire Sima Qian".

Shi Jingqian did not live up to the teacher's ardent expectations, and his lifelong research was in pursuit of the great cause of Tai Shi Gong. Even his love for character studies is like inheriting Sima Qian's tradition of chronicles. His writings are beautifully written and well-written, and he pays special attention to the life emotions of historical individuals. Even non-fiction literature may not have such an artistic beauty. His writing often starts from details, situations, and scenes, abandoning the deliberate design of theory first and macro design.

Shi Jingqian

Shi Jingqian has narrowed the psychological distance between academic research and ordinary readers to the greatest extent, and practiced the ideal of "unity of literary quality" of ancient Chinese historians in historical writing.

Shi Jingqian and the "Art of History"

Some scholars in the academic circles have a lot of "criticism" of Shi Jingqian's works, such as believing that they are shallow fragments, easy to tell stories, and sometimes imaginative. In the author's opinion, this can also be regarded as a superiority, which can be transformed into another evaluation - Xiao chang's language, microscopic vision, historical lyricism, humanistic sympathy, which is based on research "historical writing". It is precisely that a large number of historians do not have the ability to write, and they are only willing to act as examiners of documentary materials.

These criticisms often stem from the Enlightenment's monolinear view of history, the elite historical perspective within a political-economic framework, and the primacy of theory over research. In fact, most of these premises are just a possible paradigm that should not exclude the possibilities of other writings.

Shi Jingqian's works make people reflect that historical research is ultimately the foundation for writing history, and should not be studied only for the sake of research. "Writing" is its essential requirement. Descriptive, narrative and biographical are the core skills of history. Critics who consider it to be storytelling and biographical often do not stand up to scrutiny.

Throughout the Chinese historiography tradition, the chronicles, chronicles, and chronicles all revolve around the original characters and events. In the West, both Thucydides and Gibbon are committed to telling good stories. Shi Jingqian understands better what the historical tradition means for writing, that is, starting from the individual life experience, speculating on the kinetic influence of social groups and institutional structures. He was constantly wary of the overriding of various theories over historical research. "They want me to pay more attention to the myriad of modern Western theories, such as postmodernism, underlying research, or various other genres labeled post-Marxist." In all of the above aspects, I will still keep 'eating the ancient'. ”

Why did Shi Jingqian choose to stay away from theory? He has his own considerations, "As for adopting a stronger theoretical framework for content selection or organization, this may meet the needs of some readers, but for others, it will cause confusion and even daunting." Moreover, as far as the nature of the current Western cultural world is concerned, no matter what theory I choose, it will be quickly eliminated. This response is thought-provoking, the theory itself is branded, and only the narrative can be preserved.

Taking Cao Yin and Kangxi as an example, focusing on a kind of special writing, it pays special attention to exceptions and flexibility, what does it mean for the Chinese bureaucratic tradition? Cao Yin was not a feudal official or a Kangxi courtier, but his relationship with Kangxi was unique and private, which is difficult to classify in the history of the Qing Dynasty.

Hole Flying Force

Shi Jingqian regards Cao Yin as an anomaly, examining the institutional structure and bureaucratic nature of the society. "The emperor, through Cao Yin, could exercise great power of financial control. This kind of royal private subjection naturally transcends the administrative processes of the bureaucracy of Gyeonggi and the provinces, and this group of people can be clearly defined, and the special functions they play can also be analyzed."

This is a backwards of methodology, which explores paradigms, expectations, and norms from a special point of view. Cao Yin was authorized to do a lot of work beyond his duties, and Kangxi used the Southern Tour to personally inspect and develop the secret folding system. Both were practicing extra-legal institutional flexibility, and it extended to depicting the kangxi era's power-based strains.

Under the surface of political and economic life, Shi Jingqian can always see the isomorphism and resonance of literature and art and spiritual consciousness. After 1600, these aspects of Chinese society and culture can be seen in different forms. Aesthetic interests and linguistic innovations in the fields of art and literature, as well as the meticulousness of administrative structures and processes, have profoundly changed the face of China and still exist today. ”

The rarity of Shi Jingqian lies in a kind of superficial profundity. In my opinion, he arrived at the heart, beauty and life experience of history. "If we can synthesize various documents of system, literature, and politics, and look at it as a whole, Cao Yin's personality will naturally jump on the paper... Cao Yin's full aesthetic taste pleases both Manchus and Han Chinese. ”

Whether it is for Kangxi, Cao Yin, Hong Xiuquan, or the late Ming Dynasty scholar Zhang Dai, he has a delicate speculation on the restoration of intention and empathy. It can be said that behind the surface writing, it is a reflection of the "spiritual history" of the characters.

Kangxi: Reconstructing the Inner World of a Chinese Emperor is particularly prominent. This work is based on the Edict of the Prophet and simulates a first-person narrative through "empathy", which is a masterpiece. He uses the five categories of you, zhi, si, shou, and ah ge to cut materials through Kangxi confessions, depict secret emotions, and lead to historical contemplation with self-gaze. In my opinion, the book is unique in that it discovers the "body of a king": a physical Kangxi. The physical anxiety of "life and illness" always affects his mind, governance and decision-making.

As Mills argues in The Sociological Imagination, the humanities' general disdain for imagination is a great danger. Whether historical works can have imaginary factors and whether they can participate in the analysis with literary materials is a big point of debate. In fact, Shi Jingqian is very strict, and he will clearly tell the reader the source of the material.

The use of Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi" in "The Death of Wang" should not have been criticized. He borrowed literature to restore the big context and atmosphere of the era and the situation. And Pu Songling's life trajectory and age coincide with that Shandong countryside. The state of existence and the logic of emotion are the documentary values that literature can provide, and it can bridge a kind of lack and fracture. As a social history and a history of local life, the details of literature are the evidence and relics of history.

"Three Masters of Sinology" and called the logic behind it

Shi Jingqian, together with Kong Feili and Wei Feide, was called the "Three Masters of American Sinology". This was not originally a rigorous evaluation, but it was said too much, and it became a convention. Just as the rivers and lakes like and call the north and south, the number is known as the double male. The three also happen to represent the leading Chinese studies at Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley.

Analogy is a mode of thinking that reflects the reader's classification, comparison, and valuation of the achievements of the three. So, what is the internal logic of the three people in the history of governance? Is there any interoperability in writing strategies? I think the essence may lie in the vision, the vision and the method.

On the whole, their study of modern and contemporary Chinese history offers the possibility of a sociological turn. Their academic interests and similar overlaps in research fields (such as local society, grassroots governance, community analysis, civil associations and rebellions, etc.) will naturally lead to comparative discussion.

Wei Feide

In the past, we have emphasized more on the respective styles and paths of the three people. For example, Kong Feili is thicker, more traditional, is a standard academic study, and has very few works, more like the "bitter bard school"; Shi Jingqian is more focused on narrative art, and his works have strong empathy ability, humanistic care and life perception, giving historical research a temperature, implication and understanding, such as "bard"; Wei Feide presents a profound and extensive meteorology, not only covering a wide range of fields, but also deeply influenced by European annals historiography.

However, they have similarities in their writing strategies. For example, we explore the institutional structure based on events, explore the perspective of world history with local research, and analyze the sociological dimension of historical research from the bottom up and different social classes.

Both Kong Feili and Wei Feide focused on analyzing the local gentry, and some kind of coordination with the imperial control governance. "The Great Righteous Consciousness of the Yongzheng Dynasty" and "Calling the Soul" both use "events" or "strange cases" as incisions for microscopic analysis. "Remind me of how far things can be." Both point to a world of obscured aphasia, or to "gossip and gossip," pedantic obscurity, or to the prevalence of witchcraft.

From "Strangers at the Gate" to "Shanghai Trilogy", Wei Feide has continued his interest in local research, and Shi Jingqian's "The Death of Wang" also chose Tancheng, a remote village in Shandong, as a research area.

In addition, the deeper commonality lies in the view of history. Shi Jingqian and Wei Feide appeared several coincidences, and they both chose the late Ming and early Ming dynasties as the source of their research, and also valued the significance of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom event to the Chinese Empire. Because these two historical periods imply the endogenous nature of initiative, adaptability and change.

The narrative of In Search of Modern China begins in 1600, because "only from this point in time can we recognize the causes of China's current problems and what kind of knowledge, economics, and emotions Chinese should rely on to solve them." Wei Feide's "Hongye" attempts to analyze the new crisis buried in the transition process of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which intrinsically implants the decline factor of the empire.

The "Three Masters" all focus on the cycle and alternation of institutional crises, re-establishing order, and adaptation to change. The founding of the Qing Dynasty was a process of straightening out bureaucratic mechanisms, strengthening defense, and consolidating political legitimacy. The second coincidence is to use the particularity of the Qing experience to look at Chinese society and break the "essentialism" of the Chinese experience. The Qing Dynasty was not a simple cycle of dynastic changes, but responded to entirely new crises: how to coordinate within the Manchu and Han frameworks to rebuild the state system; how manchu attributes reconciled Confucian ideas, and the Confucian tradition became the key to building a common Manchu-Han identity.

Kong Feili's "Rebellion and Enemies in the Late Chinese Empire" uses the idea of "local militarization" to explain the profound impact of local regimental training and arming on the transformation of social and political structure. Local militarization may overcome the crisis and help the dynasty to survive, but it will inevitably lead to a continuous reduction in central power and the expansion of the power of the gentry and gentry, so that the socio-political structure can no longer be maintained and reorganized in the traditional old model.

In their view of history, they broke the framework of Western-centrism, the European-centered theory of the world system. This system presupposes a major premise – the rise of the West and the stagnation of China.

Just as Levinson advocated the "discovery of history in China", "Sanjie" also has a common theoretical basis: that is, the late turning point of the Chinese Empire, to find endogenous factors, should not simply attribute the modern transformation to the Opium War. They found the beginning of modern China from the changes in social structure caused by China.

This also strongly responds to the theory of "Western shock - China response" put forward by The previous generation of sinologists such as Fairbank. Relying on a strong sense of problems, "Sanjie" attaches importance to the process of crisis transmutation, reconciliation and transformation; in addition to the center and elite, it discovers the endogenous forces contained in the microscopic and the bottom, dynamic and linkage. This may be an important inspiration for domestic historical research.

Overseas Sinology Research, Valuable Lies in "Heterogeneous Gaze"

American sinology research has its long development process, during which there may be political considerations, but also traces of the Cold War. From the extensive amateur research of early missionaries to the professional research of various East Asian research centers after World War II, from the emphasis on classical and research in traditional European sinology, to the interdisciplinary synthesis of "China studies" in the United States, we have found a trend and future. That is, the "division" and "synthesis" of history in various disciplines. The originally solid, closed historiography is increasingly open to the humanities as a whole.

The study of the "Three Masters of Sinology" represents this tendency. Overseas researchers are increasingly aware that dialogue, literature sharing, and complementary advantages are the future of Sinology research.

Nowadays, Sinology has spawned more subdivisions of "Xianxue" in the United States, such as the "Shanghai Study" after Wei Feide. The attributes of sinology determine that overseas scholars do not have geographical advantages. Only by relying on Chinese literature and carrying out academic exchanges with domestic scholars can we enjoy the elements of "people".

The achievements of the "Three Masters of Sinology" are inseparable from this, and they have come to China many times to seek out and exchange speeches, and maintain close contact with domestic academic colleagues. This was difficult to achieve for a long time after the war. At that time, unlike Fairbank, who had experience living on the mainland before the war, they did not have the conditions to visit the mainland and conduct in-depth research. Most of them could only rely on the window of the Taiwan region at that time to study the language and obtain materials. This may be a rather embarrassing and distressing situation.

What is more interesting is that whether it is Wei Feide, Kong Feili or Shi Jingqian, most of them have completed representative works before the 1990s. In the preface to the new edition of Rebellions and Enemies of the Late Chinese Empire (written in 2001), Kong Feili writes: "I completed my study of this book almost 40 years ago, and at that time I did not have the original archives of the Qing Dynasty. Since then, the opportunities for research have increased considerably, and if I were to rewrite this book, I would expect it to be quite different. ”

This also shows that their academic creativity often bursts out in periods of insufficient materials and relatively scarce conditions. Although historical research is based on a large number of historical facts and rigorous research, the rupture of materials will also stimulate bold arguments and creative inferences. The study of history is not to imagine what happened, but to imagine the logic of history.

Nowadays, sinology research is obviously more superior to the environment and the times. On the one hand, there are more visiting scholars going overseas in China, and on the other hand, foreign research centers are also willing to absorb more Chinese scholars, who have more research advantages in language and culture. This objectively leads to the current situation of Sinology research - more absorption and interconnection, more convergence and confluence.

It is reasonable to assume that the future of sinology research is the future of academic globalization, which means that the eyes of others are constantly weakening, and more research may be like cultural appropriation and "displacement" (perhaps more domestic scholars, later as Chinese, study China abroad). At the end of the last century, it is difficult for sinologists and domestic scholars to have a strange, different and encountered sense of views, methods and theories.

However, the first thing that sinology research today should respond to is still the question of the intention of "for whom to study". It determines the properties and qualities of the study. The reason why Kong Feili's "Calling the Soul" has aroused strong repercussions in China is fundamentally due to his motivation for writing. He once said that the book was written for contemporary Chinese, and hoped that the work would also be original and inspiring for Chinese.

Today's sinology research is sometimes facing the danger of being confined to a specific academic circle and producing itself. Or voluntarily abandon the ambition to inspire Chinese scholars, only to be satisfied with repeating and translating a kind of "Chinese common sense" to the West, or they are self-degrading and pursuing the fun of packaging scholarship into best-selling works. The ultimate value of overseas sinology is to insist on maintaining heterogeneity, exclusivity and dialogue. These three are like souls, like the infusion of vitality. Its significance lies in the fact that it will always show the Chinese academic community the various copies, different texts and interpretation possibilities of research. As a coordinate system of reference, the Overseas Han Society continues to outline the territorial extension of Chinese studies, and ultimately, uses China as a "method" of viewing.