Wang Zhiong (Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
On September 18-19, 2021, the 2nd High-end Forum on "Song and Yuan dynasties and the East Asian World" and the Academic Symposium on Ancient China and East Asian Seas from the Perspective of New Liberal Arts were held in Zhejiang Gongshang University. I regretted missing the first session because of trivial matters, and of course I did not want to miss the second session held on my doorstep. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Yuan History Research Office of the Institute of Ancient History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Research Office of the History of the Song Dynasty and the Western Xia Jin History of song and Liao, and the School of Oriental Languages and Philosophy of Zhejiang Gongshang University, and invited more than 40 scholars from various universities and scientific research institutions across the country to participate in the meeting, continuing the specifications and scale of the first session.
Group photo of the participants
In fact, in addition to the specifications and scale, the "Song, Yuan and east Asian World" conference is very distinctive in terms of theme and staffing, and the organizers will invite scholars of Chinese dynastic history and world history to discuss roughly the same theme. As far as this conference is concerned, the papers submitted by the participating scholars should be discussed in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and the content should be concerned with China and the East Asian world, and it is best to involve a little bit of maritime content. Since this topic has been predetermined, I think that at the moment of opening the invitation to the conference, except for the scholars whose research direction is already here may be slightly relaxed, the rest of the researchers, whether they are engaged in the study of the history of the dynasty or the history of the world, will probably feel some pressure. Take myself as a target, I usually mainly study the monetary history of the Song Dynasty, and the keywords of Song yuan, East Asia, and the sea may only be related to "Song". So when I go to this conference, what kind of papers should I submit, and how should I understand the papers of other scholars?
Conference posters
This is probably one of the negative effects of the existing discipline division system. The finer the division of disciplines, the deeper everyone will delve into, but the estrangement between different fields will also be widened. Academic dialogue between scholars in different fields and different disciplinary backgrounds has become more difficult. "There is a specialization in the art", an encyclopedic scholar, can only be achieved by a very small number of people who are both talented and diligent. Strengthening the exchange of horizons, methods and knowledge between different fields and disciplines may be a more practical way. As far as the field of Song history is concerned, Mr. Deng Guangming put forward the academic research concept of "Great Song History" in the last century, not to require Song history researchers to do the history of Liaojin and Western Xia at the same time, but to say that when studying, we must have an overall vision and pay attention to the interaction between the dynasties. If we expand a little further, taking into account the contiguous discontinuities, as well as the situation of other East Asian countries in the same period and their interaction with China, then the content and even the interest of the research is likely to have a new look. This high-end forum on "Song and Yuan dynasties and the East Asian World" provides a good opportunity for scholars to communicate across fields and disciplines. How to carry out academic research and exchanges from the perspective of East Asia, how to strengthen the connection between different dynasties, between history and world history, between history and other disciplines, and between historical research methods and new technologies from the perspective of "new liberal arts", are precisely the topics that Li Jun (Party Committee of Zhejiang Gongshang University) and Wuyungaowa (Institute of Ancient History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) emphasized most in their speeches.
Li Jun, member of the Party Committee and deputy secretary of Zhejiang Gongshang University
WuYun Gaowa, researcher of the Institute of Ancient History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Yuan History Research Office
The grouping and reporting format of the meeting also fully reflected the spirit of cross-interaction. The organizers did not set up groups according to the field divisions of Song history, Yuan history, world history, etc., but interspersed scholars from different discipline backgrounds; there was no sub-forum, no conference room, so that all participating scholars could hear the speaker's speech and participate in the discussion together. Even if it is not so easy to cross generations and disciplines, listening to and chatting first should be a good start.
Meeting site
The research objects of the participating scholars are very rich, roughly, including maritime issues, Sino-foreign relations, global history, economic history, philology, history of political systems, historical theory and history of historiography, and so on. Coupled with the fact that scholars are willing to integrate some other similar research fields on the basis of their own research to echo "East Asia" and "New Liberal Arts", it is not easy to accurately classify and summarize the content of the participating papers. In my personal opinion, the following five key words are more obvious.
ocean. The ocean is the core topic of this conference, and the papers submitted by scholars mainly involve geographical concepts, academic history and trade. Liu Yingsheng (Chinese and Western College of Zhejiang University) used a variety of Chinese and foreign historical materials to examine the concepts of "ocean" and "sea" in the geographical records of the ancient Western Pacific-Northern Indian Ocean in ancient China, and explained the sea area of each "ocean" and the formation process of the relevant understanding of the ancients. Chen Fenglin's keynote report (School of History, Beijing Normal University) analyzes the achievements, trends and enlightenment of the study of the Maritime Silk Road in Japan. He believes that in the past hundred years, Japanese scholars have made a variety of explorations on the issues related to the Maritime Silk Road, and have launched many influential works, which still have positive significance and reference value. Ma Guang (School of History and Culture, Shandong University) believes that the research results on Shandong's maritime history pay more attention to overseas trade and less to offshore trade. Combined with archaeological findings, his report focuses on the trade situation between Deng and Mi'er prefectures in the Song Dynasty and the economic exchanges between Shandong and Goryeo in the Yuan Dynasty. Hao Xiangman (School of History and Culture, Hubei University) examined the common risks and difficulties seen during the Song Dynasty's maritime trade with Japan, and pointed out that they used various means to open up smuggling trade channels by virtue of the "soft power" and "Tang dynasty" quality of Song Dynasty culture, and ensured trade security and profits through personal relations with Japanese magnates. In addition to the above-mentioned papers focusing on ocean issues, the ocean as a behind-the-scenes concept or hidden field is still implicit in many participating papers.
Liu Yingsheng, a professor at the Chinese and Western College of Zhejiang University
Eastern Asia. Like the ocean, East Asia is a vast spatial concept. The papers of the participating scholars focus on international relations, the exchange and exchange of people. Wei Zhijiang (School of International Relations, Sun Yat-sen University) considered how the boundary of the Yalu River between China and the DPRK formed this topic of weak academic research from three aspects: the expansion of the northwest territory in the early goryeo period, the Liaoli War and the possession of the six eastern prefectures of the Goryeo River, the abandonment of the distant cities of Liaolai and Baozhou, and the "expansion of the Yalu River" in Goryeo. Taking the setting of the Jeju Island Horse Ranch and the ownership of the horses as clues, Uyun Kowa observes the evolution of the diplomatic relations between Won-ri and Myung-ri. Jeju Island itself and the tens of thousands of herding horses on the island have successively become the focus of the struggle between Won-ri and Ming-ri. Guo Wanping (School of Oriental Languages and Philosophy, Zhejiang Gongshang University) also adopted a research path of seeing the small and the big, and examined the trade relations between song and Japan from the perspective of the exchanges between Zhao Bogui and Ping Qingsheng. Hu Weiquan (School of History and Culture, Shandong University) used the 15th-century relations between Japan, Ming, and North Korea as clues to the Wokou, drifters, and captives, and pointed out that the interaction between the three countries and the Ryukyu Islands was crisscrossed, and these interactions mixed different positions and political and diplomatic needs between countries, and it was difficult to summarize them simply with the so-called "tributary system". Wang Yukun (Institute of Culture, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology) reflected on the operation of the "tributary system", observing the various aspects of the tributary system from the post-war peace negotiations between Korea and Japan involving the political game between the three east Asian countries. Shen Wanli (School of History, Wuhan University) and Shu Jian (School of Letters, Shanghai University) focus on people exchanges in the East Asian world of the Yuan Dynasty. The former pointed out that the Goryeo people in the Mongolian Yuan Era came out of China, which was closely related to the development of the relationship between Yuan and Li. In a state of war, the Goryeos who left the Mongols became instruments of containment of the Goryeo regime. Some of Goryeo's political elites, through forms such as SuWei, were given the opportunity to eunuch China during the Kublai Khan era. In the middle and late Yuan Dynasty, a large number of Goryeo elites were eunuchs in China, and the Goryeo people had become an important political group in the state system of the Yuan Dynasty. The latter examines the multiple Buddhist worlds of Zhikong and East Asia in the Yuan Dynasty, revealing the differences in the attitudes and beliefs of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, and the dispute over Zen Buddhism from the activities and circumstances after the Yuan Dynasty entered the Yuan Dynasty. Yang Yulei (Department of History, Zhejiang University) examines the interaction between Zhejiang and the Korean Peninsula during the Song and Yuan dynasties from the perspectives of overseas trade, cultural exchanges, and technology dissemination. Sheng Yao (School of History, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese) contributed a report on the construction of disciplines and the relationship between history and foreign languages. Based on the experience of Beiwai, he pointed out that foreign languages are a major element in the study of the history of Sino-foreign relations, and foreign Chinese institutions can play a more active role in related research, focusing on the integration of the researchers' own Chinese and foreign languages, the teamwork of researchers who master different foreign languages, and the cross-study of history, foreign Chinese and even more disciplines.
Guo Wanping, Professor of The School of Oriental Languages and Philosophy at Zhejiang Gongshang University
Japan. Japanese studies is a strong field of the host Zhejiang Gongshang University, and this conference also has a number of research papers that take Japan as the core research object or examine problems from the perspective of Japanese history. Gu Huiping (School of Tourism, Beijing Union University) analyzed the "Yawata Foolish Children's Training" and Nichiren's representation of the image of the horrified Mongols, pointing out the differences and historical influences between these expressions and historical facts. Qu Liang and Gong Yan (School of Philosophy and History and Culture, Xiangtan University) examined another concept closely related to the Mongols, kamikaze, and analyzed the process of the kamikaze concept in the construction and role of modern Japan. Kang Hao (School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University) pointed out that the "14th Century Crisis" in Japanese history was an economic and political crisis with far-reaching social impact, and the process of this crisis was closely related to the rapid changes in the East Asian world in the 1350s and 1370s, which affected the diplomatic relations between the Japanese Muromachi shogunate and the Goryeo and Ming Dynasties. Jiang Jing (Institute of East Asian Studies, Zhejiang Gongshang University) believes that the visit of the Japanese Zen monk Wu Mengyiqing during the Yuan Dynasty helped him deepen his Zen attainments, improve his meditation realm, and also achieved his outstanding poetic talent. His visit also promoted cultural exchanges between China and Japan, and promoted the exchange and communication within the Chinese Zen forest. Wang Haiyan (Department of History, Zhejiang University) included animals in the research perspective, analyzing the types of animals obtained or given by Japan in international trade and exchanges, and sheep were the main subject of discussion in this article. This article was very interesting and aroused a heated discussion among the participating scholars.
Dating. The conference also included reports and papers that examined problems from the perspective of the history of dynasties, and scholars tried their best to open up the previous and subsequent generations and expand the period of discussion. Zhang Zhiqing (Suzhou Institute of Archaeology) reported the archaeological discoveries and latest collation results of the Fancunjing site in Taicang, Suzhou, analyzed the information on the characteristics of the times contained in the site, the source, the direction and other related issues, and introduced the possible use of a large number of porcelain fragments excavated from the site. Zhang Guowang (Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) pointed out that the widespread use of the yuan fu reflects the flexibility of the Yuan Dynasty to elect officials. The Yuan Dynasty inherited the old system of the Jin Dynasty and developed somewhat. Its asanas gradually became richer; the writing was mostly based on the Ba Si Ba characters, with Chinese translation notes; and the awarding institutions were not limited to Zhongshu Province and Province, including the Internal and External Hundred Divisions and the Throwing Institutions. The system of appointment documents for officials in the Yuan Dynasty, together with the xuanfeng, the edict, and the fu body, constituted the system of official appointment documents in the Yuan Dynasty. Kang Peng (Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) compared the Liao Dynasty state names of Khitan characters and Chinese characters in various periods, and believed that the state names of the Liao Dynasty, the surnames of the Khitan people, as well as the political center and the ceremonial system also reflected the duality of political culture. My article focuses on the analysis of the northern song jiaozi image in the Southern Song Dynasty, pointing out that these images are more from the construction of southern Song officials and do not reflect the system and circulation of the northern Song dynasty. It seems that I was the only one among the scholars attending the meeting to discuss the issue of currency in the Song Dynasty, but this was not the case. Copper coins were leaked to Japan, Goryeo and Southeast Asia in large quantities during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and affected the pattern of currency circulation in these regions, which is common knowledge in academic circles. However, how big the leakage of Song and Yuan copper coins was, and which systems in East Asian countries were changed, still need to be studied in depth. Professor Kang Hao's paper touches on these issues. I asked him how the foreign scholar Gao Yinmei calculated the amount of copper coins imported into Japan each year by the Song Dynasty, why the rate of tax paid with copper coins in Japan was so high in the 13th century, and how the Japanese people and merchants traded grain and copper coins in the context of tax folding. Without the opportunity provided by this meeting, I might find expert answers to these questions.
Wang Shen, assistant researcher at the Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
literature. Due to the broad vision of this conference, a large number of Chinese and foreign literature has been included in the scope of scholars' discussion. The discussion of a document itself, or the discussion of related historical issues from the record of the document, became the focus of the conference report. Literature research is the foundation of historical research, and scholars have different methods of analyzing various types of literature and different problem awareness, which has brought a lot of inspiration to everyone. Li Xuetao (School of History, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese) analyzed the acceptance history of Muxi's "Six Persimmon Diagrams" in China, Japan and the Western world, and interpreted the connotations of the map from the perspectives of Buddhist doctrine, art history and philosophical history. Ye Shaofei (Center for Vietnamese Studies at Honghe University) also used the figure to enter history, pointing out that Bo Xihe's interpretation of Kublai Khan's elephant palanquin in the English translation of the Marco Polo Chronicle was improper, and the four-elephant wooden building in which Kublai Khan was riding was a giant wheeled vehicle dragged by four elephants, and the shape was similar to that depicted in the Ming Dynasty's "Diagram of Entering the Foot". Ge Huanli (Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) argues that various evidence suggests that the Spring and Autumn Micro-Will does not belong to the series of works written by Lu Chunhui and Zhao Kuang, but it also adopts a form of exegesis similar to the Spring and Autumn Collected Biographies, and has a certain degree of dependence on the Sayings of the Spring and Autumn Classics, and it can be concluded that it was written ten years after the Gregorian calendar and before Lu Chun wrote the Spring and Autumn Collection Notes more independently. Xu Hongxia (Department of Chinese, Peking University) pointed out that starting from the 16-character key information signed by Wen Chong, the editor of the "Self-Record of the Zhijue Zen Master of Hui Ri Yongming Temple", it can be seen that Wen Chong is not a Song person, thus correcting the misjudgment that Wen Chong has always believed to be a Song person. Cai Chunjuan (Institute of Ancient History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) started from Yuan Ren's judgment and debate on Cheng Duanli's "Reading Year Schedule" to discuss the use of the book at that time, as well as the reading atmosphere and value orientation at that time. Chen Bo (School of History, Nanjing University) examined in detail the two poems collected in the "Ink Album of the YuanRen" collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and believed that they presented several aspects of Zhang Jing and his father Zhang Jianping's life and eunuch travel, and also reflected the interaction between Zhang Shicheng's regime and the Jiangnan Shiren to a certain extent. Yang Xiaochun (School of History, Nanjing University) analyzed Wang Dayuan's historical facts of going abroad and some questions about the writing of "Island Yizhi" and clarified some misunderstandings. Wei Shuguang (Department of History, Shenyang Normal University) used the manuscript of the Collected Histories in the Iranian Parliamentary Library to study the lineage of Ah Yan Huo Ah and Hai Du. Zhang Chengzhong (School of Letters, Shanghai University) believes that Wang Zhirui's "Economic History of the Song and Yuan Dynasties" has important pioneering significance in the academic history of Economic Research in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and Wang Zhirui was the first person to argue that the Song Dynasty was a capitalist society, predates the Tao Xi Sheng Food School and the Kyoto School. The book uses the theory of commercial capital, but does not belong to the "New Life School", but has the distinctive characteristics of early Chinese Marxist historiography.
Muxi "Six Persimmons"
In general, the papers submitted to this conference present the appearance of multiple angles and aspects of "Song and Yuan dynasties and the East Asian world". Scholars of intergenerational history and world history are by no means "talking to themselves", but under the guidance of the theme of the conference, they try their best to broaden the research horizon of the article and lengthen the period of investigation, in order to obtain better writing and discussion results. With the efforts of the participating scholars, the "Song and Yuan Dynasties and the East Asian World", a magnificent, layered and unfinished puzzle, is naturally more complete. The series of conferences provides an excellent platform for exchanges between the history of the dynasty and the history of the world, and it is expected that it will become better and better.
Editor-in-Charge: Shanshan Peng
Proofreader: Yijia Xu