Intellectual Trends in Late Imperial China (Chinese Studies)

Introduction

It seems indubitable that Chinese thought experienced notable changes in the late imperial period, roughly from the late Ming through the mid Qing. Although scholars argue over the genesis, content, nature, and significance of the new developments, most acknowledge and recognize the patterned fundamental shifts in intellectual trends and directions. Some of the interrelated traits of the intellectual redirection include the following: (1) fungibility and syncretism in thinking that tended to mitigate the authority of received opinions; (2) palpable impulse to reorder and manage the world, invoking the ideal of ordering the world through practical statecraft and statesmanship (jingshi 經世); (3) general aversion toward metaphysical speculation and moral introspection and the corresponding interest in the pursuit of solid and practical learning, the so-called puxue 樸學 and shixue 實學, giving rise to utilitarian and instrumental notions of scholarship; (4) valuing personal practical experience, academic, political, social, and otherwise, such that one’s actions in the phenomenal and external worlds loomed large; (5) historicization of the classics (jing 經) that had hitherto been revered as sources of timeless authority, rendering them into objects of scholarly scrutiny, thereby breeding in time the meticulous scholarship of kaozheng 考証 or kaoju 考據 (evidential research and learning), which came to dominate the intellectual world in the so-called Qianjia period (the period of the reigns of the Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors, 1736–1820); (6) preference for limpidity, clarity, and simplicity in writing style and language; and (7) new and broadening horizons of the meaning of community, as the literati’s place in state and society was redefined and reconceptualized. To be sure, these interlarded strains of thoughts were by no means new in the Chinese intellectual universe. Yet, from the late Ming on, there seemed to be an unmistakable convergence of the various traits that fostered conceptual commonalities and intellectual confluences out of a socio-intellectual environ that was nevertheless characterized by manifold sectarian affiliations and polemics. Various modes of learning and thinking cohered to forge a new orientation that seemed to give conscious life in the late imperial period an identifiable stamp and identity. Late imperial China also ushered in new sociopolitical milieus in which thoughts and ideas unfolded. The growth of printing technology and the related book trade and culture, for instance, exerted influence on intellectual developments, as did the rise of the merchants and the fostering of an ethos that prized success in the workaday world.

General Overviews

Numerous general surveys are available from which one may glean information on the intellectual trends in late imperial China, but those included here offer some of the best analyses and discussions. Rong 1966, Gong and Shi 2007, and Wang 2010 provide systematic, general coverage of the intellectual trends, some in more details than others; Chen 2003 examines these trends in philosophical terms, whereas De Bary 1989 and De Bary 1991 deal with these in terms of intellectual history. Smith and Kwok 1993 offers a wide range of essays on various aspects of Qing thought. Yamanoi 1980 represents the best of Japanese scholarship on the topic.

Chen Lai 陈来. Zhongguo jinshi sixiangshi yanjiu (中国近世思想史研究). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2003.
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Written by one of the foremost philosophers in China, the second part of this volume concerns various aspects of late imperial Chinese thought. The most interesting and unusual portions are in the chapters 16 and 21 on the intellectual culture that emanated out of the academies (shuyuan 書院), where the scholars lectured and gathered to debate and discuss. Chapter 18 also stands out for dealing with the relations between Confucian ideas and folk religious beliefs.
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De Bary, William Theodore. The Message of the Mind in Neo-Confucianism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
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This work rejects the artificial division of Song-Ming Confucianism into the so-called school of principle (lixue) and school of mind (xinxue), tracing the development of Cheng-Zhu teachings in the Qing in terms of the central message regarding the primacy of the mind-and-heart (xin)—the xinfa (the message, measure, and method of the mind-and-heart), which constituted the core of the daotong (the transmission and lineage of the Way).
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De Bary, William Theodore. Learning for One’s Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
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This book uses ample examples from the Ming-Qing period to illustrate the centrality of the self in the Confucian project of moral cultivation, which, in its essentials, was premised on locating the realized self in the contexts of family, society, and state, such that knowing one’s self was tantamount to knowing the larger external responsibilities that one should shoulder.
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Gong Shuduo 龚书铎, and Shi Gexin 史革新. Qingdai lixueshi (清代理学史). 3 vols. Guangzhou, China: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe, 2007.
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This three-volume work is part of the state-sponsored, official project of the compilation of the entirety of Qing history. Although the focus is on Neo-Confucian learning (lixue 理学), this work of some 1,600 pages functions as a broad intellectual history of the Qing. It is particularly useful when examining the relationship between thoughts and social and political institutions, such as the examination system, academies, and Confucian temples.
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Rong Zhaozu 容肇祖. Mingdai sixiangshi (明代思想史). Taibei: Kaiming shudian, 1966.
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A classic text of general reference and a go-to primer that continues to furnish reliable information and serves as a basic introduction to the thoughts and ideas of the Ming thinkers.
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Smith, Richard J., and D. W. Y. Kwok, eds. Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.
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The title is somewhat deceptive in that it seems to suggest a volume of essays with broad chronological coverage. In fact, with the exception of a couple of chapters 1 and 9, all deal with various aspects of Qing thought and learning, such as evidential research, ideas of ontology and cosmology, popular religio-philosophical tenets, and conceptions of rituals.
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Wang Xuequn 汪学群. Zhongguo ruxueshi: Qingdai juan (中国儒學史: 清代卷). Beijing: Beijing dauxue chubanshe, 2010.
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Apart from being a competent survey of the some of the major intellectual figures and trends in the Qing, it is particular good in revealing the continued development of Lu-Wang learning associated with the Neo-Confucian school of mind-heart, which is commonly seen to have become moribund. The two substantial chapters 10 and 11 on the reemergence of Gongyang learning as an integral part of Qing learning are particularly informative.
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Yamanoi Yū 山井湧. Min Shin shisō shi no kenkyū (明清思想史の研究). Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1980.
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These essays show the newness of Qing thought in terms of the rise of the “philosophy of psycho-physical force (qi)” that dislodged the previously influential “philosophy of principle (li)” of the orthodox Cheng-Zhu school. Reveals the de-emphasis on introspective moral cultivation as fervent interests in practical and solid learning, such as evidential textual studies, practical statecraft, geography, history, astronomy, and mathematics, came to the fore.
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Primary Sources and Anthologies

The study of thoughts and modes of learning is first and foremost based and built on careful perusal and parsing of the original texts and works—the primary sources. Several collections of such writings are of crucial importance for research on the intellectual trends in late imperial China. The Huangchao jingshi wenbian (He and Wei 1971) collects Qing writings that deal with statecraft and statesmanship, whereas the Huang Qing jingjie (Ruan 1982) and Huang Qing jingji xubian (Wang 1982) marshal Qing exegetical commentaries on the classics. The Mingru xue’an (Huang 2009) systematically records many Ming texts, some of which are no longer extant, whereas the Qing xue’an xiaoshi, Qingru xue’an (Xu 2008), and the Qingru xue’an xinbian (Tang 1988), following suit, assemble a great variety of Qing writings. The encyclopedic Siku quanshu (Ji 1975) contains the complete texts of some late imperial writings, whereas the Siku quanshu zongmu (Ji 1972) offers succinct summaries and evaluations of many of these items.

He Changling 賀長齡, and Wei Yuan 魏源, eds. Huangchao jingshi wenbian (皇朝經世文编). 8 vols. Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1971.
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A voluminous collection of treaties, essays, and writings on practical learning and statecraft (jingshi) from the Qing period. For a description of the contents and organizations of this anthology, see “The Huang-ch’ao ching-shih wen-pien,” pp. 8–22 (Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 1.10, 1969), and “A Further Note on the HCCSWP,” pp. 175–204 (Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 6.2, 1970).
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Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲. Mingru xue’an (明儒學案). 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009.
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Despite its shortcomings, to the extent that Huang Zongxi (1610–1695) inserted his prejudices and redactions into many of the original writings, it still remains an indispensable resource, listing and recording the works of some 210 Ming scholars under seventeen “intellectual records” (xue’an 學案) in sixty-two fascicles. Abridged English version, edited by Julia Ching: The Records of the Ming Scholars (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1987).
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Ji Yun 紀昀, ed. Siku quanshu zongmu (四庫全書總目). 10 vols. Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1972.
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Catalogue of the Siku quanshu, not only providing some very useful information on the more than 3,000 pieces of writings included in the encyclopedic collection, but also offering a revealing introduction to some 6,793 items that are not part of the Siku quanshu.
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Ji Yun 紀昀, ed. Siku quanshu (四庫全書). Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1975.
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Some collected writings of the late Ming and early Qing scholars are included in this collection, an encyclopedic compilation undertaken during the reign of the Qianlong emperor, nine years in the making, from 1773 to 1782. Including altogether some 3,503 texts, it was meant to be a comprehensive encapsulation of all the worthy scholarship produced to that point in China.
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Ruan Yuan 阮元, ed. Huang Qing jingjie (皇清經解). 20 vols. Taibei: Hanjing wenhua shiye youxiangongsi, 1982.
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Originally published by Xuehaitang (Guangzhou, China) in 1860. The most systematic assemblage of exegeses and commentaries on the classics produced in the Qing period, particularly useful, if not indispensable, for the study of evidential learning.
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Tang Jian 唐鑒. Qing xue’an xiaoshi (清學案小識). 8 vols. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1988.
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A work compiled from 1778 to 1861 consisting of fifteen fascicles, in which the scholarly records (xue’an) of 256 Qing scholars are subsumed under various schools or traditions of Confucian learning, devoted to promoting the orthodox school of Cheng-Zhu learning: chuandao 傳道, yidao 翼道, shoudao 守道, jingxue 經學, and xinxue 心學.
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Wang Xianqian 王先謙 ed. Huang Qing jingji xubian (皇清經解續編). 20 vols. Taibei: Hanjing wenhua shiye youxiangongsi, 1982.
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Originally published in 1888. A sequel to the Huang Qing jingjie, equally indispensable for the study of classical learning in late imperial China.
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Xu Shichang 徐世昌, ed. Qingru xue’an (清儒學案). 8 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008.
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Originally published in 1938. A massive work of 208 fascicles, including the intellectual records (xue’an) of some 1,169 Qing scholars, compiled in the Republican period (1855–1939), following the general format of Huang Zongxi’s Mingru xue’an (明儒學案).
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Yang Xiangkui 杨向奎. Qingru xue’an xinbian (清儒學案新编). 8 vols. Jinan, China: Qilu shushe, 1985–1994.
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A hefty, informative, and highly useful work of some 3.5 million Chinese characters, ten years in the making, designed to be an update of and complement to the Qingru xue’an (Xu 2008) in the Republican period (1855–1939), offering itself as a massive intellectual history of the Qing.
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Databases

Increasingly, many of the texts and writings from the late imperial period have been digitized and made available online. The digital databases cited in this section contain many of the relevant primary sources, including the collected works of many of the Ming-Qing literati. The Chinese Text Project is a very handy resource since it is an open-access site, but it is not as comprehensive as the Scripta Sinica Xin Hanxue quanwen, which, however, requires institutional authorization for complete access to all of its resources. The Zhongguo jiben gujiku website arguably offers the most complete coverage, but searches are available only with very expensive subscription. Many academic institutions are subscribers. The Mingmo Qingchu xueshu sixiangshi zaitanjihua ziliaoku website specifically deals with the Ming-Qing intellectual transition, but it is still an ongoing, developing project. The Renming quanwei website focuses on biographies.

Chinese Text Project.
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This online open-access digital library makes premodern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers. With over 10,000 titles and more than one billion characters, the Chinese Text Project is one of the largest databases of traditional Chinese texts, with commentary and translation, in some cases.
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Mingmo Qingchu xueshu sixiangshi zaitanjihua ziliaoku (明末清初學術思想史再探計畫資料庫).
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A still-developing online database devoted to the study of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition, thematically and topically grouping and categorizing relevant books, articles, and other useful materials.
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Renming quanwei (人名權威). Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
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Database of Song-Yuan-Ming-Qing biographies.
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Scripta Sinica Xin Hanxue quanwen (新漢籍全文). Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
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The Scripta Sinica database, begun in 1984, provides digitized documents essential to research in traditional Sinology, with some 923 titles and 498,011,210 characters, containing almost all of the important Chinese classics. Authorization is required for full-feature access.
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Zhongguo jiben gujiku (中國基本古籍庫). Beijing University.
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As of the early 21st century, this resource may be the most comprehensive web-based commercial digital collection of traditional Chinese texts, numbering some 25,000 items, produced by Beijing University in collaboration with two commercial publishing companies: Airusheng wenhuajiaoliu youxian gongsi (愛如生文化交流有限公司) in Beijing and Wangshan shushe (黃山書社) in Anhui. Available only by subscription.
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Late Ming Thought

Examinations of and information on late Ming thought can be found in many of the works cited in General Overviews and Studies of Individual Intellectual Personages. Busch 1949–1955 and Gu 2004 specifically explore the activist Confucian thinking of the late Ming Donglin scholars.

Busch, Heinrich. “The Tung-lin Academy and Its Political and Philosophical Significance.” Monumenta Serica 14 (1949–1955): 1–63.
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A lengthy and rich article, virtually a small monograph, that still provides one of the more useful introductions in English to the basic ideas of the reform-minded scholars associated with the Donglin Academy, such as Gu Xiancheng (1550–1612) and Gao Panlong (1562–1626), who famously sought sociopolitical revivification through rethinking Confucian moral philosophy.
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Gu Qingmei 古清美. Gu Jingyang Gao Jingyi sixiang zhi bijiao yanjiu (顧涇陽高景逸思想之比較研究). Taibei: Da’an chubanshe, 2004.
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A detailed comparison of the thoughts of the two Donglin (東林) stalwarts, focusing on their critiques of Wang Yangming’s teachings and their call for the realization of one’s mind-heart and nature through practical actions, especially those that led to sociopolitical amelioration.
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The Ming-Qing Intellectual Transition

To assert the newness of the late imperial Chinese patterns of intellection is to highlight a sense of departure from the past; that is, a sense of differentness from the Song-Ming predecessors. The historical question that comes immediately to the fore is the relationship between late imperial thought and the preceding intellectual traditions. In general, inquiries into the phenomenon of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition have been pursued within two analytical frameworks: (1) the comparative approach that creates paradigms of adjoining intellectual movements and then points out their stark contrasts and vast differences, and (2) the developmental approach based on the assumption of continuity, governed by notions of tradition, influence, and evolution.

The Comparative Approach

The comparative approach that stresses rupture was in fact adopted by the some of the towering late Ming–early Qing intellectual figures, such as Gu Yanwu 顾炎武 (1613–1682) and Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), who created an archetype of Ming thought and Song-Ming Confucianism as abstract, abstruse, feckless, and feeble. Song and Ming thought became a monolithic type of thinking represented by finicky metaphysical speculation and passive moral introspection. By Qing times, such intellection became known collectively simply as “Song learning” (Songxue 宋學), the learning of moral principles (yili zhi xue 義理之學). The modern restatement of this position was made by Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, a most influential late Qing and Republican intellectual figure who criticized the futility of Song-Ming thought as “vague,” “intangible,” and “abstract.” Because of the wide circulation of the English translation by Immanuel Hsu (Liang 1959), Liang’s work became for a long time the basic framework and reference point for the study of late imperial intellectual trends, creating a dominant historiography that interprets the Ming-Qing intellectual transition as a cataclysmic event that ushered in a new spirit of thought. Hu 1930 and Hu 1967 held similar views, contributing to the establishment of the influential thesis of Qing thought as scientific and progressive. Chinese Marxist scholarship in general, as exemplified in Hou 1947 and Hou 1958, likewise endorses this cataclysmic interpretation of the emergence of “progressive” thought in the late imperial period. Such thesis of discontinuity also found echoes in older Western scholarship, such as Levenson 1964, which contends that it was only in the 17th century that “voices began to be raised against” (p. 4) Song-Ming idealism and subjective idealism. In sum, according to the thesis of rupture between Song-Ming learning and late imperial thought, 17th-century scholars begrudged the corruption of learning by indulgent moral introspection and arcane metaphysical speculation. Thus, there emerged the study of practical statecraft for the ordering of the workaday world of institutions and administrations, which realized the time-honored ideal of jingshi zhiyong 經世致用 (ordering the world and extending utility). Moreover, in order to rectify the abuses of the Song-Ming empty talk (kongtan 空談), evidential research (kaozheng 考証) arose, especially in the area of philology, otherwise known as Han learning (Hanxue 漢學), in contradistinction to Song learning.

Hou Wailu 侯外庐. Jindai Zhongguo sixiang xueshuoshi (近代中国思想学說史). 2 vols. Shanghai: Shenghuo shudian, 1947.
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A classic Marxist interpretation of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition as evidence of the rise of progressive thinking that saw the world in terms of its concrete materiality and thus the importance of the pursuit of practicality.
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Hou Wailu 侯外庐. Zhongguo zaoqi qimeng sixiang shi (中国早期启蒙思想史). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1958.
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An updated and expanded edition of Hou 1947, more fully capitalizing on Marxist vocabulary and theories, pointing to Qing thought as a sort of Chinese Enlightenment.
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Hu Shi 胡適. “Jige fan lixue de sixiangjia (幾個反理學的思想家).” In Hu Shi wencun (胡適文存), Vol. 3, 111–185. Taibei: Yuanliuchuban, 1930.
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An influential essay on some major intellectual figures in the Ming-Qing transition, together with Dai Zhen of the 18th century, advancing the thesis that in the Qing, the reaction against retrogressive Neo-Confucian thinking yielded a proto-scientific mentality of empiricism.
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Hu, Shih (Hu Shi). “The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy.” In The Chinese Mind. Edited by Charles A. Moore, 125–131. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1967.
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An essay that finds scientific, empirical thinking in the Cheng-Zhu notion of “investigation of things” (gewu), which achieved its flowering in 17th- and 18th-century Chinese learning, exemplified by evidential research (kaozheng).
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Levenson, Joseph. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. Vol. 2. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1964.
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A statement of the view that the intellectual transition from the Song-Ming to the Qing represented a disjunction in worldview, epistemology, and methodology of learning.
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Liang, Ch’i-ch’ao. Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period. Translated by Immanuel C. Y. Hsu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.
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English translation of Liang’s Qing dai xueshu gailun (清代學術概論), originally published in 1920. This influential work argues on behalf of the view of a wide chasm between Song-Ming learning and Qing thought, establishing a dominant historiography on the emptiness of the former, and the practicality and proto-scientism of the latter.
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The Developmental Approach

The developmental approach to the question of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition based on the notion of continuity appears in Feng’s classic survey of Chinese philosophy (Feng 1953). Feng regarded Han learning in the Qing as innovative and creative thinking, but he also insisted that it was a continuation of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism because it produced no new metaphysical categories. More thoroughgoing in arguing on behalf of the linkage between Qing learning and Song learning was Qian 1964. To Qian, the early Qing savants upheld the Song cultural ideals, but he did point out that the dominant scholastic Han learning and evidential scholarship of the Qianjia period strayed from the true moral way and political commitments of the late Ming and early Qing. The theme of intellectual continuity was also evident in Japanese scholarship, such as Shimada 1970, which regards Wang Yangming’s idea of liangzhi 良知 (innately spontaneous moral knowing) as a major spiritual resource for fundamental change. The left wing of the Wang Yangming school further unleashed the potentials of this liberating precept by expounding on individualism and voluntarism that signified moral autonomy. Shimada 1970 concludes that the Qing belief in the possibility of “objective” investigations of the classics should be examined in the context of the “subjectivism” that unified the Song, Yuan, and Ming philosophical views. Mizoguchi 1980 explores the import of late imperial Chinese thought while expounding the idea of multiple early modernities in world history. Late Ming and Qing witnessed the workings of the particular historical dynamics of “early modern” (sen kindai 前近代) China, manifested in the new conceptions of self and society that were reformulations of some central leitmotifs and polarities in traditional Confucian thinking. The most sustained effort to interpret the intimate nexus between Song-Ming Confucianism and Qing thought can be found in De Bary 1970, De Bary 1975, and De Bary and Bloom 1979, which examine the roots and nature of the intellectual transformation in the 16th and 17th centuries in terms of its intimate ties with Song-Ming antecedents. This thesis of continuity is restated eloquently in Yü 1975, which interprets the novelty of late imperial Chinese learning in terms of its organic relation with Song-Ming Confucianism by delineating the inner logic of Confucian thinking. Intellectualism, or the ideal of “following the way of inquiry and learning” (dao wenxue), took center stage in late imperial thought, whereas in Song-Ming times, anti-intellectualism, or the ideal of “honoring one’s heaven-endowed moral nature” (zun dexing), predominated.

De Bary, William Theodore, ed. Self and Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.
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The first volume of the trilogy edited by De Bary in 1970, 1975, and 1979 revises the view that Ming thought was “empty.” Instead, the authors show that it was vital and diverse. Late Ming thought represented a “near revolution” in that it espoused a new view of the self by generating a pragmatism that stressed “practical realities.”
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De Bary, William Theodore, ed. The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.
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The second volume of the trilogy edited by De Bary focuses on the 17th century, which ushered in a “turning point” in Neo-Confucian thought. Amplifying and reformulating the traditional Confucian emphasis on self-cultivation, the late Ming generated a positivism and pragmatism that valued “the world of human activity” (p. 31) as opposed to that of introspection and contemplation.
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De Bary, William Theodore, and Irene Bloom, eds. Principle and Practicality. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
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The third volume of the trilogy edited by De Bary and Bloom specifically deals with the central Neo-Confucian advocacy and construal of practicality, that is, “its demonstrable application to basic human needs” (p. vii) rejecting the conventional view of the Confucian tradition as quietistic, passive, and introspective.
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Feng, Youlan (Fung Yu-lan). A History of Chinese Philosophy. Vol. 2. Translated by Derk Bodde. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953.
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A view of Han learning in the Qing as a new tide of innovative and creative thinking, but the author insists that it was a continuation of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism because of its lack of new metaphysical categories.
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Mizoguchi Yūzō 溝口雄三. Chūgoku sen kindai shisō no kussetsu to tenkai (中国前近代思想の屈折と展開). Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1980.
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An important and provoking interpretation that what happened in the late Ming and Qing intellectual world was the result of the particular historical dynamics of “early modern” (sen kindai 前近代) China, the harbinger of Chinese modernity.
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Qian Mu 錢穆. Zhongguo jin sanbainian xueshu shi (中國近三百年學術史). Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1964.
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Originally published in 1937. This classic and still, in many ways, the authoritative work on the intellectual history and figures of the Ming and Qing offers an argument on behalf of the linkage between Qing learning and Song learning, regarding the latter as an intellectual tradition that emphasized “ordering the world and illuminating the Way,” p. 1 (jingshi mingdao 經世明道).
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Shimada Kenji 岛田虔次. Chūgoku ni okeru kindai shii no zazetsu (中国における近代思想の挫折). Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1970.
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Examining the intellectual developments from the Ming to the Qing through the prism of “modernism,” Shimada seeks to show that late imperial China had the spiritual leverage and intellectual resource to effect transformation of the sociopolitical order.
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Yü, Ying-shih (Yü Ying-shih 余英時). “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism.” Tsing-hua Journal of Chinese Studies 10.1–2 (December 1975): 105–146.
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By now a classic essay on the organic connections, or “inner logic,” between Qing learning and its Song-Ming antecedents, seeing the rise of intellectualism in the Qing as a special focusing on the Confucian ideal of daowenxue 道問學, pursuing the way of inquiry and learning.
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The Ming Loyalists (Yimin) and the Ethos of Loyalism

The fall of the Ming was particularly traumatic to many literati in that they now had to live under the rule of the non–Han Manchus. These surviving subjects (yimin 遗民) considered themselves to be loyal subjects of the defunct regime. During the transition between the Ming and the Qing, they produced much literature to express this very culturo-political identity and its concomitant ethos. He 1997 focuses on the pressing and timely question of life or death and martyrdom as raised by the loyalists. Tao 1997, Zhao 1999, and Wang 2004 more generally examine their views in terms of their understanding and conception of their tumultuous epoch of dynastic change. Xie 2001 and Xie 2004 more specifically explore the yimin’s use of poetry and Daoist ideas to vent their aggrieved sentiments as subjects of a conquest dynasty. Chan 2000 offers a Qing view of the loyalists, whereas Fang 2012 provides a clear glimpse of an institutional framework in which literati resistance efforts against the alien regime were launched.

Chan, Wing-Ming. “The Qianlong Emperor’s New Strategy in 1775 to Commend Late-Ming Loyalists.” Asia Major 3d ser., 13.1 (2000): 109–137.
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A study of the ways in which the Manchu Qing regime sought retroactively to redefine its relations with and conception of the Ming loyalists, in order to affirm further its self-proclaimed role as the inheritor and transmitter of Chinese learning and cultural values.
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Fang, Jun. “Literati Statecraft and Military Resistance during the Ming-Qing Transition: The Case of the Possibility Society (Jishe).” Chinese Historical Review 19.2 (December 2012): 87–106.
DOI: 10.1179/12Z.0000000005Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of the literati associated with the Possibility Society (Jishe) in the Jiangnan region and their views and actions of resistance against the Qing regime.
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He Guanbiao 何冠彪. Sheng yu si: Mingji shidafu de queji (生與死：明季士大夫的抉擇). Taibei: Lianjing chubanshe, 1997.
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A fascinating study of acts of martyrdom as the ultimate expression of loyalty and the literati’s views and evaluations of such deeds in the late Ming and early Qing, which examines the life-or-death choice that many of the surviving subjects of the fallen dynasty had to make in order to justify their very existence and way of life.
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Tao Qing 陶清. Ming yinmin jiu dajia (明遗民九大家). Taibei: Hongye chubanshe, 1997.
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Useful examinations of nine towering intellectual figures of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition, such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Wang Fuzhi, emphasizing their sense of pathos and resistance as surviving subjects of a fallen dynasty, showing how such sensibilities colored their thinking.
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Wang Fansen 王汎森. Wan Ming Qingchu sixiang shilun (晚明清初思想十論). Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2004.
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A collection of ten very insightful essays with fresh perspectives on various aspects of the thoughts of the late imperial Chinese scholars, shedding new light on their social consciousness, religiosity, sense of resignation, reclusivism, and moral ethics.
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Xie Mingyang 謝明陽. Ming yimin de Zhuangzi dingwei lunti (明遺民的莊子定位論題). Taibei: Guoli Taiwandaxue chuban weiyuanhui, 2001.
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An examination of the relatively little-known subject of the ways in which the surviving subjects of the Ming used Zhuangzi and his philosophy as a vehicle to convey their own hurt feelings and aggrieved sensibilities about the unwelcome existential conditions in which they found themselves—being subjects of a conquest dynasty and living outside of the establishment.
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Xie Mingyang 謝明陽. Ming yimin de yuan qun shixue jingshen (明遺民的怨群詩學精神). Taibei: Da’an chubanshe, 2004.
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An investigation of the under-studied subject of the Ming loyalists’ poetic sensibilities, crystallized around the pathos of yuan (regrets about injustice) and qun (conceptions of the role of an individual in the large community) as expressions of their grief and their way of coming to terms with the fact of living under a new alien regime.
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Zhao Yuan 赵园. Ming Qing zhi ji shidafu yanjiu (明清之际士大夫研究). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999.
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A study of the ethos of the literati during the tumultuous dynastic transition between the Ming and Qing. Instead of following the common individual-based narrative convention, it adopts a thematic approach, examining a variety of important intellectual and existential issues that engaged the attention of the literati, such as the questions of death, loyalty, and protest, and the style of life that many of the surviving subjects (yimin) deemed appropriate.
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Intellectual Movements, Issues, and Traditions

The intellectual trends in the late imperial period heralded a new phase in Chinese intellectual history, in which old ideas were pried out, antecedent concepts impugned, and new approaches inaugurated. The Qing scholars themselves were aware that they were embarking on something new, as they touted and expounded the theme and achievement of originality. Elman 2001 (cited under Evidential Learning (kaozheng) declares that a “revolution in discourse” occurred with the “formation of a shared epistemological perspective” (p. 38). The central role of Song-Ming moral philosophy, or the learning of the Way (daoxue 道學), came to be displaced by the all-pervasive evidential learning (kaozheng) that prescribed new methods and promoted new values. Several questions come to the fore: Was Qing learning synonymous with philology? Was there a stark dichotomy between philologico-textual Han learning (Hanxue 漢學) and moral-metaphysical Song learning (Songxue 宋學)? Was Han learning the same as evidential research? Did philology or kaozheng only assume centrality in a more capacious intellectual web woven from many strands of thought and learning? What were the main schools of thinking? What were the actual issues and subjects that engaged the literati’s attention? What were the role and place of historical learning within the kaozheng movement? Scholarship included in the Ming Loyalists (Yimin) and the Ethos of Loyalism has clearly indicated that the sundry strains of thought that appeared in the 17th century were in many ways not entirely new. What lent distinction, coherence, and novelty to Qing learning was the coalescing of previously unconnected and disparate intellectual approaches. The density forged by their convergence imbued Qing thought with temporal and ontological difference, distancing it from Song-Ming intellectual orientations. Moreover, what were the interconnections and interrelations between the civil service examinations, the academies, and the schools and education in general? What were the institutions that nurtured, promoted, preserved, and transmitted learning?

Practical Learning (shixue/puxue/jingshi)

There is no denying that one of the major intellectual trends of the late imperial period was the rise of the so-called practical, concrete learning (shixue), variously known also as puxue (simple, unadorned learning) and jingshi zhi xue (learning of practical statecraft and statesmanship). This trend repudiated abstract speculation and abstruse introspection, and its overt goal was to confront the world of social, political, and economic realities directly. Chang 1974 and Chang 1984 examine the ideal of ordering the world in Neo-Confucianism, which found its most robust expression in Qing thought. Ge 1994 offers a detailed, informative survey of the various strands of the so-called shixue. Huang 2003 broadly outlines the contours of practical learning and its ameliorative goal of sociopolitical betterment. Chow 1994 specifically explores the central importance of the restoration of the correct and authentic ritual order in the Qing scholars’ intellectual endeavors, an issue that was further examined in Zhang 2001 and Zhang 2013. Henderson 1984 reveals the rejection of speculative correlative cosmology and the embrace of evidential scholarship as the superior method to engage with cosmology and cosmography.

Chang, Hao. “On the Ching-shih Ideal in Neo-Confucianism.” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 3.1 (November 1974): 36–61.
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By now a classic and authoritative examination of the ideal of jingshi—that is, ordering and managing the world through practical statesmanship and statecraft—much of which deals with the philosophical background and underpinning of the Qing scholars’ espousal of concrete learning and practical pursuits.
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Chang Hao (Zhang Hao) 張顥. “Song Ming yilai rujia jingshi sixiang shishi (宋明以來儒家經世思想試釋).” In Jinshi Zhongguo jingshi sixiang yantaohui lunwenji (近世中國經世思想研討會論文集). Edited by Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo (中央研究院近代史研究所). Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1984.
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An essay that covers the same ground and territory as Chang 1974 but offers more detailed and substantial evidence.
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Chow, Kai-wing. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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This innovative work expounds the thesis that Confucian ritualism constituted a main intellectual trend in late imperial China, finding manifestations in moral ethics, classical commentaries, and especially in writings about lineage. Shows how efforts to effect social reform by rectifying and purifying rituals were underpinned by philosophical arguments of all sorts, thereby linking intellectual history with sociopolitical history.
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Ge Rongjin 葛荣晋, ed. Zhongguo shi xue sixiangshi zhongjuan 中国实学思想史中卷. Beijing: Shoudu shifandaixue chubanshe, 1994.
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Systematic survey of the various branches and strands of the so-called practical or concrete learning (shixue) from the late Ming to the mid-Qing. Covers not only the philosophical arguments and ideas for the pursuit of concrete learning and evidential research, but also writings and scholarship in medicine, weapons, military strategy, calendar, water management, and the like, providing interesting and needed information on some neglected subjects.
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Henderson, John B. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
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Demonstrates the newness of Qing learning by offering evidence from the 17th-century views of cosmology and cosmography, which rejected and critiqued the traditional correlative cosmology as being speculative.
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Huang Aiping 黄爱平. Puxue yu Qingdai shehui (樸学与清代社会). Shijiazhuang, China: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 2003.
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A survey of the rise of puxue (solid, simple, concrete, and practical learning) and its development from a broad-based intellectual movement to one that was more narrowly focused on philology. Follows the conventional argument that the high-handed literary inquisitions and proscriptions of the Qing regime goaded scholars into the safe territories of pedantic and scholastic studies of texts and words, thus abandoning practical statecraft and statesmanship.
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Zhang Shou’an 張壽安. Shiba shiji lixue kaozheng de sixiang huoli (十八世紀禮學考証的思想活力). Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 2001.
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A focused study of the 18th-century discourses, debates, and disquisitions on the question of rituals within the intellectual movement of evidential learning, contending that many Qianjia literati wielded philological tools to rebuild and reformulate what they considered to be the authentic ritual order.
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Zhang Xun 张循. “‘Junzi xingli buqiu biansu’: Qingdai kaojuxue de shehui xingge (‘君子行礼,不求变俗’: 清代考据学的社会性格).” Qingshi yanjiu 清史研究1 (February 2013): 24–32.
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On the practical concerns of evidential learning as expressed through the preoccupation with correct rituals and the foundation of a stable social order.
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Evidential Learning (kaozheng)

By the 18th century, in the so-called Qianjia period, evidential learning (kaozheng 考証) premised on exacting scholarship and concrete facts became ascendant, dominating the intellectual world. Since its publication, Elman 2001 has remained arguably the most-cited and most-referenced English-language work on the kaozheng movement, in particular, and the 17th- and 18th-century intellectual culture, in general. Although Elman’s claim that kaozheng initiated an epistemological revolution may be disputed, the book is a magisterial work, at once rich in insights and information. It reveals how scholars, especially in the Yangzi delta, sought to restore the ancient authentic Way (dao) through painstaking and critical investigations of the classics and ancient inscriptions, leading to the establishment of academies and libraries, apart from the composition and compilation of all manner of textual studies. In the process, the pursuit of learning and the production of scholarship became a profession, distinct and independent from office-holding and landownership. Lin 1986 details the Ming antecedents of Qing evidential research. Lin and Zhang 2003, Zhang 1999, and Zhang 2003 seek to show the enduring importance of moral learning within the apparently textually and philologically dominated evidential research. Wang 2004 and Liu 2004 illustrate the varied subject matter that engaged the kaozheng scholars; the former on the study of the Yijing, and the latter on the pre-Qin miscellaneous masters. The various aspects of evidential learning and the many scholars associated with it are studied in a couple of informative edited volumes published by the Institute of Literature and Philosophy of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan: Lin 2002 and Jiang 1994.

Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. 2d ed. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2001.
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Originally published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, in 1984. As of the early 21st century, this is still the most comprehensive general survey in English of the movement of evidential learning (kaozheng) in the Qing, clearly revealing its intellectual goal and methodology and sketching the various scholarly iterations, while also showing how social changes contributed to its consolidation and maturation.
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Jiang Rixin 江日新, ed. Qingdai jingxue guoji yantaohui lunwenji (清代經學國際研討會論文集). Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Zhongguo wenzhesuo, 1994.
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Collection of informative articles by scholars from Taiwan, China, the United States, and Japan on various aspects of Qing evidential learning.
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Lin Qingzhang 林慶彰. Mingdai kaojuxue yanjiu (明代考據學研究). Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1986.
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A thoroughly researched study of a host of Ming scholars’ philological works that in some major ways might have served as the foundation and model for the prevalent evidential scholarship in the Qing.
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Lin Qingzhang 林慶彰. Qingdai jingxueyanjiu lunji (清代經學研究論集). Taibei: Zhongyangyanjiuyuan Zhongguowenzhesuo, 2002.
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A collection of detailed and richly documented essays on various aspects of evidential research and learning in the Qing, some of which analyze the philological works of individual scholars, whereas others examine the compilation and redaction of classical texts.
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Lin Qingzhang 林慶彰, and Zhang Shou’an 張壽安, eds. Qianjia xuezhe de yilixue (乾嘉學者的義理學). 2 vols. Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Zhongguo wenzhesuo, 2003.
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A two-volume anthology consisting of eighteen well-researched articles, addressing the question of the importance of moral and philosophical elements in the works and ideas of the Qianjia scholars who are generally known for their evidential research, thereby revealing the multivalent nature of 18th-century Chinese thought.
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Liu Zhonghua 刘仲华. Qingdai zhuzixue yanjiu (清代諸子学研究). Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2004.
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A systematic study of the Qing scholars’ revived interests in the so-called miscellaneous masters (zhuzi)—thinkers and philosophers such as the Daoists and Mohists who were generally not regarded as integral to the Confucian canon and orthodoxy—as part and parcel of the rise and growth of evidential learning that first began with the interrogation of the classics.
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Wang Xuequn 汪学群. Qingchu yixue (清初易学). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2004.
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A learned study of the Qing scholars’ investigation of the Yijing, showing how the ancient classic was read differently for various reasons, from the Ming loyalists’ interpretations, such as those of Wang Fuzhi and Gu Yanwu, to the commentaries by high-ranking court officials, including those by Li Guangdi.
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Zhang Lizhu 張麗珠. Qingdai yilixue xinmao (清代義理學新貌). Taibei: Liren shuju, 1999.
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A revisionist study of Qing evidential learning, taking issue with the conventional view that the single-minded concentration on the exegesis of texts excluded and dislodged espousals of and concerns with moral philosophy, showing convincing evidence that moral introspections continued to animate the thoughts of many scholars, albeit expressed in altered forms.
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Zhang Lizhu 張麗珠. Qingdai xin yilixue: Chuantong yu xiandai de jiaohui (清代新義理學: 傳統與現代的交會). Taibei: Liren shuju, 2003.
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Sequel to Zhang 1999, which propounds and amplifies the thesis that Qianjia evidential learning, by virtue of its accommodation of both moral philosophy and empirical-objective research, represented a sort of meaningful engagement between tradition and modernity in epistemological terms.
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Historical Scholarship

One expression of practical, solid, and concrete learning in the Qing was historical scholarship, to the extent that history, the study of the past, mirrored the present. The pursuit of history was also part and parcel of the evidential research movement, insofar as it sought to establish unvarnished truths and facts. Du 1988 provides a most competent general survey of historical scholarship in the Qing, whereas Kan 2008 draws a general picture of the production of unofficial, private histories in the early Qing. Elman 2002 demonstrates the ways in which historical methodology and outlook influenced the study of the classics within the evidential research movement. Nivison 1966 and Ivanhoe 2009 offer detailed portraits of Zhang Xuecheng, the brilliant historiographer, philosopher of history, and historian.

Du Weiyun 杜维运. Qingdai shixue yu shixia (清代史学与史家). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988.
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An informative survey of the historical work, scholarship, philosophy, methodology, criticism, outlook, and approach of eleven Qing scholars known for their contributions to historiography. In addition, chapter 1 evaluates the place of the Qing in the Chinese tradition of historical production, and chapter 9 discusses the role of the writing of history in the kaozheng movement in the Qianjia period.
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Elman, Benjamin A. “The Historicization of Classical Learning in Ming-Ch’ing China.” In Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Q. Edward Wang and George Iggers, pp. 101–144. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002.
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A study of the ways in which the historical method and perspective were used for classical research.
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Ivanhoe, Philip J., trans. On Ethics and History: Essays and Letters of Zhang Xuecheng. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
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Instead of treating Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) simply as a historical compiler and philosopher of history (which he no doubt was and should be known as), this work discusses his contribution as a Confucian ethical philosopher with his own understanding of Confucian self-cultivation, translating for the first time a collection of Zhang’s essays and letters.
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Kan Hong liu 阚红柳. Qingchu sijia xiushi yanjiu: Yi shijia qunti wei yanjiu duixiang (清初私家修史研究：以史家群体为研究对象). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2008.
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Instead of using the common approach of studying individual historians or historical works, Kan constructs a general picture of unofficial and private historical pursuits in the early Qing. The author identifies the sociopolitical factors that enabled the production of private historiography, outlines the patterns of such scholarly endeavors, examines the sociological background of the writers, and explains the reasons for success and decline.
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Nivison, David S. The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh-ch’eng. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966.
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By now a classic but still an authoritative study of Zhang Xuecheng’s ideas of history and historiography, situating them in the larger contexts of his wide-ranging of thoughts on ontology, cosmology, and literature, as well as the enveloping intellectual milieu of evidential learning.
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Education, Examination, and Academy

The forging of the Qing intellectual culture was intimately connected with the education of the literati and the enveloping imperial examination system in which they were reared. Elman and Woodside 1994 provides the most authoritative and diverse scholarship on the ways in which education penetrated the strata of society and walks of life in late imperial China. Elman 2000 is a thorough portrayal of the multidimensional workings of the imperial examination system, revealing its deep and broad cultural influences that extended to all aspects of life in late imperial China. Elman 1979 studies the Xuehai tang (Sea of Learning Hall), showing how an academy functioned as the institutional basis for the spread of evidential research. Miles 2006 is a study of the same Xuehaitang in Guangzhou, interlarding social and intellectual history, and showing how the local power and institution created a powerful academic lineage and tradition with potent intellectual resources and influence.

Elman, Benjamin A. “The Hsueh-hai T’ang and the Rise of New Text Scholarship in Canton.” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 4.2 (December 1979): 51–82.
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A study published in the journal later renamed Late Imperial China discusses how the Xuehaitang (Sea of Learning Hall) served as the institutional basis for the nurturing and promotion of New Text (jinwen 今文 or gongyang 公羊) Confucian classical learning.
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Elman, Benjamin A. A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
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This meticulously researched book is based on evidence from copious examination records from the Yuan through the Qing. Elman reexamines the civil service examination system from a variety of perspectives—social, political, and cultural. He offers new interpretations on its workings and shows how the Ming-Qing examinations, based on the orthodoxy of the so-called learning of the Way (daoxue), diverged from the literature-based Tang-Song examinations. He also discusses how the institutions and processes of the examinations constituted an all-encompassing force, such that their influence permeated court politics, high intellectual life, popular culture, and religion.
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Elman, Benjamin A., and Alexander Woodside, eds. Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600–1900. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994.
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The essays constitute a collective study of Qing education that is horizontally broad and vertically deep, exploring the ways in which education was enmeshed in the multifarious social, political, and cultural realities in late imperial China. The studies also reveal how daughters and children were schooled, how mathematics and legal matters were taught, how the Manchus were educated, how academies and sects of learning were formed, and how central ideals and local contingencies were at odds. In so doing, the volume yields a big picture of the intellectual, social, cultural, and political histories of education of roughly 300 years.
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Miles, Steven B. The Sea of Learning: Mobility and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
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This book-length study of the Xuehaitang academy fruitfully interweaves intellectual and social history, laying bare the ways in which the local settings and social dynamics in the Guangzhou area governed how the Xuehaitang, founded by the eminent Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), was perceived, conceived, promoted, and received. The Xuehaitang literati appropriated the Yangzi Delta Han learning and grafted it onto the intellectual landscape of the Pearl River Delta in order to combat the orthodoxy of Song learning, yielding not only polemics but also accommodation, as evidential research came to be integrated with moral learning.
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Intellectual Sects and Lineages

Intellectual differences and orientations in late imperial China were given identifiable forms and cultural expressions through affiliations with learning (xue, in the sense of a specific tradition of learning) and schools (pai), sometimes forged by coherence of intellectual outlook and approach, and other times defined in terms of common regional origin and geographic foothold. Elman 1981 surveys various Qing schools of learning based on regional origin and base. Wilson 1995 studies the anthologies that defined the lines of transmission of authentic learning that supposedly represented the authentic teachings of the sages, the goal of which was to establish distinct scholarly entities and identities. Elman 1990, Ong 2008, and Tan 2010 examine different schools of learning that sprang up in individual localities, whereas Wu 2012 focuses on the development of the sect of Chan Buddhism.

Elman, Benjamin A. “Ch’ing Dynasty ‘Schools’ of Scholarship.” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 4.6 (December 1981): 1–45.
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A concise delineation of the various Qing schools of learning, defined and identified primarily in terms of the geographical center in which the schools were based and were active—for example, the Suzhou school of Han learning, the Changzhou school of New Text learning, and so on.
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Elman, Benjamin A. Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.
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An in-depth intellectual history of mid-Qing New Text (jinwen) learning that centered in Changzhou, as well as a sociopolitical history that sheds new light on how kinship organization fostered schools of learning and how classical studies masked themselves as political protests and advocacies.
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Ong, Chang Woei. Men of Letters within the Passes: Guanzhong Literati in Chinese History, 907–1911. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008.
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A study of the ways in which the Guanzhong literati conceptualized and wrestled with the idea of locality and their own local identity by negotiating with the tensions between the central and regional, official and unofficial, and national and local, seeking to carve out a social and cultural niche within the overarching ideal of a national culture.
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Tan, Tian Yuan. Songs of Contentment and Transgression: Discharged Officials and Literati Communities in Sixteenth-Century North China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010.
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A study of the particular genre of the qu songs, showing how literary texts and their authors were located in social and cultural contexts and how the qu served as a creative literary outlet, comforting psychic device, and instrumental tool of sociocultural authority. The author advances the thesis that these literati, dislodged from the power center, redeemed their lives by immersing in the qu while forging larger literary and social communities over which they held sway.
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Wilson, Thomas A. Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian Tradition in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
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A detailed study of the late imperial anthological compilations that sought to establish the authentic, and therefore orthodox, lines of transmission of teachings that supposedly encapsulated the genuine Way (dao) of the ancient sages. The author offers a clear picture of the many debates and discourses among the literati about correct and corrupted teachings, whose aim was to exclude one’s opponents from the daotong (lineage of the Way) while including one’s associates, leading to the formation of schools of thought.
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Wu, Jiang. Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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A systematic and wide-ranging study of the revival of Chan Buddhism as a significant event in the history of late imperial China. The author situates the religious sectarian debates regarding correct practice and lines of lineage in late Ming thought and factionalism, shows how Chan ideas were reflected in the Ming loyalists’ philosophy, and describes the central role of the Yongzheng emperor in defining Chan doctrinal legitimacy.
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Han Learning and Song Learning

As the evidential research movement attained prominence and held sway over the intellectual world, a contestation in the form of a stark dichotomy emerged: textual and philological studies versus ethico-moral learning. The former became known as Han learning; the latter, Song learning. Although many of the Qing scholars tended to identify with one or the other camp, recent scholarship has shown that such binary contention was an artificial construction that belies intellectual realities. He 2009 illustrates with much convincing evidence the interpenetration of the two strands of learning. Zhang 2007, Zhang 2009a, Zhang 2009b, and Zhang 2010, which together amount to a small monograph, offer some of the best explanations and analyses to date in Chinese-language scholarship on the import, purport, and nature of Qing learning by way of clarifying the interrelations and tensions between Han learning and Song learning.

He Yousen 何佑森. Qingdai xueshu sichao (清代學術思潮). Taibei: Taida chuban zhongxin, 2009.
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A collection of some twenty-eight articles by the late author, offering some of the best interpretations and explanations of the intellectual dynamics in the Qing world of thought, with particularly insightful arguments about the interrelations between Han learning and Song learning and their respective contents and concerns.
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Zhang Xun 张循. “Qingdai Han Song xue guanxi yanjiu ruogan wenti de fanxi (清代汉、宋学关系研究中若干问题的反思).” Sichuan daxue xuebao (四川大学学报) 4 (July 2007): 43–53.
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A clear and cogent outline of some of the main intellectual concerns of the so-called Han learning and Song learning, focusing on their ultimate convergence rather than superficial divergence.
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Zhang Xun 张循. “Hanxue de neizai jinzhang: Qingdai sixiangshi shang ‘Han Song zhi zheng’ de yi ge jieshi (漢學的內在緊張：清代思想史上“漢宋之爭”的一個新解釋).” Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan (中央研究院近代史研究所集刊) 63 (March 2009a): 49–96.
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A persuasive attempt to illustrate the inner coherence between Han learning and Song learning, despite their outward differences and tensions.
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Zhang Xun 张循. “Haxue neibude ‘Han Song zhi zheng’: Cong Chen Li de ‘Han Song tiaohe’ kan Qingdai sixiangshi shang de shencheng hanyi (‘汉学内部的’汉宋之争’: 从陈澧的’汉宋调和’看清代思想史上’汉宋之争’的深层涵义).” Hanxue yanjiu (汉学研究) 27.4 (December 2009b): 295–328.
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A successful effort revealing the concordance between Han learning and Song learning through a careful analysis of the content and import of the scholarship of Chen Li (1810–1882), the goal of which was to synthesize the two strands of learning that flowed from the same intellectual wellspring.
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Zhang Xun 张循. “Budu Han Song shu ye zheng Han Song xue: Qingdai Han Song zhi zheng ‘fengqi’ de xingcheng (不读汉宋书，也争汉宋学：清代汉宋之争“风气”的形成).” Zhonghua wenshi luncong (中华文史论丛) 4 (December 2010): 275–314.
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A competent examination of the origin, formation, and creation of the contestation between the two camps of Han learning and Song learning.
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Studies of Individual Intellectual Personages

Much of the late imperial Chinese intellectual history (or any intellectual history, for that matter) is still explored and understood in terms of the thoughts and ideas of individuals; that is, it was the coalescing of their separate signature contributions that forged and constituted the larger intellectual world. Although these individual-based histories are too numerous and diverse to summarize in one paragraph, all of them, in one way or another, seek to use the writings and learning of separate figures as reflections and exemplifications of the englobing intellectual milieus and overarching trends.

Late Ming-Early Qing Scholars

Late Ming and early Qing witnessed much syncretism in intellectual orientations, such that the so-called three teachings (sanjiao) of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism commingled, as revealed in Berling 1980, Ch’ien 1986, and Yü 1981. It was also a time of much intellectual innovation, as evidenced by the reinterpretation and reworking of various aspects of the Confucian tradition, as shown in Black 1989, Chang and Chang 1998, Handlin 1983, Lee 2014, and Peterson 1979, which respectively explore some representative brilliant thinkers in the period. Jami, et al. 2001 addresses the engagement between China and Western science and Christianity through the figure of Xu Guangqi.

Berling, Judith A. The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
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A critical examination of the syncretic tendencies in the late Ming toward creatively amalgamating the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism, and Daoism by studying Lin Zhao’en (1517–1598), whose works and endeavors, while using Daoism as the main point of departure and reference, were devoted to propagating a Way of salvation that was open to all.
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Black, Allison Harley. Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-chih. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.
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A thorough exploration of the multidimensional thought of Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692)—cosmology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and literary theory—in terms of some underpinning conventions of Neo-Confucian philosophizing, especially parallel modes of thinking, revealing how Wang sought to reconstruct and renew the old tradition.
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Chang, Chun-shu, and Shelly Hsueh-lun Chang. Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
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Through examining in detail the life and works of Li Yü (1611–1680), this book reveals the broader social changes that occurred in late imperial China: commercial-industrial growth and urbanization, population increase, and science and technology, as well as the resulting shifts in attitudes toward wealth, consumption, and sexuality, all of which molded a new literati culture.
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Ch’ien, Edward T. Chiao Hung and the Restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the Late Ming. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
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An astute study of syncretism in the late Ming, showing how Jiao Hong (1540–1620), a Neo-Confucian scholar, imaginatively and creatively blended the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism and Daoism.
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Handlin, Joanna F. Action in Late Ming Thought: The Reorientation of Lü K’un and Other Scholar-Officials. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983.
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A study of the thoughts of Lü K’un (1536–1618) as a window to the new intellectual outlook of the 16th and 17th centuries, revealing its orientation toward practical statecraft and its corresponding withdrawal from metaphysical speculation and moral introspection, a pattern of thinking that was shared by other scholar-officials, whom the book also examines in relation to Lü.
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Jami, Catherine, Peter M. Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, eds. Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
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A rich volume, built on both Chinese and Western primary sources, that reveals the various aspects of the complex life and thought of Xu Guangqi, an important Ming official, and one of the first Chinese converts to Christianity. An early champion of Western science, Xu Guangqi collaborated with Matteo Ricci, the pioneering Jesuit missionary, to translate Western scientific works. He also introduced a major calendar reform and adopted Western weapons.
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Lee, Pauline C. Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014.
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A revisionist study of Li Zhi, the late Ming figure commonly regarded as a relativist and iconoclast whose contributions was generally seen to be negative and destructive in the sense of being a persistent and trenchant critic of the establishment and stale moral learning of the Cheng-Zhu school. Lee argues that Li, in fact, propounded a systemic and positive moral ethics that sought to restore moral and political order in the world.
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Peterson, Willard J. Bitter Gourd: Fang I-chih and the Impetus for Intellectual Change. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1979.
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Interweaving translations of the writings of Fang Yizhi (1611–1671) and expositions of their meanings and significance in terms of the intellectual trends in late imperial China, this book shows how changed perceptions of the social and political worlds, including the roles and place of a xuezhe (scholar) and wenren (man of letters), contributed to the shaping and germination of the new modes of learning that began to claim ascendancy in the 1630s.
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Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
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Using the works and ideas of the Buddhist monk and thinker, Zhuhong (1535–1615), as evidence, the author reveals the intellectual phenomenon of syncretism in the late Ming, during which time the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism and Daoism cross-fertilized.
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Qing Scholars

The Qing episteme, with its particular emphases and orientations, can be illustrated by the works and thoughts of some innovative thinkers. Huang 1995 and Ng 2001 show how the Lu-Wang and Cheng-Zhu schools were respectively reformulated by Li Fu and Li Guangdi. Cheng 1971, Chin and Freeman 1990, Yü 1976, and Zheng 2008 reveal the intellectual contributions made by Dai Zhen. Birdwhistell 1996 demonstrates the role of the theory of knowledge in Qing thinking, whereas He 1999 and Rowe 2002 shed light on the immense role of statecraft in intellectual speculations.

Birdwhistell, Anne. Li Yong (1627–1705) and Epistemological Dimensions of Confucian Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
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A systematic study of Li Yong’s thought, with a view to showing how Confucian philosophy gained meaning and poignancy by referring to particular sociohistorical contexts, especially with regard to learning and teaching that sought to transform the self, society, and state.
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Cheng, Chung-ying. Tai Chen’s Inquiry into Goodness: A Translation of the Yuan Shan with an Introductory Essay. Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Center Press, 1971.
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A competent translation of the Yuan Shan (Inquiry into goodness), the treatise by Dai Zhen (1724–1777), together with a lengthy (53 pp.) introduction on Dai’s philosophical and metaphysical ideas, locating them in the larger context of meta-ethical thinking in the Confucian tradition.
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Chin, Ann-ping, and Mansfield Freeman. Tai Chen on Mencius: Explorations in Words and Meanings: A Translation of the Meng-tzu tzu-i-shu-cheng. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1990.
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An excellent translation of the Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (An evidential study of the meaning of the terms in the Mengzi), the treatise by Dai Zhen (1724–1777), together with two introductions by the translators: one on Dai’s life and time, and the other on his thought.
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He Guangru 賀廣如. Wei Moshen sixiang tanjiu: Yi chuantong jingdian wei taolun zhongxin (魏默深思想探究: 以傳統經典的詮說為討論中心). Taibei: Taida chuban weiyuanhui, 1999.
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A thorough examination of the classical studies of Wei Yuan (1794–1857) in a chronologically ordered framework, providing a clear picture of Wei’s evolving intellectual concerns and interests.
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Huang, Chin-shing. Philosophy, Philology, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century China: Li Fu and the Lu-Wang School under the Ch’ing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511529115Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study that situates a focused examination of the life and work of Li Fu, a Lu-Wang adherent, in the broader intellectual history of the contention between the Lu-Wang and Cheng-Zhu schools from the 12th century to the 18th century.
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Ng, On-cho. Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing: Li Guangdi (1642–1718) and Qing Learning. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
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A detailed examination of the thoughts of Li Guangdi, a keeper of the Cheng-Zhu flame and high-ranking official in the court of the Kanxi emperor, this book revisits the nature of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition by identifying its philosophical roots and reassesses the role and place of Cheng-Zhu learning in late imperial Chinese thought.
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Rowe, William T. Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
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Through Chen Hongmou’s life (1696–1771), the book engages some larger issues in 18th-century China: self-perception of the scholar-officials, ameliorative efforts to save the world, tensions between Confucian moral teachings and practical statecraft, the state versus local communities, and the prerogatives of the sociopolitical collectivities versus the imperatives of the individual. Suggests that the Qing answers to these questions conditioned China’s later responses to many problems.
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Yü Ying-shi 余英時. Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng (論戴震與章學誠). Xianggang, China: Longmen shudian, 1976.
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An imaginative history of ideas that examines Dai Zhen’s and Zhang Xuechang’s thoughts with reference to Isaiah Berlin’s metaphors of the hedgehog and the fox for two epistemological worldviews, offering the interpretation that Dai and Zhang, representing the two modes of Confucian learning—bo (erudition) represented by the fox and yue (synthesis) represented by the hedgehog—may best be understood as transmitters of the Cheng-Zhu and Lu-Wang tradition, respectively.
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Zheng Jixiong 鄭吉雄. Dai Dongyuan jingdian quanshi de sixiangshi tansuo (戴東原經典詮釋的思想史探索). Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chubanshe, 2008.
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To date the most comprehensive monograph in Chinese on Dai Zhen, covering not only various aspects of Dai’s thinking—his metaphysics and moral philosophy together with his evidential learning—but also emphasizing his preoccupation with formulating the sociopolitical and existential notion of shequn (社群): community and communitarianism.
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Intellectual Change in Social Context

Ideas do not function in a vacuum and emerge out of nowhere. They reflect the times and the social milieus from which they spring. Just as social changes in late imperial China engendered new ideas and changed old ones, so thoughts mirrored and critiqued altered social circumstances. Brokaw 1991 explains how old religious morality books acquired new significance and usage. Brook 1994 reveals the relationship between gentry patronage and development in Buddhism. Clunas 2004 and Clunas 2009 illustrate the connection between wealth and aesthetic tastes and values of consumption. Elman 2001 demonstrates the sociological conditions under which evidential learning thrived. Shang 2003 examines literature as social critique, and Yü 1987 describes how a mercantile ethos gained respect and power as merchants became socially powerful by dint of their wealth.

Brokaw, Cynthia. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
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A detailed study, blending intellectual and social history, of the hugely popular genre of morality book known as the “ledgers of merit and demerit” in 16th- and 17th-century China, showing their multiple functions and how they transformed the traditional conceptions of fate, influenced the Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation, and established social stability by giving people a clear sense of their space and place in society
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Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1994.
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Examines the ways in which donations to and patronage of Buddhist establishments contributed to the forging of a gentry society in late imperial China that was no longer dependent on office-holding and other traditional avenues toward prestige and power. Brook used information from three disparate counties, in the process also revealing the relationship between Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism.
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Clunas, Craig. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004.
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A sociocultural history of material culture in late imperial China, focusing on examining the “superfluous things,” such as the paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, carved jade, and other objects collected by the elites, as well as their aesthetic, social, existential, and philosophic perceptions and conceptions of these artifacts. Analyzing the Chinese phenomena with reference to the sociocultural theories and views in 18th-century England, the author also ponders the question of Chinese early modernity.
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Clunas, Craig. Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644. London: Reaktion, 2009.
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Based on the author’s lectures as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 2004, this volume offers a cultural history that illustrates the brilliance of late imperial Chinese culture through images and objects, such as paintings, weapons, textiles, and ceramics, as well as textual sources, revealing the robust interactions between China and the rest of Asia, thereby debunking the myth of Ming China as a secluded culture.
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Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. 2d ed. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2001.
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The second half of the book offers a finely told and carefully constructed social history of the Yangzi Delta, cogently showing how social changes in this rich area provided the material conditions that supported the growth of evidential research, which increasingly became the professional mainstay of many literati who failed to secure positions in the imperial bureaucracy. Originally published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, in 1984.
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Shang, Wei. Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003.
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A study that uses the 18th-century work, Rulin waishi (The unofficial history of the scholars), as an index to the larger intellectual and literary issues that engaged the literati of the time: purifying rituals, constructing the past and history, reading and writing novels as both entertainment and protest, forging an extra-official critical community, and regenerating the moral order.
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Yü Ying-shih 余英時. Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen (中國近世宗教倫理與商人精神). Taibei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1987.
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Refuting the Weberian thesis that unlike Western Europe and America, which were animated by the inner-worldly asceticism in Protestant ethics that enabled the rise of capitalism, Chinese culture, valuing harmony, was distinctly lacking in tension, Yu shows the abundance of this-worldly spirit in the Confucian tradition, a manifestation of which was the emergence of the merchant ethos that engendered a more complicated conception of the dao that accorded mercantile activities their proper valuation.
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Intellectual Development and the Culture of Books and Printing

The culture of books—composition and reading—and the process of producing books—printing and copying—are integrally a part of intellectual development, as texts are the physical encasements and vessels of ideas. Inoue 2002; Zeitlin, et al. 2003; Chia and De Weerdt 2011; Chia and Idema 2007; and Brokaw and Reed 2010 offer some general information on this linkage between printing and the intellectual and reading cultures in China, while providing some comparative perspectives.

Brokaw, Cynthia J., and Christopher A. Reed, eds. From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, Circa 1800 to 2008. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
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The thirteen essays, covering the period from the late 18th century to the early 21st century, examine the connections between technological, intellectual, and sociopolitical changes and the Chinese book and printing culture, shedding light on the emergence of genres of print, changes in writing practices, the spread and transmission of ideas via texts, the organization of knowledge, and the relationship between the state and print culture.
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Chia, Lucille, and Hilde De Weerdt, eds. Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900–1400. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.
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A volume of essays that examines the diversity of Chinese textual production from the 10th through the 14th centuries, providing a good background for the study of book and print culture in the late imperial period.
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Chia, Lucille, and W. L. Idema, eds. Books in Numbers: Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Harvard-Yenching Library; Conference Papers. Cambridge and Hong Kong: Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University, 2007.
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A volume of papers from the academic conference that celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Harvard-Yenching Library, examining the book culture of China, Japan, Korean, and Vietnam as they were influenced by political, economic, social, and cultural factors.
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Inoue Susumu 井上進. Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi: Shomotsu sekai to chi no fūkei (中国出版文化史—書物世界と知の風景). Nagoya, Japan: Nagoya daigaku shuppankai, 2002.
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An informative survey that offers very good descriptions of the book trade and culture in imperial China, albeit somewhat wanting in analysis.
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Zeitlin, Judith T., Lydia H. Liu, and Ellen Widmer, eds. Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003.
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The essays explore the relationship between writing and materiality in Chinese literary history and study the physical aspects of the production and circulation of writing, also moving the focus away from the author in order to show how editors, publishers, collectors, and readers transmitted and interpreted texts.
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Printing and Culturo-Intellectual Change

Chow 2004, Brokaw and Chow 2005, and McDermott 2006 specifically examine the role of printing in effecting culturo-intellectual changes in late imperial China. Hegel 1988, Shen 2009, Akin 2009, Li 2014, Dennis 2015, and Park 2012 explore the flourishing of certain genres as a result of the advances in printing technology.

Akin, Alexander Van Zandt. “Printed Maps in Late Ming Publishing Culture: A Trans-Regional Perspective.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2009.
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Examines how the growth of publishing in the late Ming led to enhanced production and circulation of cartographic materials in China, Korea, and Japan, including works on geography, military matters, and history. The author also reevaluates the role of the Jesuits’ contributions as a part of the expansion of publishing in the late imperial period.
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Brokaw, Cynthia J., and Kai-wing Chow, eds. Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.
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The eleven essays in the volume, duly informed by insights from the history of the book in the West, examine the social and cultural dimensions of the history of books in late imperial China from a variety of disciplinary angles. Explores the introduction of the book in the West and examines the relationship between the medium of the manuscript and print culture, the rise of urban and rural publishing centers, the growth of readership, and the development of special markets in a host of different texts and writings.
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Chow, Kai-wing. Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
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An examination of the burgeoning and growth of print culture in the 16th and 17th centuries from technological, economic, and cultural perspectives. Contends that both woodblocks and movable-type printing constituted a major historical dynamic of tremendous culture influence, so much so that writings and examinations came to be commodified, which in turn wrought changes in the conception and definition of authority.
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Dennis, Joseph R. Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center, 2015.
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Examination of the history of the book in Ming China by looking at the various aspects of the compilation and production of local gazetteers—authorial rationale, finances, costs, printing processes and technologies, distribution, circulation, and reception—shedding light, in the process, on other facets in late imperial China: social, cultural, and administrative.
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Hegel, Robert E. Reading Illustrated Fiction in the Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
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A detailed study of the salient physical aspects of the printed book in late imperial China, focusing on such subjects as book format, illustrations, and the theory and practice of reading illustrated narratives. Also examines the technological advances that enabled the efficient production of affordable books.
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Li, Ren-yuan. “Making Texts in Villages: Textual Production in Rural China during the Ming-Qing Period.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014.
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Examines the use of texts in late imperial rural China by studying textual materials from villages in Pingnan, northeastern Fujian, focusing on the texts produced by local people and used locally, providing little-known information on the rise of textual culture and the growth of the literate mentality in peripheral society.
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McDermott, Joseph P. A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.5790/hongkong/9789622097810.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A broadly conceived study of the history of the book in late imperial China, as Chinese printing was changing from the medium of the manuscript to an imprint culture, addressing a wide array of issues—manufacture, circulation, readership, and so on—by focusing on literati publications and readers in the lower Yangzi Delta.
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Park, J. P. Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.
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A broad-based study of the very popular series of lavishly illustrated books by Zhou Lujing (1542–1633), which forged the first multi-genre painting manuals in China, revealing how these texts fulfilled and shaped the reading tastes of an expanding reading public and how they imparted social meaning by serving as a sort of cultural capital and commodity that enhanced the status of the non-elite folk.
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Shen Junping 沈俊平. Juye jinliang: Ming zhongye yihou fangke zhiju yongshu de shengchan yu liutong (舉業津梁: 明中葉以後坊刻制舉用書的生產與流通). Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 2009.
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A very informative study on the production, circulation, consumption, and reception of the examination guide books.
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Theory, Practice, and Culture of Reading

Dai 2012 and Yu 2003 study the theory and practice of reading, whereas Son 2010 shows how the growth of print influenced conceptions of textuality. Guy 1987 reveals the Qing state’s role in forging a culture of books through official compilations.

Dai, Lianbin. “Books, Reading, and Knowledge in Ming China.” DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 2012.
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An examination of the art of reading and its application to the acquisition and innovation of knowledge in late imperial China, exploring the social, cultural, and epistemic dimensions of reading practices that were strongly influenced by the methods propounded and prescribed by Zhu Xi (1130–1200), whose philosophy had become orthodoxy by the 14th century.
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Guy, R. Kent. The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987.
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A multidimensional study of the compilation of the “Complete Library of the Four Treasuries” (Siku quanshu) that sought to evaluate, edit, and reproduce the best Chinese writings in the four traditional categories: Confucian classics, histories, philosophies, and belles-lettres, pointing to the negative process of censorship as well as the accomplishments and significances, such as fostering working relations between the literati and the Manchu state.
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Son, Suyoung. “Writing for Print: Zhang Chao and Literati-Publishing in Seventeenth-Century China.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2010.
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Examination of the practice and mechanism of private publishing among the literati in 17th-century China, revealing how the material condition of print influenced literary production and consumption, as well as notions of textuality, by focusing on the nexus of cultural, economic, and political factors that governed the use of the medium of print as opposed to that of handwritten manuscript.
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Yu, Li. “A History of Reading in Late Imperial China, 1000–1800.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2003.
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A historico-ethnographic study of the act of reading (dushu) in late imperial China by examining the practice and representation of reading. Shows how reading, governed by social conventions and cultural expectations, was conceptualized, perceived, conducted, and transmitted during the 10th to the 18th centuries.
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Book Trade and Market

Chia 2002 and Brokaw 2007 reveal the intricate workings of the book trade. Together, they explain how intellectual trends—the constellations of thoughts and ideas—evolved hand-in-hand with the corresponding culture of books that was materially supported by the technology of printing.

Brokaw, Cynthia J. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.
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Examination of the thriving publishing industry in Sibao in western Fujian, from the late 17th to early 20th century, which furnished south China with affordable books of all sorts, from educational texts to religious manuals. Reveals two main developments in print culture: entry of commercial woodblock publishing into the previously untouched territories of the rural hinterland, and the resulting growth of readership in the lower strata of society.
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Chia, Lucille. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.
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A study of the publishers of Jianyang, Fujian, from the 11th through the 17th century, showing how they actively responded to the market by offering genres and titles that were in demand. In the process, the author also provides clear glimpses of the diverse late imperial Chinese culture of books that was composed of the varied reading habits, tastes, and level of literacy at different social strata.
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