Reading Journal on Early China

#1	Friday, Jan. 29 -- from Section 1 of the list
#2	(2 due)  Friday, Feb. 12 -- two from Section 1            or one each from Sections 1 & 2
#3
#4	Friday, Feb. 19 -- from Sections 1 or 2
#5	Friday, March 12 -- from Section 2 or 3
#6	Tuesday, March 23 -- from Section 3
#7	Friday, April 9 -- from Section 3

Journals will principally be graded on the basis of the record of careful reading reflected in your notes, accuracy of your summations, and the appropriateness and insight of your comments.  However, for the precis and response sections of your entries, your writing style should also be clear and accurate in form, and entries that fall short in these aspects will earn lower grades.  Consult the Writing Guide on this web site (not all sections will be relevant for this assignment).

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JOURNAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Be aware that most of these readings employ the "Wade-Giles" system for transcribing Chinese.  Items marked * use the this older and much clumsier system.  In many cases, names and terms with which you're familiar may at first appear unfamiliar (for example, the names of the major states of the early Classical era - Jin, Qi, Chu, and Qin - will appear as Chin, Ch'i, Ch'u, and Ch'in).  You will need to be able to handle this unfortunate situation, so print out and use the Wade-Giles Guide on this website.

Section 1: State and Society in Classical China

*1. Derk Bodde: "Authority and Law in Ancient China" [1954], in Essays on Chinese Civilization, 161-70. [10 pages]

Bodde's article, published more than half a century ago, is dated in parts (especially at the end - when he speaks of Communism in China, his reference point is 1954), but it is brief and outlines a clear and helpful model.  Bodde taught for many, many years at the University of Pennsylvania, and remained active in the field long after retirement, until his recent death.

*2. Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies [2002], Chapter 4: "Walls and Horses: The Beginnings of Historical Contacts Between the
             Horse-Riding Nomads and Chinese States," 127-158.  [31 pages]
            [DS 741.3 .D5 2002]

Di Cosmo is one of the few scholars working on Central and Northern Asia during the ancient period.  He was trained at Indiana, and now teaches at Princeton.

*3. Cho-yun Hsu, "The Transition of Ancient Chinese Society" [originally 1962], in C.S. Chang ed., The Making of China, 62-71. [10 pages]

This is the only selection that is taken from a textbook - the original footnotes have been stripped away.  Although the author, Hsu, made his central argument in the 1960s, it continued to be influential, and is basic to G380's approach to Classical China.  Hsu taught for many years at Pittsburgh, where he was in the Sociology and History departments - you should be able to detect this combination of approaches in his work. 

*4. Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition [1965], Chapter 4: "The New State," 78-106 (notes, 202-5).  [29 pages]
             [HN 673 .H75]

A more detailed study by Hsu, part of an influential book that grew out of his dissertation at the University of Chicago. The book itself is on Reserve, and skimming the first few pages will make Hsu's motive clear and your reading of this chapter easier.  -  NOTE:  Hsu refers to the Spring-Autumn Period by its Chinese name (in Wade-Giles): "the Ch'un Ch'iu Period"; the Warring States Period becomes "the Chan Kuo Period."

*5. Frank Kierman, "Phases and Modes of Combat in Early China," in Frank A. Kierman, Jr. and John K. Fairbank, ed.,
             Chinese Ways in Warfare [1974], 27-66.  [40 pages]

Military history is a much understudied field in China, and the volume that Kierman and Fairbank put together about thirty-five years ago was the first attempt to expand this area of scholarship.  Kierman's very successful contribution is the work for which he is best known.  This is a longer article with a number of different parts - be sure to give its various aspects balanced attention. 

*6. Mark Lewis,  in Sanctioned Violence in Early China [1990], Chapter 1: "The Warrior Aristocracy," 15-52 (notes 251-268)  [38 pages]
            [HN 740 .Z9 V55 1990]

This is part of a book written, in part, to offer a model of Classical Chinese society different from the one sketched in Cho-yun Hsu's works (3 and 4 above).  Both Lewis and Hsu trained at Chicago under the same teacher, but their approaches are in many ways a study in contrasts.  The book itself is on Reserve, and the first few pages of the Introduction will help make clearer what Lewis's project is.

7. Lisa Raphals, "A Woman Who Understood the Rites," in Bryan Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects [2002], 275-302. [21 pages]

There is very little information on the role of women in Classical China.  Raphals' study of one example, which relies heavily on a series of tales collected in a section of the Guoyu ("Discourses of the States"), stands almost alone among attempts to analyze the status of patrician women during the pre-Qin period.  Raphals teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

*8. Sydney Rosen, "Changing Conceptions of the Hegemon in Pre-Ch'in China," in David Roy and T.H. Tsien, ed.,
             Ancient China: Studies in Early Civilization [1978], 99-114.  [16 pages]

Rosen presents a very clear, conservative description of the origins, role, and limits of the Spring & Autumn institution of the "hegemon" (or ba [pa in Wade-Giles]).  Rosen was trained at Chicago, and her work reflects the influence of  Herrlee Creel (11 below).

9. David Schaberg, "Remonstrance in Eastern Zhou Historiography," Early China 22 (1997), 133-179  [47 pages]

Schaberg teaches at UCLA and specializes in analysis of the major historical texts of the Spring-Autumn period.  He is an historian, but his analyses are intensely literary in their approach.

*10. Richard Walker, The Multi-State System of Ancient China [1953], Chapter 5: "Leadership in Ancient China," 59-72 (notes 125-29).  [14 pages]
            [DS 747 .W18]

Walker was the first American scholar to publish a sustained analysis of Classical China's political system - this chapter from his book dates from 1953.  Its ideas have held up surprisingly well, although many of its general statements are now most interesting because they have proved to be true only to a degree.  Among the writers you'll read for your journal, Walker probably had the most interesting career, including five years as US ambassador to South Korea for the Reagan administration.

Section 2: Religion and Thought in Classical China

*11.  Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction [1993], Chapter 2:  "Culture Bearers," 40-66.  [25 pages]
            [BL 1825 .B57 1993]

Birrell's book was a pathbreaking general introduction to Chinese myth.  It groups myths by theme and by individual heroes - this chapter combines the two approaches.  Birrell's focus is myths that can be recovered from texts of the Classical era, though she consults sources that are later, and this can help us get a clearer grasp of the "grammar" of early mythology - its typical range, functions, central cast of characters.  It's good to bear in mind, however, that during the Classical period, there was neither a common Chinese culture nor a universally accepted canon of wisdom.

*12. Herlee Creel, "On Two Aspects in Early Taoism," in his What Is Taoism? [1970], 37-47.  [11 pages]

Creel was one of the early founders of the field of early China studies in the US; he taught at the University of Chicago, and his 1935 book The Birth of China was, in its time, an authoritative study of archaeology and early history.  That time is long past, but in some of his shorter essays, such as this one, Creel articulated clear models that became basic to the field.

*13.  A.C. Graham, "The Nung-chia 'School of the Tillers' and the Origins of Peasant Utopianism in China,"
                in the journal Bulletin of the School of Oriental and  African Studies (University of London) 42.1 (1971), 66-100   [35 pages]
                [Electronic Journal Resource; access through IUCAT]

During the late twentieth century, Angus Graham was the most respected 'sinologist' (scholar of China) working in the area of ancient thought, based at the University of London.  Many of his best studies were in the style of "detective work," uncovering lost traditions through careful reasoning based on a few clues.  This is an example of such an approach.

*14. Frederick Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China, 2nd ed.,
            Chapter 2: "The Beginnings of a World View," 9-25. [17 pages]

Mote taught for many years at Princeton, where his special focus was the history of late Imperial China.  His training, which included work in pre-Communist China during the 1940s, was unusually broad, and his influence on the field extended well beyond his more specialized work.  His book on the origins of the Chinese worldview, first published in 1971, probably shaped the perception of early Chinese thought among more students than any other book of the late 20th century.

*15. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Ancient China [1969],    
                Chapter 1: "Human Nature and Natural Equality," 1-22.  [22 pages]
                [BD 450 .M96 1969]

This is the first chapter of an influential book that aimed to find common ground among the competing philosophical schools of early China, with special emphasis on apparently "opposing" Confucian and Daoist schools.  Munro's approach to early philosophical texts was an expression of a new direction in scholarship, much stimulated by the work of Cho-yun Hsu (especially 4, above).  Munro taught at the University of Michigan. 

*16. Mu-chou Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare [1998],
                Chapter 3: "Personal Welfare in the Context of Mantic Technique," 41-68 (notes 230-35).   [28 pages]
                [BL 1802 .P65 1998]

Mu-chou Poo is based at the Academic Sinica research institute in Taiwan, a very eminent institution that brings together scholars who are both trained to a high degree of technical expertise and interested in developing general models to explain traditional Chinese history and culture.  (Others on this list who have worked extensively at Academic Sinica include Cho-yun Hsu and K.C. Chang, though they have been based in the US.)  In his wide ranging book on the character of early Chinese religion, Poo articulates important and sometimes overlooked features with great clarity.

17.  Mark Csikszentmihalyi, "Mysticism and Apophatic Discourse in the Laozi,"
                in Csikszentmihalyi and Philip Ivanhoe,ed., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi [1999], 33-58.  [26 pages]

"Apophatic" discourse refers to statements that characterize the world according to what it is not, and this is a common strategy of the Daoist text known as the Laozi or the Dao de jing.  Csikszentmihalyi [chik-zen-mèe-high], who teaches at Berkeley, illustrates how careful and attentive interpretation can help us "hear" a difficult text speak more clearly.

Section 3:  Topics in Shang and Western Zhou History

18. William Boltz, "Language and Writing,"
                in Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, ed., The Cambridge History of Ancient China [1999], 74-123.  [49 pages]

Boltz's chapter is more specialized than most of these readings.  Boltz is a very acute historical linguist at the University of Washington whose theories about Old Chinese phonetics and the origins of writing have had great impact on the field.  This essay lays out some ideas of very broad importance, but it also includes technical features that may lead you to worry that you won't understand what's being said (such as the difference between OC *k^wjáns and OC *ăk^wjáns, just to pick a random example).  In fact, you don't need to worry about the details to grasp the main points - anyone interested in China's unusual language, or in how languages change and writing systems develop should find this an absorbing essay.

*19. K.C. Chang, Early Chinese Civilization:  Anthropological Perspectives [1976],
                Chapter 9: "Changing Relationships of Man and Animal in Shang and Chou Myths and Art, 174-196.   [18 pages]

Until his death a few years ago, Chang was the most prominent archaeologist of China living in the West (he taught at Harvard for many years), and probably the most imaginative Chinese archaeologist anywhere.  He developed a variety of exciting theories, many of which are touched on in the G380 online texts, including some of those in this essay.

*20. K.C. Chang, Shang Civilization [1980],
                Chapter 3: "The Shang Dynasty and Its Ruling Apparatus," 158-183; 188-209. [42 pages]
                [DS 744 .C38]

Chang's study of the Shang is still the most comprehensive overview.  Some aspects of his ideas have been superseded by later research (that's why, for example, pages 184-87 of this selection are omitted), but much remains either valid or controversially viable.  The model of the Shang kingship's relation to structures of the royal lineage that appears in these pages is summarized in online course materials - it is one of the most intriguing theories to emerge about Shang political organization.

*21. Cho-yun Hsu and Katheryn Linduff, Western Chou Civilization [1988]
              Chapter 5: "Forming a Nation and Chou Feudalism," 147-185.   [32 pages]
               [DS 747 .H79 1988]

Hsu, whose major career impact was on Warring States era history (3 and 4 above), moved back into Western Zhou history during the 1980s, publishing a well received monograph (sustained specialized study) in Chinese, of which this is largely a translation, with added contributions from Linduff, an art historian at Pittsburgh.

*22. David Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization [1983],
              "The Late Shang State: When, Where, and What?" 523-558.   [33 pages]

David Keightley, retired from Berkeley, is without question the most influential Western scholar of Shang Dynasty oracle bone texts.  This is an ingenious essay and remains one of the most influential studies of the Shang state a quarter century after Keightley wrote it. 

*23. David Keightley, "The Religious Commitment: Shang Theology and the Genesis of Chinese Political Culture,"
                in the journal History of Religions 17 (1978), 211-225.   [15 pages]
                [Electronic Journal Resource; access through IUCAT]

Keightley has produced a long series of published and unpublished papers on ideological aspects of Shang religion.  This is the earliest.  Keightley has refined many of the ideas found in this comprehensive overview, but its general contours still reflect his overall approach, which is perhaps most clearly visible in this initial articulation.

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