井底之蛙

I posted this on Frog in a Well Japan.
—

Earlier this month, I met a descendent of the Taiwanese aboriginal group, Sysiyat tribe (賽夏族), and his wife. The Sysiyat is a relatively small tribe living in Wufengxiang (五峰鄉) and Nanzhuang (南庄) in the mountainous inner-land of Hsinchu (Xinzhu, 新竹) Province. I called him because I am studying the local history of Beipu (北埔) right now, and stories about the Sysiyat people in neighboring Wufengxiang seemed important to me.

His name is Zhao Zhenggui (趙正貴). His grandfather, Taro Yomaw, was the chief-general of the tribe in the area during the first half of the Japanese colonial rule, and he cooperated with the Japanese in many policing operations to suppress other rebellious aboriginal populations. Taro Yomaw’s third son and Mr. Zhao Zhenggui’s father, Ybai-taro, attended the Japanese elementary school in the Zhudong (竹東）city, went to the elite Teacher’s College (師範大学), and became a police officer and teacher for the aboriginal villages. Ybai-taro continued his career as a teacher after the KMT took over the island, and after he retired in the 1970s, he started writing memoirs, histories, and fictional stories in Japanese. (Mr. Zhao’s interview about these writings in Chinese)

Taro Yomaw in his youth:

Taro Yomaw and Ybai-taro

(both photos provided by Mr. Zhao Zhenggui)

From what I can tell, his memoirs and histories are based on what he heard from his own father and older generations, Japanese publications he later read by himself, and his own experiences as a police officer. Sometimes they are mixed together, but one eye-catching feature is that his writings show a perfectly smooth transfer of legitimacy from Japanese colonizers, especially Emperor Hirohito, to the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek.

Instead of giving my lousy interpretations, I will just show some quotes from his “高砂族の古今” (Old and New of Takasago Zoku)

日本時代になってサイセット族が一番先に新竹の高い砂浜に渡台した歴史にちなみ全島の蕃人を高砂族と昭和天皇が命名あそばされた。
(Showa Emperor named all the aborigines in Taiwan “Takasago zoku” after the Sysiyat who had arrived in the high beach in Hsinchu)

This is historically not accurate because the Japanese were already calling them 高砂族 in the 16th century.

私が小学校に共学した時に日本人の子供は山の人と言って蕃人と言はれた事がない。平地人の子供は蕃人と言はれたので自然に日本人の子供に親しみを持ったのであった。
(When I went to the Japanese elementary school, Japanese children called me “mountain people” but never called me “banjin (barbarians)”. [Chinese] settler children called us “banjin” so I naturally felt closer to Japanese children.)

In the statistics of elementary school attendance, there were no Chinese-Taiwanese children who attended 小学校 before the 1920s, but there were always a couple of aboriginal kids studying with the Japanese children in the cities of Hsinchu.

戦死した弟もおそらく靖国神社に祭られてゐると思ひ何時か日本東京に行ってみたまを拝んで行かうと思ってゐる。台湾の山猿として野蛮人としてゐたのがたった十年間の旧友方々の指導により南方て勇しく戦ひ世界の人たちをびっくりさせた。休戦後は日本人と別れたが少しも恨まず日本人を無事にかへらせて惜別の涙を流したのであった。此の首刈り好きな高砂族を真人間に教育された日本人に対し感謝してゐる。中国人になっても其の昔の教育の基礎があって皆新政府の命を受け此の三十年間に於て目ざましい進歩をして安定な生活してゐるのである。祖国にかへり孫文先生の三民主義精神に基つぎ蒋総統の遺訓を守りますます本当の人間になったのである。それは日本中国のおかげと感謝してゐる。
(Because my younger brother who died in the battle is also enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine, I am thinking of visiting Tokyo some day and praying for his soul. [The aboriginal people] were regarded as Taiwan’s mountain monkeys and barbarians, but after only 10 years of guidance by our old friends, we surprised people around the world by fighting bravely in the South [Southeast Asia]. After the war, we were separated from Japanese people, but we did not hold grudge against them but sent them home safe with tears. I thank the Japanese, who educated the aborigine who used to like head-chopping and transformed us into true human beings. After becoming Chinese, we built upon the basis of old-day education and received orders of the new government. We have been making amazing progress the past 30 years, and enjoying a stable life. We returned to the mother nation, and based on Sun Yat-Sen’s Three Principles of the People and President Chiang’s will, we became even truer human-beings. I think it is thanks to Japan and China.)

This I found very interesting because of his heartfelt acceptance of both regimes. Praising the Japanese occupation wasn’t a popular thing to do in the 1970s under the KMT rule, but the issue was not either-or for him. If you are too upset or too happy reading his praise of the Japanese rule, don’t forget to read the next one.

終戦当時世界の聯合国のイギリス、アメリカ、ソレンの首相が「日本を三分にして天皇を廃止する」と蘇聯ががんばったが蒋公は日本国は昔のまヽにして占領国は返へさせても好い天皇は廃止してはならぬ」と三名の首領を押へた。日本国民は之を聞いて皆泣いて蒋公に感謝したと言ふ。日本国の再造の神として日本史上に残されると言ふのである。終戦後世界偉人を二十名増加して三十名となった。其の中に中華民国の蒋公が開びゃく以来始めての偉人になられた。蒋公は生き乍らの世界偉人でゐたので世界の人々はわざ＜台湾におがみに来たのであった。
(Upon the end of WWII, the leaders of Britain, the US, and the USSR in particular, insisted that they would divide Japan into three and abolish the emperor system. But President Chiang suppressed their assertion by saying “Japan should remain the same but the occupied territories can be returned. We must not abolish the emperor.” I hear the Japanese people cried and thanked President Chiang. He will be remembered as the God of Re-Creation of the nation in the Japanese history. After the war, the number of the world’s greatest people increased by 20 and became 30. President Chiang became the “world’s greatest person” for the first time in the history of ROC. Many people in the world came to see him in Taiwan because he was a living great man.)

I don’t have to discuss the accuracy issue of this passage. I was stunned by his affirmation of the authority of Chiang Kai-shek by claiming that Japanese people worship him.

As you can see, there is a lot going on in his writings but it obviously requires a careful reading. I don’t know exactly how I am going to use this as a source but I hope at least someone enjoys this entry.

I have been reading Francis Fukuyama’s new book The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. It is, as the title suggests, the first of two volumes that will explain the development of human politics from the dawn of time to the present. As a big picture sort of guy, Fukuyama claims that “human politics is subject to certain recurring patterns of behavior across time and across cultures” As a historian this type of talk tends to worry me, as I assume that any universals of human politics are either so vague as to be meaningless, or flat out wrong. Still, he is trying to present a theory of world political development that goes beyond Europe and gets as far as China, if not New Guinea, and when a big picture book gives that much attention to China I have to buy it.

The book begins with some discussion of the creation of the first states.

But in the end, there are too many interacting factors to be able to develop one strong, predictive theory of when and how states formed. Some of the explanations for their presence or absence begin to sound like Kipling Just So stories.

So, the Key To All Mythologies that we are looking for here is not the origins of the state, but a strong predictive theory of the origins of the modern stable, democratic, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive and uncorrupt state. In order to create this one needs 1. A state 2. The Rule of Law 3. accountable government. ¹

Fukuyama posits Qin China as the world’s first modern state.  This is somewhat problematic, since the main reason he calls Qin modern is that they had gotten away from patrimonialism and had established “a more impersonal form of administration.” China scholars usually refer to the Qin/Han period, since Qin lasted only from 221 to 206 BCE. How can you make a Huge Comparison or talk about Large Processes while resting everything on such a small sample? The Han of course built on the Qin model, but Fukuyama’s discussion will not help anyone trying to understand the relationship between Confucianism and Legalism or Modernism and Classicism in the Han, a dynasty where bureaucratism and familism were both very important in a very complex sort of way.  Fukuyama’s account of Qin/Han is based mostly on Harrison The Chinese Empire Harcourt Brace 1972 and Levenson and Schurman China: an Interpretive History. California 1969, although he does manage to cite Loewe a few times. This is not the book to read if you are a China scholar hoping that a broader perspective will help you understand China-y stuff. ²

Well, in any case eventually the Chinese fall behind, reverting to patrimonialism. Lots of stuff happens. Why did China not develop? A cocoon becomes a butterfly, a wad of dough placed in an oven becomes bread. Why did China not become Denmark?

The book is, among other things, Fukuyama’s take on the Great Divergence debate, the arguments over why China fell behind after 1300 or 1500 or 1700 or whenever; why China failed to have an industrial revolution, or more generally failed to modernize properly despite such a promising beginning. A lot of very interesting stuff has been written on this issue in recent years. Most other scholars who write on this topic focus on economics, and their books are full of complex discussions of comparative institutions.

How does Fukuyama explain China’s manifest backwardness in the modern era? Well, the book includes the most serious discussion of Oriental Despotism to have been published in the last 50 years.³

Oriental Despotism is nothing other than the precocious emergence of a politically modern state before other social actors could institutionalize themselves , actors like  a hereditary territorially based aristocracy, an organized peasantry, cities based on a merchant class, churches, or other autonomous groups.

So this is yet another checklist book, with a roster of European traits one needs to be modern, and then you either check them off or don’t. He does talk a bit about the ability of the bureaucracy to constrain the Emperor, but for some reason this does not count.  For the most part he focuses on China’s lack of The Rule of Law.

“Early Chinese kings exercised tyrannical power of a sort that few monarchs in either feudal or early modern Europe attempted. They engaged in wholesale land reform, arbitrarily executed the administrators serving them, deported entire populations, and engaged in mad purges of aristocratic rivals. …European state development had to take place against a well-developed background of law that limited state power. European monarchs tried to bend, break, or go around the law. But the choices they made were structured and checked by the preexisting body of law that was developed in medieval times.”

This seems wrong, but at least in a way that might potentially be productive. China -was- institutionally different from “Europe’⁴ and a comparison could be enlightening, but looking at Europe as possessing a system of law that was ‘preexisting’ does not seem accurate. It does make it easy to explain China’s backwardness, since although there is a lot of scholarship on Chinese law none of it describes the creation of a legal system which was distinct from existing systems of power and could constrain rulers by its mere legality. In fact if you look at that way you can ignore pretty much everything written about China in the last 30 years. ⁵

Having explained China’s failure to create a Rule of Law⁶ Fukuyama then goes on to explain the failure of economic development. One aspect of Great Divergence debates is that there are disagreements about when China fell behind. I guess failure to create the Rule of Law is in the Tang or something, but he also gives a Ming date for China’s economic failure.

What China did not have is the spirit of maximization that economists assume is a universal human trait. An enormous complacency pervaded Ming China in all walks of life. It was not just emperors who didn’t feel it necessary to extract as much as they could in taxes; other forms of innovation and change simply didn’t seem to be worth the effort.

His examples here are the old chestnuts of the end of Zheng He’s voyages and Su Sung’s mechanical clock, which somehow did not lead to an industrial revolution. For some reason he leaves out the Chinese abandonment of movable type. In any case this  spirit of what I guess you can call Oriental passivity is his explanation of the “binding constraints that prevented rapid economic growth from taking off in Ming-Qing China.”⁷

This seems to be so wrong as to be silly and embarrassing. There is no footnote for this enormous complacency.⁸ It must be easier to make a big argument when trans-historical cultural factors can just fly in and then just as mysteriously fly out again.

So, all in all I would say the book was not worth the money, despite all the promises of China discussions in the Table of Contents. Reading this book will not help you understand China better. I’m pretty sure it will not help you understand Europe better. If you are looking for something that can explain everything in general but nothing in specific, this may be the book for you.

It does have the benefit  that each chapter begins with a little summaries of what is to come. Thus chapter 21 Stationary Bandits…

Whether all states are predatory, and whether the Chinese state in Ming times deserves to be called that; examples of arbitrary rule drawn from later periods in Chinese history; whether good government can be maintained in a state without checks on executive authority.

These little snippets are not very common nowadays, and it gives the agreeable feel that one is reading a work of scholarship that has somehow fallen through a time warp from the 19th century.

1. Do you have a Kindle? It’s nice. You can carry it anywhere, and its always full of books, so if you want to read recent scholarship, classic literature, or trashy novels they are all there right now. Unfortunately it does not give page numbers. It claims this is from p. 15,  location 503 [↩]
2. If you are a non-China person Lewis Writing and Authority in Early China is a good place to start. [↩]
3. Since he  is not particularly interested in economics we don’t get anything on the Asiatic Mode of Production. [↩]
4. just as Italy was different from England [↩]
5. I also find his use of dates frustrating. What is an Early Chinese King? Where are these examples coming from? Or are they just taken at random from the Shang-Qing period? [↩]
6. Has anyone played Civilization 5 yet? Is it any good? [↩]
7. Fortunately these constraints no longer exist. This timeless aspect of Chinese culture is now Gone with the Wind, leaving behind only ‘an emphasis on education and personal achievement’ Apparently the May Fourth Movement was a big success. [↩]
8. Maybe he got this from reading Tim Brook? Craig Clunas? It’s a mystery. [↩]

On the assumption that some of our readers teach East Asian History and thus may on occasion have to talk about Japan, history, and earthquakes, I offer two links.

The obvious place to look for historical understanding of Japan and earthquakes is Gregory Smits “Shaking Up Japan: Edo Society and the 1855 Catfish Picture Prints” Journal of Social History 39.4 (2006) He has lots of cool pictures, and you can find even more (thus impressing your students with your knowledge) at the Pink Tentacle .

If you want a more modern assessment, this is a good choice.

China Hush reports that the Chinese film and TV industries have been ordered to stop making time-travel dramas, on the grounds that “The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.”

I find this convenient if wrong-headed. Convenient because while Americans may talk about what what our history means to us it is hard to pin down what historical orthodoxy is. China makes it easy. Wrong-headed because the Chinese government is very big on encouraging young Chinese to identify with “5,000 Years of Chinese History.” Getting people to do that is actually hard, and time travel might help.

David Lowenthal talks about time travel stories in The Past is a Foreign Country. Modern science fiction stories are only the tip of the iceberg, as there are countless stories of a knock on the head, a strange dream or a pact with the devil sending people to the past. Although lots of these stories are about about how you can use your amazing knowledge to make money gambling, or fix the present or whatever, many of them deal with how disconcerting and foreign the past is. In some stories you can’t talk to people, they may kill you for being a heretic, or you might starve to death. In any case, you will almost certainly want to go home. I have not watched any of these TV dramas, but all of them seem to open with the past being frightening and dangerous, but with the hero eventually finding their feet and, of course, true love. This would seem to be good from a Chinese nationalist perspective, since all these people are traveling to a past that is supposed to be ‘theirs.’ If Americans want to go a long way into the past we visit King Arthur’s court, which is obviously in a foreign country, and thus if we don’t identify with it and have to kill everyone to liberate them, that’s o.k. Chinese kids should -like- visiting Ancient China Land, and apparently they do.

Needless to say there are some serious problems. The past is really different from the present in ways that are being ignored in these stories. Sex and lust were probably the same things in the Qin Dynasty as now, but love? I doubt many people are learning much about the past as it is understood by historians from these shows. On the other hand, the official line seems to be that history is a nationalistic catechism to be memorized, respected, and bored by. That’s even worse. The article also reports that there is to be a ban on productions of the Four Classic Novels. Again, the problem is apparently a lack of respect for the treasures of Chinese culture, and you can see the point. If you let the current generation of Chinese youth get their hands on these stories they might portray the Monkey King as some sort of  turbulent troublemaker or Li Gui as a drunken hoodlum. Heck they might even imply that Baoyu was gay! Far better to stick these stories in boring classrooms and museums than to risk what might happen to them in the present.

Via Jeremiah Jenne

On April 8th, 1911  five days before the scheduled Canton revolt an independent radical from Singapore assassinated the Manchu governor of Canton, Fu Qi. This threw the not-very organized revolutionaries into disarray, and headed the Canton revolt towards yet another failure.

By 1911 the revolutionary forces in China had been trying and failing to overthrow the Qing since at least 1895.  In later histories this string of failed revolts can sometimes seem like they are rising to a crescendo, but at the time things did not seem so clear cut. This led to any number of debates on method, one of which was over the value of assassinations in fomenting revolution. Influenced by Anarchists and Russian Narodniks and assorted Japanese radicals， various Chinese began a fascination with direct action. Part of this was based on the idea the a person like the knight-errant of old could rectify the world with a single stab, or, as one radical newspaper put it. (taking advantage of the ease in putting ‘ism’ on words in Chinese)

“Republicanism, Revolution-ism, Blood-Sacrifice-ism, Assassination-ism, none of these can be undertaken without knight-errant-ism ” ”共和主义，革命主义，流血主义，暗杀主义，非有游侠主义 不能担负之“ ¹

While some revolutionaries like Huang Xing and Sun Yat-sen were trying to broaden the revolution, bringing in more people, more groups and more money, the assassins seemed attracted to the fact that a single person was all that was needed. Probably the best example was Wu Yue, who was killed in 1905 when a bomb he was going to throw at the five commissioners the Qing were sending overseas to examine Western methods exploded prematurely.  Wu Yue felt that the Chinese people had become so weakened by Manchu rule that only the shock of assassinations could arouse their spirit 伸民气, and the sacrifice of revolutionary lives would be needed to establish a new nation.²

Wu is perhaps best classified as an assassin, rather than an Anarchist. Although clearly influenced by Russian ideas other Anarchists dismissed him for his anti-Manchu racism, which they saw as counter to their internationalist ideas.³ He was certainly no reformer, nor does he seem to have had very clear ideas about -how- assassinations were going to lead to his ultimate goal of a constitutional government. He claimed that a stage of assassination had to proceed a stage of revolution, which would in turn lead to constitutional government, but it was not clear how this was supposed to happen.

Wu’s attempt did get a lot of attention, however, as it was the biggest thing anyone had tried yet, and right in the heart of Beijing. Traditionally those convicted of particularly heinous crimes were dismembered through lingchi 凌遲 and their bodies displayed. This penalty had officially been abolished earlier in 1905 as part of the modernization of Chinese judicial practice, and had last been imposed in 1904 on a mass murderer. Public execution in this extreme form was the ultimate expression of the state’s (and heaven’s) disapproval.  Wu Yue’s body was photographed and the photographs pretty widely distributed, perhaps as a final, modernized version of this punishment. (I have put the picture beneath the fold.) Perhaps Wu Yue would even have been pleased by this. His assassination attempt had failed, but the state had anointed him the most dangerous of revolutionaries. If nothing else he could not be lumped in with the milquetoast reformers he was so contemptuous of.

Needless to say, it was hard to build a revolutionary movement out of bomb-throwers like Wu Yue and fundraisers like Sun Yat-sen.

(more…)

1. 朱育和， 辛亥革命史 人民出版社， 2001 p.247 [↩]
2. 朱育和， 辛亥革命史,  人民出版社， 2001 p.251, Rankin Early Chinese Revolutionaries p. 107 [↩]
3. Dirlik Anarchism and the Chinese Revolution p.94 [↩]

On March 31, 1911, the Japanese consul in Fuzhou filed a report on Chinese concerns about foreign invasion. That foreigners were going to divvy China up into colonies or “carve the melon” had been a major fear in China for several years, and in the Spring of 1911 rumors were again circulating that the foreign powers were meeting, perhaps in Paris, to decide on the division of China. The foreign press (and some Chinese papers) poo-pooed these wild rumors, by which they meant that there was not a formal meeting going on to divvy up China’s provinces among the Powers. The process of gradually absorbing Chinese sovereignty was of course still going on. Foreign-run factories, railways, and mines were dotted across China, the Treaty Ports were open for business, and Korea had been formally annexed by Japan on August 29, 1910, moving it from the status of semi-colonized to fully colonized. Given the general lack of faith in the court, there were calls for popular militias to organize to defend the nation. In this atmosphere of heightened suspicion even innocent foreign actions could seem sinister, and in any case there were plenty of actual hostile acts by foreigners for Chinese to be concerned about. This atmosphere had a lot to do with the explosive impact of the Sichuan Railway case in the Summer of 1911 and the Revolution in the fall.

In the case of Fujian, students in Shanghai and Japan were urging their fellow provincials to prepare to defend the nation. As Fujian was assumed to be part of the Japanese spoils in any division, the Japanese consul took interest in their activities

It appears that around 13 March some gentry here held a meeting to discuss the situation. After that, they distributed a leaflet entitled “Appeal for the Immediate Organization of a Militia.” This is attached to this re­ port as Exhibit I. In summary it says: Britain raided Pianma; France moved large troops to Yunnan under the pretext of protecting the rail­road; Russia is aiming at Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Yili areas. The division is close at hand. Japan and Germany are also about to take ac tion. Since foreign troubles always come with domestic discord, we have to organize a militia for self-defense now that we cannot rely on govern­ment forces.

The British consul filed a protest with the Fujian authorities as it was known that a copy of the leaflet appeared in a school run by a British national. The American consul, who was appointed to the post earlier, visited other consuls here and discussed whether they should make their attitude clear about this matter. Their conclusion was that they did not have to take any action since the leaflet was not causing serious trouble.

Yet there were rumors circulating in the city. One of them said that farmers in the suburbs were preparing arms and banners to attack Japa­nese. There were also far-fetched arguments based on a visit made by Canton consul-general, Segawa; the Hong Kong consul, Funatsu; and myself [consul Takasu]. They stopped over here on the way back to their posts, and visited local government officials, including the general-in-chief and the governor.

This was followed by a harbor call by the receiving ship Tsugaru. It was said that the consuls met with an important mission, that the warship called to spy upon Fujian or that six warships gathered on the open sea.

Attached to the report was a copy of the call for establishment of a militia

Further Appeal for the Immediate Establishment of a Militia

Compatriots: Britain has occupied Pianma; France aims at the mines in Yunnan; Russia is getting closer to Mongolia and Yili. Students in Japan, the United States, and assemblies in every province are sending out emergency telegrams one after another. We assume you saw our first leaflet and already understand quite well what is going on in our country. From what you have read in Beijing and Shanghai newspapers and the Jianyanbao, which has recently been published in Fuzhou, we believe that you have understood that we are not exaggerating things. We had expected that you would take countermeasures quickly to protect yourselves, your families, and your property. In the last ten days, however, further worsening of the foreign troubles has led people in all other provinces to rise and take action. At the moment, the Merchants Asso­ ciation in the capital, Fuzhou, the Nantaizhen Board of Directors, and the schools are working out countermeasures. They are organizing mer­ chant militias, beginning to train militias, setting up an Association for Physical Education, or making military calisthenics a compulsory subject. Responses vary, but the object is one and the same.

However, we wonder how people in other prefectures, districts, and counties [other than Fuzhou] are going to protect themselves, their families, and their property. It is quite strange that they are doing nothing about it. We cannot keep silent because we want to protect ourselves, our families, and our property as well as yours. This is why we are making another appeal to the people of our hometown.…..Just think about what Japan does these days. The Japanese government as well as its people have been targeting the Northeast since the powers began their actions. According to a detailed report we have obtained, there are four times as many Japanese troops stationed in the Northeast as Chinese troops deployed across the entire country. The report also says that they have introduced wireless telegraph throughout Mongolia to communicate secret information. It is reported that they are going to send two more divisions to the Northeast.5

Next are a series of telegrams between various provincial assemblies.

A telegram from the Xian provincial assembly to the Fujian provincial assembly: “A telegram from Yunnan says that Britain has occupied Pianma, and Japan and Russia are making a raid on the Northeast. The only way to save our country from danger is for people to arm themselves. In cooperation with other provincial assemblies, we would like to start training a militia under the pretext of maintaining order. On 9 February (9 March in the solar calendar) we requested the National Assembly to obtain permission from the government.

From the Fujian assembly to the Tianjin assembly: “The matter is quite urgent. A joint conference of assemblies should be convened.” From the Fujian assembly to the Grand Council: “We are now facing a national crisis. People are very afraid that the nation may perish. When diplomacy is faced with difficulties, the government should turn to public opinion. If we are allowed to ask His Majesty for an extraordinary session of the National Assembly and to express there how angry our people are, we think it might be possible to reduce the foreign countries’ contempt for us and gain time to work out countermeasures.”

These are only a few examples. We have much more information, but it is simply impossible to carry all the details that were reported by Beijing and Shanghai newspapers and by the Jianyanbao, which has recently started in Fuzhou.

The leaflet concludes as follows:

Just think, our property is about to be lost, and so are our lives, our families, and our country. Is there any easy solution to such a serious crisis? Proverbs say, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well,” and “Try everything even if there are no prospects.” If you do not care if the people of our nine prefectures and two districts lose their country, their lives, their families, and their property, we do not care, either. But if you do, set up a militia promptly. If one group of people appeals, many other groups will respond. If one village rises, others will follow. If we expand the movement from one village to one county, one county to one pre­ fecture and then to one province using the same system, and if we keep in close touch with one another, we will be able to maintain order in our homeland in peace-time and assist the army in time of war. This is what we have to do right now to save our country. Compatriots, time never returns. If we rise now there is a chance to recover our nation. We sincerely ask you to seriously consider our proposal.

From Ono Shinji “A Deliberate Rumor: National Anxiety in China on the Eve of the Xinhai Revolution.” in Eto Shinkichi and Harlod Z. Schiffrin China’s Republican Revolution University of Tokyo Press, 1994.

Livebloging 1911

Someone once said “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

That is a pretty radical statement. Also a somewhat analytical one. Very few have ever accused Sun Yat-sen, father of the 1911 Revolution of being either a radical or overly analytical. He was however, great at dinner parties. On March 19th he was not in Canton, where the April uprising would be happening, nor in Hong Kong, where it was mostly being planned. He was in Vancouver, ¹ talking to audiences of Overseas Chinese. He raised $7,000 HK, which was the largest total raised for the April uprising anywhere in the world. If Huang Xing was the organizer of the revolution Sun was the publicist and fund-raiser. Having been abducted in London in 1896 and briefly imprisoned in the Chinese legation made him by far the best-known Chinese revolutionary overseas, and his tireless fund-raising and organizing in Southeast Asia, North America, Japan and elsewhere made him the best known spokesman for the overthrow of the Qing and establishment of a Republic. So although he played a pretty limited role in the actual 1911 revolution it is worth thinking about him for a bit. They also serve who only wrangle invitations to banquets and give speeches.

Although the bulk of his uprisings were failures, a revolution costs a lot of money, and while giving speeches all over the world on the Overseas Chinese rubber chicken circuit must have been a drag he kept at it, and had a rare ability to convince everyone from wealthy Cantonese merchants to railroad laborers to part with their cash.  Sun’s personal ability to persuade people to support the cause was a major asset, even if it was not clear what all these resources, both money and recruits, were best used for. So today is a fine day to remember Sun Yat-sen, who among his many other achievements, was the after-dinner speaker who financed the 1911 Revolution.

1. Or somewhere in Canada. The nianpu I have is not very detailed, but in was in Vancouver about the 19th. [↩]

Live-blogging 1911

Live-blogging is (for historians) the process of blogging about something in the past as if it was happening in the present. Since this is the 100^th anniversary of the 1911 revolution, I thought it might be nice do something on that. The Wuhan revolt is still a ways off, but the Canton uprising is (although nobody knew it) right around the corner. Textbooks tend to dismiss the various revolts that Sun Yat-sen encouraged in the years before 1911 as pathetic failures, which is true enough, but by early 1911 some of them were becoming more substantial. There were a couple of disturbances in the New Army in Canton early in 1911, the first of which happened on February 12, exactly one year before the Manchu emperor formally abdicated.

Revolutionaries vaguely connected to Sun Yat-sen had been organizing in the New Army in Canton for some time. . Ni Yingdian 倪映典 was the ringleader of the revolt. He was the son of a traditional Chinese doctor from Anhui and had risen to command an New Army artillery division before being dismissed for revolutionary activity. He promptly moved to Guangdong and joined the new army there and was again dismissed for revolutionary activity, although he was not arrested. It may seem a bit odd that he was dismissed but not arrested twice, but the Qing government was less in control of things than they might have hoped and also desperate for modern-trained men. More to the point, during the New Policies period many revolutionaries were turning into reformers, and they may have hoped that the same would happen with Ni.

Unfortunately a mutiny occurred among the troops of the Second Regiment on February 10^{th ,}, well before the planned date for the revolt. Sun Yat-sen had raised over HK 8,000 to support the revolt, and preparations were being made for supporting revolts in the countryside, but Ni decided he could not wait and encouraged his old comrades to rise up. When the commander of the Artillery Division refused to join the revolt Ni shot him, which pretty much committed them to the revolt, which was put down the next day. Ni Yingdian was one of the first rebels killed. Several others were executed later and the rebellious units disbanded.

Although the revolt itself had minimal support it was a revolt of active military units in a major city, which was an upgrade from some previous revolutionary actions. The punishment of the rebels actually won them a good deal of support.  Sun and his followers began mobilizing for a new revolt in Canton.  “Intellectuals, tradesmen, workers and peasants” began to assemble in the city. Female members of the Revolutionary Alliance posed as brides and began smuggling arms into the city.  They also took over a newspaper which had been created to oppose a planned provincial gambling monopoly and used it to spread revolutionary ideas. So that is pretty much where things stood in March of 1911

Most of the above is from Rhodes, China’s Republican Revolution

P.S. If anyone has suggestions for posts, feel free to sent them to me.



Apparently Google is just like the British East India Company. Or so at least the toadies of the CCP would have you believe.  According to People’s Daily,  Google is attempting to corrupt China with information, just as the British tried to corrupt it with opium.

In the colonial era, the British East India Company used the monopolization of trade in the colonies to traffic opium and assist Britain in building its hegemony. In the Internet era, Google uses its monopoly of Internet information search to traffic American values and assist American in building its hegemony.

Besides the obvious historical errors (it was not John Company who attacked China with warships in the Opium Wars, but the British Navy) the historical analogy does not work the way the author would like to claim. It is indeed true that both Google and the British East India Company were foreign firms, but in fact both of them had success in China not because they marched in and forced people to buy their goods at gunpoint, but because Chinese people wanted to buy what they were selling.  (Leaving out the fact that Google gives it away for free.) The piece points out that Baidu has held on to the bulk of the Chinese search market, so I guess this would make Baidu domestic Chinese opium, maybe a nice Yunnan. ¹ Where is the Carnival of Bad History when you need it?

Via Jeremiah Jeene

1. Goes well with fava beans [↩]

February third is the Lunar New Year, celebrated in East Asia as the New Year or Spring Festival.

The Reuters article “Chinese Ready for Upheaval, Sex in Year of the Rabbit” is a lively explanation that each year in the Chinese system has its own character. Since the Year of the Rabbit is full of motion and excess, the article predicts lots of sex scandals. Since both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were born in rabbit years, the article says they would be well advised not to tie the knot next year.

The Wikipedia article “Lunar New Year” leads to articles on holidays observed according to lunar systems, including Rosh Hashanah. The Chinese New Year article is long and full of more details than most of us would need, but the principal menace to humanity is that following the links will take you to so many fascinating places that the rest of the morning is shot.

Traditionally New Year lasted for fifteen days. When I lived in Taiwan my landlord explained that back on the mainland in the old days, New Year was when the rice bin got emptier and the outhouse got fuller.

But I’m still not sure why it’s “rabbit” and not “hare.”

Added Later: The University of Southern California US-China Institute has a nice collection of Rabbit postage stamps from the PRC, Macau, Taiwan, and the US in its Talking Points of February 2-16. And also rabbit stamps from Australia, Bhutan, Canada, France. Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Malaysia (Children’s Pet Series), Marshall Islands (1999), Mongolia, Nevis, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Uganda (1999), and Vietnam.

You can tell when your culture has real “soft” power by the number of stamps issued around the world for your holidays!

Even More! McDonalds, Pepsi, and Coca Cola Celebrate Chinese New Year by Daniel Gilroy at ChinaSMACK has a series of TV commercials from organisations who have created ad campaigns to “welcome in the Chinese New Year (and of course try and make some big sales).” Lots of fun to watch.

BTW, ChinaSMACK, which “provides English translations of current social issues being discussed on various Chinese forums” frequently has smart and insightful reports on advertising, pop culture, and current hot topics in China.