Description
Book SynopsisIn this exciting book, Ronald Suleski introduces daily life for the common people of China in the century from 1850 to 1950. They were semi-literate, yet they have left us written accounts of their hopes, fears, and values. They have left us the hand-written manuscripts (chaoben 抄本) now flooding the antiques markets in China. These documents represent a new and heretofore overlooked category of historical sources. Suleski gives a detailed explanation of the interaction of chaoben with the lives of the people. He offers examples of why they were so important to the poor laboring masses: people wanted horoscopes predicting their future, information about the ghosts causing them headaches, a few written words to help them trade in the rural markets, and many more examples are given. The book contains a special appendix giving the first complete translation into English of a chaoben describing the ghosts and goblins that bedeviled the poor working classes.
Trade Review"Suleski is to be commended for his collecting efforts, which have saved a great number of important texts that might otherwise have been relegated to the rubbish bin. In documenting and describing these materials he does a service to the field and highlights a corpus of texts that will doubtless be the source of continued research." -Nathan Vedal, Washington University, in East Asian Publishing and Society, Vol 9 (2019) p. 191-203 "The volume's greatest worth lies in its novelty: Suleski is right to note that the study of chāoběn as a means of better understanding the lives of people is a scholarly methodology that 'almost does not exist.' Those with an interest in Chinese religion, especially the late Qīng and Republican period, have much to gain from it." -Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, in Religious Studies Review, Vol 47 (2021), p. 125
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Contextualizing Chaoben: On the Popular Manuscript Culture of the Late Qing and Republican Period in China 2 Apologia in Chaoben 3 Written in the Margins: Reading into Texts 4 Teacher Xu: Entering a Classroom in Late Qing China 5 A Qing Dynasty Astrologer’s Predictions for the Future 6 Constructing the Family in Republican China: Shandong 1944 7 Mr. Bai and Mr. Qian Earn Their Living: Considering Two Hand-written Notebooks of Matching Couplets from China in the Late Qing and Early Republic 8 The Troublesome Ghosts: Part 1 9 The Troublesome Ghosts: Part 2 10 Concluding Remarks Appendix A. A List of Chaoben in the Author’s Personal Collection Used in This Study Appendix B. Various Categories of Chaoben Not Discussed in the Text Appendix C. Korean and Japanese Chaoben Appendix D. Full Translation of Fifty Days to Encounter the Five Spirits Bibliography Index
