History Commons^™

Recovering China's Past: Missionary Photographs Of Late-Imperial And Republican China In Western Archives, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, once wrote that, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” And Confucius noted: “Study the past if your would define the future.” Thus, to effectively prepare for the future, the past must be recovered, and among the most untouched sources of China’s late-imperial and Republican Era history are the many Western missionary archives, which contain large repositories of important imagistic history of Chinese persons and culture – political, artistic, religious, architectural, and scientific. This paper approaches historical questions regarding Sino-Foreign cultural relations and exchanges by exploring how missionary photographs help …

White Snake, Black Snake Folk Narrative Meets Master Narrative In Qing Dynasty Sichuanese Cross-Stitch Medallions, Cory Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

The cross-stitch medallion in figure 1 was collected by my grandmother, Katherine Willmott, in the early 1920s when she was a missionary in Renshow, Sichuan Province, West China. Many years after I inherited it, I learned that it depicts a folk narrative called “White Snake; Black Snake” that was traditionally performed both on stage in the legitimate theaters and in Chinese shadow puppet dramas (Highbaugh n/d:6).

The story may be summarized as follows: There were two female snakes, White Snake and Black Snake, who were inseparable friends. They both changed into beautiful young women. White Snake got married and bore …

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

Beijing's "Benedictine" Age: A Report On China's Renewal In Catholic Worship, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

Confucius’ disciple, Yan Hui, once asked the Master how to become a good person. “Goodness,” the Master said, comes about when “one forms himself according to ritual.” China has never quite lost its Confucian sense of ritual, for ritual is what forms a person in goodness, and in his final exhortation to his inquisitive student, Confucius suggests that ritual forms our vision, our speech, and our actions. Little wonder, then, that when Jesuit missionaries first went to China in the late sixteenth century, one of the aspects of Christianity that attracted Chinese most was the richness of Catholic ritual. Few …

China's Century And The West In History: Historical Research In China On The Early Modern Era, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

MEMS Talk -- Whitworth University

Local Magistrates And Foreign Mendicants: Chinese Views Of Shanxi's Franciscan Mission During The Late Qing, 1700-1900, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

Strangers in Distant Lands: The West in Late-Imperial China (2012 Symposium at the University of Hong Kong, HK)

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …