Book Reviews by Yuanfei Wang
Journal of Asian Studies, 2022
Another distinguishing feature of this study is the use of images that put the reader in close co... more Another distinguishing feature of this study is the use of images that put the reader in close contact with the sources. Urbansky intersperses well-known illustrations, such as a Soviet propaganda postcard by Viktor S. Ivanov celebrating Sino-Soviet friendship (figure 6.1, p. 207), and unique images, such as the full-page reproduction of a passport of a Russian worker on the Chinese Eastern Railroad from 1898 (figure 2.1, p. 42) and a photograph of the Mongol nobleman Zorigt Baatar E. Tokhtogo (figure 3.1, p. 96), who resisted Han Chinese rule over formerly de facto autonomous Mongol populations, to apply an anthropological touch to this historical research and to give readers not only an interpretation of a source but an invitation to form their own understandings of it. Although nationalism has become a tempered element in relations between the present-day governments of China and Russia, this history rightly highlights the gradual scarcity of transcultural people in the northeastern borderland who might have been Russian or Chinese but could be comfortable being both or neither. Citizens who are more attached to a single culture, language, or national identity may be preferable as inhabitants of territories where people must uphold the demarcation of artificial boundaries, but Urbansky's work affirms that they might be less ideal for the cultivation of relationships that helped both states and societies thrive in the past.
Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and Reviews, 2021
by thoroughly reading their complete work collections (quanji) in multiple volumes. It is also la... more by thoroughly reading their complete work collections (quanji) in multiple volumes. It is also laudable that she directly approaches the original, primary materials and develops her own analysis rather than depending too much on the secondary materials. Moreover, the notes from 195 to 248 are more than just the reference citations, but full of rich, informative, yet highly concise analyses and comments. The notes and the main text constitute an organic intertext, and the reading experience is much enriched and broadened with these valuable notes. Last but not the least, a deeply researched academic work is rarely a joy to read, unlike this book. Written in a quasi story-telling style and embellished with eloquent and refined language, the book engages readers with its many riveting biographies, stories, and history. Among others, it was delightful to learn that Zhao Yuanren, Qu Qiubai, and Zhou Youguang all came from the same Qingguo Alley in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, a phenomenon the author used to kick off the rare conversation with Zhou when he was one hundred and ten years old in 2016. I highly recommend this book to scholars and students of modern Chinese literature, history, and language, and to anyone who is interested in the cultural study of language and script.
Journal of chinese humanities, 2018
Papers by Yuanfei Wang
Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and Reviews, 2020
In Jin Ping Mei cihua, purple in different shades becomes fashionable among courtesans and women ... more In Jin Ping Mei cihua, purple in different shades becomes fashionable among courtesans and women of gentry and merchant classes. Purple, which used to designate high official ranks and royalty from Tang to Song, was censored, downgraded, and diverted from the official sartorial hierarchy in the Ming. Offering a brief material and cultural history of purple dye, this article delineates how the women of Jin Ping Mei adopt purple to construct their professional and everyday personas and argues that dyeing and colors are central in the novel's conception of the dynamics between the material world and the mind.
Journal of Chinese Humanities, 2019
Ming Studies, 2021
This paper discusses the figuration of the purple jade hairpin as inalienable possession in the T... more This paper discusses the figuration of the purple jade hairpin as inalienable possession in the Tang author Jiang Fang’s (792–835) marriage romance “Huo Xiaoyu’s story” and the Ming playwright Tang Xianzu’s (1550–1616) dramatic adaptation of the story, The Purple Hairpins (1595). Examining how the hairpin’s materiality and symbolism intersects with the tradition of classical poetry and marriage laws, the paper shows opposing poetics—the critical and the lyrical—of the two marriage romances. Whereas the selling of the hairpin in the Tang romance indicates the loss of Huo Xiaoyu’s identity and the culture of romance—a true social order of exogamy based upon language exchange, the circulation of her hairpins in The Purple Hairpins authenticates her identity and the culture of romance.
Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and Reviews (CLEAR), 2020
In Jin Ping Mei cihua, purple in different shades becomes fashionable among courtesans and women ... more In Jin Ping Mei cihua, purple in different shades becomes fashionable among courtesans and women of gentry and merchant classes. Purple, which used to designate high official ranks and royalty from Tang to Song, was censored, downgraded, and diverted from the official sartorial hierarchy in the Ming. Offering a brief material and cultural history of purple dye, this article delineates how the women of Jin Ping Mei adopt purple to construct their professional and everyday personas and argues that dyeing and colors are central in the novel’s conception of the dynamics between the material world and the mind.
Journal of the Siam Society, 2020
This article considers how Siam became the locus of utopian imagination for the Chinese cultural ... more This article considers how Siam became the locus of utopian imagination for the Chinese cultural elite residing in China and overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia in the 17th century. The settlement of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and the kingdom of Ayutthaya proffered sources of imagination for Chen Chen (1615-1670) to compose the novel The Sequel to the Water Margin (Shuihu houzhuan). He channeled ideas and ideals on free trade, refuge, colonialism, and Han Chinese racialism into a story on Chinese pirates' conquest of Siam. The emergence of such utopian imagination was bound up with late Ming ideals of passion, love, and self-invention and the 17th-century Chinese discourse of oceans and pirates.
Nan NÜ: Men, Women, and Gender in China, 2020
This article examines the emaciated self-images of four women's self-inscription poems on their o... more This article examines the emaciated self-images of four women's self-inscription poems on their own portraits. They are Huang Hong (early seventeenth century), Xi Peilan (1760-after 1829), Tan Yinmei (fl. mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century) and Zheng Lansun (1819-61). These women similarly describe their self-images as qiaocui (emaciated), alluding to the legendary girl poet Feng Xiaoqing. Inherently ambivalent , qiaocui could imply sexual and erotic appeal, the virtuous mind of a recluse, sickness , ordinariness, melancholy, as well as aging and death. The article argues for the importance of the rhetoric of qiaocui and the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing in the self-inscriptions by women in Hangzhou and the broader Jiangnan region as a medium to construct their female subjectivity. This article suggests that, initially a persona publicly circulated in the late Ming, the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing came to define the women's per-sonhood in private spaces in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
positions: asia critique, vol 27, no.4, 2019
In late sixteenth century, thriving private maritime trade brought forth maritime trouble to the ... more In late sixteenth century, thriving private maritime trade brought forth maritime trouble to the late Ming state. In times of rampant “Japanese” piracy and Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, Chinese literati composed unofficial histories and vernacular fiction on China’s foreign relations. Among them, Yan Congjian 嚴從簡 wrote Shuyu zhouzi lu 殊域周咨錄 (Records of Surrounding Strange Realms) (1574), He Qiaoyuan 何喬遠 compiled Wang Xiangji 王享記 (Records of the Emperors’ Tributes) (1597–1620), Luo Yuejiong 羅曰褧 penned Xianbin lu 咸賓錄 (Records of Tributary Guests) (1597), and Luo Maodeng 羅懋登 composed a vernacular novel Sanbao taijian xiyangji tongsu yanyi 三寶太監西洋記通俗演義 (Vernacular Romance of Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyages on the Indian Ocean) (1598). This article examines how the imminent maritime realities reminded the late Ming authors of one cross-border war and two genocides in Java and Sanfoqi during Yuan and early and mid-Ming times. These transgressions that violated Chinese official tributary order became memorable and made Sino-Java relations a definite point of comparison for the late Ming maritime piracy problems. This article argues that the cultural memory of Sino-Java military and diplomatic exchange enabled the authors to lament and condemn the executed pirates Wang Zhi and Chen Zuyi. The four authors imbue their narratives with personal anxieties and nationalistic sentiments. While the historical narratives tend to moralize and idealize China’s tributary world order, the vernacular fiction paints a more realistic picture of the late Ming state by involving heterogeneous voices of the “other.” Collectively, the four narratives represent various images of the Ming Empire, revealing the authors’ deep apprehension of the Mings’ identity, their political criticism of the state, and their divergent and even self-conflicted views toward maritime commerce, immigrants, and people of different races.
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-7726916
Books by Yuanfei Wang
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Book Reviews by Yuanfei Wang
Papers by Yuanfei Wang
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-7726916
Books by Yuanfei Wang
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-7726916