August 29 further reading: The Manchus and the Han sample reading notes

Zhou Dongyu in Gong Suo Chen Xiang, Liaoning Ribao

Please take notes while reading for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Feel free to share them by Monday and Wednesday night on Google drive in "CHI 331 Group notes" to which you should all have been added. Extra credits for great notes. Some sample notes from readings for 8/29 below, and feel free to comment with your questions and reflections.

"Visions of the 18th Century: The Charms of Qing TV" reading notes and further reading links

"The erasure of Manchu language from period dramas is of course a matter of artistic expedience, but it is also one of the many small and subtle ways the educational and media environment in the People's Republic of China reinforces an orthodox interpretation of Chinese history, one which emphasises continuity and unity. For most viewers, the assumption is that what the Manchus spoke doesn't matter, because, in the end, the Manchus were Sinicised: seduced by the splendour of Chinese civilisation into abandoning their own language, culture and identity. How else could a small population of barbarians have ruled over so many Chinese for such a long time?"

A Virtual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization: Timelines and Maps 

The Economist on China: Weekly round-up, August 30, 2013 

"The Manchus and Their Language" reading notes

p. 485 Once the Manchus had their own literary language, they embarked upon what must surely be one of the world's great translation projects. The earliest translations from Chinese were of political and military works, texts that would be of use as the Manchus prepared to occupy and rule China. Later, the basic Confucian classics were translated. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries numerous historical, religious, scientific, medical, and literary works were translated from Chinese.

p.486 If the Mongol and Han members of the banners are included, the early Manchu confederacy totaled nearly one million people. In the early years of the dynasty, the vast majority of Manchus was monolingual in Manchu (Ji 1993, Elliott 2001). Knowledge of Manchu was also common among the Mongol and Han members of the confederacy. The vitality of the language remained reasonably strong for the first century of Manchu rule in China; thereafter a steady decline set in. By the middle of the eighteenth century knowledge of spoken Manchu was becoming rare. By the early nineteenth century spoken Manchu was effectively moribund in Beijing and probably extinct in many of the Manchu garrisons spread across China.

p. 487 The first Europeans to learn Manchu were several of the Jesuit missionaries at the Qing court in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries some members of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing also studied Manchu. In general Europeans found learning Manchu far easier than mastering Chinese; some also believed that Manchu was superior to Chinese in its concreteness and clarity (Elliott 2001). Of especial interest to foreign scholars were the translations into Manchu of the most important Chinese Confucian classics. These Manchu versions served many an early sinologist as trots in their own translation work.

p. 489 Today in China there are almost ten million people who identify themselves as Manchu, making it the second largest minority in China (Elliott 2001: 43). Some of these present-day Manchus are descendants of the original Tungusic groups that made up the Manchu confederacy, but others are undoubtedly the descendants of the Chinese, Mongols, and Koreans who were incorporated into the Manchu banner system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One rather unusual group of Manchus are the descendants of a group of Russian Cossacks brought to Beijing in 1685 and enrolled in one of the city banners; there they intermarried with Manchus and other banner-people.

p. 490 In conclusion, we might ask what has been the contribution of the Manchus to world history and culture. The most important contribution was without doubt the creation of the Qing empire, the last of the great Chinese dynasties. The Manchus expanded the borders of Ming China, ultimately to include Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. With the exception of the now independent country of Mongolia (the "Outer Mongolia" of Qing times), the present borders of China are in the main those of the Manchu Qing dynasty. It was the Manchu rulers of the last dynasty who first confronted the irreversible tide of European and American interest in China.