Throughout my graduate career at UCLA, I took classes with many professors, but none had a greater impact than the research methods seminar that I took with Elman. We were sent into the East Asian Library on assignments such as “title chasing,” “quote chasing,” and “date chasing” where we had to dig deep into the resources to write up our reports within a designated time. All of us became almost permanent fixtures in the East Asian Library that semester as we buried ourselves amongst the library stacks searching for answers to our weekly assignments. It was a very intensive exercise, and we all knew that not completing the assignments was not an option. But this was also the most rewarding class because it provided us with the skills for using critical research tools, and understanding the importance of rigorous scholarship. Elman has continued to train his students rigorously and shares the resources for research through his website “The Classical Historiography for Chinese History” hosted by Princeton University Library. This is one of the most comprehensive resources for anyone working in the field of classical Chinese history.
A major part of Elman's influence on his students both at UCLA and at Princeton is that he led by example. His masterful scholarship on evidential research, education, the civil service examination, and science, medicine, and technology have helped to shape not only our understanding of the subjects, but has also encouraged explorations in new directions of research. The articles in this issue reflect the inspiration of Elman's work on some of us who work on the intellectual, cultural, and medical histories of late imperial China. The richness of the intellectual and scientific traditions in traditional China is amply reflected in the papers in this volume that are built upon Elman's extensive research. We see in Brigid Vance's paper the popularity of dream encyclopedias, and the practice of glyphomancy in the late Ming where she shows the importance and power of Chinese characters, and the way glyphomancy offers insight into the timing of future events for late Ming rulers through dream divinations. Lu Miaw-fen's paper shows how the dual worship of ancestors and the cult of Confucius within the private household were not only a way to identify with the patriarchal bloodline, but also a way for self-cultivation in becoming a sage, making the private home a quasi-religious practice space. Ori Sela's paper builds upon Elman's research on the intellectual revolution in Jiangnan in the eighteenth century and the examination system to further show the significance of collaborative efforts and the communal nature of knowledge production in the eighteenth century. Chu Pingyi uses the family instructions of the Yuan family to show how Confucian physicians who were failed examination candidates justified their practice of a technical skill, medicine, by ascribing Confucian values to it and creating an ethics and incentive to improve their skills based on a fear of retribution. Chao Yüan-ling's paper on the legal statute yongyi shashang ren (incompetent physicians killing or injuring people) and the legal cases presented in the Xing'an huilan (Conspectus of Penal Cases) based on this statute shows a diverse healing landscape in late imperial times, and the ways the state used the statutes and substatutes to advance their agenda.
Elman unquestioningly inspired not only research in late imperial China, but provided guidance and support in a wide range of research agenda among his students. The array of papers presented by his students from UCLA and Princeton at the conference in his honor organized in May 2015 by Eugenia Lean (Columbia University) and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (New York University) in New York reflected his impact as a teacher. The conference was titled “New Directions in the Cultural and Intellectual History of China” and there were panels on “Social Functions of Texts and Readings,” “Grammar, Neologisms, and the Architecture of Language,” “Medicine and Bodies in Late Imperial and Modern China,” “Politics and Qing Intellectual Currents,” “Confucian Worthies, Jesuits, and Confucianism as Religion,” and “The Texts of Industry.”
One of Elman's continuing intellectual concerns is a rethinking of the place and role of traditional Chinese science in modern China. The groundbreaking works by Joseph Needham and his numerous collaborators, and the seminal research by Nathan Sivin have indisputably established the presence of rich traditions of natural studies and medicine in traditional China. In On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900,Footnote1 Elman convincing argued that the Chinese literati were actively interested and engaged in dialogues with European science beginning in the sixteenth century, and explores the factors leading to the construction of a failure narrative of science in China despite her remarkable achievements. Elman aimed to present a unified narrative of the development of modern science, medicine, and technology in China through a broad survey of the period 1550–1900. By treating them as a continuum rather than separating into an accustomed earlier Jesuit phase and a later Protestant phase, he placed the rise of modern science in China within a historical perspective. To challenge the idea that the Chinese literati were not interested in science, Elman showed that the Chinese literati were not only interested in European science when they encountered it through the Jesuits, but that in the nineteenth century, the much disparaged arsenals, shipyards, and other self-strengthening enterprises actually showed the Qing reformers achieving a collaboration between literati who held scientific knowledge and the artisans who produced the technical works. Ultimately, the Chinese produced their own science. But why was there a failure narrative of Chinese science then? Defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 set the stage for “the beginnings of the failure narrative,”Footnote2 and instead of the West, China looked to Japan as the emissary of modern science. Parallel to the decline of dynastic strength, an account that criticized the classical traditions in Chinese science and medicine emerged. The new Chinese elite, many educated in the West and in Japan, abhorred what they considered to be the backwardness of Chinese culture and customs, including traditional medicine. The writer Lu Xun attacked not only classical Chinese culture as one that “eat people” in his Diary of A Madman,Footnote3 but also Chinese medicine as superstition and the cause of his father's death. Thus began the narrative of failure and the displacement of China in the field of science and medicine.
Elman's book is an ambitious work to restore the place of science into the history of China, and argues for the remarkable achievements of Chinese science “on their own terms.” Through an abridged version titled A Cultural History of Modern Science in China,Footnote4 he hopes to make it accessible to a broader segment of scholars and students in Asian studies, and engage those who are specialists in western science and medicine, encouraging an understanding of the important place of science and medicine in China before the twentieth century.
In contemporary China, science and technology undoubtedly are on the forefront of national efforts for China to assert scientific leadership in the global community. In the twenty-first century, we see a new nationalist narrative emerging that attempts to use traditional scientific and medical accomplishments for nationalistic purposes, and this is a direction that Elman cautions against.Footnote5 The contemporary rush to create a nationalist narrative of the ancient traditions of science in China often disregards the richness of the intellectual and cultural traditions as shown by articles in this issue. One often finds the narrative of traditional Chinese science and medicine being stripped of its “superstitious” elements and packaged in new scientific garb. Acupuncture as practiced in the West is based on a Western anatomical model with little or no reference to the theoretical frameworks of classical medicine. Chinese medicine as practiced today is systematized and institutionalized with unscientific elements removed.Footnote6 Nathan Sivin refers to the system of Chinese medicine that emerged in the 1950s as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).Footnote7
Yet despite these attempts at “scientizing” Chinese medicine, it has yet to be fully accepted by the international scientific community. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine won by Tu Youyou, a scientist in the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, highlighted TCM and its herbal traditions. It was through a search of ancient medical texts that facilitated Tu Youyou's discovery of Artemisinin, a drug that was critical to the successful treatment of malaria. However, the Nobel Committee emphasized that the award was not a recognition of TCM, but of a scientist who was inspired by ancient Chinese medicine, then went on to use scientific research methods to find the therapy for malaria.
Ultimately, Elman hopes that in restoring the understanding of the achievements of science in China prior to 1900, China's triumphs in contemporary science, medicine, and technology will exert a more benevolent impact than the catastrophe caused by Euro-American techno-science in the early twentieth century.Footnote8
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yüan-Ling Chao
Yuan-ling Chao is a Professor in History at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research interest is in the history of medicine in late imperial China.
Notes
1 On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).
2 Ibid., p. xxxvii.
3 Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman” in The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China (London: Penguin Classics, 2009), pp. 21–31.
4 A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
5 On Their Own Terms, p. xxxviii.
6 See Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (Vancouver, Canada: The University of British Columbia Press, 2014).
7 Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1987), pp. 3–4n.
8 On Their Own Terms, p. 421.