Acknowledgments
Many people have helped me in preparing this study. They have offered insights, answered specific questions, and provided suggested translations. I take final responsibility for the information presented in this book, but I am pleased to gratefully acknowledge assistance from many colleagues and friends.
My first “teacher” in learning how to understand chaoben was He Zhaohui 何朝暉. We met in 2006, when he joined the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow. He served as a specialist in rare books at the Peking University Library and has been teaching since 2008 at the Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies at Shandong University. We have met in Beijing and at the Shandong University campus. Reviewing with me a number of chaoben I had bought, he helped to put those manuscripts in the context of the times in which they were produced. He also pointed out how valuable and interesting the comments, stories, and poems written in the margins as an afterthought by the copyists could be. He gave me good ideas on how to identify the handmade paper used in chaoben. He was always willing to look at my materials and to answer questions. In 2009 we enjoyed the experience of finding a number of old handwritten and woodblock-print books in Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. We divided the treasures we had found to our mutual satisfaction.
My second “teacher” was Li Renyuan 李仁淵. I met him later that year while he was working on his Ph.D. and was a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He was also familiar with chaoben and was interested in the materials I was collecting. He visited me a few times at my home in Cambridge, offering several hours of excellent tutoring in how to “read” chaoben by locating critical points in the text, how to appreciate the expressions used by the writers, and even how to become comfortable with the nonstandard characters that occurred every so often. He clued me in to the idea that the particular expressions used by the chaoben writers could be seen as expressions of their social status and world-view. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 and is now at the Academic Sinica in Taiwan where he continues his fieldwork in the villages of Fujian.
In order to make sense of the wide range of materials I was collecting, I chose a few topics to concentrate on in more detail. I prepared that material in the form of PowerPoint presentations and wrote up a few articles that were then published. Along the way, and continuing until the preparation of this book, I regularly consulted with colleagues, specialists, and fellow scholars, all of whom I consider friends. Space limitations prevent me from listing all of their accomplishments and affiliations, as I would have liked. In lieu of that, I ask them to accept my gratitude for their help and here list them only by name, in alphabetical order.
The many colleagues and professionals who have helped me were: Mark Byington, Adam Yuet Chau 周越, Chen Shi 陳實, Du Yuping 杜玉平, Du Zuxun 杜澤遜, Ge Huanli 戈煥禮, He Jun 何俊, He Wumeng 何無夢, Wilt Idema, Alister Inglis, Kawaguchi Toshiaki 川口敏明, Sunjoo Kim 金善珠김선주, Ronald Knapp, Kobayashi Tadao 小林忠夫, Jonghyun Lee 李鍾玄, Li Linxiang 李林祥, Li Zhisong 李志松, Lin Yiping 林一平, Liu Xiaoli 劉曉麗, Lü Shuxian 呂淑賢, Noji Kaeko 野地香惠子, Osawa Akihiro 大澤顕浩, Qu Xiaofan 曲曉范, Paul Ropp, Shao Yunfei 邵韻霏, Sun Yan 孫嵒, Michael Szonyi, Robert Weller, Ming Wong (Huang Ming) 黃明, Yang Liu 楊柳, Yu Chao 于超, Zhang Zhicheng 張志成, Zhai Wenjun 瞿文君, Zhang Weiqi 張偉奇, Zhang Zhiqiang 張志強, Zheng Da 鄭達, Zhou Guixiang 周桂香, Zhou Donghua 周東華, and Zhou Xuanyun 周玄雲.
Since I arrived at Suffolk University in Boston, I have been helped by a number of graduate and undergraduate students. Most are native speakers of Chinese. They have made initial translations of some material and have offered their opinions on wording and usage. Most of them now work in China or in the United States for major companies. Among these capable students are: Cui Yixuan 催毅鉉, Li Donglin 李棟琳, Li Yunjie 李雲傑, Noji Kaeko 野地香惠子, Belal Sohel, Yang Xi 楊曦, and Zhang Yu 張于.
William Leete was a New Englander who graduated from Yale Divinity School. He went to China as a Christian missionary and lived there from 1913 until his death in 1952. During that time, he often carried a box camera and took thousands of pictures. He was most interested in the common people he encountered on the streets and in the villages. He photographed them while they were engaged in their daily routines and activities. The photos capture the sense of energy and the atmosphere of a time and place that no longer exist. His grandson William Morse now operates Wm. Morse Editions, a fine art printmaking studio in Boston. Mr. Morse is conserving and restoring the thousands of photographs taken by his grandfather. He has generously agreed to allow a number of these photos to be published in this book. These treasures, which show us the lives of China’s common people during the period covered in this text, have never before been published. The photos, appropriately credited, appear throughout the book.
Additional thanks are given to the David. M. Rubenstein Book & Manuscript Library, part of the Duke University Libraries. They have allowed me to use many photographs from the Sidney D. Gamble Collection. Sidney Gamble visited China several times between 1908 and 1932. On the first visit he went with his parents and had not yet graduated from Princeton University. In subsequent visits he was doing Christian social work for the YMCA and also conducting social surveys. Although he enjoyed great wealth because his father was part of the Procter & Gamble conglomerate of cleaning agents and cooking oils, Sidney was interested in the lives of the typical people he encountered daily in the streets. He took many photographs of these ordinary people and the scenes he observed.
I am grateful for a Grant from the Rosenberg Institute for East Asian Studies at my school, Suffolk University in Boston, to help with the completion of the manuscript. The Grant was arranged by Maria Toyoda, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk.
My thanks go also to the editors at Brill, who have helped with the publication of this book. In the Boston office, the Senior Acquisitions Editor for Asian Studies, Qin Jiang Higley, was always pleasant to work with. The Assistant Editor for Asian Studies, Victoria Menson, took the manuscript and made it into a book. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers whose comments provided good advice and helpful observations.
June 2018