SERICA

Since ceasing to be employed by the Bodleian some four and a half years ago, I’ve been trying my best to complete the cataloguing of the Library’s pre-modern and so-called “special” Chinese collections as a private scholar. Inevitably I’ve left the most difficult things until last.

These are some very down-market works of popular literature made by Piet van der Loon. I remember seeing some of them in his study in his house on Boars Hill on my frequent visits there, but never paid much attention to them. I think that he, too, had put them aside for dealing with one day in the future, which of course never came. There are several hundred of them, and I wouldn’t even have known what they were if he hadn’t tied them in bundles and labelled them.

They are extremely difficult to catalogue because they challenge the rules, which were drawn up for cataloguing regular publications, not casually produced ephemera. Again and again one is faced with the choice of either following the rules, or cataloguing the works in such a way as to show the reader what they are and to give access to them. The ideologues in our cataloguing departments often forget this, and would do well to conduct research using their own catalogues from time to time and see for themselves how difficult it often is to find things in them unless the rules are bent.

In these popular and very localised works, occasionaly rather strange alternative or dialect characters are used, and they are often difficult to identify and locate in the character set. My thanks to Andrew West for giving me much help in this area.

The three biggest collections, which I catalogued some time ago, are:

1. 閩南歌曲 (Fujian folk songs), Sinica 4028-4500
2. 廣州木魚書 (Cantonese “wooden fish books”), Sinica 4911-5234
3. 粵劇劇本 (Canton opera scripts), Sinica 5241-5700

A further hundred or so Cantonese “wooden fish books” were transferred from the Chinese Studies Library in 2014 (Sinica 6194-6295), and another two dozen came from Glen Dubridge in 2017 (Sinica 6751-6774), so that the total size of these three collections is currently:

閩南歌曲 – 480 editions
廣州木魚書 – 487 editions
粵劇劇本 – 461 editions

These are sizeable holdings by any standards.

I’m writing the present blog entry because I’ve recently catalogued three further groups of materials that Piet labelled, and which I’ve attempted to fit into my classification scheme, which is the Sibu 四部 system modified so that it will accept everything in our collection, at least after a fashion. They are (to use his terminolgy):

1.
“Canton dramas, genre unidentified”, Sinica 5806-5854, 57 editions.

Catalogued here.

2.
客家歌冊 (Hakka song books), Sinica 5855-5875, 25 editions.

Catalogued here.

When I first posted this blog entry I wondered why the term 廣東語 was set against each title if these are indeed Hakka song books. But Justin Leung posted a comment noting that all these editions were published in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period, when Hakka was known as 廣東語.

3.
福州評話 (Fuzhou stories), Sinica 5876-5899, 26 editions.

Catalogued here.

If anyone with a knowledge of these things could tell me a better way of classifying this type of popular literature, I’d be extremely grateful.

From time to time people come to the Bodleian with something they have found in their attic. They say they want to know what it is, but what they really want to know is what it’s worth. I was usually able to identify what they brought in, but was not allowed to value it, even if I could.

The manuscript I’m about to describe was brought to me by a Mr Turner in the summer of 1979, just three years after I joined the Library. Although photocopiers had been invented at that time, I didn’t have one, and scanners weren’t even dreamed of, so I transcribed it by hand. At the same time I identified it and wrote a couple of paragraphs on it for the owner. When he returned to collect it I offered to buy it from him once he had got a valuation from commercial dealers, but he never came back and I never saw the document again.

But I kept my transcription together with a carbon copy of my identification, and came across it for the first time in nearly forty years when clearing out my room as instructed, prior to my dismissal (see my previous blog entry).

The manuscript is a piece of ephemera of the sort I have recently become rather interested in. And so have the Chinese, who have started publishing collections of it which they sometimes call guzhidui 故紙堆, or “piles of old papers”. Ephemera is notoriously difficult to catalogue and make accessible to readers, but is of immense value in putting flesh on the bare bones of historical fact. Mr Turner’s manuscript illustrates this perfectly.

It is a notice from the acting magistrates of Nanhai 南海 and Panyu 番禺, two towns near Canton. It is quite large, 55cm high. and 66cm. wide, and is one of several copies that would have been made to be posted on the city walls near the main gates. It is dated the 17th day of the 5th month of the 20th year of Guangxu, which in the western calendar is 20 June 1894. It bears two seals applied side by side over the characters 「二十」 in the date. One is the official seal of Nanhai, and the other, which is illegible, is probably that of Panyu. The day of the month 「十七」 is written in red and would have been filled in after the rest of the document had been completed, just prior to its issue; and also written in red are the check marks and signature of the clerk who prepared it.

Here is my transcription of the manuscript, presented horizontally but preserving the text alignment and layout of the original (to see the vertical arrangement in PDF click here):

欽加同知銜署南海縣事候補縣
　　　　　　正堂加十級紀錄十次楊
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　為
欽加運同銜署番禺縣事海陽縣
　　　　　　正堂加十級紀錄十次杜

　　　曉諭事照得本年時疫流行歷更數月之久
　天降灾梫入宜戒惧乃聞外閒謠言妄謂病由洋
　　　教士放毒所致在明白事理者原不為其所
　　　愚觀香港洋人亦復一骵沾疫天行時癘感
　　　受非獨華民如果毒出外洋豈非自傷其類
　　　明係不法匪徒造言煽感希圖濨事誠恐安
　　　分良民誤信警疑除訪拏造謠之人從嚴惩
　　　究外合行出示曉諭為此示諭城厢內外人
　　　䓁知𢘻現在時疫已漸止息爾䓁正可安居
　　　作業靜迓
　天和勿得誤聽謠言致濨紛擾是為至要其各凜
　　　遵毋違特示

　　　光緒二十年五月十七日示

The 1911 edition of Nan hai xian zhi 南海縣志 records that in 1894 the magistrate was Yang Yinting 楊蔭廷 (9:1b) and that in this year there was a serious epidemic, the mention consisting of two characters only:「大疫」(2:69b). And the 1931 edition of Pan yu xian xu zhi 番禺縣續志 records that in 1894 the magistrate was Du Youbai 杜友白 (13:14a); the epidemic is not noted in the main chronological section (42:7b), but receives passing mention elsewhere (2:40a, 41a). (The editions of these two gazetteers are the first to have been published after the epidemic, and the links I have supplied lead to our catalogue entries of the reproductions I have used; both are in the recently published and very fine series Guang zhou da dian 廣州大典.)

It is immediately apparent that Mr Turner’s piece of ephemera tells us very much more than the laconic mentions in the gazetteers.

The epidemic has been troubling the region for several months. There is a rumour that it has been caused by poison planted by foreign missionaries, but this cannot be true as it has also affected the foreign residents of Hong Kong. The rumour has been put about by trouble makers with the object of causing a disturbance. The magistrates have posted the bill to inform people that the trouble makers have been arrested and punished, and that the epidemic is now abating so that they may go about their business as usual. They should pay no attention to the fabrications of trouble makers, and should obey the magisterial commands in fear and trembling.

If this text gets picked up by web crawlers and becomes searchable, and if this is the only form in which it survives, which it probably is, I will feel that my blog entry will have served a useful purpose, if only a small one. And if we had the time and resources to treat the countless pieces of ephemera in our libraries similarly, surely that would be a job worth doing.

I was shocked to discover that my previous blog entry was written almost exactly five months ago. My silence is not due to lack of interest, much less of things to write about, but because I have had to modernise our Chinese catalogue, something which would merit its own blog entry if it were a little less off-message.

So here at last is a brief account of the set of three papers that were used in the provincial examination at Nanchang in 1902. They were exhibited together with related materials in the Proscholium of the Old Library between 22 February and 6 April. I will present the exhibition online as my next blog entry.

But first to the papers themselves. I have called them Chü jên papers not out of antiquarianism, but because on the spine of the small yellow folder in which the papers were kept, presumably made shortly after their acquisition in September 1910, are the words

3 CHÜ JÊN EXAMINATION PAPERS

They are described as follows in my catalogue, and may be seen here.

光緒二十八年壬寅補行庚子恩科並辛丑正科江西鄉試題 第壹、贰、叁場 / (清)光緒二十八年[1902]官撰
刊
3張 ; 58 x 90, 58 x 87, 54 x 86公分
Sinica 3043

Also in the folder were two letters from Arnold Foster. The first is dated 22 June 1910; it says what the papers are and offers a set to the Library. The second is dated 2 September 1910 and encloses the papers; it was evidently written in response to a reply from the Library. There are also two copies of a printed single-sheet description of the papers, with blanks where the names of the city and province should be written. These have been completed in manuscript, to read:

“… in the Examination Cells of Nan-chang Fu the Capital of the Province of Kiang-si …”

I’m grateful to my Cambridge colleague Charles Aylmer for drawing to my attention the work Arnold Foster : memoir, selected writings, etc. (London Missionary Society, 1921), which gives evidence of the provenance of these examination papers. I will quote the relevant paragraph (pp.44-45) in full, as it also sheds light on the dissemination of missionary publications:

“During the Manchu Dynasty, Triennial examinations were held in all the provincial capitals, and students, who had already obtained their B.A. degree, came from all parts of the province to sit for the examination. Out of the five or six thousand who go in for it only seventy or eighty could pass, but as this was the only door to official life, large numbers always competed. This was felt to be a unique opportunity for reaching the student class. In September, 1902, Mr. Foster and representatives from all Protestant Missions in the three cities, with Chinese Christian helpers, waited at the gate of the examination hall with packets of books to give to the students, as they left the building. Thirty-two hampers full of books were given late in the evening and very early the next morning. This was an occasion when Mr. Foster believed in free distribution. As a rule, he thought it much wiser to sell books, as being paid for, they would be valued and read. He regretted that free distribution had revived in later years, so making sales more difficult.”

It must surely have been during the course of this book distribution that Foster obtained copies of the examination papers. We are not told the names of the cities in which these exchanges of materials took place, but in his letter of 22 June 1910, Foster says he got sets of papers from “each of six or seven of the Provincial Capitals of China”, and that in addition to Oxford, he was making “a similar offer to the British Museum, to the Cambridge University Library, & to one other English library only.”

Arnold Foster (1846-1919) was a graduate of St. John’s College and President of the Cambridge Union (1870). Accordingly, he gave what is probably the finest set of papers to his alma mater. These are from Nanking, the capital of Kiangsu Province, which had the largest examination complex in China with 20,644 cells. This set has been described by Charles Aylmer on the CUL website.

The only other set I have seen is ours, which is from Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi Province. I suppose the set given to the British Museum (assuming they accepted Foster’s offer) is now in the British Library – I will try and find out. What is the “other English library”, I wonder, and what happened to the other two or three sets that Foster said he had acquired?

Like ours until earlier this year, they are probably lying undiscovered on a library shelf or in someone’s office. It is therefore impossible to say whether such sets of papers are rare. I can only say that the only two copies known to me are those in Oxford and Cambridge. A Google search for the title (or more sensibly, elements of the title such as “恩科”, “正科” “鄉試題”) does not reveal any more copies of the papers themselves, but plenty of published reports and lists of candidates, notably in the Toyo Bunko and other Japanese libraries.

Ephemera is notoriously difficult to describe and thus bring to the attention of scholars. It is even difficult to know what things are, because scholars are normally concerned with scholarship, and not the tiny details of daily life and work to which ephemera almost exclusively relates. And when all who might remember these details are long dead, so that there is nobody to ask, the difficulties are often insuperable.

I aim to describe all our Chinese ephemera in due course, and to identify it as best I can with the help of others.

In my second blog entry over two years ago, I described a rather high-brow piece of ephemera, the Red Decree. The subject of the current blog entry is rather different. I catalogue it as follows:

陞官圖 / 舊題(明)倪元璐作
清道光庚子[1840]廣東刊
1張 ; 82 x 75公分
有「張隆盛製」朱文印記
Sinica 440/2

This is a large single-sheet item, bearing no title, so the title is simply a statement of what the item is, and was assigned to it by Xiang Da so that it could be included in his card catalogue. The “promotion chart” is simply an English translation of this description.

The above image is too small to be legible – I reproduce it only to show what the chart looks like; the full image can be seen and examined here.

The chart was among the books given to us in 1877 by General Lawrence Shadwell,who had served in the 98th (Prince of Wales) Regiment of Foot which had been sent to Hong Kong in 1842. His books are the first to be listed in James Legge’s manuscript continuation of Joseph Edkins’ printed catalogue of Chinese books in the Bodleian, which appeared in 1876 and contains 299 entries. Legge’s list therefore starts at number 300, and I reproduce the first entry to give a flavour of this document, which is surprisingly crude, and to introduce it to readers of this blog:

Unfortunately, there is no individual entry for the chart, which is found under number 321, “Extracts from Peking Gazette, Treaties, &c.”, and in fact it is only because of later annotations to this entry that we know that this batch of materials comprised 3 printed volumes, 19 manuscript volumes, and 4 printed sheets, of which one was discarded as a duplicate in 1939 by EOW (Eric Otto Winstedt, who was keeper of the Oriental collections at the time). Let’s hope it wasn’t a duplicate of the chart!

And here is the description of the chart “written on the back” as Legge’s entry suggests, and in his own hand:

However, it is wrong. Although the chart does indeed depict the structure of the contemporary Chinese bureaucracy, it is not a directory, but a game.

This, together with almost everything else I now know about the chart, I learned from Puk Wing Kin when he visited me in Oxford in 2009. Most important to me as a cataloguer, he pointed out that certain characters in the chart are represented by simplified forms which are only homophonous in Cantonese. For example: you 由 is used for rou 柔 (both are pronounced yau in Cantonese), and zhuang 庄 is used for zang 贓 (in Cantonese both are pronounced jong). I was thus able to say with some certainty where the map was printed in my catalogue entry, rather than merely infer it from its provenance; the date of 1840 道光庚子 is clearly printed in the central panel.

Puk Wing Kin came to Oxford in 1995 to pursue doctoral research under David Faure; his subject was the Ming salt monopoly, and he gained his D.Phil. in 2007. He had been introduced to the chart as an M.Phil student at Hong Kong Baptist University in the early 1990s. He is now a history professor in the Chinese University of Hong Kong specialising in the socio-economic history of Ming and Qing China, and is thus well qualified to understand the complexities of the game. He has written a book about it, which was published in 2010, with a second edition in 2011:

遊戲官場 : 陞官圖與中國官制文化 / 卜永堅著
再版
香港 : 中華書局, 2011
平裝1冊(96頁) : 圖, 表 ; 23公分 + 圖2張
ISBN 978-962-8931-75-0

The two charts reproduced in large format in the book are facsimiles of ours and one printed in Shanghai in the Republican period.

The book discusses the history of the game, which originated in the Tang and achieved its present form in the Ming. The details of the chart change from time to time, according to the contemporary structure of the Chinese bureaucracy. The book also explains the rules of the game. They are very complex, and I will not pretend to understand the details, but the aim is quite simple: to achieve high government office, which means reaching the post of Grand Secretary 大學士 in the Grand Secretariat 內閣, encircled in red in the following image:

This involves a long series of promotions and demotions, as set forth in the small print in each of the rectangular panels, all determined by the roll of dice and the movement of counters. As in life, much depends on where one starts from, which in the game is again determined by the roll of dice.

By playing the game, much can be learned about the bureaucratic structure of imperial China and how officials rose and fell within it, for which reason Wing Kin told me that he sometimes plays the game with his students.

Although on one level the game is a very sophisticated form of snakes and ladders, perhaps its nearest western equivalent is Monopoly, which leads to a comparison of the two. While both are aleatory – games of chance depending on the roll of dice – whereas the aim of one is to attain the highest office in the land through virtuous conduct, that of the other is to become rich by bankrupting one’s neighbours. Food for thought here, don’t you think?

I’m going to describe another piece of printed ephemera in my next blog entry, as it’s closely related. Appointment to any of the posts represented in the promotion chart depended on passing the official examinations that were periodically held at local, provincial, and metropolitan levels. We have a set of three papers that were used in the provincial examination at Nanchang in 1902 which I’d like to bring to your attention. They will be exhibited in the Proscholium of the Old Library for a few weeks from mid-February, the aim of the display being to illustrate the traditional Chinese preoccupation with success in examinations as the path to fame and fortune.