Book Title

East Asia beyond the Archives: Missing Sources & Marginal Voices

Editors

Catherine S. CHAN and Tsang Wing MA (Department of Chinese History and Culture)

Publisher

Leiden University Press

Year of Publication

2023

ISBN

9789087284244

Introduction

For a long time, silk, tea, Sinocentrism, and Eurocentrism made up a big patch of East Asian history. Simultaneously deviating from and complicating these tags, this edited volume reconstructs narratives from the periphery and considers marginal voices located beyond official archives as the centre of East Asian history. The lives of the Japanese Buddhist monks, Eastern Han local governors, Confucian scholars, Chinese coolies, Shanghainese tailors, Macau joss-stick makers, Hong Kong locals, and Cantonese working-class musicians featured in this collection provide us with a glimpse of how East Asia’s inhabitants braved, with versatility, the ripples of political centralisation, cross-border movement, foreign imperialism, nationalism, and globalism that sprouted locally and universally. Demonstrating the rich texture of sources discovered through non-official pathways, the ten essays in this volume ultimately reveal the timeless interconnectedness of East Asia and the complex, non-uniform worldviews of its inhabitants.

Content

Rewriting East Asia: No Victors, No Vanquished - Catherine S. Chan and Tsang Wing Ma
Part I. Challenges to Central Narratives in Ancient China
1. The Failure of Abdication as a Regular Method of Monarchic Power Succession: A Study of the Tang Yu zhi    dao Manuscript - Hin Ming Frankie Chik
2. The Monumentalization of Communal Memories in Eastern Han China, 25–220 CE - Chun Fung Tong
3. Commemorating the Dead for the Living: Two Eastern Han (25-220 CE) Stelae from Southwest China - Hajni Elias
Part II. Informal Sino-Japanese Interaction in Medieval East Asia
4. Chinese Treasures Buried in Private Japanese Libraries: Popular Confucian Works Known as Accounts of Filial Children - Keith N. Knapp
5. Sino-Japanese Exchanges during a Tribute Hiatus: Sources from the Buddhist Archives - Yiwen Li
Part III. East Asia between East-West Encounters
6. “Boys,” “Mandarins,” and “Coolies”: Searching for Hong Kong’s Chinese Community in the Colonial Archive - Thomas M. Larkin
7. Uncommon Sources on an Uncommon Life: Cantonese Opera Music Master Wong Toa (1914-2015) - Wing Chung Ng
Part IV. Global Patterns in Contemporary Southern China
8. Revisiting Cold War Hong Kong: Chinese Tailors, American Servicemen, and Suit-Making Experiences, 1950-1980 - Katon Lee
9. The Orient is Hong Kong? Cultural Representation of Hong Kong in Tourism Material and the Missing Voices of the Tourists - Lok Yin Law
10. What Joss-Stick Community? Issues in the Inventory and Interpretation of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Macau - Catherine S. Chan

* Owners of respective book covers are credited. Book covers are for reference only. FH is unable to accept responsibility of any inaccurate information.