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The Peking Gazette
over of an issue of the Peking Gazette.
C
Source: Translation of the Peking Gazette for 1876
(Shanghai: North China Herald, 1877), back cover.
The Peking Gazette
A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Chinese History
By
Lane J. Harris
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover images (clockwise from upper left): Cover of a rare white-bound Peking Gazette published by the
Jusheng baofang 聚陞報房 of Beijing; Illustrated London News (March 22, 1873), reprinted in William
Simpson, Meeting the Sun: A Journey All Round the World through Egypt, China, Japan, and California, Including
an Account of the Marriage Ceremonies of the Emperor of China (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer,
1874), 269; Cover of an issue of the Peking Gazette, Translation of the Peking Gazette for 1876 (Shanghai: North
China Herald, 1877), back cover; collection of gazette covers published by the Juheng baofang 聚恒報房
(http://media.people.com.cn/mediafile/200610/23/F200610231016117299569521.jpg).
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
Acknowledgements vii
Qing Reign Periods viii
Terms of Measurement, Units of Currency, and Bureaucratic
Titles ix
Introduction 1
My thanks to many wonderful colleagues who have helped with this project
over the years. In particular, I would like to thank Jeff Kyong-McClain at the
University of Arkansas-Little Rock, who worked with me on a different course
reader in the past. That one didn’t pan out, but our work together made this
project significantly easier. Alexander Kais, at the Institute of Modern History,
Academia Sinica, was kind enough to use some of the early chapters in his
classes and provide helpful feedback. No one has taught me more about teach-
ing, and about engaging students with large collections of documents, than
my colleague in the History Department, Tim Fehler. Tim also deserves thanks
for listening to my ideas about this project during countless late afternoon,
evening, and weekend conversations. I was fortunate during the latter stages of
this project to meet Emily Mokros, who has been a fount of knowledge about
the Gazette and its translators.
Special thanks to the reviewers, librarians, and editors who helped see this
volume to completion. My reviewers showed exceptional enthusiasm for the
project, but more importantly helped me think through several critical issues.
Any resulting faults are my own. Qin Higley, my editor at Brill, has been a con-
stant supporter of the project from its inception, for which I am indebted. I
would like to thank the staffs at the British Library, the Center for Research
Libraries, and the James B. Duke Library at Furman, especially Elaina Griffith,
for their always courteous and timely assistance.
Above all, I would like to thank Mei Chun, who has been my partner and
scholarly companion over the last fifteen years. As always, she provided me
with intellectual sustenance and the project with unflagging support. Without
her many sacrifices, both personal and professional, this book would never
have been finished. Preston, too, has given up a lot while I worked on this book.
This book is dedicated to my students at Furman University, for it is with
them that it began.
Qing Reign Periods
Yongzheng 1722–1735
Qianlong 1735–1796
Jiaqing 1796–1820
Daoguang 1820–1851
Xianfeng 1851–1861
Tongzhi 1861–1875 1861 Sushun & seven others
1861–73 Empress Dowager Ci’an
1861–73 Empress Dowager Cixi
Weight
jin 斤 is unit of weight equivalent to 1.3 pounds or just over half a kilogram.
Usually translated in the Peking Gazette as a catty.
shi 石 (or sometimes dan) is a unit for measuring grain equivalent to about 133
pounds. Often translated in the Peking Gazette as a picul.
Length
cun 寸 is a unit of length approximately 1.4 inches; ten cun make a chi.
Translated in the Peking Gazette as an inch.
chi 尺 is a unit of length approximating a foot; ten chi make a zhang. Often
translated in the Peking Gazette as a foot.
zhang 丈 is a unit of length approximating four yards or twelve feet. Not usu-
ally translated.
li 里 is a unit of distance, roughly equivalent to one-third of an English mile or
half a kilometer. Not usually translated.
Area
mu 畝 is unit of area for measuring land; it is approximately one-third of an
acre. Not usually translated.
qing 頃 is a unit of area for measuring land; it is approximately 16 acres. Not
usually translated.
Units of Currency
wen 文 is a standard unit of currency made of copper and lead and minted
(usually) by imperial decree. The value of the coins varied greatly over time,
but their weight, size, and shape (round, with a square hold in the center to
allow them to be strung together) remained virtually the same for centu-
ries. Approximately 1,000 wen per liang. Invariably translated in the Peking
Gazette as cash.
qian 錢 is a unit of currency equivalent to one-tenth of an ounce or one hun-
dred cash. Usually translated in the Peking Gazette as mace.
x measurement, units of currency, & bureaucratic titles
Imperial Clansman (zongshi 宗室): A descendant along any male line of the
dynastic founder.
Imperial Clan Court (zongren fu 宗人府): A powerful governing body with
jurisdiction over the entire royal family, except the emperor, and all imperial
clansmen. Charged with maintaining the royal genealogical records, adjudicat-
ing disputes among royal family members, and holding legal jurisdiction in any
case concerning a member of the imperial family.
Imperial Household (neiwu fu 內務府): An administrative agency with many
offices created to serve the personal needs of the emperor, his immediate fam-
ily, and his attendants within the palace. In the Qing, staffed mostly by Manchu
imperial bondservants.
Post Provinces
Huguang Hunan, Hubei
Liangguang Guangdong, Guangxi
Liangjiang Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Anhui
Minzhe Fujian, Zhejiang (includes Taiwan until 1887)
Shaan-Gan Shaanxi, Gansu
Sichuan Sichuan
Yun-Gui Yunnan, Guizhou
Zhili
Dongsansheng Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang
No governor-general Shandong, Shanxi, Henan
Military Titles
Eight Banners (baqi 八旗): The primary military and social organization of the
Manchu people established by Nurhaci in the early seventeenth century; some
Mongols, Han Chinese, and other ethnic groups were also incorporated into
the banner system.
“Tartar General” or Manchu General-in-Chief (jiangjun 將軍): Highest-
ranking Manchu general in each province, rank equivalent to a governor-gen-
eral. He commanded the provincial banner forces.
Green Standard Army (lüying 綠營): Han Chinese provincial armies, con-
taining both infantry and marines, which served to garrison cities and towns,
suppress peasant uprisings, and act as a local police force.
Provincial Commander-in-Chief or General (tidu 提督): Commander of the
provincial Green Standard troops.
xiv measurement, units of currency, & bureaucratic titles
The Peking Gazette ( jingbao 京報), that “patriarch of periodicals,” is often con-
sidered the oldest newspaper in world history. Rightly speaking, the Peking
Gazette was not a newspaper at all in the sense of publishing editorial opin-
ion, generating unique content, and providing social and cultural commentary
on the events of the day, but it did contain “news value” in as much as any
traditional government gazette published contemporary documents pertain-
ing to the day-to-day working of the state. In seventeenth-century Europe,
editors with close connections to their governments began publishing periodi-
cals “by Authority,” like the famous London Gazette (1665–), as a record of the
public business of government. When European missionaries and merchants
first started arriving along the borders of the Qing empire in large numbers,
they searched for sources of news that would help them understand what was
happening in the world’s largest empire. Soon enough, they encountered the
Introduction 3
jingbao with its records of official movements, imperial edicts, and memorials
from officials and came to understand it as something like the gazettes pub-
lished in their own countries. As they slowly mastered the linguistic expertise
necessary to read the formal, documentary proclamations of the Qing em-
perors and his officials, they came to see what they started calling the Peking
Gazette as something else. Much more than the dry official records of the
British or French governments, the Peking Gazette contained the emotional
discourses of the emperor as he gave vent to “his hopes and fears, his joys and
sorrows.”1 He mourned with his subjects, celebrated their accomplishments,
and honored their longevity. As John Barrow, who served as personal secretary
to Lord Macartney on the latter’s mission to China in 1793, wrote, the Gazette
is “a vehicle for conveying into every corner of the empire the virtues and the
fatherly kindness of the reigning sovereign.”2
The Peking Gazette, also translated as the “Metropolitan Reporter” or “Court
Announcements,” was more than just a mouthpiece of the emperor, it was also
the most important public source of information about the workings of the
late Qing state. It provided room for discussion of imperial policy, censorial
criticism of high-ranking officials, insights into the beliefs and practices of
common people in times of crises, titillated the public with court cases about
wayward women and their paramours, and revealed the motivations of sectar-
ian rebels against the government. Through the gazette “one is able to feel the
pulse of the whole empire,” wrote Jehu Lewis Shuck, the first Baptist mission-
ary to China.3
In the nineteenth century, the Peking Gazette was the only source of infor-
mation that circulated throughout the empire and, for foreigners, the “single
most important source on Chinese affairs.”4 Since then, however, the Peking
Gazette has been largely forgotten by historians and students of Chinese his-
tory as access to government archives has changed how we study the late Qing
state over the course of the long nineteenth century. Reading the Gazette again,
more than a century later, shows us that the early missionaries, foreign officials,
1 Samuel Mossman, “The Peking Gazette,” Leisure Hour 14 (February 25, 1865), 122.
2 John Barrow, Travels in China; Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made
and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen,
and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country, from Pekin to Canton (London: A. Strahan,
1804), 391.
3 “Extracts from Communications of Mr. Shuck,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 18: 3 (March
1838), 55.
4 Jonathan Ocko, “The British Museum’s Peking Gazette,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 2: 9 (January
1973), 36.
4 Introduction
and sinologists were not wrong in spending so much time reading and translat-
ing the Gazette. It continues to provide a unique vantage point from which to
understand the policies, behaviors, and attitudes of the central government,
the ideas and cultural perspectives of the officials who populated the admin-
istrative machinery of the Qing state, and the mentality and ways of thinking
among several hundred million subjects of the empire. As Sir Rutherford B.
Alcock, one of the first British consuls in the newly-opened treaty ports, wrote,
the Gazette contains “a great deal of matter calculated to convey information
of the highest value to any student.”5 What kind of information did the Gazette
convey?
The Peking Gazette was not an official publication of any specific office in
the Grand Council or Grand Secretariat, the two highest administrative bod-
ies in the land, but a periodical, like its European counterparts, “issued by
authority.” The missionary Robert Morrison, one of the first translators of the
Gazette, had it right when he described the gazette as containing “orders is-
sued by Imperial Authority.”6 Morrison’s publisher put it slightly differently,
“no thought, no word, except such as his majesty has made public, goes forth
in that publication.”7 The different types of information and orders released by
the emperors to the public gave both form and content to the Gazette.
The Gazette consisted of three sections. Each issue began with a section enti-
tled “Copies from the Palace Gate” (gongmenchao 宮門抄) that contained very
brief descriptions of imperial audiences, guards on duty in the imperial city,
and the physical movements of the emperor. A typical example: “Tomorrow
morning the Emperor will pass through the Huayuan and Shenwu gates on
his way to the Dagao temple to worship. His Majesty will return by the same
road. Everything must be in readiness by six a.m.” The second section entitled
“Imperial Decrees” (shangyu 上諭) contained both imperial decrees and re-
scripts. An imperial decree was an announcement from the throne in the em-
peror’s voice to the officials and people of the empire. The bulk of this section
consisted of announcements concerning the appointment, transfer, demotion,
dismissal, or retirement of imperial bureaucrats. It was something like a ser-
vice list in which officials were literally “gazetted.” On occasion, this section
also contained lengthy discourses by the emperors as they waxed philosophic
5 Rutherford Alcock, “The Peking Gazette,” Fraser’s Magazine 7: 38 (February 1873), 245.
6 Robert Morrison, Translations from the Original Chinese with Notes (Canton: P. P. Thoms,
1815), preface.
7 “Periodical literature: Chinese Almanacs; imperial Court Calendar; the provincial Court
Circular of Canton; the Peking Gazette; with remarks on the condition of the press in China,”
Chinese Repository 5: 1 (May 1836), 12.
Introduction 5
in the vermilion ink reserved for themselves, discourses that provide the best
insight into the public minds of the emperors. An imperial rescript, by contrast,
was most often a short reply by an emperor to a memorial from an official. In
most cases, after publishing the entire memorial, the emperor’s reply would
be something simple, such as: “granted by imperial rescript,” “Let the relevant
Board take notice,” or “It is known.” The third part of the Gazette, known as the
“Memorials” (zoubao/zouzhe 奏報/奏摺) section, contained official reports or
requests by Qing bureaucratic officials to the emperors begging for “the Sacred
glance” or “Imperial gaze” thereupon. This was usually the longest section of
the Gazette as prolix Qing provincial or metropolitan officials addressed their
sovereign in language often described by foreigners as “humbug.”8 The three
sections were not, as far as we can tell, an innovation of the Qing period, but
served as a fairly standard format going back to the earliest forms of govern-
ment gazettes in Chinese history.
whose primary task was to forward imperial edicts and official information in
manuscript form back to his respective lord. These manuscript copies came to
be known as dibao 邸報 or Reports from the Di Office.
The first actual use of the term dibao is found only in literary sources from
the Tang dynasty (618–907).9 After the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) devas-
tated much of the Tang empire, the court reintroduced autonomous provincial
leaders and regional military commanders. These semi-autonomous elites es-
tablished Capital Liaison Offices ( jinzouyuan 進奏院) to, among other things,
maintain communications with the court through the Gazette of the Capital
Liaison Office (jinzouyuan zhuangbao 進奏院狀報). Rather than serve to inte-
grate the empire, as these arguments suggest, the earliest gazettes were tools
used by autonomous political leaders, semi-independent lords, or military
commanders to stay informed about happenings at the court. At the end of
the Tang, however, the purpose of the gazette underwent a fundamental shift.
The Tang-Song transition saw the creation of what historians call the early
modern agrarian state, a state designed to centralize the empire through a
leaner administrative structure. The success of this new-style state was in no
small measure due to its command and control over the circulation of offi-
cial information through a new-style gazette. The centralization campaigns of
the Taizu (r. 960–976) and Taizong (r. 976–997) emperors of the Song brought
most of the territories of the former Han dynasty under their control. In the
new Song capital at Kaifeng, the Chancellery opened a Memorials Office under
the control of a supervising secretary, who served as the center of the Song
communications system between the court and local governments by oversee-
ing the production and dissemination of what was probably a hand-written
manuscript form of the gazette, variously called the zhuangbao or chaobao
(朝報). Unlike the previous Capital Liaison Offices serving the interests of in-
dependent military commanders, the new Memorials Office and its gazette
served to integrate the empire and give the central government greater control
over the circulation of information about imperial edicts, official memorials,
and government personnel movements. In this sense, the Song transformation
of the meaning of the gazette marked “a major transition in imperial politi-
cal culture” by standardizing the ways the court interacted with the reading
public.10
9 Ge Gongzhen 戈公振, Zhongguo baoxue shi 中國報學史 (A history of Chinese journal-
ism) (1927, reprint: Sanlian shudian, 1955), 24–25.
10 This description of the early Song gazette is based on: Hilde De Weerdt, “‘Court Gazettes’
and ‘Short Reports’: Official Views and Unofficial Readings of Court News,” Hanxue yanjiu
漢學研究 (Chinese studies) 27: 2 (June 2009): 167–200, quote on p. 169.
Introduction 7
The short-lived Mongol Yuan (1279–1368) dynasty and its obscure gazette-
like service list called the chumu 除目 ended with Zhu Yuanzhang’s establish-
ment of the Ming dynasty in 1368.11 In the Ming, the gazette originated in the
offices of a group of officials known as the provincial couriers (titangguan
提塘官), one for each province, who served as smaller versions of the Song-era
memorials office. As soon as the Office of Transmission (tongzhengsi 通政司)
in the capital received memorials from the provinces, they were routed
through the various bureaucratic offices to the emperor. After being read by
the emperor, the grand secretaries re-routed the documents to the Offices
of Scrutiny for the Six Boards (liuke 六科). The supervising secretaries of the
Offices of Scrutiny, after checking the documents for errors, posted those for
dissemination on placards in their hall. The provincial couriers then visited the
hall, copied down the documents related to their provinces as well as material
of general interest, and delivered the copies to their own “reporting offices”
(baofang 報房). The reporting offices, it is believed, carved the woodblocks,
printed a few copies of the gazette, and sent them to their respective provincial
capitals, where the gazettes were reprinted in much larger numbers for general
distribution to local officials.12 It was essentially the duty, then, of the fifteen
provincial administration commissions to keep themselves informed of court
happenings by posting their provincial couriers in the capital. This new diffuse
system for generating the gazette meant that it was not a single, comprehen-
sive, and integrated periodical issued by a single government office, but that
there were many different types of gazettes in the Ming.
As in many other areas of government, the Qing dynasty followed much
of Ming administrative practice, but altered arrangements to suit their own
purposes. Official responsibility for printing the gazette is described in the
Statutes of the Great Qing.13 In the Statutes, the now sixteen provincial couriers
stationed in the capital were entrusted with attending the Offices of Scrutiny
of the Six Boards to make copies of all imperial decrees and reports of memo-
rials to the Throne that had been “released for dissemination” ( fachao 發抄)
or “turned over” (jiao 交) for publication, which they gave to their reporting
offices for printing. By the nineteenth century, however, the functions of the
reporting offices had changed dramatically. Most of them had been taken over
11 On the Yuan chumu, see: Li Man, “On Yuan Dynasty ‘Newspapers’: The Existence of ‘Dibao’
and ‘Guanbao’ Reexamined,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 42 (2012): 343–74.
12 I would like to thank Professor Kai-wing Chow, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, for sharing his research on the Ming gazette with me.
13 Qinding Da Qing huidian 欽定大清會典 (The imperially authorized Collected statutes of
the Great Qing dynasty) (Jiaqing edition), juan 39.
8 Introduction
14 Emily Carr Mokros, “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette” (Ph.D.
diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2016), 102, 115.
15 Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did private printing establishments began
stamping “jingbao” on the cover of their publications. Many early Western translators
knew it as the “Te-tang King-paou” (提塘京報) (Capital gazette from the provincial
couriers) or “King Chaou” (京抄) (Copies from the capital).
16 Emily Mokros argues that commercial publishing of the gazette was a hallmark of the
Qing period in her “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette,”
Chapter 2; see also Hyun-Ho Joo, “The Jingbao as Late Qing China’s News Medium and
Its Reports on Korean Affairs,” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 13: 2 (2013): 235–49.
Introduction 9
premium price because they appeared much earlier than the official or long-
form of the gazette.
What did the Peking Gazette look like? The official form of the Peking
Gazette was generally printed on thin, yellow or brownish bamboo paper noted
for its absorbency. The cost savings achieved by the printing establishments
through the use of cheap, light-weight paper, however, was not appreciated by
foreigners who described the Qing-period gazettes as “very coarsely printed on
miserable-looking paper of the flimsiest material.”17 Although there was much
variation in the length of the gazettes, they were usually about twenty to twen-
ty-five pages in length. The cover was typically of bright yellow, slightly thicker
paper, and bound together with a few stitches of thread or twisted paper. Often,
though not always, the characters for “jingbao” were stamped on the cover
along with the name of the commercial printing establishment (Figure 1).
In some cases, the cover had also been stamped with a depiction of an official
dressed in traditional clothing who held in his hands a scroll from which he
was discoursing (Figure 2).
Late Qing officials received the Gazette as one of the privileges of their office
while private subjects or foreigners could purchase among several different
Figure 1
Cover of a rare white-bound Peking Gazette published by
the Jusheng baofang 聚陞報房 of Beijing.
Source: http://www.jibao.net.cn/product/
view.asp?id=57.
Figure 3
Illustrated London News (March 22, 1873),
reprinted in William Simpson, Meeting
the Sun: A Journey All Round the World
through Egypt, China, Japan, and California,
Including an Account of the Marriage
Ceremonies of the Emperor of China
(London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer,
1874), 269.
Although it is impossible to estimate how many people read the Gazette out of
a population of approximately four hundred million who lived in the late Qing
empire, contemporary accounts suggest it was read constantly by officials, lit-
erate local elites, and foreigners who had mastered documentary Chinese, all
18
North China Herald (September 14, 1850).
12 Introduction
of whom got their news from this “tongue of orthodoxy.”19 Reading the Gazette,
John Francis Davis argued, was encouraged by the Qing government because
the documents it published exhibited “obvious proofs of an anxiety to influ-
ence and conciliate public opinion upon all public questions.”20 For officials,
reading the Gazette gave them their only comprehensive picture of what was
happening across the empire, but it also allowed them to participate in and
follow ongoing debates about imperial policy. Many officials would have also
read the Gazette for personal reasons, to keep up with their network of col-
leagues and friends as they circulated throughout the country on public busi-
ness. “Hungry provincial expectants,” those qualified but not yet appointed to
an official post, read with “avidity” the sections of the Gazette on official pro-
motions and demotions hoping they would be the next lucky soul to secure an
official position.21 According to Samuel Wells Williams, editor of the Chinese
Repository, the leading Western periodical on the China coast in the early
nineteenth century, the gazette was also “very generally read and talked about
by the gentry and educated people in cities, and tends to keep them more
acquainted with the character and proceedings of their rulers, than the Romans
were of their sovereigns and senate.”22
The readers who most concern us were the Protestant missionaries, British
government officials, and early China scholars who read and translated the
Peking Gazette for the broader global public.23 Robert Morrison (1782–1834),
the first Protestant missionary to China, arrived in Macao in 1807 and immedi-
ately began looking for contemporary sources to study the Chinese language
in preparation for his translation of the Bible. Not long after arriving, Morrison
stumbled across the Gazette and almost immediately set to work learning to
read it with the assistance of his Chinese tutors. Eight years later, Morrison
began publishing translations of the Peking Gazette in periodicals in Canton
and Malacca.24 As Morrison’s publisher wrote of his translations, “His design in
communicating [his translations], is from a hope of its tending to illustrate the
character of modern China, to bring Europeans and Chinese into closer con-
nection with each other, and to assist the good and wise in forming a proper
judgement of ‘the ways of God with men.’”25 From 1815 until his death nearly
two decades later, Morrison routinely published his translations in various pe-
riodicals like the Indo-Chinese Gleaner, the Canton Register, and the Chinese
Repository while also starting to train the next generation of translators such
as John Francis Davis, who would later become the Governor of Hong Kong.26
After Morrison’s death in 1834, a few other missionaries tried their hand
at translating the Gazette to varying degrees of success, but the Qing govern-
ment had also become concerned that “the transmission of the Capital News
[jingbao] to the rebellious barbarians surely is the deed of traitorous natives.”27
Qing concerns about foreigners reading the Gazette seems to have made
them wary about what to release for publication. As James Hevia has written
of a slightly later period, “The ability to authoritatively decode Qing internal
documents….and the use of translated documents as offensive weapons worked
to destabilize the administrative reporting structure of the Qing Empire.”28
Before long, the Qing government started suppressing the publication in the
Gazette of most information concerning foreign countries, which explains why
so little appeared on the Opium War (1839–1842) and almost nothing on the
Second Opium War (1856–1860). During such conflicts, the British public in
24 Morrison’s earliest translations of the Gazette appear in his Translations from the Original
Chinese, with Notes (1815). For an excellent study of Morrison’s work in translating the
Peking Gazette, see: Mokros, “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing
Gazette,” Chapter Four.
25 Indo-Chinese Gleaner 3: 1 (February 1818), 44.
26 John Francis Davis, “Extracts from the Peking Gazette for 1824, Being the Fourth Year of
Taou-kwang,” Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1: 2
(1826): 383–412.
27 J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Types and Uses of Ch’ing Documents,” Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 5: 1 (January 1940), 62.
28 James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 61; Mokros specifically shows how Western dip-
lomats used their understanding of the gazette during tense negotiations with the Qing.
“Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette,” 277–86.
14 Introduction
along the China coast, in the world’s great capitals, and even in small towns
across America reprinted North China Herald translations of the Peking Gazette
to do what we hope to do, to help readers better understand the interplay of
complex political themes, social movements, and cultural ideas over the course
of the long nineteenth century in China.
This reader will be useful for instructors who teach modern Chinese history,
Chinese civilization courses, or broader East Asian surveys. The reader is de-
signed so that instructors can use the entire text, select out several pertinent
chapters that fit the structure of their course, or assign the various chapters to
their students as the basis of research papers using translated primary sources.
For instructors and students who would like to delve even more deeply into the
Gazette—to explore additional sources on the included topics, craft their own
thematic chapters, or research other subjects—I have worked with Brill to pro-
duce a database of approximately 8,500 pages of English-language translations
of the Gazette, which is available for purchase through your library under the
title Translations of the Peking Gazette Online.
Each chapter opens with a brief introductory essay describing the immedi-
ate background of the event or topic, discusses possible avenues of interpreta-
tion, and sometimes outlines the major historiographical debates surrounding
the subject of the chapter. The purpose of these introductions is not to analyze
the documents in question, the job of the student historian, but to help initiate
classroom discussions and promote engagement with the texts. Discussions
may also be started by addressing the additional questions provided at the end
of each chapter. A short list of briefly annotated suggested English-language
readings, some primary and some secondary, is also appended to each chapter
to guide students who decide to use a specific chapter as the starting point for
a research or term paper.
As students read the documents they will not only gain an unusual familiari-
ty with day-to-day and unique concerns of the Qing empire, but also encounter
perspectives and arguments that run counter to the prevailing interpretations
of nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese history. This is intended. I
must caution students against reading these documents too literally. It is often
necessary to read between the lines, to unpack the packaged content, to fully
understand the material published in the Gazette. By continuously reading
these selections, and constantly questioning their contents, students will hone
their analytical abilities and come to appreciate the artful ways information
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Lisen, eikä se tee mitään, että hän kutsui teidät salassa äidiltään.
Mutta Ivan Fjodorovitšille, teidän veljellenne, minä en voi yhtä
helposti uskoa tytärtäni, suokaa se minulle anteeksi, vaikka minä
edelleenkin pidän häntä mitä ritarillisimpana nuorena miehenä. Ja
ajatelkaahan, hän oli Lisen luona enkä minä tietänyt siitä mitään.
3.
Reuhtova lapsi
— Niin.
— Olisi.
— Tunnen.
— Osaan.
— Ei.
— Jotta ei mihinkään jäisi mitään! Ah, kuinka hyvä olisi, kun ei jäisi
mitään! Tiedättekö, Aljoša, minä aion toisinaan tehdä hirveän paljon
pahaa ja kaikkea huonoa, ja teen sitä kauan salaa, ja yhtäkkiä kaikki
saavat sen tietää. Kaikki ympäröivät minut ja osoittavat minua
sormellaan, ja minä katson kaikkia. Se on hyvin miellyttävää. Miksi
se on niin miellyttävää, Aljoša?
— Mutta eihän se ole vain sitä, että minä sanoin, minähän myös
teen sen.
— Minä uskon.
— Ah, kuinka minä rakastan teitä sen tähden, että te sanotte: minä
uskon. Ja tehän ette ollenkaan, ette ollenkaan valehtele. Mutta
kenties te luulette, että olen puhunut teille tätä kaikkea tahallani,
ärsyttääkseni teitä?
— Kaiketi se on.
— Se on totta.
— En tiedä.
— Hyväkö?
— Minä itse.
— Lähetitte hänelle kirjeen?
— Kirjeen.
— Teitäkin.
— Itken.
— Itken.
4.
Hymni ja salaisuus