East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)
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Noël Golvers, Libraries of Western Learning for China. Circulation of Western Books Between Europe and China in the Jesuit Mission (c. 1650–c. 1750), vol. 1, Logistics of Book Acquisition and Circulation
Get PDFThe Northern Song State’s Financial Support for Astronomy
Get PDFAstronomy was politically relevant to the imperial state in ancient China because a good astronomical system was believed to indicate the legitimacy of rule and symbolize good governance. This political signi-ficance meant that astronomy was a state enterprise. China saw many important astronomical achievements during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) when astronomy received sustained organizational and financial support from the imperial government. Alongside astronomy’s high profile in state politics, this fiscal support contributed to its development, along with the eight major astronomical reforms which the Northern Song dynasty made. It maintained a state-supported Astronomical Bureau which had more than 100 members of staff. In addition, the government invested a lot of money in astronomical instrument making. For example, the water-powered astronomical clock tower constructed in 1092 cost more than 5000 strings of money, accounting for about one thousandth of the total annual fiscal income of the imperial state.The purpose of this study is to ascertain to what degree the state sup-ported astronomical research financially. Based on sources such as the Song huiyao jigao 宋會要輯稿 (Re-Collection Draft to Essentials of the Song Period), we give an estimate of the Song government’s financial investment in astronomy—an investment which comprised a substantial part of the state’s total fiscal income. We believe that this investigation of the Northern Song state’s financial support for astronomy will help to explain why there were so many great innovations in astronomy during this period
The Censor’s Stele: Religion, Salt-Production and Labour in the Temple of the God of the Salt Lake in Southern Shanxi Province
Get PDFThis case study analyses religious and technological changes that occurred during the last seventy years of the Ming dynasty (1574-1644) around the Hedong Salt Lake, situated south of Yuncheng City in southern Shanxi province. Based on a close reading of inscriptions found on stone steles at the Temple of the God of the Salt Lake and of different kinds of gazetteers, the article documents the processes and analyses the factors that shaped the expanding pantheon of local salt-production-related deities during this period. I argue that these religious changes need to be under-stood in the context of a wider sociotechnical system around the Salt Lake, especially the emergence of new salt production methods that were intro-duced at this time under the increasingly affirmative leadership of local salt merchants, as well as the changing conditions of local labour management. The larger methodological point the article makes is about the necessity to take stone steles themselves in their spatial and material dimensions as evidence of historical processes: this will allow us to see that by means of these steles and their inscriptions the temple became an architectural discursive space that facilitated new forms of social participation and of administrative intervention, while offering simultaneously a nexus be-tween the sphere of human intervention and the relevant ‘natural’ factors of the salt production at the Salt Lake. Accordingly, the article proposes novel ways to understand the role of religious institutions such as temples in their relation to ‘natural’ and ‘technological’ processes
Thomas O. Höllmann, Schlafender Lotos, trunkenes Huhn. Kulturgeschichte der chinesischen Küche
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Introduction from the Guest Editors: Knowledge Spheres: Borderlines and Intersections of Expertise and Knowing in China, Song to Qing
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Walls and Gates, Windows and Mirrors: Urban Defences, Cultural Memory, and Security Theatre in Song Kaifeng
Get PDFKaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song (960-1127) dynasty, boasted sophisticated siege defence installations, which were ultimately breached by the Jurchen invasion of 1126-1127. According to both the archaeological and textual evidence, its concentric city walls and milita-rized gates with barbicans and bastions represented a crucial stage in the militarization of urban form in early-modern China, as well as a more open approach to planning. While Kaifeng’s urban defences evoked imperial majesty and personal security for Northern Song residents who described them, diasporic literati of the Southern Song (1127-1279) invoked the violation of this defensive perimeter as a metonym for the invasion of their lost homeland. The concept of security theatre explains how Northern Song Kaifeng’s city walls and gates could simultaneously function as efficacious siege defence installations and be perceived as symbolic defences