East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

Editorial

Theobald, Ulrich

162 EASTM 21 (2003) 
Zhang Junhua and Martin Woesler (eds.), China’s Digital Dream: The Impact of 
the Internet on Chinese Society. Bochum: University Press Bochum (China—
Science and Scholarship; 5), 2002. 272 pp. 
 
Ulrich Theobald 
 
[Ulrich Theobald is a collaborator and Ph.D. candidate of the Seminar           
for Chinese and Korean Studies at Tübingen University. His main research topic 
is comprising the science and technology policy of contemporary China, 
focusing on space and military technology. He is the author of an online 
information guide for the German Ministry of Education and Research about 
international cooperation in science and technology with China, and an online 
encyclopaedia called “A Universal Guide for China Studies” (2000-): 
www.chinaknowledge.org] 
 
 
The general popularity of the internet has boosted and substantially changed two 
important realms. The first is the field of marketing, the second is the sphere of 
the information society. Using the internet, marketing experts are able to apply 
completely new sales techniques and channels in pursuing worldwide global 
business activities. Besides new markets and a higher turnover potential, internet 
marketing has created new jobs and economic growth, and as a consequence 
higher tax revenue for governments. In both the private and public spheres, the 
internet has made a fundamental contribution to the emergence of a 
communication society that exchanges knowledge and information at levels 
hitherto undreamed of. Probably the most positive effect of the internet as part of 
the process of globalization is the growth of wealth. 
But the internet has also “negative” or “subversive” aspects. In addition to the 
spread of computer viruses and criminal information, the internet serves as an 
instrument for disseminating ideas, statements and knowledge that reach places 
where they were not intended to go. This problem is of special concern to states 
and countries that are currently undergoing a period of transition from an 
underdeveloped society and economy to ones that are more open and prosperous. 
Authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes are deeply troubled by the thought 
of political overthrow by a population that has become mentally emancipated 
from the restrictions imposed upon them. Every regime therefore has to weigh up 
the economic and social benefits against the potential political challenges that a 
widespread use of the internet might generate. 
Shanthi Kalathil and Nina Hachigian demonstrate that the PR China and 
Singapore consciously risk the emergence of a society that is well-informed and 
ready to discuss political matters. For these two states, the social and economic 
benefits of the internet in general outweigh the political risks, but there remain 
many issues that should not become a matter of open or official discussion in the 
eyes of the two regimes. The control of data access and data flow by an internet 
163 Reviews 
police requires advanced techniques and can only, in the long run, be partially 
accomplished. As a result of this imperfect and selective control, sites like that of 
the New York Times had been unreasonably blocked, whereas the site 
www.freetibet.org has never been restricted. In many cases, the blocking of sites 
resembles a game of cat-and-mouse with the users bypassing the controlled 
locations by using proxy servers. Because it is impossible—and too expensive—
to control all undesirable sites, the internet police has been content recently with 
a kind of self-censorship and self-policing by providers and users. The internet 
scene in Vietnam is still much more restricted than in China, while in Singapore, 
a semi-authoritarian regime, the government mostly controls sites run by the 
political opposition or those which they consider to be immoral, and this control 
is imposed especially on schools, universities, and internet cafés. 
The government of Malaysia takes a quite different stance, one that fully 
exploits the positive effects of the internet on the economy. Because Malaysia 
wants to accomplish the great technological leap into the high-tech age, it has 
established a Multimedia Super Corridor and therefore eschews any blocking of 
foreign sites. At the other end of the spectrum, we find extremely authoritarian 
regimes like those of the DPR Korea (North) and the Union of Myanmar (former 
Burma), whose governments have suppressed any critical discussion for decades 
and whose authorities attempt to suppress most of the flux of information coming 
in from abroad. For these regimes, political survival far outweighs the economic 
benefits from the internet. This relentless stance—even possessing a computer or 
making an overseas call are prohibited—does not only derive from the fear of 
political challenge by a knowledgeable society, but is actually quite 
comprehensible from an economic point of view: Their populations lack 
“technical literacy” due to economic underdevelopment, so the implementation of 
the internet would not provide a boost to such non-industrial societies. 
The study of Liang Guo and Wei Bu shows that in a country as vast as China 
the use of the internet naturally differs vertically (socially) and horizontally 
(geographically), depending on the economic and social back-ground of the user. 
We can generally say that Chinese “netizens” (net citizens) are young, male, 
educated, unmarried, and have a sufficient income to afford a computer and 
telephone, but it is expected that, within a few years, the proportion of women 
using the internet will be as high as that of men. At present, most users do not 
have more than two years experience of the internet. Compared to the United 
States we can observe that in China more people not possessing a computer 
would be willing to invest time and money in the use of the internet if they had a 
higher income. Generally, Chinese non-users have a more positive attitude to 
modern technologies than in those in America. While the internet is an important 
sales and trade channel in the more developed countries, Chinese users rely on 
the internet mainly to obtain information and news, to chat and to email. It seems 
that many of the traditional media do not meet the demands of a knowledge-
thirsty Chinese society. Both sides, population and government, show a very 
164 EASTM 21 (2003) 
positive attitude to the internet as an instrument for modernization and wealth 
creation. 
Although the Chinese shares and securities market started only a decade ago 
(1990) it has doubled in size several times since the introduction of the internet 
and wireless technology—in spite of higher expenses for the online user. Huang 
Haifeng shows that the Chinese government consequently has had to issue 
ordinances concerning the safety and the utilization of the internet as a trade 
channel in general. For a long time, the government hesitated to make clear 
decisions about online trade because the internet should, in their eyes, serve as an 
evolutionary instrument rather than a revolutionary one. Particular attention had 
to be paid to the safety systems of the internet (encryption technology, firewalls, 
digital signature), which are still not adequate for to the scale of its use, and many 
users are still not aware of the dangers to their privacy. The main reasons for the 
enormous increase in online securities trade are the low costs for the brokerage 
firms, the velocity of information flow and the convenient access even from 
remote areas. However, online trade in commodities and goods is still not 
widespread, largely because commodity trade via the internet is still restricted 
and unaffordable for most companies and users. Many IT companies and firms 
offering services therefore provide technical support for the traditional brokers, 
and are thus given access to their consumer markets. For many brokering firms 
online trade is still insufficient and does not return their investment in the costly 
net structure. But simply their presence on the internet helps them to spread their 
corporate name and image and they hope to be repaid in the future. 
Confronted with the so-called negative impacts brought about by internet 
media, especially after China’s access to the WTO in 2001, China is trying to 
regulate online networks with legislation, and encourage the conglomeration of 
traditional media to take part in this new medium. Sun Xupei shows that it is 
often hard to distinguish between traditional media and media using digital 
technology, as most big newspapers and news agencies have an internet presence. 
China’s internet population is expected to rise to 200 million by 2005, and there 
will be an urgent need to provide this community with the news and services they 
demand. In order to conform to the style and strategies of in-coming foreign 
media and news enterprises, China cannot but lift all restraints on circulation 
services within the next few years. Laws and decrees concerning internet news, 
media and services are effective to some degree in standardizing and regulating 
the setup and the operation of domestic websites, in preventing and eliminating 
mis-information, and in safeguarding the security of the internet. But it is 
virtually impossible for individual people to open and maintain a website with 
up-to-date news information. To meet the challenge of the impending influx of 
overseas media giants, Chinese internet websites and other media have realized 
that it is necessary to merge the biggest TV and media groups into larger 
conglomerates. Although China’s media policy concerning content will be 
readjusted in the next few years of transition, there will not be any fundamental 
changes at the policy-making level in the foreseeable future—at least in theory. 
165 Reviews 
The blocking of objectionable information will certainly not benefit the process 
of modernization. Yet we may also assume that prohibitive rules will be largely 
ineffective in practice. 
Martin Woesler demonstrates that the increasing use of the internet in China 
is substantially contributing to the formation of a new public sphere. Even if the 
government tries to prohibit certain sites and controls the flow of information, the 
technical possibilities of the internet (bypassing via a proxy server, anonymous 
registering with a foreign provider, accessing via an international phone call, or 
loading a banished site into a browser frame) make it possible to disseminate 
every kind of information. Therefore, the Chinese government has turned to the 
device of self-censorship, demanding that publishers declare that they will refrain 
from producing, posting and disseminating information that may jeopardize state 
security and social stability. China’s main battle against the emerging information 
society was lost the moment China lifted its restrictions on international news 
sites and politically dissident sites. Even human rights information is now 
accessible through the international news sites. China, says Woesler, is on its way 
to a Western-style information society.  
Enquiring into the potential negative impact of foreign cultures and 
civilizations on China, Lan Peng makes evident that not every product is subject 
to unlimited cultural dissemination. Chinese internet users are not simply passive 
consumers of this new technology, but create their own sites and pages, chat 
about their own subjects of interest and so actively produce a Chinese culture on 
the internet. Lan Peng provides the example of popular Chinese movies shown in 
theatres or on TV and Chinese bestselling books, which are also very popular 
online. There is no reason to cry out that the foreign English-speaking “wolf” is 
coming, devouring Chinese culture. 
For any government presenting themselves as representatives of the people in 
the new medium is as much an issue as is the control of the unwanted influx 
and/or dissemination of objectionable thought. This presence of the state 
authorities in the extremely popular internet to ensure government power and 
party consolidation is called e-government. The Chinese government launched a 
Government Online Project (GOP) in 1999 not only to introduce representatives 
of the people and to create a paperless administration in the long run, but also to 
establish B2G (business-to-government) relations. A very important part of the 
GOP are the so-called “golden projects” that provide bridges of interaction 
between private people or companies and the government, like digital tax paying 
or credit cards (the jinka). To ensure the integration of firms and private persons 
into government structures, the Enterprise Online Project and the Family Online 
Project have been implemented. By controlling e-commerce through such a 
government-created structure, the Chinese government will be able, as Peter 
Lovelock and John Ure explain, to help state-owned enterprises to gain an 
advantage, while private e-commerce (called B2B “business-to-business” or B2C 
“business-to-consumer”) will be hampered. 
166 EASTM 21 (2003) 
The construction of an e-government cannot progress unhindered, however. 
Tan Xinjiao illustrates that hostilities between various governmental interest 
groups, and the fear government workers may have of technological changes and 
reform are some important impediments for the development of e-government as 
a medium for a better government image and improved government efficiency 
and transparency. E-government measures are not only established as a bridge 
between the government and the population, but also as a window for foreign 
investors and the international public. 
By using a whole set of regulations and the manipulation of market forces 
surrounding the internet, the Chinese government is able to enhance its nation-
building policy in a new way. In the paper by Christopher R. Hughes, we see that 
the nation-state is by no means declining in the age of cyberspace and 
globalization. The information revolution will not automatically spread liberal 
democracy and Western mores. When states combine regulation with market 
mechanisms and particular cultural formations, they retain and even develop 
considerable powers of control over the way in which the internet architecture 
evolves. Within the phenomenon of “one system-many countries” a kind of 
virtual realism will develop which will strengthen nations instead of dissolving 
them. 
The book published by Zhang Junhua and Martin Woesler illuminates various 
important facets of the impact of the internet on Chinese society. While we might 
have expected that the Chinese government would seize the chances offered by 
this new technology to strengthen the development of a scientific and modern 
society and economy, it comes as somewhat of a surprise to learn that the 
government has given up the goal of totalitarian control of the information 
society. This surprising information about the challenge to party rule by an 
emancipating knowledge-thirsty society is enriched by evaluations of the 
evolution of Chinese online-trade. What the future of a free online-trade China 
will look like is still uncertain, but from China’s Digital Dream we learn that it 
will be just as complex as traditional trade. The internet in China will be a 
Chinese internet.  


Zhang Junhua and Martin Woesler (eds.), China's Digital Dream: The Impact of the Internet on Chinese Society

Chiu, Ann Shu-ju

156 EASTM 21 (2003) 
Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the “Stone Mountain Medical 
Case Histories”. London & New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003. xi, 209 pp. 
 
Ann Shu-ju Chiu 
 
[Ann Shu-ju Chiu is the Head of the Chinese Overseas Collection at the Chinese 
University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library, and teaches information courses in 
the humanities. She is also a Ph.D. student at the Department of Anthropology, 
CUHK. Her research interests cover transnationalism, the anthropology of 
online communities and the culture and science of East Asian societies. Her 
recent and forthcoming publications include “Area Studies and WWW Virtual 
Library—Using Huizhou in Imperial China as an Example” (in the Bulletin of 
National Central Library, 2001, pp. 1-23), “The Application of Cyborg Anthro-
pology in the Observation of Online Chinese Overseas Communities” (in the 
Proceedings of the Internet Society Conference, 2003), “Teaching and Docu-
mentation of the Chinese Overseas Studies, with Special Reference to The Chi-
nese University of Hong Kong” (co-author with Chee-Beng Tan, in the Proceed-
ings of the International Conference: Transnational Networks—Challenges in 
Research and Documentation, 2003), “The Social Value and Scientific Founda-
tion of Xin’an Medicine” (in the Proceedings of the International Symposium on 
Ancient Chinese Texts and Records of Science and Technology, 2003).] 
 
 
Using socio-economic and biographic sources and textual and gender analysis, 
Joanna Grant studies the Chinese physician Wang Ji 汪 機, who lived in Huizhou 
徽 州 in the early sixteenth century, and his work “Stone Mountain Medical Case 
Histories” (Shishan yian 石 山 醫 案). The methodologies Grant employs to 
reconstruct the thought of Wang Ji and his contemporary medical culture are very 
interesting and original. The four chapters of the book reflect the findings origi-
nating from her methodological strategies She comprehensively reviews a wealth 
of traditional primary sources and secondary literature to present a picture of 
Wang Ji as a respected physician, prolific medical writer, and Confucian gentle-
man of benevolence. Readers would hardly question such a perfect image of this 
reputed doctor as described in the historical materials. 
Grant then subtly connects the micro approach with the macro perspective to 
explain how Wang Ji diagnosed his patients and arrived at his medical decisions. 
During Wang Ji’s lifetime Huizhou underwent drastic changes that marked the 
dawn of late imperial China. An increasing number of merchants came to play an 
active role in a society witnessing a boom in commercialisation, urbanisation and 
transportation networks. More often than not they cultivated an extravagant and 
unrestrained lifestyle. Wang Ji and his medical case histories can be best under-
stood against the background of the particular conditions of that time and place. 
Influenced by the ethical thought of his contemporaries, Wang Ji shared their 
157 Reviews 
concern over the excessive financial, physical and spiritual indulgences of his 
merchant patients. He feared that these bad habits might further sabotage the 
socio-economic foundation of the whole empire. Wang Ji therefore implanted 
many elements of this hypothetical causation into his treatment of male patients. 
They were to be cured of the diseases caused by excesses in drinking, eating, or 
sexual activities with a large supplement of warm and sweet tonics like ginseng 
(renshen 人 蔘) and astragalus roots (huangqi 黃 芪). 
Through Grant’s textual guidance and interpretation we can see how Wang Ji 
endeavoured to carve out a social space and promote symbolic power for himself 
and his profession. Grant brilliantly succeeds in providing a living human face to 
a figure of a time long passed away. Facing the fierce competition of his rival 
medical practitioners, Wang Ji struggled hard to establish his own theoretical 
school for his disciples by debating with his rival elite physicians and by convinc-
ing his patients of the efficiency of his cures. Obviously, his clients were suscep-
tible to the advise of other healers available in this region. In addition, nouveau 
riche merchants sometimes aspired to elevate their status by sponsoring educa-
tional institutions and medical publications. Wang Ji thus became aware of the 
threat from those ambitious merchants who turned to classical studies and aligned 
themselves with the medical profession. He sensed the need to establish a core of 
ethics and professional knowledge to distinguish the elite physicians from those 
outside of the traditional medical lineages and training. 
Grant’s gender analysis of the “Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories” con-
stitutes an intriguing part of this book. Although the author of this collection of 
medical cases never highlights explicitly any gender differences in the text, Joan-
na Grant depicts vividly how differently Wang Ji rendered his clinical services to 
men and women in terms of diagnosis, aetiology, illness syndrome, treatment and 
outcome. Where male patients were advised to be abstinent, female patients were 
rarely judged to be suffering from overindulgent behaviour, needing only simple 
treatment and being expected to recover quickly. Grant considers this to be an 
almost innate reaction of Wang Ji towards his contemporary culture. Huizhou 
women were reputed for their chastity and frugality throughout the history of 
imperial China. Since men were held to be the instigators of the chaotic socio-
economic transformation, Wang Ji unconsciously attributed their illnesses to their 
moral decadence. In most cases, Wang Ji therefore prescribed ginseng and 
astragalus roots for them to supplement the depletion of yuanqi 元 氣 or “vitali-
ty” resulting from their self-indulgence. This medical therapy implied the restora-
tion of social order. Grant certainly deserves high credit for her unravelling of the 
social values behind the clinical practices of Wang Ji, thus adding a cultural 
dimension to her research into the history of science and medicine. Because phy-
sicians are products of their own culture, Wang Ji cannot escape from the influ-
ences of his time, and especially not from the influences of the regional culture of 
which he was a part. 
Although Grant takes keen notice of the changing socio-economic environ-
ment of Wang Ji’s period in her analysis of culture and medicine, she misses, or 
158 EASTM 21 (2003) 
does not pay enough attention to, some salient characteristics of Huizhou. The 
micro approach, focusing simply on one single text, may have led to her refrain-
ing from making some comparisons between Huizhou and the rest of China. 
Compared with other areas, people from Huizhou were distinguished by their 
strong devotion to Confucianism. Not only Huizhou literati and physicians ob-
served the precepts of Confucian conduct, but merchants adhered to this philoso-
phy in their business practices as well. In addition, as noted by Grant and men-
tioned above, Wang Ji’s application of warm and sweet tonics (ginseng and 
astragalus root) to supplement yuanqi depletion in his merchant patients was a 
treatment more prominent among physicians in Huizhou than in other areas of 
China. Since Huizhou was called Xin’an in pre-modern times, this feature was 
termed Xin’an wenbu peiyuan xuepai (新 安 温 補 培 元 學 派 “Xin’an school 
of restoring vitality by the application of warm medicine”). 1  It was a long-
standing tradition that continued into modern times. For example, Hu Xueyan 胡 
雪 巖, a famous merchant of Huizhou origin of the late Qing and early Republi-
can Period, ran an unprecedented large-scale pharmacy called Hu Qingyu Tang 
胡 慶 餘 堂 in Hangzhou with herbal cabinets designed specifically for ginseng 
and astragalus root (shenqigui 蔘 芪 櫃).2 No doubt, the application of these 
substances must have been very popular.  
 Some scholars have also pointed out that the Huizhou physicians’ use of 
warm medicines to restore vitality was related to their reverence for the Yijing 易 
經 (Classic of Change).3 This Confucian classic was not only of great importance 
in the civil service examinations, but was also a canonical scripture for physi-
cians. Although Grant mentions that many physicians like Wang Ji established 
their profession as a result of their failure in the civil service examinations (pp. 
31-32), she does not explore further the internalisation of Confucian classics by 
these men withheld from bureaucratic power. Although it cannot be measured 
precisely how much former civil service examination candidates who had now 
turned to medical careers were influenced by the Yijing, there can be no doubt 
that due to their long practice in memorising this text they relied on relevant 
                                                 
1 See Zhang Yucai 張 玉 才 and Wang Tao 汪 濤, “Shilun ruxue dui Xin’an yixue de 
yingxiang” 試 論 儒 學 對 新 安 醫 學 的 影 響 (A Discussion of the Impact of Confu-
cianism on Xin’an Medicine), in: Zhou Shaoquan 周紹泉 and Zhao Huafu 趙 華 富 
(eds.), ’98 guoji Huixue xueshu taolunhui lunwenji ’98 國 際 徽 學 學 術 討 論 會 論 文 
集 (’98 Proceedings of the International Symposium on Huizhou Studies), Hefei: Anhui 
daxue chubanshe, 2000, pp. 535-536. 
2 Tong Guangdong 童 光 東 and Liu Huiling 劉 惠 玲, “Ming Qing shiqi Xin’an 
yaodian jiqi yiyaoxue zuoyong” 明 清 時 期 新 安 藥 店 及 其 醫 藥 學 作 用 (Xin’an 
Dispensaries and Their Role in Medicine in the Period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties), 
Zhonghua yishi zazhi 中 華 醫 史 雜 誌 (Journal of the History of Chinese Medicine), 
25.1 (1995): 32.  
3 Zhang Yucai and Wang Tao, op. cit., pp. 535-536.  
159 Reviews 
knowledge from it in the construction of medical theory. Connected to this, it 
may also be that Wang Ji’s moral inclination in medical practice is related to his 
earlier experiences in the civil service examinations. 
It is beyond question that Huizhou scholars admired the Cheng-Zhu ortho-
doxy (Cheng Zhu lixue 程 朱 理 學) and were enthusiastic about the civil service 
examinations. Cheng Hao 程 顥, Cheng Yi 程 頤 and Zhu Xi 朱 熹 were all of 
Huizhou origin and initiated the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism (lixue 理 學). 
Since they provided the government with philosophical support for the mainte-
nance of social order and stability, it was Zhu Xi’s annotations of the “Four 
Books” (Sishu 四 書, including the Daxue 大 學 (Great Learning), Zhongyong 中 
庸 (Doctrine of the Mean), Lunyu 論 語 (Confucian Analects), and the Mengzi 孟 
子 (Works of Mencius)) which shaped the spirit of examination topics in the late 
imperial period. While it may be true that the social chaos during his time 
prompted Wang Ji to adopt ethical principles in his medical practice, it may be 
also possible that he simply acted in a manner akin to a cultural reproduction of 
the civil service examination system. Though once he may have had great hopes 
of transmitting, as a successful candidate, the moral philosophy of the “Four 
Books” into the bureaucratic sphere, he now at least could still instil his under-
standing of Confucianism into his daily medical theory and practice. 
In addition to the “Four Books,” every candidate was required to select one 
book from the “Five Classics” (Wujing 五 經, i.e. Yijing 易 經 (Classic of 
Change), Shijing 詩 經 (Classic of Poetry), Shujing 書 經 (Classic of Docu-
ments), Chunqiu 春 秋 (Spring and Autumn Annals), and Liji 禮 記 (Record of 
Rites)) as his specialisation in taking the policy question (ce 策) examination. 
This policy question tested the broad learning of the candidates in such fields as 
astronomy, law, medicine, etc. With its many cosmological passages, the “Book 
of Change” was the first choice of most candidates.4 The emperors believed that 
when the cosmological cycles proceeded in a smooth way this was a good omen 
for their rule. Familiarity with the concepts of the “Book of Change” might equip 
the candidates with the technical capacity required for answering the policy ques-
tion in an appropriate way. The central concepts of cosmology were also reflect-
ed in traditional Chinese medicine, in which the philosophical duality of yin and 
yang combined with the Five Phases (wuxing 五 行) was widely applied in the 
explanation of the functions of the human body. Illness resulted when the princi-
ples of cosmological operation became disordered in the human body. In the 
binary pairs of yin/yang, heaven/earth, sun/moon, life/death, dry/damp, hot/cold, 
the yang-related elements like heaven, sun, life, dry and hot were hailed as the 
positive principle. The yin-related elements like earth, moon, death, damp and 
                                                 
4 Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial 
China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, p. 466. 
160 EASTM 21 (2003) 
cold were judged to be negative.5 When taking a closer look at the Yijing, we can 
see that yang, heaven and vitality, the primary elements of the universe, are held 
in high esteem. Quite a few Huizhou physicians relied on Yijing concepts when 
favouring the application of warm medicine for the restoration of vitality.6 Un-
successful civil service examination candidates starting an alternative career in 
medicine were convinced that the Yijing, a work so familiar to them through their 
long and intense efforts in learning, was also an indispensable foundation in the 
medical field.7  
Another aspect to be mentioned is that the tension between physicians and 
merchants might have been more apparent than real. When reading Grant’s book, 
we are given the impression of a tension between Wang Ji and his merchant pa-
tients whose diseases were attributed to general overindulgence. However, given 
the pervasive and cohesive clan organisation of Huizhou, the relations between 
literati and merchants might have been more of a reciprocal than a rival nature. 
Merchants used the wealth earned in other regions to sponsor the education of 
their clansmen aspiring success in the civil service examinations. We can clearly 
tell from the biographical sources that the medical profession was dominated by 
members of certain famous surnames and lineages such as the Wangs 汪 and the 
Chengs 程.8 The Wang family might have benefited tremendously from its Con-
fucian merchant forebears.9 Of course the clansmen serving in the court might 
also have helped their hometown by promoting policies favourable to the inter-
ests of the Huizhou merchants. During the Ming dynasty most of the physicians 
ran their own pharmacies, which were supplied with sufficient and diverse medic-
inal herbs by the Huizhou merchants. As observed by Grant, “Wang Ji himself 
had a pharmacy in Qimen 祁 門, and presumably medicinal herbs were yet an-
other commodity that merchants traded in, which would enable him to procure 
supplies of herbs that could not be grown locally” (p. 81). If we believe that di-
agnosis was free of charge in late imperial China (p. 33), herbal prescriptions 
would have been the main source of income for physicians. Grant also notices 
that Wang Ji and other elite physicians preferred the internal medical treatments 
employing herbal remedies to the use of acupuncture and moxibustion or other 
external surgeries practised by popular medicine healers (pp. 83-84). Thus in 
                                                 
5  George M. Foster and Barbara Gallatin Anderson, Medical Anthropology, New 
York: Wiley, 1978, p. 63. 
6 Zhang Yucai and Wang Tao, op. cit., pp. 535-536. 
7 See Li Jiren 李 濟 仁 (ed.), Xin'an mingyi kao 新 安 名 醫 考 (A Study of Famous 
Physicians from Xin’an), Hefei : Anhui kexue jishu chubanshe, 1990, p. 37. 
8 See Li Jiren, op. cit. 
9 Marta Hanson, “Merchants of Medicine: Huizhou Mercantile Consciousness, Mo-
rality, and Medical Patronage in Seventeenth-Century China”, in Hashimoto Keizō, Cath-
erine Jami, and Lowell Skar (eds.), East Asian Science: Tradition and Beyond; Papers 
from the Seventh International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Kyoto, 
2-7 August 1993, Osaka: Kansai University Press, 1995, p. 213. 
161 Reviews 
addition to medical theories, the motive of profit should be considered in a more 
pronounced way. As Grant outlines in her analysis of patient/physician dynamics, 
“the level of society to which Wang Ji’s patients belonged” was relatively high 
(pp. 86-88). A considerable proportion of poorer patients, who could not afford 
the expense of treatment, might have turned to popular medicine healers. 
In conclusion, Joanna Grant presents a lively picture of the Chinese physician 
Wang Ji and his work “Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories.” Scholars will 
not only find it enjoyable reading, but hopefully will be stimulated by it to raise 
further issues awaiting discussion and research.  


Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician : Wang Ji and the "Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories" 

Togo, Toshihiro

Bibliography of the late Prof. Yabuuti Kiyosi

Ebner von Eschenbach, Silvia Freiin

134 EASTM 19 (2002)
Iwo Amelung, Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851-1911).
Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten
Qing-Zeit. Opera Sinologica, 7. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000.
xviii, 455 pp., 23 figures, 2 photographic plates, 34 tables.
Silvia Freiin Ebner von Eschenbach
[Silvia Freiin Ebner von Eschenbach is professor of Chinese Studies at the
University of Würzburg (Germany). Her current research focuses on Chinese
cultural anthropology and on Chinese cultural and economic history, including
water control.]
This is a highly specialized study of inundations and disaster control measures
on the Yellow River in Shandong province during the years 1851-1911.
The period under examination begins with the collapse of a dam in 1851 that
served as the harbinger of the great crisis of 1855, when a dike near
Tongwaxiang in the eastern part of Henan province broke. At this time, the
Yellow River shifted its lower course from the south of the Shandong peninsula
to the north of it, draining along the bed of the Qing River into the sea. Years of
administrative controversies followed as to whether the old river course should
be restored or not. The governors of Jiangnan, Jiangsu and Henan pleaded
against restoring the Yellow River to its southern course for fear of becoming
responsible again for river control in their respective provinces. The gentry of
Jiangnan also opposed the restoration as a means to avoid the obligation to send
grain tribute to Beijing through the adjoining Grand Canal (pp. 60-63).
Eventually, financial reasons and a fear of social unrest among workers meant
that the breaches were not repaired until the year 1888 (pp. 71-72). For this
reason river control along the new course had remained provisional during this
time, resulting in one hundred minor breaches of dikes along it. Covering this
aftermath of the crisis of 1855, the detailed investigations of the author end with
the fall of the Qing dynasty and the influx of western hydraulic knowledge (pp.
2, 7, 372-373). However, he also touches on the infiltration of China by foreign
geographers, merchants, and engineers and the subsequent transition to the
modern age (e. g. pp. 74, 131-134, 245, 261, 323-324, 349-351), with a brief
overview of the Republican Era (pp. 54-56).
According to the author, the aim of the book is to provide a comprehensive
and detailed description of the shifting of the river bed, its effects, and the efforts
of the Qing administration to regulate and control the river along its new course
(p. 7). His overall thesis maintains that flood disasters are the direct result of
hydraulic processes whether natural or man-made, and only the indirect result of
political, economic, and social factors (p. 11). This means that the Yellow River
is looked upon primarily from a micro-historic point of view (p. 12). It is from
135 Reviews
this micro-historic point of view that the author takes a descriptive rather than an
analytic approach to his subject.
His descriptive approach is reflected in the encyclopedic structure of the
book. In Chapter 1 the author deals with the major and minor inundations of the
Yellow River in Shandong province and asks what their effects were, including
the economic and social consequences (pp. 13, 19-56). Chapter 2 focuses on the
controversial concepts for coping with the inundations that were devised and the
ensuing hydraulic measures that were taken, posing the question of what the
relation was between the two (pp. 13, 57-145). In chapter 3 the river
administration itself is looked into. The question here is how the administration
was adapted to the new situation after 1855, and how a new provincial
administration specializing in river control was built up to take its place.
Efficiency and dysfunctional factors in the relationship between provincial and
local administrations as well as local society are examined closely, with two case
studies presented as illustration (pp. 13, 146-240). Chapter 4 deals with
hydraulic techniques, including hydraulic cartography, focussing on whether it
was efficient and how it was modernized (pp. 13, 241-301). The supernatural
dimensions of deities and ritual as an integral part of river administration and
river control is the subject of chapter 5 (pp. 302-324). Chapter 6 is concerned
with emergency relief measures for the general population, with the emphasis on
the quantity and organization of the measures (pp. 13, 25-370). This structure
allows the book to be used as a sort of encyclopedia, all the more so as its
appendix contains two excellent indices with integrated glossaries of
geographical and personal names and of subject terms (pp. 431-436, 437-455).
Only a few Chinese equivalents for administrative titles are lacking (e. g.
„Sonderbeauftragter„).
The author's claims to offer a comprehensive and highly detailed presentation
of the subject are fully achieved, but at the cost of clarity in the argumentative
structure. The essentially descriptive approach of the book has resulted in an
overwhelming number of excursions, with the author sometimes deviating from
his subject and getting lost in fine details or other historical periods (e. g. pp.
242-243, 245, 250, 300-301, 341, 373). This additional information could,
perhaps, have been put into footnotes, in an appendix, or else the text could have
been subdivided by subtitles. At any rate, the text would have benefitted from
many more subsections or paragraphs.
Nevertheless, it is from these excursions that the reader may gain very close
insights into micro-history. A few examples may suffice: dike-building
sometimes resulted in armed fights (xiedou) between neighboring villages (pp.
51-52). Special emissaries in charge of hydrology inspecting small localities had
to be looked after with costly hostels and sedan-chairs (pp. 136, 367). Dike
workers were not paid per day but per cubic measure (fang) of earth shifted by
their work, with certificates being handed out for every cubic measure that could
be changed into money later on (pp. 215-216). Charity organizations (shantang,
i.e. „charity halls„) created a remarkable kind of advertisement in order to attract
136 EASTM 19 (2002)
sponsors for disaster relief (p. 343). Centers for the distribution of congee
(zhouchang) handed out their meals by an intricate system of colored „slips of
bamboo for rotation„ (xunhuanqian) in order to avoid misuse (pp. 357-359).
Understanding of the text is enhanced by the inclusion of figures, plates and
tables, but it would had been much easier for the reader to follow the
explanations if the author had included more diagrams to illustrate the
hydrological concepts and maps, or cartographic sketches to point out the
relative position of the localities as well as distribution of quantitative spacial
data (chapter 2, esp. pp. 59, 60). With such additional graphic material the
presentation of the text would have been much more transparent to the reader
and therefore even more instructive. This is a major shortcoming of the book.
One should however take into consideration that this is the first time that
such a wealth of primary archive material has been presented to the reader.
There has been no such comprehensive study in either western languages or in
Chinese or Japanese (pp. 9-10). The author keeps very close to primary sources.
He mainly relies on the Shilu (Veritable Records), the Donghua lu (Records
from the Donghua Gate), the respective sections in the complete works of high
officials, reports in the Jingbao (Beijing-Gazette) and other newspapers such as
the Shenbao (founded in Shanghai 1872), local gazetteers, and petitions to the
throne by the director-general of waterways and the provincial governors. The
author also looked for original documents preserved in the First Historical
Archive (Diyi lishi dang’an guan) in Beijing, especially the „reference copies of
the petitions to the throne„ (lufu zouzhe) with „clear lists„ (qingdan) enclosed
(pp. 14-15). The author complains of the paucity of sources preserved from
provincial and local administrations. Thus the Zai Hui jilüe (Records of holding
office in Hui[min]) and the Zaizhen riji (Diary of Disaster Relief), both by Liu
Tang, become important sources of information for the local level that, however,
cannot be counterchecked by other sources (pp. 16-17).
The author succeeds in reconstructing a puzzle while coping with the
difficulties of incomplete and incongruent data. The data are qualitative as well
as quantitative. As far as the quantitative data are concerned the author develops
a comparative method. In order to make the figures for the various inundations
comparable to each other, he proposes an index of „disaster-strickeness„
(„Katastrophenbetroffenheit„). The index is made up by the number of villages
affected in the district multiplied by the degree of the severity of damage
indicated by tax exemption according to administrative records (p. 25 and tab.
IV, XXIII-XXXII). The author is well aware of the recurring problem of biased
„administrative„ and „political„ figures (pp. 33, 34).
He concludes that the inundations actually affected no more than ten percent
of the population and agricultural area of Shandong. Yet the economic loss by
far exceeded the province’s total tax income as well as the expense of river
control (pp. 371-372). As the central authority responsible for river control, the
Administration of Water-ways underwent a process of disintegration from 1855
that lasted until 1902. Responsibility shifted from the central to the provincial
137 Reviews
and local levels. By the end of the dynasty a new irregular river administration
for Shandong came to be institutionalized (pp. 375-376). The intra-bureaucratic
debates produced no systematic long-term plan for dike-building as a measure of
river control. Authorities evaded any pro-active policy and only reacted to
problems, in the end deciding on the worst possible solution of inadequate dikes
(pp. 374, 380). Dike-building problems were aggravated by the interference of
interest groups, such as the influential „salt winning households„ (zaohu) (pp.
126-129). Bad quality earth was sometimes used for dike-building, and repair
work on dikes was done only in cases of impending danger. It was the end of the
dynasty before bricks and stones came to be used as material for reinforcing
dikes (pp. 377-378), while the gathering of relevant hydrological data and
cartography remained unchanged and were not modernized (p. 380).
By the beginning of the Guangxu Era (1875-1908) the state could no longer
cover the expenses necessary for river control. Therefore, it had to be financed
by selling off offices to private contributors. An unfavorable side effect of this
contribution system was the creation of new officials interested only in self-
enrichment (p. 378). Disaster relief was taken over by non-state charity
organizations run by the new urban class of gentry, merchants and officials.
Selling offices in exchange for monetary contributions led to decentralization
and loss of control by the central authority of the state (pp. 352-353). During the
late 19th century relief for the affected population was more and more provided
in the form of money instead of food. This tendency was caused by the almost
complete breakdown of the grain storage system, which again was an effect of
the Taiping and Nian rebellions (p. 378). Yet, disaster relief was more an
administrative than a financial problem as state bureaucracy did not reach down
to the local leaders in the rural communities (p. 379). As people became aware
of the crisis, enfeoffments and veneration of popular river deities increased (p.
372). As a result of his study, the author is able to underline the inefficiency of
the administration and the inadequacy of technical measures to bring the Yellow
River under control.
In conclusion, the book may be highly recommended to specialists in
Chinese bureaucratic history and experts in Chinese hydrology.


Iwo Amelung, Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851-1911): Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten Qing-Zeit

East Asian
Science, Technology,
and Medicine
Number 19
2002
A journal dedicated to the study of traditional and modern
East Asian science, technology, and medicine.
Editor:
Hans Ulrich Vogel
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
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Editorial Consultant:
Jutta Rall-Niu, Seminar für Sprache und Kultur Chinas, Universität Hamburg
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Hermann Kogelschatz, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Bridie Andrews, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
Francesca Bray, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa
Barbara
Christopher Cullen, Department of History, SOAS, University of London
Benjamin A. Elman, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Los
Angeles
Charlotte Furth, Department of  History, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles
Keizô Hashimoto, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, Osaka
Yi-Long Huang, Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu
Sang-Woon Jeon, Cultural Properties Committee Korea, Seoul
Catherine Jami, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Yung Sik Kim, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University
Dieter Kuhn, Institut für Kulturwissenschaften Ost- und Südasiens - Sinologie,
Universität Würzburg
Angela Ki Che Leung, Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy,
Academia Sinica, Taipei
Bing Liu, Institute of  Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University,
Beijing
Dun Liu, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Academia Sinica, Beijing
Morris Low, Department of Asian Languages and Studies, University of
Queensland, Brisbane
Georges Métailié, Centre Alexandre Koyré, CNRS-EHESS-MNHN, Paris
Yunli Shi, Department of the History of  Science and Scientific Archaeology,
University  of  Science and Technology of China, Hefei
Nathan Sivin, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
C. Michele Thompson, Department of History, Southern Connecticut State
University, New Haven
Togo Tsukahara, History and Philosophy of  Science, Technology and Medicine,
Kobe University
Paul U. Unschuld, Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München
Donald B. Wagner, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen
Tadashi Yoshida, Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai
THE SCOPE OF EASTM
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Numbers 1-10 (1975-92) were published irregularly under the editorship of Nathan Sivin
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University of California, Los Angeles, by Benjamin A. Elman. Beginning with Number
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ISHEASTM
The publication, since the fifties, of Joseph Needham’s (1900-1995) monumental work,
Science and Civilisation in China, has been followed by a rapid development of research
on the history of science, technology, and medicine in China, as well as in civilisations
upon which Chinese culture exerted an important influence, such as Japan, Korea, and
Vietnam. Since 1982, International Conferences on the History of Science in China had
been held at irregular intervals. At the sixth of these conferences, held in Cambridge in
1990 in honour of Joseph Needham’s ninetieth birthday, participants agreed to found the
International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine
(ISHEASTM).
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• The organisation of a plenary meeting every three years (Kyoto 1993, Seoul 1996,
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• The publication of a journal, EASTM, on a semi-annual basis;
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This journal is printed on acid-free paper.
ISSN #1562-918X


Vogel, Hans Ulrich

Note from the Editor

Hanson, Marta E.

New Directions in the History of Science in East Asia

Wagner, Donald B.

123 Reviews
REVIEWS
Peter Golas, Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical
Technology. Part XIII: Mining. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999. xxvi + 538 pp., 127 ills., 15 maps, 14 tables.
Donald B. Wagner
[Donald B. Wagner is an independent scholar, presently based at the Nordic
Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has for some years been
engaged in writing the volume on ferrous metallurgy for Science and civilisation
in China.]
Peter Golas’s volume for Science and Civilisation in China gives us for the first
time a real history of mining in China. He provides the necessary technical detail
with very clear explanations, and he makes great efforts to place the technical
development in its full historical context. Peter Golas is thus a worthy disciple of
our master Joseph Needham, whose insistence on ‘brass tacks’, and on taking up
the whole of a subject in a big book, seems to me the most valuable part of his
legacy.
The sources for the study of mining in China change with the period.
Archaeological excavations give a fine view of Han and pre-Han mining, but
Chinese archaeologists have shown very little interest in later developments.
From the late Han through the Tang there is very little relevant material of any
sort. For the Song and Yuan we have a few interesting written sources, throwing
some light on the economic and social context of mining but with very little
information on the techniques. From the Ming the written record becomes richer,
and we begin to learn more about mining techniques, especially in the Tian gong
kai wu _an gon of 1637 and the Diannan kuangchang tulüe _annan kuan
of ca. 1845. For the 19th and 20th centuries there are numerous eyewitness
accounts by Western and Western-trained mining engineers. Finally, Golas has
himself visited a number of mines in south China which still today use
traditional techniques.
Our view is thus inevitably patchy. We know a great deal about the
techniques used by miners at (among others) the great copper mine at
Tonglüshan ??? in Daye, Hubei, in the Warring States and Han, but nothing
about how they lived or who organised their work. We know more about the
organisation of Song mining, but virtually nothing about its technology. We
know a little of both for the Ming and Qing, but what we know immediately
raises more difficult questions. The only way to proceed is to interpret the
124 EASTM 19 (2002)
sources for a period in the light of what is known for earlier and later periods:
not an ideal situation, but Golas is fully aware of the pitfalls in his path, and he
has produced an account which seems methodologically solid. I have a few
reservations on the use of modern eyewitness accounts, and will return to these
further below.
The techniques of mining may perhaps be roughly divided into three
categories: prospecting and exploration; everything that goes on inside the mine;
and ore dressing. Outside these categories are placer mining and the copper
precipitation process. All of these matters are of course impressively covered
and well explained, but in less than half of the book (pp. 203–386). The rest,
what makes this book unique and wonderful, covers the context in which these
techniques were developed and practised: the geology of ore deposits in China
(pp. 41–57), the products of Chinese mining (pp. 58–202), labour and capital
(pp. 387–415), and the role of the State (pp. 416–428).
With all this before us we can begin to see technological choices as effects
and as causes in history on an equal footing with other historical factors in
constant interaction. China’s ore deposits are most often small and irregular; this
was perhaps the reason for the generally small scale of mines. This may in turn
have been an important factor in a seemingly general lack of investment capital
in the mining industry, or perhaps State policies hindered large-scale investment.
Both deposit size and available capital influenced the techniques chosen for any
particular mine; these techniques influenced labour relations; or was the
influence of labour relations on the choice of techniques more important? The
processes which followed on after mining and ore-dressing, in particular the
techniques of smelting ores to metals, must also have interacted with mining
techniques: particular smelting techniques set requirements for mining and ore
dressing, while the limitations in these techniques set requirements for smelting
processes.
The sections on ‘Major non-ferrous metals’ and ‘Iron’ (pp. 58–150, 150–
173) anticipate future volumes of SCC and may in some particulars be corrected
by them. It is nevertheless important to have this material as part of the story of
mining, and Golas’s treatment, for example, of the earliest use of copper and
bronze in China (pp. 58–78) brings geology and mining technique very usefully
into the discussion of this vexed question. Surveys of the geology of native
copper, mixed ores (copper–arsenic, copper–tin), and sulphide ores in China are
all relevant here.
An example of the ways in which techniques set requirements for other
techniques can be seen at the Tonglüshan copper-mine site. Techniques for
mining hard rock seem not to have been available here at this early time; fire-
setting, for example, seems not to have been much used, and tools were
generally of bronze or wrought or cast iron rather than steel. Therefore the early
mining activities at Tonglüshan were restricted to a contact zone in which the
rock is friable and easy to mine with primitive implements. But the friability of
the rock meant that mining in this zone required extensive timbering, and the
125 Reviews
timbering methods here were developed, over the centuries through the Han, to a
high level of sophistication. Elsewhere, and at later times, many mines used less
timbering; the rock in these places must have been harder and the techniques for
cutting into rock more developed.
In the friable copper ore at Tonglüshan the sulphur had been leached out by
rainwater over geological time. The resulting oxide ore was much easier to smelt
than sulphur ores, and copper-smelting near the mine used a relatively simple
blast-furnace process. In places where only sulphide ores of copper were
available, a more elaborate multi-stage process would have been necessary.
The chapter ‘The shortage of capital’ (pp. 410–415) states one of the
conundrums of Chinese economic history: Chinese mining seems normally to
have been on a small scale, and there has always been difficulty in obtaining the
necessary investment for mines. This in spite of the fact that there has not been a
general shortage of private investment capital; institutions existed for pooling
capital in sophisticated partnership arrangements. Golas discusses various
explanations and suggests that the most important factor was that the risks
involved in mining investment, which he discusses in detail, generally
outweighed the possible returns.
There is more to be said on this question. First, we should distinguish
between the scale of the individual mine and the scale of the enterprise as a
whole. In many places it is the local geology alone which determines that mines
will be small (p. 57). If deposits are small and quickly worked out, then large
investment, for example in drainage, ventilation, or mechanised haulage, is not
economical, even in cases where such investment would make more of the
deposit available for exploitation. This may have been the case in the iron mines
of Guangdong. In Shanxi, on the other hand, the enormous deposit of coal
underlying the greater part of the province would have lent itself to large-scale
mining, but simply digging a vertical shaft to the coal layers was so
straightforward (pp. 163, 200 fn. 694) that large-scale mines were apparently
seldom attempted here before modern times – as far as we know.
Chinese mining and smelting enterprises, on the other hand, have sometimes
been very large. In Guangdong, in the late Ming and early Qing, large firms
played a significant role in iron production: iron was mined, smelted in
numerous blast furnaces in the mountains, and transported down the great rivers
of the province to Foshan, where it was fabricated into products and traded
throughout China and Southeast Asia.1 According to Guangdong xinyu
uangdo,2 (by Qu Dajun (by Q, 1630–96) the labour force of such a firm was
at least 300 households, including 200 miners, and transportation was provided
                                                
1 See e.g. Xu Dixin & Wu Chengming (eds.), Chinese Capitalism, 1522–1840, tr. by
C. A. Curwen et al., London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 93–110, 249–264.
2 Typeset ed., repr. Hong Kong: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974, ch. 15, pp. 408–410; tr.
Donald B. Wagner, The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate,
Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997, pp. 65–67.
126 EASTM 19 (2002)
by 200 oxen and 50 river vessels. Even allowing for exaggeration, these were
large-scale enterprises which could easily discount the risks involved in
investing in any one mine.
But here is where the unavoidable reliance on recent travellers’ accounts can
lead into methodological muddle. Qu Daxin’s account was written before
foreign trade sent the Guangdong iron industry into a steep decline, and no
modern-trained observer ever saw that industry in its prime. For Shanxi, on the
other hand, we have numerous modern descriptions of traditional mining
practices, but seemingly none at all before the late 19th century, when foreign
competition had sent profits down to near-zero at the same time that foreign
trade was introducing other, more profitable, investment opportunities.
Accounts of Chinese mining by knowledgeable modern observers are
unreliable guides to earlier practice. In the nature of the case, all such accounts
refer to an industry operating in economic conditions fundamentally changed by
contact with the modern West. Decreased profits, higher returns on alternative
investments, and a surfeit of cheap labour due to generally troubled times meant
that the most economically rational technologies were usually small-scale and
labour-intensive. Several modern observers have noticed signs in poverty-
stricken mining districts of the former prosperity of their ‘glory days’ (pp. 40 fn.
130, 393 fn. 48). What technologies were used back then is often simply
unknowable, but Golas does give us some examples of what seem to be larger-
scale mines in which, at some past time, significant investment was made (pp.
16, 283, 335 fn. 266, 315 fig. 81, 340, 342, 348, 393 fn. 48).
It may well be that future work, especially in the archaeology of mining in
more recent centuries, will give us an alternate view of the technology and
context of Chinese mining. In the meantime, Peter Golas’s book gives us a clear
view of the available evidence and an opportunity to argue about these questions
in a more informed manner than has ever been possible before.


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Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician : Wang Ji and the "Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories"

Bibliography of the late Prof. Yabuuti Kiyosi

Iwo Amelung, Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851-1911): Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten Qing-Zeit

Editorial

Note from the Editor

New Directions in the History of Science in East Asia

Contents

Peter Golas, Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Part XIII: Mining

370

608