Modern China: An Interpretive Anthology

250 Pages·1970·6.723 MB·English

by  Joseph Richmond Levenson

Modern China
—
/ \
'N
r'
U. S. S. R.
(Turkestan)
OUTER
MONGOLIA
THAILAND

Modern China
An Interpretive Anthology
JOSEPH R. LEVENSON
University of California, Berkeley
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Collier-Macmillan Limited London
About the cover: Lo P’ing, "Portrait of the Artist's Friend, I-an” dated 1798 (Ching
Yüan Chai Collection}.
“The painting contains so many levels of meaning as to invite one to read still more
into it. Admitting this w may still wonder, as we look at it, whether Lo P’ing was
not conscious of standing near the end of a long evolution, contemplating the past
with the same mild sadness as the figure he portrays. The painting sums up the
special virtues of the last phases of the evolution, but also exemplifies the paradoxes
and contradictions that had penetrated to the very heart of Chinese painting: awk­
wardness sublimated into a kind of skill, individuality manifested in archaism,
straightforward feeling set forth through oblique allusions, serious points disguised
as pleasantries. Every further degree of concern with such interplay of opposites,
every additional layer of stylistic reference, had separated the artist that much more
from the once-possible forthright approach to the world."
James Cahill, Chinese Pointing (New York: Skira International, i960}, p. 192.
© Copyright, The Estate of Joseph R. Levenson, 1971
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the Publisher.
First Printing
Library of Congress catalog card number: 78-103692
The Macmillan Company
Colubr-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario
PRINTED IN THB UNITED STATES OP AMERICA
Foreword
On April 6, 1969, Joseph R. Levenson was drowned in a boaring accident
This untimely death of so brilliant a scholar stunned his colleagues and
grieved his family and close friends. For all of us Levenson came closer to
die ideal scholar in humaneness and intellect than anyone we have known.
His influence upon our own thinking and work has been great. Indeed for
a whole generation of students of Asian history he brought not only great
sensitivity and understanding to an analysis of the China of the past and
die revolutions of her mind, but ability to make his students conscious of
the sensibility of the Chinese past and of the sorrow and brilliance of her
decline.
It is altogether fitting that this anthology is one of his last pieces of
scholarship. Although it is precisely what it purports to be (a selection of
readings skillfully tied together with Levenson’s own remarks), it is also
a reflection erf Joe’s own working style. One erf his greatest gifts was his
ability to read as much into a text as the author intended. Often, in fact,
he saw implications of which even the original essayist was barely aware.
These aperçus in turn, uniquely rewoven with other source materials,
became integral parts of, and gready enhanced, such works as his trilogy
Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. In this set erf readings we can join
once again in the excitement erf his understanding and the joy of his mind.
Thomas R. M etcalf
Irwin Scheiner
Frederic Waxeman

Preface
This anthology (like its companion volumes, Modern Japan: An Interpre­
tive Anthology, by Irwin Scheiner, and Modern India: An Interpretive
Anthology, by Thomas R. Metcalf) has four parts. The first asks, How
does one define China—how have the Chinese defined themselves—as a
vessel of history in modem times? The next, What was the role of the
past, and of Chinese feelings for the past, in establishing definitions?
Third, What made the old order seem threatened, what made men feel the
urgent need to threaten it? Lastly, What were the goals (and why were
they goals) of the bearers of the threat? The selections that follow do not
comprise a flowing narrative. They offer, instead, connecting links of in­
terpretations of the evidence of the senses.