Table Of ContentTen Thousand Things
Ten Thousand Things
Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing
Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang
Z O N E B O O K S • N E W Y O R K
2012
© 2012 Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang
zone books
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Brooklyn, NY 11218
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Distributed by The MIT Press,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farquhar, Judith.
Ten thousand things : nurturing life in contemporary
Beijing / Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-935408-18-5 (alk. paper)
1 . Ethnology — China — Beijing. 2. Socialization —
China — Beijing. 3. Community life — China — Beijing.
4. Philosophy, Chinese. 5. Medicine, Chinese — China —
Beijing. 6. Beijing (China) — Social life and customs.
I. Zhang, Qicheng. II. Title.
gn635.c5f37 2012
306.0951’156 — dc23
2011037199
Contents
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction: Life Well Nutured 11
i City Life 49
ii How to Live 125
iii Daily Life 173
iv The Meaning of Life 239
Conclusion 279
Notes 295
Bibliography 329
Index 343
Acknowledgments
Ten Thousand Things originated in collaboration, built its form and
content through collaboration, and was made possible only through
collective labors, most of which are not adequately noted in its
pages. Here we would like to acknowledge the participation of many
others, some of them no longer living, some of them institutions,
rather than individuals, in the life of this project.
This research has had a life of its own, enjoyed by both of its
authors. Together we have drawn from a number of vibrant, vivid
resources made available by many friends and associates. We two
were first brought together in 1999 through the good offices of Eric
Karchmer, then a student at the Beijing University of Chinese Medi-
cine, and Lai Lili, a staff member at BJUCM and graduate of their
medical school. They organized a workshop there about anthropol-
ogy and Chinese medicine and arranged for Judith Farquhar to be
invited. At the workshop, with the notable support of senior scholars
Yan Jianhua, Wang Hongtu, and Lu Guangxin (something we’re sure
all of them have since forgotten), we discovered our shared interest
in life nurturance, embodiment, and ethnography. It was then that
we first began to plan collaborative research, with the approval of
the Inner Canon, Classical Medical Chinese, and Cultural Studies
Programs at the university.
The most intense period of broad collaboration was several months
each year between 2002 and 2004 (though we were delayed and inter-
rupted by outbreak of SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome —
in 2003), when a group of graduate students and others helped
7
TEN THOUSAND THINGS
the two of us to conduct interviews in Beijing’s West City Dis-
trict and to join in life-nurturing activities there. The attentive
and sensitive field research of Qiu Hao, Lai Lili, Luo Hao, Wang
Minghao, Yu Hong, Guo Hua, and Shen Yi extended the reach of
this project in many ways. At one point Assistant Professor Qu
Limin joined our group for a couple of interviews, increasing the
fun; she later added a number of popular works on life nurtur-
ance to her significant scholarly publications, and a discussion of
some of her writing appears in Chapter 2. One of the most pro-
ductive elements of this group fieldwork was the lively conversa-
tions we had during, after, and between interviews. We were able
both to extend the power of our preliminary analyses and to check
each other’s interpretive enthusiasms as we talked, transcribed,
and talked some more.
The process of writing was long and often interrupted. One of
the challenges and pleasures of this long process had to do with the
fact that each of this book’s two authors was writing various other
things in his or her own language while this book was coming into
existence; producing the elements gathered into Ten Thousand Things
was an asymmetrical process stretching over more than five years.
Everything Farquhar wrote needed to be translated into Chinese, at
least roughly, for Zhang’s editing and supplementation; much that
Zhang wrote had to be carefully translated into English as it was
incorporated into the English draft. In practice, we found ourselves
spending scattered long afternoons together going through drafts
sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph. Lai Lili often
provided stalwart translation support, and Shen Yi filled in wonder-
fully some of the time. Together, our little group obsessed over the
right word, the right degree of verbosity, presence or absence of
modifiers, and many other delights and frustrations of translation.
This was as rewarding a process as any work among comrades in
“the field.” We hope that the effort we all expended resulted in both
symmetrical and shared authorial voices, and we remain grateful for
Lai Lili’s and Shen Yi’s full partnership in this project and others far
beyond Ten Thousand Things.
8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research project was funded in part with a generous grant
for collaborative research from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research. Judith Farquhar also received signifi-
cant support from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation of New
York, which allowed a year-long writing fellowship at the National
Humanities Center in North Carolina. She also benefited from
research funds provided at the University of Chicago by the Adolph
and Marian Lichtstern Anthropology Research Endowment and
by the Division of the Social Sciences. Zhang Qicheng received
institutional support from the Beijing University of Chinese Medi-
cine, especially the Library and the Graduate School. We are both
immensely grateful for these irreplaceable gifts.
Judith Farquhar wishes to thank many friends and colleagues
whose insights about at least ten thousand things have inspired vari-
ous gestures made in Ten Thousand Things. Scattered conversations
and readings shared with Lily Hope Chumley, Nicholas Harkness,
Larisa Jasarevic, Kiho Kim, Tong Lam, Li Chengwei, Margaret Lock,
Luo Hongguang, George Marcus, Meng Yue, Vinh-kim Nguyen,
Mariella Pandolfi, David B. Sutton, Tatiana Chudakova, Wang Jun,
Wang Min’an, Wu Yiching, Yue Gang, Zhao Chengguang, and Zhao
Dingxin have been more influential than any of them realize. Marisol
de la Cadena pushed for more thorough, more ethical collaboration in
ethnography and in this project; this was a most welcome pressure.
Stephan Feuchtwang continued to hear the political resonances in
life nurturing, which reassured at times when it seemed that no one
understood that part. Jim Hevia read a number of drafts and helped to
keep things logical and exciting. Comrades at the National Humani-
ties Center, especially Maud Ellman, Geoffrey Harpham, Elizabeth
Helsinger, Louise Meintjes, Amelie Rorty, Terry Smith, and John
Wilkinson welcomed life-nurturing China into wholesome circula-
tion with other wonderful research projects in a way that markedly
increased the robustness of our topic and our approach. We are espe-
cially grateful as well to those who provided research assistance and
logistical support at the University of Chicago: Betsey Brada, Anne
Ch’ien, Kathryn Goldfarb, Sandra Hagen, and Britta Ingebretson.
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