Antje Richter

A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture

Email: marketing@brill.com A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture is the first publication, in any language, that is dedicated to the study of Chinese epistolary literature and culture in its entirety, from the early empire to the twentieth century. The volume includes twentyfive essays dedicated to a broad spectrum of topics from postal transmission to letter calligraphy, epistolary networks to genre questions. It introduces dozens of letters, often the first translations into English, and thus makes epistolary history palpable in all its vitality and diversity: letters written by men and women from all walks of life to friends and lovers, princes and kings, scholars and monks, seniors and juniors, family members and neighbors, potential patrons, newspaper editors, and many more. With contributions by: Pablo Ariel Blitstein, R. Joe Cutter, Alexei Ditter, Ronald Egan, Imre Galambos, Natascha Gentz, Enno Giele, Natasha Heller, David R. Knechtges, Paul W. Kroll, Jie Li, Y. Edmund Lien, Bonnie S. McDougall, Amy McNair, David Pattinson, Zeb Raft, Antje Richter, Anna M. Shields, Suyoung Son, Janet Theiss, Xiaofei Tian, Lik Hang Tsui, Matthew Wells, Ellen ...

The Trouble with Wang Xizhi: Illness and Healing in a Fourth-Century Chinese Correspondence

Containing many reports of his own illnesses and attempts at treatment, along with inquiries after the health of correspondents and acquaintances, the letters of Wang Xizhi (303-361) constitute the earliest sizeable corpus of personal health reports in Chinese literature and are thus a valuable source for the study of Chinese epistolary communication and medical history. This article explores the rhetorical strategies of Wang’s medical narratives and the role that writing about illness and healing may have played in the correspondents’ relationships and broader networks. Examining the medical ideas and terminology evident in Wang Xizhi’s letters, the article also seeks to illuminate a section of the multifaceted world of early medieval Chinese healing practices. By allowing us to get closer to the calligrapher’s body, Wang’s illness narratives further help us to heighten our awareness of the circumstances that shape the artistic process. Les lettres de Wang Xizhi (303-361) contiennent de nombreuses informations sur ses propres problemes medicaux et sur ses facons de se traiter, ainsi que des questions adressees aux destinataires quant a leur sante et celle de leurs connaissances communes. Elles constituent ainsi le plus ancien corpus de taille consequente au sein de la litterature chinoise traitant de l’histoire medicale d’individus ; elles ont donc une valeur importante comme source tant pour l’histoire epistolaire que medicale. Cet article explore les strategies rhetoriques dans les recits qu’offre Wang au sujet de la sante, ainsi que le role que ses ecrits sur les maladies et les guerisons ont pu jouer dans ses rapports sociaux avec ses correspondants et au-dela. En examinant les idees et la terminologie medicale exprimees dans les lettres de Wang Xizhi, cet article ambitionne aussi d’eclairer un pan du monde tres varie des pratiques de guerison chinoises medievales. Ses temoignages sur ses maladies, qui nous permettent d’approcher de pres le grand calligraphe dans sa corporalite, nous rendent plus attentif aux conditions les plus physiques de sa production artistique.

Introduction: The Study of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture

It would seem surprising that this book should be the first publication, in any language, dedicated to the study of Chinese epistolary literature and culture in its entirety; surprising because of the immense riches of a tradition of writing, transmitting, reading, and preserving letters that, in China, spans more than two millennia; surprising also because of the acute attention that scholars in other disciplines have been paying to letter writing for at least a century and a half—from the European Classics and ancient Near Eastern Studies to research on the dramatic changes in written communication we are witnessing in our day and age.1 One reason for the relative neglect of epistolary matters in China seems to be that letters do not play a significant role in the Confucian canon, in contrast to the epistles in the New Testament, whose cultural significance lead to a sustained scholarly interest in this medium of written communication. Another reason for the delay of attention to the Chinese epistolary world may be that letter writing was well and alive in China until rather recently, when it began to be substituted by digital media of written communication in the 1990s. In the West, the decline of handwriting as a means of communication was felt more than a century earlier with the spread of typewriters and telecommunication, which failed or were slow to gain a foothold in China.2 Meanwhile, nostalgia for the vanishing world of letter writing is growing in China, too, and along with it, scholarly interest. There has been a moderate rise in publications since the mid-1990s, both in China and the West, but much more is yet to be discovered in the long and incredibly rich history of Chinese epistolary culture. The present volume with its wide range of essays on a variety of epistolary matters from the third century BCE to the twentieth century clears and covers enormous ground and by this very act exposes the even larger

Mit Schätzen Beladen Heimkehren Der Schubkarren Als Glückverheissendes Motiv in Volkstümlichen Chinesischen Drucken

在略述中國獨輪車的構造特徵和歷史發展以後，本文說明中國吉祥畫的 獨輪車圖案。獨輪車主要出現在吉祥畫的三個主題，有不同的比喻和敘 述的作用。畫有〈搶劫的猴子〉的吉祥畫帶給小孩和商人愉快的氣氛。 〈試驗趙州石橋〉的吉祥畫希望給施工帶來平安。〈裝以財寳〉的獨輪 車圖案象徵財富的盼望。在這三個不同的主題中，獨輪車與商人的世界 緊密相關。作為小商人的工具，獨輪車結合了財富及升級的期待。透過 两位平民皇帝的傳奇故事，獨輪車的意義更加提高了。原本是車伕的柴 榮（後周世宗）和趙匡胤（宋太祖）後來成為一國之尊。所以獨輪車一 方面體現了與帝王階級密切的關聯，另一方面也意味著對太平治世的期 望。中華人民共和國以來出現的獨輪車畫中，計劃經濟的圖騰取代了財 神以及人民解放軍取代了門神，這些都建立在類似的模式上。