James Carter

Struggle for the soul of a city: nationalism, imperialism, and racial tension in 1920s Harbin.

As Howard Lee Haag was completing his studies at the University of Michigan in early 1921, he was also preparing to go abroad to work for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). When his instructions arrived from the YMCA, he found that he and his wife were being assigned for the next fourteen years to a city in Manchuria. Haag had never heard of the place. He wrote his parents with the news: “Florence and I are assigned to . . . work for the YMCA in Harbin, Manchuria. Now perhaps you will have to scratch your head to find out where it is! . . . You see, it is a Chinese town in which there are 55,000 Russian people” (Haag, 27 March 1921). Some months after his arrival, Haag reversed this statement in a letter to friends at home, observing, “We are on Chinese soil, but in a Russian city” (Haag, 14 January 1922). In these two statements, Haag framed the central question that was being asked in Harbin in the early 1920s: was it culturally a Chinese city with many Russian inhabitants or a Russian city on Chinese territory? The question was of vital importance to the city’s residents, both Chinese and non-Chinese, all of whom felt strongly about “their” city’s identity. In 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution and at the request of the Russians, Chinese troops had moved into the city, but no official transfer of sovereignty had occurred, thus leaving the city with

A Tale of Two Temples: Nation, Region, and Religious Architecture in Harbin, 1928-1998

Harbin is located on the upper reaches of the Sungari River, and . . . is a gathering place for merchants, travelers, and refugees from Asia and Europe, where the languages, customs, beliefs, and goods of travelers and immigrants mix together.’’ 1 This description of Harbin’s multicultural environment, written in , justified the imposition of a Chinese national narrative onto the city and the surrounding region. To study Northeast Asia is to inhabit a periphery of not just one region but several. The conference that spawned this article testified to this fact: Specialists on Russia, Korea, China, and Japan all contributed expertise on the region, and none could form a complete narrative of the place without the others. Other minorities, ranging from Poles, Jews, and Armenians to Manchus, Ewenki, and Mongols, also contributed to making this region unique and contested. In telling one small aspect of Harbin’s twentieth-century story, I focus on the city’s multicultural past, how it has been claimed by different peoples, and how this polyethnic history is reemerging as a new sense of regional identity becomes—perhaps—viable

Revolution as Restoration. Guocui xuebao and China's Path to Modernity, 1905–1911

CD-Rom of the Latin transcription and scanned folios of the original manuscript in the ARSI in Rome. There is enormous effort, deep scholarship, and impressive erudition in the publication of the Acta. To give just one example: Stumpf often quotes the actual words in Chinese expressed by Kangxi and his mandarins. Since these were written in the older transliterations devised by Nicolas Trigault, it is not always easy to reconstruct the original character and meaning. The editors have certainly made a noble effort to identify and reconstruct all such utterances. This volume is in so many aspects a perfect example of scholarship and erudition that one regrets the many errors in Chinese characters introduced by the printer. For instance, “記理安” on p. xix, p. 325, n. 621 should be “紀理安” instead; other errors include: “閔明我” instead of “閩明我” on p. xix, p. 13; “伊大仁” instead of “伊大人” on p. lix; “桐城” instead of “桐成” on p. 158, n. 301; “孫致彌” instead of “定致彌” on p. 159, n. 306; “字” instead of “子” on p. 162, n. 327; “檔案” instead of “擋案” on p. 282, n. 572.