Summing up Naquin, Rawski, chapters 3 & 4

Cultural Life

City Life

Urban culture developed on the basis of conditions that existed in the Ming but were enlarged or intensified in the Qing such as imperial patronage, merchant and scholarly networks, mobility and commercial expansion.

The possibility of downward mobility due to partible inheritance was a facet of life that became more threatening in the Qing. Examinations remained a desired way into the elite, but the large amount of candidates diminished the chances of winning an official post. Participants who found out about cases of fraud in a particular examination took to the streets to protest against the involved abuse of power, a behavior rather uncommon in circles of the well-educated.

Merchants advanced on the ladder of social appreciation. They were connected in networks which they not only used for their business purposes but also in order to sponsor the organization of municipal and welfare services such as famine relief, security measures, road maintenance, fire fighting, and garbage collection.

One example for intensified commercial activities in the cities was the increase in the number of pawnshops. They were the money lending institutions of the less wealthy.

Literacy in the cities was essential for the participation in the exams but also for successfully running commercial enterprises. Book publishing enterprises gained major importance and brought a high level of respectability not only to the compilers of the text but also to the artisans who produced the books. New categories of books and publications became popular in this time such as illustrated reference works and almanachs. The latter were based on official calendars but included the dates of religious holidays and recorded at which times certain everyday life activities were auspicious or inauspicious.

There were two main festivals: The New Years festival (celebrated within the house and in the company of preferred all family members) and the mid-autumn festival. The New Years festival was one of the few occasions when women could be seen in public, walking in the streets in order to admire the beauty of the lanterns made for the festivities

Entertainment by drama and regional drama performance troupes was highly appreciated by urban audiences. Permanent theaters were established on the compounds of huiguan ('guild')-merchant associations. Since the Ming there were also wealthy private households who kept their own drama troupes. They could be performed in the local dialect. Womens’ roles were played by male impersonators; the contents of the operas could contain a wealth of sexual allusions. At the same time martial arts performances within a play became prominent.

Other entertainment were gambling and visiting female or male prostitutes.

Literati Culture

Literati culture was not limited to the cities but connected city and countryside.

A new school of scholarship, the school of textual criticism, flourished in the period. After scholars had largely studied and followed the interpretations of the Neo-Confucian school of Song scholarship (Zhu Xi) they now started to reject his teachings as falsifications of the original texts by Buddhist and Daoist influences. They tried to reconstruct the old texts in their classical form by rigid philological analysis. One side effect of this trend in scholarship was that a new emphasis was laid on the internalization of moral values (expressed in contemporary morality books).

Literati circles were inclusive: “Scholars, merchants, retired officials, and quasi-professional painters could meet as members of a poetry club…” (p. 69). Since museum collections did not exist, artists relied on connections from such clubs to see famous and important paintings. If they had no access to such clubs they tried to improve their skills by learning from manuals.

Literati culture was defined by a certain taste for objects which was decribed in manuals for taste.

Material culture

The centers of the production and consumption of material culture were the capital Beijing and the urban centers of the Lower Yangzi area.

Local cuisines developed under the influence of imported crops such as maize, sweet and white potatoes, tobacco, and the American red pepper.

Snuff bottles became popular when the pleasure of tobacco smoking was matched by the pleasure people sought in taking snuff.

Houses were build of wood which lead to a constant and in the Late Qing increasing loss of timber. Courtyard houses were build around a small garden, that was protected from the outside by a fence etc.. The style of the southern two-storey villas was imitated in the capital.

Life-cycle Rituals

Family rituals like weddings and funerals of the Qing were based on those of the Ming. Standard markers of rank were clothing and hairstyle.

State-ritual

State rituals performed by the emperor or officials were supervised by the officials of the Ministry of Rites. Only correctly performed rituals were effective. The worldly institutions were mirrored in the neither worldly bureaucracy.

The sacrifices comprised sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, to the Deities of the Land and of the Grain and were supposed to keep heaven-man- and earth in harmonic relations. Order and stability were of utmost importance, chaos and confusion were to be avoided on an individual level as well as on the state level. Terms explaining family structures were imitated on the state level;

Emperor : Son of Heaven

Magistrate: Father and Mother of the commoners

Social change

Economic diversity and growth

Agriculture remained the most important resource of the Qing state. In labor intensive cereal production the majority of the work force of peasants was absorbed. Two zones are dominant for two different crops: In the north wheat and millet are dominant, the south is the area of wet-rice cultivation. Distributing the risk of a bad harvest between landlord and tenants in a share cropping system was dominant. Landownership could be shifting, but largely was limited to members of the same clan; complete alienation from the land appeared usually only over a period of several decades. Tenure could be permanent which in general benefited the tenants because the system offered a high level of security.

The dense population in the south had to devote much of its work time to the irrigation process and to the maintenance of the irrigation system.

“Native banks” handled nearly all money transfer transactions we know of modern banks. They

► accepted deposits

► made loans

► issued private notes

► transferred funds between regions etc.

within the monetary system which used copper coins, silver, silver dollars, and paper notes.

Especially in the South transport systems were further elaborated to serve waterborne commerce. When trade with the European merchants became eminent, the “Canton system” developed, in which compradores or middlemen represented a group of state-authorized firms, Co-hong, who were allowed to trade with the foreigners. Silk, tea, and porcelain from the state workshops in Jingdezhen were the most important wares traded with Southeast Asia and with European merchants.

Demographic trends

The population numbers during the Qing tripled. The average marriage age for women was17-18, for men 21. Mixed marriages between Han and minorities were comparatively rare.

Hereditary Statuses

The hereditary status of one’s lineage membership was an important and accepted fact in the Qing and included the entire population from the imperial family down to the local headmen of tribes, the leaders of the banners, as well as important religious leaders.

A distinction was made between “good people” (=respectable persons) and “mean people”, persons who worked in disrespectable professions, lived in a servile status, or were of aboriginal descent.