具体描述
These translations of eighteen classical Chinese texts from the mid-ninth century (Tang dynasty) through the late nineteenth century (Qing dynasty) offer a comprehensive collection of primary sources focusing on gender issues in medieval and late imperial China. The book's title reflects the sometimes ironic relationship between Confucian viewpoints and women's visibility in Chinese historical documents. The texts, written by both men and women, show that Confucian values and scholarly practices produced a rich documentary record of women's lives.
穿越迷雾：晚清知识分子与现代性的抉择 一 本书深入探究了晚清时期（约1870年至1911年）一批关键知识分子的思想轨迹与行动逻辑。他们正身处一个前所未有的历史关口：古老的帝国秩序在内忧外患中摇摇欲坠，西方工业文明的冲击如海啸般席卷而来，传统儒家思想的权威性受到空前挑战。这不是一个简单的“中西之争”的故事，而是一部关于知识精英如何在意识形态的剧烈震荡中，试图为民族未来寻找新出路的复杂史诗。 聚焦于甲午战败后的“救亡图存”高潮，本书剖析了梁启超、康有为、谭嗣同，乃至早期留学归国精英如严复、辜鸿铭等人的精神世界。他们不仅是政治改革的鼓吹者，更是文化和思想的建筑师。他们深知，仅靠器物层面的学习（如洋枪大炮）无法真正挽救中国，真正的危机在于“心智”的落后。 我们首先考察了早期维新派的思想结构。康有为的“托古改制”策略，试图在维护儒家经典的神圣性与推行君主立宪的政治诉求之间架起桥梁。他如何巧妙地重新诠释《春秋》大义，将康乾盛世的理想投射到现代国家的构建上？本书通过梳理《孔子改制考》和《新学伪经考》的文本细读，揭示了这种“保守的激进主义”是如何在精英阶层中获得合法性的。这种策略的内在矛盾——试图用旧的权威来论证新的变革——最终如何成为其政治实践的局限性？ 梁启超的转型尤其引人注目。从早期的对康有为的盲目追随，到戊戌政变失败后的流亡，再到对“新民”思想的宏大构建，梁启超展现了现代知识分子在失败面前的自我批判与迭代能力。他引进了卢梭、孟德斯鸠等西方思想，但其核心关切始终围绕着“国民性”的改造。他笔下的“新民”不再是传统意义上顺服君主的臣民，而是具有公共意识、权利观念和爱国情感的现代公民。本书重点分析了梁启超在《时务报》和《新民丛报》上如何通过文学革命（如“文体革命”）来配合政治理念的传播，以及他如何在中国思想界首创了“民族主义”的现代叙事框架。 二 然而，现代性的引入并非坦途，它必然与传统的核心价值发生剧烈冲突。本书的第二部分着重探讨了知识分子群体内部的分化与挣扎，特别是围绕“中学为体，西学为用”这一核心命题展开的辩论。 严复是这一矛盾的典型代表。他毕生致力于翻译赫胥黎、斯宾塞和约翰·穆勒等人的著作，其“信、达、雅”的翻译观，本身就是对中国文言文表达能力的一种挑战和反思。严复对进化论的引入，以其“物竞天择，适者生存”的论调，对传统“天命观”构成了沉重打击。然而，这位深受西方功利主义和达尔文主义熏陶的学者，最终却以一种近乎悲观的姿态收场。他看到了西方文明的强大，也看到了中国知识界对新思想的肤浅接受。我们试图揭示，严复深层的忧虑并非来自技术落后，而是源于对国民道德基础和政治伦理的彻底幻灭。他的知识分子身份，最终演变成了一种孤独的文化守望者的角色。 与此相对，本书也关注了那些试图在传统文化中寻找现代化资源的声音。辜鸿铭，这位精通多国语言、以“辫子和马褂”形象示人的学者，构成了强烈的对照组。他极力推崇中国文化中的“温情”与“人道主义”，反对西方社会中被他视为过度理性化和“机械化”的弊端。辜鸿铭的论述，虽然在当时被视为保守甚至反动，但其对现代社会异化现象的洞察，为我们理解知识分子对“全盘西化”的反思提供了重要的参照点。他的存在提醒我们，现代性的构建从来不是单一路径，而是充满了多元且充满张力的对话。 三 知识分子的“场域”也在剧烈变动。从传统书院到近代学堂，再到留学生群体的兴起，知识的生产和传播方式彻底重塑。本书通过考察京师同文馆、南洋公学以及留日学生群体的内部运作，分析了现代教育体系如何塑造了“新式知识人”。 留日学生群体尤为关键。他们不仅是政治激进主义的火种，也是文化革新的先锋。他们带来的不仅仅是科学知识，更是对于共和、民主、社会党等一整套现代政治语言的引入。然而，当这些来自异域的概念被移植到中国土壤时，它们立即被本土的权力结构、社会关系和历史经验所“扭曲”和“再诠释”。例如，“革命”一词的内涵在孙中山的“三民主义”与早期同盟会的实践中，如何与传统“驱除鞑虏”的叙事交织，形成一种混合的动员语言。 本书的最后部分，聚焦于知识分子与权力中心——清廷的微妙关系。从中体西用派的洋务大臣，到力图在体制内推动渐进改革的张之洞，再到最终选择武装推翻的革命派。这些知识分子群体面临的共同困境是：如何与一个固执、腐朽但又拥有绝对合法性的旧政权共存或对抗？他们的政策建议，无论是改良还是革命，最终都必须通过对皇权和士绅阶层的说服或压制来实现。 《穿越迷雾》旨在揭示，晚清知识分子的抉择并非简单的“开明”与“愚昧”的对立，而是一系列充满痛苦、妥协和巨大精神代价的复杂行动。他们试图用有限的知识工具，去解决一个庞大帝国在历史转折点上遭遇的生存危机。他们的思想遗产，至今仍在形塑着我们对中国现代化道路的理解与争论。
作者简介
Susan Mann is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis.
Yu-Yin Cheng is Assistant Professor of History at Marymount Manhattan College.
目录信息
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introduction
Guide for Students and Teachers
1. Biography of the Daoist Saint Wang Fengxian by Du Guangting (850 - 933)
Translated by Suzanne Cahill
This biography of an important Daoist female saint of the mid-ninth century chronicles her life from childhood through her spiritual self-cultivation, culminating in her ascension to heaven.
2. Biography of the Great Compassionate One of Xiangshan by Jiang Zhiqi (1031 - 1104)
Translated by Chün-fang Yü
The earliest documentary evidence of the legend of Miaoshan, this stone inscription shows how the local story of a Chinese princess became identified with a universal Buddhist deity, the Bodhisattva Guanyin.
3. The Book of Filial Piety for Women Attributed to a Woman Née Zheng (ca. 730)
Translated by Patricia Buckley Ebrey
The excerpt from this classic appears opposite corresponding passages from the original Book of Filial Piety to highlight the differences gender makes in the text and its messages.
4. Funerary Writings by Chen Liang (1143-1194)
Translated by Beverly Bossler
These three funerary odes describe how the funeral tablets of Chen Liang’s mother’s family came to be in his care, how his mother and her sister decided to marry their children together, and how his sister sustained her natal household during a period of family calamity. Along with the commemorative biography that follows, they open important windows on domestic life and family values during the period following the fall of the Northern Song.
5. "The Customs of Various Barbarians" by Li Jing (1251 - ?)
Translated by Jacqueline M. Armijo-Hussein
This description of minority peoples from a Yuan dynasty official’s record of his experiences in Yunnan province illustrates how views of gender relations and especially sexual practices served as a measure of the level of civilization among non-Han populations.
6. Selected Writings by Luo Rufang (1515 - 1588)
Translated by Yu-Yin Cheng
In these writings scholar and philosopher Luo Rufang celebrates women who pursue intellectual and philosophical interests. He also champions the virtue of motherly nurturance and love, which he considered as important as the central Confucian virtues of filial piety and brotherly respect.
7. Final Instructions by Yang Jisheng (1516 - 1555)
Translated by Beverly Bossler
Composed in prison, these notes instruct Yang’s wife and sons how to get along without him. His foremost concerns are three: that his family not become the subject of ridicule, that his sons get along with one another, and that his wife—who had already proven herself the moral conscience of the family—not commit suicide.
8. "Record of Past Karma" by Ji Xian (1614 - 1683)
Translated by Grace S. Fong
This autobiographical essay by the woman poet Ji Xian , with its powerful descriptions of dreams, visions, and personal illness, is unusually self-revelatory of the tensions between her personal religious desires and her obligations to her family.
9. "Letter to My Sons" by Gu Ruopu (1592 - ca.1681)
Translated by Dorothy Ko
Having seen to it that both sons married capable and learned wives, Hangzhou poet Gu Ruopu, virtuous widow and matriarch of the Huang family, decided to divide the family property and establish separate households for them. In this letter Gu outlines her support for the Confucian ideal of familism, but admonishes her sons to recognize women’s indispensable roles in the male-centered kinship system.
10. Personal Letters in Seventeenth-Century Epistolary Guides
Translated by Kathryn Lowry
The large number of epistolary guides and collected letters published in the late Ming include models for letters to family members as well as a few examples of love letters and provide a unique view of the social universe of that period. The love letters translated here show how this genre can be read as a sort of epistolary fiction and raise questions about how people might have consulted letter-writing manuals for reasons beyond social etiquette.
11. Letters by Women of the Ming-Qing Period
Translated by Yu-Yin Cheng
These short letters, written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, reveal the erudition and wit as well as the spiritual and aesthetic sensibilities of highly educated upper-class women.
12. Selected Short Works by Wang Duanshu (1621 - after 1701)
Translated by Ellen Widmer
These short selections from the works of one of the earliest anthologists of women’s writings display the extraordinary range and breadth of her learning, while revealing her personal, aesthetic, and scholarly sensibilities.
13. Two Ghost Stories from Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange by Pu Songling (1640 - 1715)
Translated by Judith T. Zeitlin
The ghost story, authored by men and narrated from the male point of view, is one of the privileged spaces in Chinese literature for exploring fantasies of gender and sexuality. Such tales often involve a passionate affair between a young scholar and a beautiful female ghost who possesses a surprising degree of corporeality. The two late imperial tales translated here share two related themes: the power of love to triumph over death and the cosmic power of male generativity.
14. Two Biographies by Zhang Xuecheng (1738 - 1801)
Translated by Susan Mann
These biographies by one of the most distinguished scholars of the Qing period breathe life into views of women that are sometimes dismissed as mere conventions or stereotypes. In both texts we see, through men’s eyes, how women took responsibility for setting the standards to measure and criticize men’s behavior.
15. Poems on Tea-Picking
Translated by Weijing Lu
These poems about women at work, written mostly by men and spanning the dynasties from Tang through Qing, display the varied meanings of women’s work in the poetic imagery of elite writers and point to the ways in which women as literary subjects supplied a ceaseless range of possibilities for inventive poets over time. The poems also show the subtle relationship between poetry as social criticism and poetry as aesthetic performance in the culture of the late imperial elite.
16. Drinking Wine and Reading "Encountering Sorrow": A Reflection in Disguise by Wu Zao (1799 - 1862)
Translated by Sophie Volpp
In this dramatic tableau the playwright casts herself as the sole speaker. She poses before a portrait of herself cross-dressed as a male scholar and sings to the portrait a sequence of lyrics describing her frustrations as a woman of talent. The text concludes that none but her cross-dressed self-image is a match for the writer herself. Hangzhou poet and official Chen Wenshu, a noted patron of female writers, wrote a collection of poems celebrating this work.
17. A Brief Record of the Eastern Ocean by Ding Shaoyi (fl. 1847)
Translated by Emma Jinhua Teng
During his eight-month stay in Taiwan in 1847 Ding Shaoyi wrote the Brief Record, which treats sixteen topics, among them: taxes, schools, coastal defense, local products, "savage" villages, "savage" customs, and marvels. When he returned to Taiwan in 1871 he appended new material to each item in his original account. The passage translated here is Ding’s 1871 supplement to his original entry titled "Savage Customs."
18. The "Eating Crabs" Youth Book
Translated by Mark C. Elliott
This anonymous bilingual text, in Manchu and Chinese, reflects the complex ethnic picture in late imperial China, particularly in and around Beijing. Youth books were a form of oral performance very popular in the Qing capital. In this particular one, the story is told of a hapless Manchu bannerman and his shrewish Han Chinese wife who run afoul of a pot of feisty crabs.
Glossaries and References
Contributors
Index
· · · · · · (收起)
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introduction
Guide for Students and Teachers
1. Biography of the Daoist Saint Wang Fengxian by Du Guangting (850 - 933)
Translated by Suzanne Cahill
This biography of an important Daoist female saint of the mid-ninth century chronicles her life from childhood through her spiritual self-cultivation, culminating in her ascension to heaven.
2. Biography of the Great Compassionate One of Xiangshan by Jiang Zhiqi (1031 - 1104)
Translated by Chün-fang Yü
The earliest documentary evidence of the legend of Miaoshan, this stone inscription shows how the local story of a Chinese princess became identified with a universal Buddhist deity, the Bodhisattva Guanyin.
3. The Book of Filial Piety for Women Attributed to a Woman Née Zheng (ca. 730)
Translated by Patricia Buckley Ebrey
The excerpt from this classic appears opposite corresponding passages from the original Book of Filial Piety to highlight the differences gender makes in the text and its messages.
4. Funerary Writings by Chen Liang (1143-1194)
Translated by Beverly Bossler
These three funerary odes describe how the funeral tablets of Chen Liang’s mother’s family came to be in his care, how his mother and her sister decided to marry their children together, and how his sister sustained her natal household during a period of family calamity. Along with the commemorative biography that follows, they open important windows on domestic life and family values during the period following the fall of the Northern Song.
5. "The Customs of Various Barbarians" by Li Jing (1251 - ?)
Translated by Jacqueline M. Armijo-Hussein
This description of minority peoples from a Yuan dynasty official’s record of his experiences in Yunnan province illustrates how views of gender relations and especially sexual practices served as a measure of the level of civilization among non-Han populations.
6. Selected Writings by Luo Rufang (1515 - 1588)
Translated by Yu-Yin Cheng
In these writings scholar and philosopher Luo Rufang celebrates women who pursue intellectual and philosophical interests. He also champions the virtue of motherly nurturance and love, which he considered as important as the central Confucian virtues of filial piety and brotherly respect.
7. Final Instructions by Yang Jisheng (1516 - 1555)
Translated by Beverly Bossler
Composed in prison, these notes instruct Yang’s wife and sons how to get along without him. His foremost concerns are three: that his family not become the subject of ridicule, that his sons get along with one another, and that his wife—who had already proven herself the moral conscience of the family—not commit suicide.
8. "Record of Past Karma" by Ji Xian (1614 - 1683)
Translated by Grace S. Fong
This autobiographical essay by the woman poet Ji Xian , with its powerful descriptions of dreams, visions, and personal illness, is unusually self-revelatory of the tensions between her personal religious desires and her obligations to her family.
9. "Letter to My Sons" by Gu Ruopu (1592 - ca.1681)
Translated by Dorothy Ko
Having seen to it that both sons married capable and learned wives, Hangzhou poet Gu Ruopu, virtuous widow and matriarch of the Huang family, decided to divide the family property and establish separate households for them. In this letter Gu outlines her support for the Confucian ideal of familism, but admonishes her sons to recognize women’s indispensable roles in the male-centered kinship system.
10. Personal Letters in Seventeenth-Century Epistolary Guides
Translated by Kathryn Lowry
The large number of epistolary guides and collected letters published in the late Ming include models for letters to family members as well as a few examples of love letters and provide a unique view of the social universe of that period. The love letters translated here show how this genre can be read as a sort of epistolary fiction and raise questions about how people might have consulted letter-writing manuals for reasons beyond social etiquette.
11. Letters by Women of the Ming-Qing Period
Translated by Yu-Yin Cheng
These short letters, written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, reveal the erudition and wit as well as the spiritual and aesthetic sensibilities of highly educated upper-class women.
12. Selected Short Works by Wang Duanshu (1621 - after 1701)
Translated by Ellen Widmer
These short selections from the works of one of the earliest anthologists of women’s writings display the extraordinary range and breadth of her learning, while revealing her personal, aesthetic, and scholarly sensibilities.
13. Two Ghost Stories from Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange by Pu Songling (1640 - 1715)
Translated by Judith T. Zeitlin
The ghost story, authored by men and narrated from the male point of view, is one of the privileged spaces in Chinese literature for exploring fantasies of gender and sexuality. Such tales often involve a passionate affair between a young scholar and a beautiful female ghost who possesses a surprising degree of corporeality. The two late imperial tales translated here share two related themes: the power of love to triumph over death and the cosmic power of male generativity.
14. Two Biographies by Zhang Xuecheng (1738 - 1801)
Translated by Susan Mann
These biographies by one of the most distinguished scholars of the Qing period breathe life into views of women that are sometimes dismissed as mere conventions or stereotypes. In both texts we see, through men’s eyes, how women took responsibility for setting the standards to measure and criticize men’s behavior.
15. Poems on Tea-Picking
Translated by Weijing Lu
These poems about women at work, written mostly by men and spanning the dynasties from Tang through Qing, display the varied meanings of women’s work in the poetic imagery of elite writers and point to the ways in which women as literary subjects supplied a ceaseless range of possibilities for inventive poets over time. The poems also show the subtle relationship between poetry as social criticism and poetry as aesthetic performance in the culture of the late imperial elite.
16. Drinking Wine and Reading "Encountering Sorrow": A Reflection in Disguise by Wu Zao (1799 - 1862)
Translated by Sophie Volpp
In this dramatic tableau the playwright casts herself as the sole speaker. She poses before a portrait of herself cross-dressed as a male scholar and sings to the portrait a sequence of lyrics describing her frustrations as a woman of talent. The text concludes that none but her cross-dressed self-image is a match for the writer herself. Hangzhou poet and official Chen Wenshu, a noted patron of female writers, wrote a collection of poems celebrating this work.
17. A Brief Record of the Eastern Ocean by Ding Shaoyi (fl. 1847)
Translated by Emma Jinhua Teng
During his eight-month stay in Taiwan in 1847 Ding Shaoyi wrote the Brief Record, which treats sixteen topics, among them: taxes, schools, coastal defense, local products, "savage" villages, "savage" customs, and marvels. When he returned to Taiwan in 1871 he appended new material to each item in his original account. The passage translated here is Ding’s 1871 supplement to his original entry titled "Savage Customs."
18. The "Eating Crabs" Youth Book
Translated by Mark C. Elliott
This anonymous bilingual text, in Manchu and Chinese, reflects the complex ethnic picture in late imperial China, particularly in and around Beijing. Youth books were a form of oral performance very popular in the Qing capital. In this particular one, the story is told of a hapless Manchu bannerman and his shrewish Han Chinese wife who run afoul of a pot of feisty crabs.
Glossaries and References
Contributors
Index
· · · · · · (收起)
读后感
用户评价
我非常欣赏作者在构建世界观时所展现出的那种细致入微的考据精神。这本书里的每一个场景，哪怕是背景中一闪而过的小物件，似乎都有其历史的根基和文化上的注脚，这使得整个故事的基调显得异常坚实可靠。它不是一个悬浮在空中的故事，而是扎根于真实的历史土壤之中的，这种厚重感，是很多当代小说所缺乏的。读完之后，我甚至产生了一种想要去探究书中涉及的那些历史细节的冲动，这无疑是对作者研究深度的一种侧面肯定。它提供给读者的，不仅仅是阅读的愉悦，更是一种知识上的拓展和对过往时代的温和追溯，感觉就像是走过了一段时光隧道，带着一身的尘土与沉思，重新回到了当下。
这本书的语言风格，可以说是雅俗共赏的典范。它没有故作高深的晦涩，也没有流于表面的浅薄，而是找到了一个绝妙的平衡点。作者的文字功底深厚，遣词造句之间透露出一种古典的韵味，但又巧妙地融入了现代的语感和节奏，使得阅读体验极为顺畅。那些描绘景物的段落，简直就像是一幅幅精心绘制的水墨画卷，色彩虽不浓烈，但意境深远，让人心神为之一振。更难得的是，在处理那些涉及复杂伦理困境的情节时，作者的笔触精准而克制，没有过度的煽情，而是让事实和人物的选择本身去说话，这种“不着一字，尽得风流”的表达方式，才是真正考验文学功力的所在，读完之后，脑海中久久回荡的，不是某一句华丽的辞藻，而是那些鲜活的画面和人物的剪影。
这本书的叙事手法真是让人眼前一亮，作者似乎有一种魔力，能将宏大的历史背景与个体细腻的情感纠缠在一起，让人在阅读过程中仿佛身临其境，体验着那个时代错综复杂的社会人情。尤其是在对人物内心世界的刻画上，那种入木三分的洞察力，简直让人拍案叫绝。你能够清晰地感受到每一个角色在命运的洪流中挣扎、选择，他们的喜怒哀乐、他们的挣扎与妥协，都显得如此真实可信，绝非脸谱化的符号。叙事节奏的把控也堪称一流，时而紧凑如鼓点，令人屏息凝神，时而又舒缓悠长，给予读者充分的时间去消化那些沉甸甸的情感重量和哲理思辨。这种张弛有度的叙事节奏，使得整本书读起来酣畅淋漓，既有文学的美感，又不失故事的引人入胜。
从主题探讨的角度来看，这本书的野心是相当宏大的。它似乎在不断追问一些关于“人应该如何存在”的终极命题，但它从不直接给出答案，而是通过铺陈大量矛盾的、两难的境地，将选择的权杖交到了读者手中。书中对于个体自由与集体责任之间的永恒拉扯，描绘得尤其深刻。那种在特定文化规范下，个人意志如何被塑造、如何又试图冲破束缚的挣扎，让作为现代读者的我，也感同身受。这种对人性复杂面的深度挖掘，使得这本书的讨论层次远远超越了一般的叙事作品，它更像是一面镜子，映照出我们自身在面对生活中的重大抉择时，内心的真实反应和潜在的道德天平的倾斜方向。
这本书的结构设计精妙绝伦，如同一个复杂的机械装置，每一个齿轮都咬合得恰到好处。作者似乎对“伏笔”的运用有着近乎偏执的掌控欲，初读时可能只觉平淡无奇的一句话或一个眼神，在故事的后半程，会以一种意想不到却又逻辑严密的方式被激活，带来巨大的情感冲击和对先前情节的重新理解。这种精密的布局，让重读成为一种享受，因为每一次回溯，都能发现先前未曾察觉的巧妙铺垫，这显示了作者在动笔之初，便已将整个故事的骨架搭建得无比稳固。它不仅仅是一个故事的线性展开，更像是一个环形结构，最终导向一个豁然开朗的、却又充满余韵的结局，让人在合上书页时，仍久久不能平复内心的震撼与回味。
MA的時候為了了解季嫻讀過… 考comps通讀一遍
曼素恩主编，既学术又通俗，很精彩。用翻译学的视角看也是很有意义的一本书。但中文原文并不好找。
MA的時候為了了解季嫻讀過… 考comps通讀一遍
曼素恩主编，既学术又通俗，很精彩。用翻译学的视角看也是很有意义的一本书。但中文原文并不好找。
MA的時候為了了解季嫻讀過… 考comps通讀一遍
