EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Cross-sectional 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 234 Sam-Sin Fresco (University of Leiden) For Pay or to Pray? An Interdisciplinary Study of Hong Taiji Sure Han Cash (1627–1636) Key words: Qing history, Manchu civilisation, coins, Hong Taiji, dynastic symbolism This paper follows an interdisciplinary, Manchu-centred approach in understanding the casting of Hong Taiji Sure Han/Tiāncōng cash. Just as his father Nurhaci (r.1593–1626) Hong Taiji (r.1627–1643) did not abandon his Inner Asian roots, but understood coinage as part of such a discourse. While Nurhaci coinage has received some historiographical attention beyond numismatics, Hong Taiji coins are not acknowledged. The Old Chronicles are silent about Sure Han cash. Instead, they provide us with a detailed description of the ritual of lakiyambi ‘hanging up’ coins in the Tangse. Random coins, or the Sure Han coins? By integrating diverse disciplines (including archeology, literary studies, epigraphy), the relative place of Manchu coinage during the Hong Taiji period will be established. Schweiger Irmy (Stockholm University) Creating an Ethical Agenda: Local Experiences and Cosmopolitan Memory in Long Yingtai’s Meta-Fiction Key words: Long Yingtai; cosmopolitan memory; Holocaust; Cultural Revolution; waishengren identity Much alike the study of literature, memory studies was characterized by its “methodological nation- alism”. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2002), among others, have argued that the global spread of Holocaust discourse has generated a “cosmopolitan memory” that has a vivid effect on collective memory and moral debates on a global scale. The Holocaust they argue is no longer tight to its spatial and temporal particularism, its memory “travels” and thereby becomes “cosmopolitan” or “multidirectional” (Rothberg, 2012) transcending its directly affected community and being taken up by others. The presumption that the Holocaust provides the central paradigm of a cosmopolitan memory is of course highly questionable in a Chinese context. Starting in the 1990s the Cultural Revolution has turned into an icon, transgressing its national, regional or linguistic ambit. If we conceive of vernacular as directionality we can assume that different vernacular and cosmopolitan memories are contesting, intermingling and complementing each other. When reading cultural celebrity Long Yingtai’s 龍應台 (b. 1952) “Big River Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949” (2009), we encounter a carefully constructed polyphonic counter-discourse of national history that subverts state-engineered nationalism in the PRC as well as in the ROC and that at the same time echos the German “Erinnerungsdiskurs”. Blending individual voices of survivors’ traumatic experi- ences with her own ethical beliefs, Long Yingtai explicitly points to elements of the past that traditionally counteract the self-sufficient narrative of the nation while at the same time positioning “Chinese war and exile” into a global context. In my paper I will explore whether Long Yingtai’s meta-history enables Chinese imagination to reflexively rework the boundaries between Self and Other or in how far the author makes use of cosmopolitan models to advance her own ethical agenda and to build waishengren 外省 人 (mainlander) identity? Uchida Keiichi (Kansai University) Louis Poirot’s Manchu-Chinese Translated Bible Key words: Manchu-Chinese translated Bible, missionaries, Jean Basset, Robert Morrison, Louis Poirot There have been many historical breakthroughs in the fields of Chinese translated Bibles recently. The long disappeared Jean Basset’s Chinese translation version was discovered. It was the version on which the reputable Robert Morrison’ translation Shentian shengshu ( 神天聖書 ; The Holy Bible) was based. Another one is the re-surface of Louis Poirot’s Chinese translation of the bible guxin shengjing 古新聖經 which was the earliest Chinese bible that was translated in Mandarin/ Pekingese. For sure,