CHINESE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY NEWSLETTER
Issue 3:2, December 1996
This newsletter may be freely photocopied; however, authors’ rights must be respected.

Changes to the Newsletter
1. Introduction of Refereeing
A decision has been made to change the newsletter
into a refereed periodical. While CEHN and its
readers have hitherto been fortunate indeed in thequality of the submissions nobly made to thenewsletter in its unrefereed form, there are grounds
for believing that the flow of excellent submissions islikely to increase once CEHN provides contributors
with the benefit of refereeing. As many readers haveexpressed appreciation for the “noticeboard” featuresof the newsletter, these will not be abandoned. The
publication will retain its dual character as newsletterand journal.
Beginning with the first 1997 issue, alloriginal articles exceeding 3,000 words will be sent to
two readers. Other submissions may be sent out forrefereeing at the editor’s discretion. The newsletter
will continue to welcome submissions of material
other than articles (e.g. research and conference
reports); these will be refereed or not as seems
appropriate. In short, editorial policy will retain theflexibility needed for a dual-function publication, but
contributors of substantial articles published in
CEHN from issue 4:1 on will be able cite thenewsletter as a refereed periodical for C.V. purposes.
An editorial board has been created to assist
with refereeing and contribute more generally to thenewsletter’s future development. As the membershipof the board has not been finalized, it will beannounced in the next issue. Subscribers may be
confident, however, that the list of those who have so
far agreed to serve represents a rich reserve ofexpertise, and includes both internationally respectedsenior scholars and — no less important —representatives of the newest generation ofresearchers. Scholars who are not board members
may be asked to referee submissions as appropriate,and suggestions and initiatives from all subscribers,
board members or not, will always be warmly
appreciated.
2. Internet and Hard-Copy Publication
There are plans to post the newsletter on theWorld Wide Web in the near future. Further
information will be distributed to e-mail subscribers
as soon as it becomes available.
The editor will investigate possibilities forenhancing the appearance of the hard-copy version.

Cost constraints are real, but could be somewhat
alleviated by the prompt payment of subscriptions.
1997 subscriptions (for hard-copy subscribers outside
the PRC) fall due on January 1st. Full details will befound at the end of the newsletter.
3. Relaxation of Word-Limit
Internet publication does make possible
some relaxation of constraints on the length ofarticles; however, even the Internet has limitations.
The newsletter’s previous policy of setting a wordlimit in the low thousands is herewith abandoned, but
contributors are asked to confine their submissions toa reasonable length. The editor reserves the right to
ask authors to condense long articles if necessary or
consider serial publication. Short articles of thelength that has been usual in the newsletter so far(1,500 to 3,500 words) will still be welcome.
4. Change of Editorial Address
The editorial headquarters of the newsletterare moving (with the editor) to the University ofSydney.
From December 10th, all paper
correspondence should be addressed to her at:
Dept. of Chinese Studies
School of Asian Studies
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006
Australia
The e-mail address at Indiana State
University should not be used after that date. The
future e-mail address (effective from about Dec. 17th)
will be: <helen.dunstan@asia.usyd.edu.au>.
It is anticipated that implementation of theabove changes may impose delay in the publicationof the first 1997 issue. The understanding ofsubscribers is requested.
Contents of This Issue
An article by Christian Daniels serialized inearlier issues of CEHN introduced the importantethnographic work of Yin Shaoting, of the Yunnan
Provincial Museum of Ethnology. Readers willremember that Yin is the author of two books on thepractice of swidden cultivation by non-Han peoples in
Yunnan, and that his account vindicates theirtechniques from an environmentalist perspective. In
this issue, we have the honour of presenting an article
by Yin himself, a case-study of the recent impact ofpopulation pressure on one Han Chinese Yunnancommunity and its immediate environment. The
overall story of deforestation and erosion may soundfamiliar, but the experience discussed by Yin has adistinctive feature: this whole community lives in akarst cave.
The second instalment of Elisabeth
Grinspoon’s two-part article on the realities of forest
conservation in the Xishuangbanna nature reserve
introduces a second case-study, that of an upland Dai
community. The villagers of lowland “Mengguo”,
described in Grinspoon’s first instalment, were shown
growing rice, maize, and Amomum villosum inside
the reserve, enjoying access to a variety of reserve
forest resources (including timber), and destroying
their own collective forest in the name ofmodernization and prosperity. In the case of upland“Mannan”, some of the issues (use of reserve land for
growing rubber trees, the construction of an irrigation
reservoir inside the reserve) are different, but theunderlying problems are the same. In her conclusion,
Grinspoon explores the combination of fiscalpressures, reserve-management policy considerations,and institutional interests which has created thepresent compromise: villagers are allowed to pursue“economic development” at the expense of
biodiversity on the understanding that limited
concessions will gain local cooperation forconservationist goals. The concessions made so far
appear to go beyond those advocated in the last
instalment of Daniels’s article (CEHN 2, no. 2). Only
time will tell whether the policy can hold.
Also in this issue are, from Lawrence
Crissman, an update on the China Geographical
Information System Project, and, from Hugh Shapiro,a first contribution to the new “Teaching Ideas andExperience Section.” Shapiro shares with the CEHN
readership an innovative syllabus-cum-bibliographyon the history of Chinese science and technology.
His comparative approach is informed by recent
trends of thought in a scholarly community broader
than that of sinologists alone. It is hoped that his
initiative will encourage others to share theirsyallabuses (which may be quite different in terms ofcontent and/or pedagogy) on pre-modern Chinese
understandings of the natural world and on Chinese(or indeed East Asian) environmental history.

Chinese Environmental History Newsletter 3:2,
December 1996
Contents
Page
Noticeboard(publications; Internet — WWW anddiscussion group — addresses)

2

A Contemporary Village in a Karst Cave:
The Case of Feng’ai Dong by Yin Shaoting

4

The Political Ecology of Forest
Conservation in Xishuangbanna (II) The
View from an Upland Dai Village by
Elisabeth Grinspoon

7

The China Geographical Information System
Project: An Update by Lawrence W. Crissman

9

Teaching Ideas and Experience Section
Course Syllabus: Science, Technology,
and Medicine in China by Hugh L. Shapiro

11

Update to Directory of Subscribers

18

Submission and Subscription
Information

20

Noticeboard
Publications
Han Guanghui, Beijing lishi renkou dili [TheHistorical Population Geography of Beijing].
Beijing: Beijing Daxue chubanshe, 1996. 365 pp. 50
tables, 18 maps. A comprehensive survey of thedemographic history of Beijing and the surrounding
region, covering the period from the Khitan Liaodynasty (916-1125) to the Republic (1911-1949).
The material is arranged by topics, andchronologically within topics.
Topics include
adminstrative geography; historical population
statistics for both Beijing and its region; population
growth and its determinants; migration; government
measures to prevent excessive concentration of
population in Beijing; and the geographicaldistribution of population.
Ni Genjin, “Qin Han huanjing baohu chutan” [APreliminary
InvestigationofEnvironmental
Protection in the Qin and Han]. Zhongguo shi yanjiu
70 (1996, no. 2): 3–13.
An investigation of2

environmental protection in early imperial China,
covering both measures deliberately taken to protect
the environment, and measures taken for otherreasons
whose
effect
would
have
been
conservationist.
The subject of environmental
protection is divided into two broad topics: protectionof nature and natural resources, and prevention andcontrol of pollution. The environmental problems
faced by society in the period in question are
identified as: (1) severe deforestation; (2) the
frequency and severity of natural disasters, especiallyflooding of the Yellow River; and (3) pollution bothin cities (in the form of noise, dust, smoke, and waste)
and in association with the mining industry.
Evidence is presented that contemporaries were
aware of at least some aspects of the environmental
challenge that they faced.

Other Items of Interest
Soma Hewa, Colonialism, Tropical Disease andImperial Medicine: Rockefeller Philanthropy in Sri
Lanka. Lanham, Maryland: University Press ofAmerica, 1995.
Richard C. Hoffmann, “Economic Development andAquatic Ecosystems in Medieval Europe.” The
American Historical Review 101, no. 3 (1996): 631–
69.
Hua Linfu, “Lun liang Han shiqi Zhongguo diming
xue de dianji” [On the Foundation of Chinese
Toponomy during the Han Period]. Zhongguo shi
yanjiu 70 (1996, no. 2): 14–25.
Jinnai Hidenobu, Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology.
Trans. Nishimura Kimiko. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1995.

Journals and Newsletters
Environment and Development Economics. A newquarterly journal, edited by Charles Perrings(University of York), and published by Cambridge
University Press in association with the Beijer
Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences. Besides book reviews andreview essays, the journal will publish articles in two
main categories: “Theory and Applications” and“Policy Options.” The intended readership includes
those concerned with policy development as well as
academic researchers.
Submissions of work
conducted in low-income countries and/or by younger
scholars will be encouraged. The subscription rate
for individuals is US$62.00 p.a.

Li Bozhong, “‘Zui di shengcun shuizhun’ yu ‘renkou
yali’ zhiyi: dui Ming Qing shehui jingji shi yanjiu
zhong liangge jiben gainian de zai sikao” [Querying“Minimum Subsistence Level” and “Population
Pressure”: A Reconsideration of Two Basic Concepts
in the Study of Ming and Qing Social and Economic
History]. Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu 56 (1996,
no. 1): 31–37.
Adam Markham, A Brief History of Pollution. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. US$15.95.
Ian H. Rowlands, The Politics of Global Atmospheric
Change. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1995. Distributed in the United States by St. Martin’s
Press, price US$24.95 (paperback).

Pacific Circle Newsletter.
This newsletter ispublished by Pacific Circle, a commission of theInternational Union of the History and Philosophy of
Science. Pacific Circle was set up in 1985 to promotescholarship in historical and social studies relating toPacific science. Membership in the Circle (which
includes a subscription to the newsletter) costs
US$10.00 p.a. ($25.00 for three years). Cheques ormoney orders, payable to “Pacific Circle Newsletter”,
should be sent to the editor:
P.F. Rehbock
Pacific Circle Newsletter
History Department
University of Hawaii
2530 Dole Street
Honolulu HI 96822
U.S.A.
Tel: 808-956-7675 or 8358
Fax: 808-956-9600
E-mail: frehbock@hawaii.edu

H. Sidky, Irrigation and State Formation in Hunza:
The Anthropology of a Hydraulic Kingdom. Lanham,
Maryland: University Press of America, 1995.
Timothy M. Swanson, ed., The Economics andEcology of Biodiversity Decline: The Forces Driving
Global Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.

Internet Addresses
New List on Chinese Medicine
This list is intended to foster discussion among
academics, especially graduate students, doing
research on the history and anthropology of Chinese
medicine. The list was originally conceived as aforum for graduate students scattered around theworld; in order to make it a more comfortable “place”
3for students and encourage student participation,
tenured academics are excluded.
To subscribe, send the message “subscribe
chimed” (without the quotation marks) and no othertext to the following address:
Majordomo@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Questions may be sent to T. J. Hinrichs at:tjhinric@fas harvard.edu

world of stone subsist? The following account of atypical village will provide some insight into the great
extent to which the environment influences andconditions human life and development.
The village in question is called Feng’ai
Dong (Peak-rock Cave), and is indeed a village in acave. It lies in Guangnan County, and is under thejurisdiction of the Anwang District Office of Nanping
Township. Anwang is nine kilometres from Nanping,
and the journey can be made by jeep or tractor ingood weather. It is about another ten kilometres from
Anwang to Feng’ai Dong by a narrow, winding pathover uneven, boulder-strewn terrain. This means awalk of three hours or so. Rocky hills stretch out
along the route, with valleys in between. Feng’ai
Dong is situated half-way up the hillside in one ofthese valleys.
Viewed from afar, the entrance to the cave
looks like the open mouth of a huge fish. The valley
is completely silent, and the cave-entrance seems
deserted, betraying not a sign of human presence.
Only after going some tens of metres deep into thecave does one suddenly hear the mixed sounds ofhuman beings, horses, hens, and pigs. At the sametime, one’s gaze is met by a unique phenomenon. In
the depression made by the cave floor stand houses,
closely packed together and arranged in higgledypiggledy order. On the roofs, besides the heaped-up
golden, russet, and pearl-white heads of maize instorage, there are all manner of grain-bins, sieves,baskets, winnowing-trays and such-like implements.
These form a motley picture, strange beyond
compare, beneath the stalactites of all imaginableshapes that hang from the cave’s roof. It is truly
astonishing to come upon a large, Han Chinese
community of 287 individuals in 56 households deep
inside a (by all appearances) entirely deserted cave ina remote and desolate karst mountain area.
Feng’ai Dong’s orientation is roughly eastwest. Its maximum internal width is about 125
metres, while the internal area is about 7,500 square
metres. The cave-entrance and the deepest place
inside the cave are, respectively, 1,250 metres and
1,130 metres above sea-level. The cave has three
sections, upper, middle, and lower. The middle
section directly faces the cave-entrance, and receives
bright sunlight for a short time each day (about one
hour in winter, and at most two hours or so insummer). This, therefore, is the best section, and theone in which most houses have been built. As one
follows the slope downwards, the houses in the mostbuilt-on area form four rows. The upper and lower
sections do not receive direct sunlight, and are
relatively dark; thus fewer houses have been built
there.
How are the people of Feng’ai Dong
affected by living in a cave? They themselves

The “Tokaido Revisited” Web-Site
For information on this web-site on “the multiple
aspects of Japanese modernity and landscape”, thecontact address is:jillyt@grove.ufl.edu

A Contemporary Village in a Karst
Cave: The Case of Feng’ai Dong
Yin Shaoting
The Yunnan
Ethnology

Provincial

Museumof

The Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous
Prefecture of south-east Yunnan is a typical karst
region. In appearance, the landscape is rich andbeautiful, while the natural conditions would not be
considered particularly bad — or so one might
suppose. In fact, however, the land is barren, while
human life is sustained only with great hardship. On
the present economic map of China, this region islabelled as a poverty-stricken zone. The cause of thepoverty lies in the stone. Rocks and stony hills may
be thoroughly valuable resources in more than a few
places, but here the stone is everywhere one looks
and everywhere one puts one’s feet. Stone occupies
by far the greater part of the living space available tohuman beings. It constitutes an obstacle and indeed adisaster, bringing huge difficulties and unending
worry to the local inhabitants.
If such an environment were left free ofhuman tillage, trees could still grow in the space
between the rocks, while it might be possible for thestony hills to grow some forest cover. Were theforest cover thick enough, there would be rare plants
and grasses, as well as birds and animals, clear
springs and running brooks. Unfortunately, theWenshan region offers no exception to the extreme
overcrowding that plagues the whole of China.
Zhuang, Yi, Miao, Yao, Han Chinese, and Hui(Moslem) communities live intermingled in thisregion; there are signs of human habitation
everywhere, and the villages closely dot thecountryside. How, then, do people who dwell in a4

recognize both advantages and disadvantages. A firstadvantage is that house-building is cheaper andrequires less work. To build a house outside the cavecosts at least ¥6,000 to ¥7,000, while the expense cango as high as ¥10,000 to ¥20,000. Building a houseinside the cave costs only ¥2,000 to ¥3,000, which isa considerable saving. Second, the cave is at least
relatively warm in winter as well as cool in summer.
Third, there is no need to fear storms, while stores offirewood can be kept dry over the rainy season.
Inside the cave one travels on dry ground, so thatgoing out of doors presents no problems. Fourth,building homes inside the cave saves land on theoutside. Fifth, the concentration of the houses into asmall area is convenient from the point of view ofresidents’ everyday comings and goings in theneighbourhood. When the door is open, one is inside
an enclosed village; when it is closed, one is simply athome.
Of course, the disadvantages are evident as
well. For example, not only is there little daylight inthe cave, but ventilation is inadequate, the cave isdark and chill, and the air is rather foul, which makes
it unhealthy for both human beings and domestic
animals. According to an elderly resident, in the
1950s there were only thirteen households in the
cave, there was plenty of living space, and hygiene
was good. Now, however, with fifty- six households
crowded together, housing conditions have naturally
deteriorated greatly.
Excessive population growth has also led tosevere water shortage. Feng’ai Dong’s water supply
comes from two sources. One is the surface waterthat percolates into the cave; the other is rainwater
accumulated in man-made wells and reservoirs
outside the cave. The first kind of water is collected
in a most unusual way. A great many of the families
have set up bamboo pipes, some tens of metres long,leading upwards from their houses; at the top end of
the pipes are funnels made of bamboo splints andbark. The funnels are placed underneath the dripping
stalactites hanging from the cave roof. The drops ofwater are collected in the funnels and then passthrough the bamboo pipes (whose septa have been cut
through) straight into the water-storage vats of thehouses below. This thoroughly ingenious method ofcollecting water has the additional function of
preventing the drips from soaking into the houses’
roofs. A similar technique is involved where wells
are dug in parts of the cave in which percolated
surface water is relatively abundant. In the northeastern corner of the cave are distributed some tens ofwells of various sizes, shapes, and depths. The sidesof the wells are made of pounded clay. Again,
funnels and bamboo aqueducts are used to lead thewater into the wells. The aqueducts in the well area

run criss-crossed, some being as much as forty or
fifty metres long.
The water which has percolated through therock of the cave-roof is drinking water of the highest
quality, for it is cool, clear, and palatable. However,
because the flow is limited, it cannot meet all theneeds of the people and animals living in the cave.
This being the case, wells have been built outside thecave, in two places some distance away where thereis clay. The rainwater accumulated in these wells isused to supplement the percolated water. In addition,in the late 1950s, embankments were raised and afairly large reservoir built at a place called Shuijing
Wan (Well River-bend).
Even so, with the
population growing and the forest cover rate
declining sharply, the problem of inadequate watersupply has worsened daily. By the 1970s and 1980s,
all the water stored both inside and outside the cave
sufficed for only seven or eight months of the year.
From February until May, with the outside wells dry
and the inside stores of percolated water exhausted,
the people of Feng’ai Dong had no choice but to getup each morning hours before dawn to go to Dongbao
Xiang, more than fifteen kilometres away across themountains, in order to fetch water. They brought thewater on their backs or using shoulder carrying-poles.
The bitter hardship of their lives at that time would be
hard for most people to imagine.
In 1990–91, in order to alleviate the burdenof acquiring water, the government assisted thevillagers of Feng’ai Dong in building a large
reservoir, capable of holding more than 1,000 cubic
metres of rainwater, by the mouth of the cave. This
basically solved the water supply problem of the
cave’s human and animal residents, allowing thehuman residents to sleep more soundly. However,
the reservoir water, being rainwater washed downfrom the surrounding hillside, contains a substantial
admixture of mud and sand, and is thus anything but
pure. Drinking such water is evidently bad for humanhealth.
Excessive population growth has not only
led to difficulties over drinking water, but has also
created a severe land shortage.
The naturalenvironment has also undergone extreme degradation.
Feng’ai Dong’s agricultural land is for the most part
distributed over the valley in front of the cave. The
valley is basically oval, and the floor of the basin,
1,109 metres above sea-level, is the only piece oflevel ground belonging to the village. Irregularly
distributed over the area surrounding the basin floor,
up to a height of 1,150 metres above sea-level, there
are some discontinuous tablelands.
Above thetablelands is the domain of stone. Rocks are strewn
wildly all over the land, and soil exists only in thecrevices between the rocks and in depressions in therocks themselves. Yet even such inferior land is5

greatly prized by the local inhabitants. Wherever
there is a patch of soil the size of a hand, it will be
used for growing maize, sweet potatoes, or pumpkins.
Statistics show that in 1962 Feng’ai Dong
had a population of 134, which had increased to 287
by 1992 — more than double. The relationshipbetween population growth, agricultural land, andenvironment is clearly manifested in the changes in
the landscape of this valley. According to thevillagers, in the late 1950s land used for agriculture
was confined within the belt below about 1,150
metres above sea-level, and the hillsides higher up
were forested. The 1960s saw reclamation carried out
at higher altitudes, with forests being cut down tomake room for cropland as far as 1,200 metres above
sea-level. In the 1970s, this process continued further
up the hillsides, and the agricultural land expanded toan altitude exceeding 1,300 metres. In 1992, at thetime of my investigation, only some of the hill-tops
still retained a few trees, and the hills themselves
were for the most part naked rock, completely
desolate.
However, although the deforestation andland-clearing have crept ever higher, theoverabundance of stone and the shortage of soil havemade it impossible to solve the problem in this way.
As of 1992, about half the villagers still did not haveenough to eat, and, on average, about ten of the fiftysix households had to buy supplementary grain fromthe government each year. The problem of land
shortage was now fully conspicuous.
Although the villagers of Feng’ai Dong havefailed to solve their food problem throughreclamation, the natural environment has nonethelesssuffered great damage. According to elderly people
who know the village history, the whole valley was
thickly forested when their ancestors arrived over ahundred years ago. In front of the cave there weregreat trees and creepers as thick as the diameter ofChinese tea-cups. One could not see the caveentrance at all. During almost the first hundred years
after the ancestors made their homes inside the cave,the surrounding environment changed little. Except
for the valley floor and the area adjacent to it, thickforests and green hills continued to dominate thelandscape right down till the early 1950s. As there
were forests, there were wild animals: cases ofwolves bursting into the cave and harming thedomestic animals were by no means infrequent.
However, in the mere forty or so years from the
1950s till the present day, the environment has beentransformed completely, and the forests have all but
disappeared.
The loss of forests is liable to accelerate
erosion, a problem which is especially serious in akarst region. As explained above, the people ofFeng’ai Dong are already undergoing major hardshipbecause of the severe shortage of soil and water.
However, given that the villagers burn firewood, thedestruction of the forests also threatens them with thedisaster of literally “cooking without fuel” (to borrow
a common saying). At present, they feel thatobtaining firewood presents even worse problems
than obtaining drinking water. Every year, after thelast of the maize stalks have been burned, they haveto go looking for firewood a very long way off. If
their search is unsuccessful, they have no option but
to beg for firewood from friends and affinal relatives
in other villages. Because it would not do to beg too
much, they have thought up the method of having
their children form ties with “dry [nominal] fathers.”1
This means having a child find a “dry father” in avillage with plenty of trees. If one “dry father” is notenough, the child may strike up the relationship with
two, three, or four. The child then takes advantage ofthe connection to ask the “dry fathers” for firewood.
Obviously, using the traditional custom of “dryfathers” to forge connections through which to beg
for firewood is only an expedient to which thevillagers are driven. What will they do in future?
This is their constant worry.
The above should have sufficed to give thereader some insight into peasant life in a karst
mountain region of south-east Yunnan.
Incontemporary China, and indeed the contemporary
world, there are very few people still living in caves;from this point of view, the case of Feng’ai Dong
would seem to be devoid of representative
significance. However, the case of Feng’ai Dong isfully typical in that it provides a conspicuous exampleof the sorry plight into which human beings can be
led by the blind development of population, carriedout without regard for the necessary harmonious coexistence between man and environment, andresulting in severe damage both to the environment
and to natural resources. In any case, the very factthat in this, the closing decade of the twentiethcentury, there is a village living a hard life in a cavefor environmental reasons deserves deep reflection on
our part.
[Translated by Helen Dunstan]NOTE
1. The nearest Western equivalent to a Chinese “dry”
parent would be a purely secular godparent. Trans.

6the villagers’ private plots, and its uniformly-spaced
rows of more mature rubber trees stretch as far as theeye can see. State forestry-farm workers beganplanting these trees in 1969. The farm covers tens of
thousands of hectares in the county and employs over
2,000 long-term Han Chinese workers from thecountry’s inland provinces. Although Mannan’svillagers credit the farm with bringing them
improvements in the local infrastructure — a dirtroad, a hospital, a middle school, and electricity —their sentiments toward it are generally negative. The
villagers complain that the state took two-thirds oftheir village land when it established the farm, andthat new conflicts with the farm continue to arise.
Villagers say that the farm’s workers plant rubber
trees so close to their paddy land that the trees shade
the paddies, decreasing rice yields. They also pointout that forestry-farm workers let their chickens into
the village paddies to feed on the growing rice.
Why do Mannan’s villagers have more
conflicts with the forestry farm than with the nature
reserve? On the one hand, Beijing manages theforestry farm from the top down. Distant state-levelbureaucrats are responsible for the forestry farm, andthe farm managers, whose hometowns are far awayfrom Xishuangbanna, lack the incentives andmechanisms to address the villagers’ complaints. On
the other hand, the local-level officials of the reserve
management system have both the power and the
incentive to negotiate with village leaders. Village
leaders and reserve managers are part of the same
scheme of social and economic relations and have acommon interest in solving problems. The villagers
do not fear local officials when going into the nature
reserve, despite clauses in the national regulations
banning such activities. According to the regulations,“it is prohibited to carry out such activities as cutting,grazing, hunting, fishing, and gathering medicinal
herbs. . .” in nature reserves. The township reserve
management officials, like the villagers, seem to pay
little attention to the regulations. Local officials evencomplain that the regulations are too impracticable toimplement.
Mannan’s villagers go into the nature reserve
on a daily basis, crossing the river in long dugout
canoes made from tropical hardwood trees that may
have been harvested before the reserve wasestablished. Villagers also lead their water buffalo
across the river to a large plot of reserve land thatthey burn annually to promote the growth of grass for
grazing. They were burning this land annually long
before the reserve was created. They are also
undeterred by the natural walls surrounding thereserve’s forests. These thick, green walls form as aresult of the abundance of light in the disturbed edge
areas of the forest. The light allows lianes, epiphytes,
and climbing palms to grow everywhere, from the

The Political Ecology of Forest
Conservation in
Xishuangbanna(II) The View from an Upland Dai
VillageElisabeth Grinspoon
Department of Environmental Science,
Policy, and Management
University of California at Berkeley
The first part of this article (see CEHN 3, no. 1)
presented the case of “Mengguo,” a lowland Dai
village, and addressed the management of the
Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve, established by thestate to protect Yunnan’s declining rain forests. The
second part of the article examines the reserve’s
effects on the lives of the local Dai minority people
and natural ecosystem in “Mannan,” an upland Dai
village sharing boundaries with a nature reserve and astate-run forestry farm. Comparing these two Dai
villages uncovers a process of negotiation between
reserve managers and village leaders that enables
local farmers to use the reserve land for theireconomic benefit in both traditional and nontraditional ways.
Mannan Village“Mannan” (a pseudonym) is a riverine
village with a population of nearly 300 people inabout 60 households; it has nearly 10,000 mu of
mountain land. From a high peak near the outskirtsof the village, one can see the muddy waters of the
Lancang River, a tributary of the Mekong,meandering across the landscape. The river separates
the village land from the Xishuangbanna Nature
Reserve. On the western bank, fuel wood forests andfruit orchards cover the village land. Wooden houses
on stilts, characteristic of Dai settlements, stand in acluster not far from the river’s edge. Covering thehill beyond the houses are the villagers’ private plotsof rubber trees and shifting-cultivation land that has
been allocated as private plots. For decades, thevillagers have been using different portions of theircultivated land in rotation, so that each parcel of land
periodically lay fallow.1 Since the early 1980s,
however, the villagers have been transforming moreof the shifting-cultivation land into rubber tree
plantations, putting more pressure on the remaining
shifting-cultivation land.
Villagers say that they learned aboutplanting rubber trees by observing the workers at theneighboring state forestry farm. The farm is behind7

ground to the branches of the canopy trees, making
entry into the forest difficult. In spite of the natural
walls, villagers regularly venture deep into the forest
to hunt, fish, gather wild vegetables, and growmedicinal herbs such as Amomum villosum.
During 1995, village cadres were planting
rubber trees on the reserve land near the bank of theriver. Village cadres gained use of these plots while
representing their village in negotiations with reserve
managers. The cadres conduct these negotiations in
the name of the village’s economic development.
Because reserve management officials have an
economic stake in the prosperity of the township, theyusually permit villagers to use the land. The userights, however, officially remain those of the reserve
management. The village cadres are responsible fordividing the land among the villagers. Cadres may
take the biggest plots or even the whole tract of landin question for themselves and their relations.
Village leaders also recently negotiatedsuccessfully for permission to build a reservoir in thereserve. The national regulations governing nature
reserves are filled with loopholes. For example, thenational regulations contain strongly worded
statements prohibiting construction projects inside thereserves. At the same time, the regulations permit
construction projects “under special circumstances.”
The reservoir will irrigate paddy land that lies inside
the reserve; this land was opened by the villagers’
ancestors when the village was located on the westernside of the Lancang River. Although the village
moved to its present site over seventy years ago, thevillagers have continued to use that paddy land overthe decades. Building the reservoir will supply thewater needed for higher yields on it. With higher
yields, Mannan’s village leader explains, farmers will
no longer need to plant upland rice, a highly laborintensive activity. The shifting-cultivation land thatis now used for upland rice could then be used forrubber tree plantations to develop the cash economy.
The county and provincial governments decided toapprove this plan on the grounds that it would aid thevillage’s economic development; their decision had
little connection with the villagers’ historic claim to
the land and more to do with their aim to promotelocal economic development.

determining the range and boundaries of a nature
reserve, the relevant department should giveconsideration to the integrity of the protected
landscape, as well as the needs of local economic
construction, the production activities, and theeveryday lives of the local residents.”2 Thus, thelocal government has discretionary powers to alter theboundaries of the nature reserve according to the
local situation.
In Xishuangbanna, prefectural nature reserve
management officials see short-term economic
development as a necessary goal. “The villages must
develop, and we need to support their efforts because
we rely on the villagers,” explains Cao Mengliang,
the Director of the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve.
“In China, the right to produce is the most important
human right; if we do not support the productive
efforts of the villagers, then they will become poorer
and more destructive to the reserve’s forests. As aprerequisite for conservation we must develop
economically. If this area does not develop, wecannot protect the forests.” He reasons that thereserve management must promote good relations
with the villagers, or else they will not prevent
outsiders from doing damage to the forests. “Wemust first make sure that the villagers’ economic
needs are satisfied because we cannot build aprotective wall around the reserve,” he says.
According to Cao, some of the farmers’ activities in
the reserve aid long-term economic development. He
says that the villagers use the money from the sale ofmedicinal herbs to buy rubber tree saplings. Thesesaplings represent a long-term investment that willproduce more income for the villagers. This processof development, however, also leads to long-term
ecological destruction as large-scale rubber
plantations further exacerbate the loss of biodiversity
and problems of soil erosion.
Cao Mengliang emphasizes the importanceof developing local economies primarily because it is
crucial for the survival of the reserve management
bureau itself. According to the national regulations
on nature reserves: “The funds necessary for the
management of nature reserves shall be arranged by
the people’s government above the county level ofthe region where the nature reserve is located.”3 In
the case of Xishuangbanna, the people’s government
above the county level is the prefectural government
in Jinghong. The prefectural government is underincreasing pressure to become self-sufficient and to
pay off debts as a result of the fiscal decentralization.
Because of the devolution of fiscal
responsibility to local-level governments, theprefectural government has asked nature reserve
management units to produce at least enough revenue
to support themselves. This has led the reserve
management units to encourage workers to pursue

The Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve Management
BureauBecause economic development is given thehighest priority in post-Mao China, regulations are
structured to allow government agencies at all levels
to promote it. Most of the regulations regarding themanagement of reserves have been written during theDeng era of market reforms and government
decentralization. The 1994 regulations highlight theimportance of regional economic development. “In
8entrepreneurial activities that have little to do with the
public mission of the unit and may even run counterto it.
The Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve
Management Bureau, for example, has plans to open
restaurants and promote tourism in order to help
support four reserve management offices that operate
at the county level, six management stations at thetownship level, and eighty foresters at theadministrative village level.

problem in the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve isrooted in government mandates requiring the
Ministry of Forestry, which administers reserves atthe provincial level, to maximize profits.4
The conservation policies implemented
within the context of economic reform have both
positive and negative effects on the local Dai people
and on the natural resources in the reserve. On thepositive side, these policies allow for negotiations andcompromises that give the village leaders a vested
interest in protecting the reserve’s resources. On thenegative side, these policies increase human impact
on the forest. The result is a nature reserve that may
not be as biologically sustainable as the international
community might like, but may be more culturally
and economically sustainable than reserves in someSoutheast Asian nations.

Conclusion
China established and designed its reserve
system to address the dual goals of nature
conservation and economic development. The central
government deliberately designed the nature reserve
management system to preserve the natural resources
within the reserves on one hand, and, on the other, toallow profit-making activities and promote
entrepreneurial activities at the local level. Fiscal
decentralization has forced local governments andlocal work units to become self-sufficient, and, thus,
profit-making has become one of the primary goals of
the work units in the reserve management hierarchy.
In this sense, China’s nature reserves are a model fordemonstrating the effects of market intrusion inreserve management.
The effects of the market (that is, the effectsof these profit-making activities and of peasantresponse to the demand for rubber) reaching into
reserve management at the local level are both
positive and negative. The managers are willing tohonor the villagers’ historic claims to land in thereserve because the villagers use the land in an
economically productive manner. In this way, they
aid local economic development, which benefits all
members of the local community, especially local
officials.
Local officials are rewarded throughbonuses and promotions for successfully fostering
economic development.
While the local-level Xishuangbanna Nature
Reserve managers understand the necessity of making
compromises between economic development andnature conservation, the Chinese state does not
acknowledge this trade-off. Instead, the state-run
newspapers blame greedy rural producers for the
decline of forest resources in the reserve. Already in
1986, China’s official English-language daily
newspaper noted, “The People’s Daily blamed thecrisis [in the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve] on rural
producers’ ill-considered approach to [sic] making aquick profit at the expense of rural resources and theignorance of local officials on the importance ofprotecting flora and fauna for ecological purposes”(China Daily, 1986). Here, the central government
blames rural producers’ profit-making efforts for the
failure of the reserve’s policies aimed at conservation.
In this, the state misdirects its reprehension. The

NOTES
1.
Cf. Christian Daniels, “Environmental
Degradation, Forest Protection and Ethno-History in
Yunnan (III): Nature Reserves and Non-Han Swidden
Cultivators,” in CEHN 2, no. 2, p. 12.
2. The Regulations of the People’s Republic of China
on Nature Reserves, Order of the State Council of thePeople’s Republic of China, no. 167. Promulgated in1994.
3. Ibid.
4 .S. D. Richardson, Forests and Forestry in China(Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1990), p. 232.

The China Geographical
Information System Project: An
UpdateLawrence W. Crissman
Griffith University
The May 1995 issue of this newsletter (CEHN 2, no.
1) contained a description of the Spatial Information
Infrastructure for Asian Studies in Australia(SIIASA) Project, which has been conducted by theAustralian Centre of the Asian Spatial Information
and Analysis Network (ACASIAN) since 1992. The
China Geographical Information System Project(China GIS Project), initially established in 1989 in
the Faculty of Asian and International Studies,
Griffith University, has been the major beneficiary of
9SIIASA resources. As elaborate spatial databases for
the PRC have now been produced or are in the final
stages of completion, it is timely to provide an updateon what has been achieved.
Not everyone in the field of China studies
may immediately appreciate the revolutionary
significance of Geographical Information Systems(GIS) technology for social science research
generally, or the particular value which the China GIS
Project spatial databases have for a wide variety of
research on historical as well as contemporary China.
A GIS containing relevant information is especiallysuited to research on environmental issues because of
the way in which it permits information on spatiallydistributed variables to be stored, analysed, anddisplayed. China’s environmental history is no
exception.
Essentially, establishing a GIS involves
digitising mapped information to create objects in a
spatial database which are associated with attribute
variables that can therefore remain disaggregated andanalysable in terms of their geographic distributions
or co-variance with other spatially distributed datasets.
To translate that techno-babble, suitably
computerised map information can be linked to
information of various kinds, permitting investigationof the geographical distributions or spatial contexts ofthe variables. As a result of such analyses, spatial
patterns can be identified, and it may also be possible
to understand the causes of the distributions.
For example, a vectorised (geometrically
digitised) map of China’s county-level (xian andequivalent shi) boundaries can display census data as
choropleths (maps depicting spatially distributed
variation with different colors, hues, or intensities),
such as the ones contained in the Population Atlas ofChina (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987).
GIS-based analysis can be far more sophisticated,both geometrically and statistically, than such pretty
maps might suggest, but they do represent one kind of
simple output that can be almost effortlessly
generated from a suitable GIS. The elaborate spatial
databases produced for the China GIS Project makepossible analyses of many aspects of the spatialorganisation of China’s society, economy, andenvironment that would simply not be feasible in theabsence of such research infrastructure.
The most significant proportion of the spatial
data for China produced by ACASIAN for SIIASA
and the China GIS Project was vectorised from the
1:1,000,000 Land-use Map of China atlas (Beijing:
Science Press, 1990) under a copyright agreementwith the Institute of Geography of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences and the Science Press. At
present, the agreement limits distribution of the Landuse Map of China (LUMC) databases to Australia andChina and allows their use for academic research andgovernmental purposes only. However, negotiations
are under way concerning making access to the data
for academic and commercial use more widely
available, particularly for collaborative research
projects.
In addition to representations of over fifty
land-use or land-cover categories in some 165,000
polygons down to four square kilometres in area
(largely based on areal photography and groundsurveys done in the early 1980s), the LUMC Spatial
Data Bases contain all the elaborate hydrological andother information contained on the published maps.
However, the administrative boundaries shown on the
LUMC are not complete or up-to-date, and havetherefore been supplemented with information from awide variety of other sources to produce a spatiotemporal administrative database that can generate
the correct administrative units for the whole PRC for
any date between 1980 and 1996. This allows
statistics pertaining to any point in time between
those dates to be accurately geo-referenced andsimultaneously analysed both spatially anddiachronically. Basic variables from the 1982 and1990 census returns are in the attribute databases, as
are a variety of agricultural statistics (obtained fromcollaborative or public-domain sources) for the 1980s
and 1990s.
As funding permits, the temporal
coverage of the administrative database will be takenback to at least 1949.
Before his untimely death earlier this year
(1996), Professor Robert Hartwell (recently retired
from the Univeristy of Pennsylvania) had used
ACASIAN boundary data for 1991 to produce colocated county coding for historical counties goingback to the Tang dynasty, and on that basis hadcreated administrative maps for A.D. 741, 1080,
1200, 1290, and 1391. He had plans to prepare
similar maps for 1541, 1820, 1910, 1914, 1930, and1948 as well, which he would have achieved if he had
lived a few months longer. ACASIAN would like tohear from anyone with an interest in the historicaladministrative geography of China who would like tocontribute to finishing that aspect of Hartwell’s lifework.
ACASIAN has purchased rights to digitise
the Atlas of Chinese Postal Codes (Harbin: Harbin
Cartographic Publishing House, 1988). On that basis,
it has produced commercial MapInfo products
containing 1992 administrative boundaries andcapitals and all 12,000 officially-designated zhen
contained in the 1990 census. The maps in The
Language Atlas of China (Hong Kong: Longman
Group, 1987) have also been vectorised for the China
GIS Project, as have some Russian ethno-linguistic
materials.
In addition to the spatial data for China
created at ACASIAN, SIIASA has obtained other10

valuable databases for the China GIS Project. They
include recent (early 1990s) 1:1,000,000 land-coverpolygons produced by the Institute of Remote
Sensing Applications in Beijing from satellite images.
Digital Elevation Model data on a one-kilometre gridwere obtained from the EROS (Earth Resources
Observation System) Data Center in Sioux Falls, andcan be used to produce contour lines for any desired
set of elevations. Digital Chart of the World data for
China have also been translated into MapInfo format.
ACASIAN has also produced contemporary
administrative boundary databases for the entire
former Soviet Union as well as most countries in
East, Southeast, and South Asia, plus Iran andTurkey. Further information on the China GIS
Project and other aspects of spatial data work
conducted at ACASIAN can be found on thefollowing World Wide Web site:
http://www.asian.gu.edu.au
The Director of ACASIAN may becontacted at the following addresses:
Prof. Lawrence W. Crissman
Australian Centre of the Asian Spatial
Information
andAnalysis
Network(ACASIAN)
Faculty of Asian and International Studies
Griffith University
Nathan (Brisbane) QLD 4111
Australia
E-mail: Crissman@ASIAN.gu.edu.au

Course Syllabus: Science,
Technology, and Medicine
in China

general idea of science in China, how people havethought about it, and what lateral issues seem to be atstake. Beginning with an issue that has generated somuch contrary discourse only served, in some cases,
to reinforce preconceived ideas about the problem.
To avoid this tendency, “Heaven” has been moved tothe end of the course. Second, students took quickly
to the medical themes examined in Ren/Human.
Many stated that they would have preferred treating
the “human” themes earlier so as to have time fordeveloping related projects.
The Di/Earth section, too, proved
productive, due to an approach borrowed from Harold
Kahn: using slides made from the woodblock prints
reproduced in Sung Ying-hsing’s T’ien-kung k’ai-wu
for student presentations. Success owed much also to
the quality of the readings, such as the volume by
Robin D.S. Yates and Joseph Needham, Science andCivilisation in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical
Technology, part 6, Military Technology: Missiles
and Sieges.
Texts were selected from a variety of
disciplines to suggest the breadth and richness of the
field, and the quality of research being done on these
problems. Most students enrolled in the course hadcompleted a two-semester introductory course on
Chinese history.
Regular student presentations,permitted by the seminar format, played a critical rolein students’ absorption of the material. Presentations
involved the following: the analysis of a particular
essay or theme, a debate, a slide presentation, or the
explication of an artifact I provided or of an image
reproduced from such works as Gilman’s Seeing theInsane, Hommel’s China at Work, and Needham’s
Science and Civilisation in China.
I thank Lisa Ann Raphals for generously
sharing her syllabus on Chinese science, andShigehisa Kuriyama, Judith Farquhar and Helen
Dunstan for conceptual and bibliographical help.

Hugh L. Shapiro

TopicsTeaching Ideas and Experience

University of Nevada, Reno

1. Human (Ren)
Conceptualizing the Body
Medicine
Gendered Medicine
Physiological Alchemy
Madness
Self-mutilation and Suicide
Forensic Medicine

This course aims to introduce students to the thinking
behind the science, technology, and medicine ofclassical and imperial China. Structuring the coursearound the notion of Tian-Di-Ren/Heaven-EarthHuman was intended to familiarize participants with
the idea of correlations dating from the late classicalperiod, and to introduce a concept that structured themapping of sanctioned knowledge during the imperial
era.
Having taught the course once, I reversed theorder of presentation into Human-Earth-Heaven, for
two reasons. First, the Tian/Heaven section raises the

2. Earth (Di)Engineering
Farming and Sericulture
Warfare11

3. Heaven (Tian)
Time
AstronomyMusic
Conceptions of Nature
Problematizing Science in China

Philip A. Kuhn, “The Crime Defined” and “TheRoots of Sorcery Fear,” in his Soulstealers: The
Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 73–118.
Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “The Haircutting Command,”in his The Great Enterprise: The Manchu
Reconstruction of Imperial Order in SeventeenthCentury China (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1985), 646–50.
Marcel Granet, “Right and Left in China,” in Rodney
Needham, ed., Right and Left (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973), 43–58.
J.S. Sieratzki and B. Woll, “Why Do Mothers Cradle
Babies on Their Left?” Lancet 347.9017 (22 June
1996): 1746–48.
Roger Ames, “The Meaning of the Body in ClassicalChinese Philosophy,” in Thomas P. Kasulis, ed.,Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice(Albany: State University of New York Press,
1993), 157–78.
John Hay, “The Human Body as a Microcosmic
Source of Macrocosmic Values in Calligraphy,”in Kasulis, ed., Self as Body in Asian Theory andPractice, 179-212.

Readings and Reference
AbbreviationsAB
Art Bulletin (College Art Association ofAmerica)AHR American Historical Review
BMFEA Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities
CMJ
Chinese Medical Journal
CS
Chinese Science
CSe
Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin, eds.,
Chinese Science: Explorations ofan Ancient Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1973.
HJAS Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
HR
History of Religion
JAS
Journal of Asian Studies
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JHMAS Journal of the History of Medicine andAllied Sciences
LIC
Late Imperial China
MC
Modern China
MAQ Medical Anthropology Quarterly
SCC
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in
China.
Multiple parts and volumes.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1954–.
STEA Nathan Sivin, ed., Science and Technology
in East Asia. New York: Science
History Publications, 1977.

Reference
Barbara Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin: A
Doctor’s
Patients
inEighteenth-Century
Germany. Trans. Thomas Dunlap. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Edward H. Schafer, “The Development of Bathing
Customs in Ancient and Mediaeval China and theHistory of the Floriate Clear Palace.” Journal of
Oriental and African Studies 76, no. 2 (1956): 57–
82.
Paul Demieville, “Gauche et Droite en Chine,” in his
Choix d’Études Sinologiques (1921–1970)(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973), 518–32.
Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Exploration
in Social Theory. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1984.
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self inEveryday Life (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959),
1–16, 238–255.
Charles E. Rosenberg, “Framing Disease: Illness,Society, and History,” in Charles E. Rosenberg
and Janet Golden, eds., Framing Disease: Studies
in Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1992), xiii–xxvi.
Katrina C.D. McLeod, “Law and the Symbolism of
Pollution: Some Observations of the Ch’in Laws
from Yun-meng,” paper delivered at annual
meeting of the Association for Asian Studies,
Chicago, 1978.

1. HUMAN (REN)
Week 1: Conceptualizing the Body
Shigehisa Kuriyama, “The Imagination of the Winds
and the Development of the Chinese Conceptionof the Body,” in Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow,
eds., Body, Subject, and Power in China(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 23–41.
Mark Elvin, “Tales of Shen and Xin: Body-Person
and Heart-Mind in China during the Last 150
Years,” in Michel Feher, ed., Fragments for a
History of the Human Body, Part Two, (NewYork: Zone, 1989), 267–346.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “TheMindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Workin Medical Anthropology.” MAQ (NS) 1, no. 1(1987): 3–41.
12

Week 2: Medicine
Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Concepts of Disease in East
Asia,” in Kenneth Kiple, ed., The Cambridge
World History of Human Disease (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 52–59.
Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary
China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
Center for Chinese Studies, 1987.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Interpreting the History of
Bloodletting.” JHMAS 50, no. 1, Special Issue(1995): 11–46.
Nathan Sivin, “Foreword,” in Manfred Porkert, The
Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine:
Systems of Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1974), xi–xvi.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Visual Knowledge in ClassicalChinese Medicine,” in Don Bates, ed., Knowledge
andtheScholarly
MedicalTraditions(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
205–33.
Judith Farquhar, Knowing Practice: The ClinicalEncounter of Chinese Medicine.
Boulder:
Westview Press, 1994.

Week 3: Gendered Medicine
Charlotte Furth, “Blood, Body and Gender: Medical
Images of the Female Condition in China: 16001850,” CS 7 (1986): 43–66.
Charlotte Furth, “Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth,and Infancy in Ch’ing Dynasty China.” JAS 46,
no. 1 (Feb 1987): 7–35.
Judith Farquhar, “Objects, Processes, and Female
Infertility in Chinese Medicine.” MAQ (NS) 5,
no. 4 (1991): 370–99.
Victoria B. Cass, “Female Healers in the Ming andthe Lodge of Ritual and Ceremony.” JAOS 106,
no. 1 (1986): 233–40.
Charlotte Furth, “Rethinking Van Gulik: Sexuality
and Reproduction in Traditional Chinese
Medicine,” in Christine K. Gilmartin et al., eds.,
Engendering China: Women, Culture, and theState (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1994), 125–46.
Emily M. Ahern, “The Power and Pollution ofChinese Women,” in Arthur P. Wolf, ed., Studies
in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1978), 269–90.

Reference
Li Jingwei, ed., Zhongguo gudai yishi tulu
[Illustrations for the History of Medicine ofClassical China]. Beijing: Renmin weishengchubanshe, 1992.
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine (Huangdi
neijing) consists of two separate compilations, theSuwen (Basic Questions) and the Lingshu(Celestial Pivot). These collections draw together
the work of many authors and comprise the mostinfluential writings of traditional Chinese
medicine. The Huangdi neijing was compiled
between the first century B.C. and the early first
century A.D.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Pulse Diagnosis in the Greek
and Chinese Traditions,” in Yosio Kawakita, ed.,History of Diagnostics: Proceedings of the 9thInternational Symposium on the Comparative
History of Medicine — East and West (Osaka: The
Taniguchi Foundation, 1987), 43–67.
Paul U. Unschuld, Medical Ethics in Imperial China:
A Study in Historical Anthropology. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979.
Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, “Hygiene andPreventive Medicine in Ancient China,” [1962] in
Needham et al., eds., Clerks and Craftsmen in
China and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 340–78.
Ralph C. Croizier, Traditional Medicine in Modern
China: Science, Nationalism, and the Tensions ofCultural Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1968.

Reference
Bernhard Karlgren, “Some Fecundity Symbols in
Ancient China.” BMFEA 2 (1930): 1–67.
Charlotte Furth, “Androgynous Males and Deficient
Females: Biology and Gender Boundaries in
Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century China.” LIC
9, no. 2 (1988): 1–31.
Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Female Body andReligious Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” inFeher, ed., Fragments for a History of the Human
Body, Part Two, 160–219.
Thomas Laqueur, “Orgasm, Generation, and thePolitics of Reproductive Biology,” in Catherine
Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, eds., The Makingof the Human Body: Sexuality and Society in the
Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1987), 1–41.

Week 4: Physiological Alchemy
Joseph Needham, SCC, vol. 5, Chemistry andChemical Technology, part 5, Spagyrical
Discovery and Invention: Physiological Alchemy(1983), 129–211, and SCC, vol. 2, History of
Scientific Thought (1956), 146–52.
Robert H. Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China: A
Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society
from ca. 1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D. Leiden: E.J.
Brill, (1961) 1974.
Donald Harper, “The Sexual Arts of Ancient China as
Described in a Manuscript of the Second Century
B.C.” HJAS 47, no. 2 (1987): 539–93.
13

Douglas Wile, “Sexual Practices, Medicine andTaoism,” in his Art of the Bedchamber: The
Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics, Including
Women’s Solo Meditation Texts (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992), 19–43.
Kristopher Schipper, “The Taoist Body.” HR 17(1978): 355–86.

Week 5: Madness
Hans Agren, “The Conceptual History of PsychiatricTerms in Traditional Chinese Medicine,” in Li
Guohao et al, eds., Explorations in the History of
Science and Technology in China (Shanghai:
Shanghai Chinese Classics Press, 1982), 573–81.
Karl Bünger, “The Punishment of Lunatics and
Negligents According to Classical Chinese Law.”
Studia Serica 9, no. 2 (1950): 1–16.
Wu Youru, “Suckling a Baby Corpse,” trans. Don J.
Cohn. In “Selections from the Dianshizhai
Pictorial,” Renditions 23 (Spring 1985): 64.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A
History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans.
Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1988), vxii, 3–37.
Martha Li Chiu, “Insanity in Imperial China: A Legal
Case Study,” in Arthur Kleinman and Tsung-yi
Li, eds., Normal and Abnormal Behavior in
Chinese Culture (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1981),
75–94.
Vivien W. Ng, Madness in Late Imperial China:
From Illness to Deviance. Norman: University ofOklahoma Press, 1990.
M.A. Screech, “Good Madness in Christendom,” in
W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd,eds., The Anatomy of Madness, Essays in the
History of Psychiatry, vol. 1 (London: Tavistock
Publications, 1985), 25–39.
Sander L. Gilman, Seeing the Insane. New York:
Wiley, 1982.

ReferenceOn qi (ch’i):Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary
China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
Center for Chinese Studies, 1987), 237–40.
Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought inAncient China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1985), 179-84 and 269–75; forfurther references, see index.
A.C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: PhilosophicalArgument in Ancient China (La Salle, Illinois:
Open Court, 1989), 101–104 and 352–54; forfurther references, see index.
Henri Maspero, “Methods of ‘Nourishing the Vital
Principle’ in the Ancient Taoist Religion,” in his
Taoism and Chinese Religion, trans. Frank A.
Kiernan,Jr.
(Amherst:
UniversityofMassachusetts Press, 1981), 445–554.
Kristopher Schipper, Le Corps Taoiste.
Paris:
Fayard, 1982.
On alchemy:
Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1968.
Nathan Sivin, “Chinese Alchemy as a Science,” inFrederic Wakeman, Jr., ed., Nothing Concealed:
Essays in Honor of Liu Yu-yun (Taipei: Ch’engwen ch’u-pan-she, 1970), 35–50.
Nathan Sivin, “Chinese Alchemy and theManipulation of Time” (1976), in STEA, 108–24.
James Ware, Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the
China of A.D. 320: The Nei P’ien of Ko Hung
(Pao-p’u-tzu). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1966.
Michel Strickmann, “On the Alchemy of T’ao Hungching,” in Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel, eds.,
Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 123–
92.
Mircea Eliade, “‘Alchemy and Science in China,’
Review of Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary
Studies.” HR 10, no. 2 (1970): 178–82.
Ho Peng Yoke, “Chinese Alchemy,” in his Li, Qi, andShu: An Introduction to Science and Civilizationin China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 1985), 171–217.

Reference
Martha Li Chiu, “Mind, Body, and Illness in a
Chinese Medical Tradition.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard
University, 1986.
George Rosen, Madness in Society: Chapters in the
Historical Sociology of Mental Illness. New
York: Harper and Row, 1968.
Andrew T. Scull, ed., Madhouses, Mad-doctors, andMadmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the
Victorian Era.
Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1981.
G.E. Berrios and Roy Porter, History of ClinicalPsychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric
Disorders. New York: New York University
Press, 1995.
Lin Keh-ming, “Traditional Chinese Medical Beliefs
and Their Relevance for Mental Illness andPsychiatry,” in Kleinman and Li, eds., Normaland Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture, 95–
111.
Margery Wolf, A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism,
Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

14

Week 6: Self-mutilation and Suicide
Self-mutilation“Yü-jang’s Revenge” and “Nieh Cheng theAssassin,” in J.I. Crump, trans., Chan-Kuo Ts’e
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 285-87 and 45558.
Li Yu, The Carnal Prayer Mat [Rou butuan], trans.
Patrick Hanan (New York: Ballantine, 1990), 95–
118, 304–306.
Ssu-ma Ch’ien (Sima Qian), “Letter to Jen An,” trans.
J.R. Hightower, in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology ofChinese Literature from Early Times to the
Fourteenth Century (New York: Grove Press,
1965), 95–102.
Wu Youru, “How He Lost His Manhood One
Morning,” trans. Don J. Cohn. In “Selections
from the Dianshizhai Pictorial,” Renditions 23(Spring 1985): 67.
T’ien Ju-k’ang, “Self-Mutilating Behavior of Ko-ku”,
appendix to his Male Anxiety and Female
Chastity: A Comparative Study of Chinese Ethical
Values in Ming-Ch’ing Times (Leiden: E.J. Brill,1988), 149–61.

Themes and Variations (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1978), 146–60.
Katherine Carlitz, “Desire, Danger, and the Body:
Stories of Women’s Virtue in Late Ming China,”
in Gilmartin et al., eds., Engendering China, 101–
24.
On “death pollution,” see James L. Watson, “Of Flesh
and Bones: The Management of Death Pollution
in Cantonese Society”, in M. Bloch and J. Parry,eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
155–87, and “Funeral Specialists in CantoneseSociety: Pollution, Performance, and Social
Hierarchy,” in James L. Watson and Evelyn S.
Rawski, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial andModern China (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), 112–15.

Week 7: Forensic Medicine
Brian E. Mcknight, The Washing Away of Wrongs:
Forensic Medicine in Thirteenth-Century China(translation of Xiyuan jilu by Song Ci). Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for
Chinese Studies, 1981.
Lu Gwei-Djen et al, “A History of Forensic Medicine
in China.” Medical History 32 (1988): 357-400.
Derk Bodde, “Forensic Medicine in Pre-Imperial
China.” JAOS 102 (1982): 1-15.
Janet A. Tighe, “The Legal Art of PsychiatricDiagnosis: Searching for Reliability,” inRosenberg and Golden, eds., Framing Disease:
Studies in Cultural History, 206-26.

SuicideSsu-ma Ch’ien (Sima Qian) “The Biography of Ching
K’o,” in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese
Literature from Early Times to the FourteenthCentury (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 106–18.
Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, vol. 3, The
Warning Voice, trans. David Hawkes (New York:Viking Penguin, 1973), 369–70.
Robin D.S. Yates and Joseph Needham, SCC, vol. 5,
Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part 6,
Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges (1995),
43, note (e) (on suicide as military strategy).
Andrew C.K. Hsieh and Jonathan D. Spence,“Suicide and the Family in Pre-modern China,” inKleinman and Li, eds., Normal and Abnormal
Behavior in Chinese Culture, 29–48.
Margery Wolf, “Women and Suicide in China,” inMargery Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds., Women in
Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1975), 111–42.
Mark Elvin, “Female Virtue and the State in China.”
Past and Present 104 (1984): 111–52.
T’ien Ju-k’ang, Male Anxiety and Female Chastity: A
Comparative Study of Chinese Ethical Values in
Ming-Ch’ing Times. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988.

ReferenceCharles E. Rosenberg, The Trail of the Assassin
Guiteau: Psychiatry and the Law in the Gilded
Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Thomas R. Forbes, “Early Forensic Medicine inEngland: The Angus Murder Trial.” JHMAS 36(1981): 296–330.
Roger
Smith,“Mental
Disorder,Criminal
Responsibility and the Social History of Theories
of Volition.” Psychological Medicine 9 (1979):
13–19.

2. EARTH (DI)Week 8: Engineering
Arthur F. Wright, “Symbolism and Function:
Reflections on Changan and Other Great Cities.”
JAS 24, no. 4 (1965): 667–79.
Chang Kwang-chih (K.C. Chang), The Archaeologyof Ancient China. Fourth edition. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1986.

Reference
Dianshi zhai huabao, Shanghai, 1884-89; reprint,
Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin chubanshe,
1983.
Richard M.W. Ho, trans., “Tu Shih-niang Sinks theJewel Box in Anger,” in Y.M. Ma and Joseph
S.M. Lau, eds., Traditional Chinese Stories:
15

Michael Sullivan, “Pictorial Art and Architecture of
Early Imperial China.” AB 36, no. 1 (1954): 1–
19.
Klaas Ruitenbeek, “Craft and Ritual in Traditional
Chinese Carpentry.” CS 7 (1986): 1–23.
R. Thorp, “Architectural Principles in Early Imperial
China: Structural Problems and Their Solution.” AB
68, no. 3 (1986): 360–78.
John Kieschnick, “Buddhism and the History of theChinese Chair” (typescript), 1–37.
Mark Elvin, “Skills and Resources in Late Traditional
China,” in Dwight H. Perkins, ed., China’s Modern
Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1975), 85–113.
Joseph Needham and Colin A. Ronan, The Shorter
Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Read the first three sections: “Engineers: Their
Status, Tools, and Materials,” “Basic MechanicalPrinciples,” and “Mechanical Toys and Machines.”
Reference
Paul Wheatley, Pivot of the Four Quarters. Chicago:
Aldine Publishing Company, 1971.
Lynn White, “Tibet, India, and Malaya as Sources ofMediaeval Technology.” AHR 65 (1960): 515–26.
George Basalla, The Evolution of Technology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Joanna Waley-Cohen, “China and Western Technology
in the Late Eighteenth Century.” AHR 98, no. 5(1993): 1525–44.
Andre Wegener Sleeswyk, “Reconstruction of the SouthPointing Chariots of the Northern Sung Dynasty:
Escapement and Differential Gearing in EleventhCentury China.” CS 2 (1977): 4–36.
Klaas Ruitenbeek, Carpentry and Building in Late
Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century
Carpenter’s Manual Lu Ban Jing. Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1993.
Stephan Feuchtwang, An Anthropological Analysis ofChinese Geomancy. Vientiane, Laos: Vithagna,
1974.
Joseph Needham and Colin A. Ronan, “Vechicles forLand Transport,” in their The Shorter Science andCivilization in China, vol. 4, 155-219.

Week 9: Farming and Sericulture
Farming
Sung Ying-hsing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu: ChineseTechnology in the Seventeenth Century, trans. E-tu
Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 3–33,
81–107.
Rudolf P. Hommel, China at Work, An Illustrated
Record of the Primitive Industries of China’s Masses,
Whose Life is Toil, and Thus an Account of Chinese

Civilization. 1937. Reprint, Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1969.
Mark Elvin, “The High Level Equilibrium Trap” and“Conclusion,” in his The Pattern of the Chinese Past
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), 298-319.
Peter C. Perdue, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasantin Hunan, 1500–1850. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1987.
James C. Scott, “Resistance Without Protest and Without
Organization: Peasant Opposition to the Islamic
Zakat and the Christian Tithe.” Comparative Studies
in Society and History 29, no. 3 (July 1987): 417–52.
Margaret Visser, “Rice: The Tyrant with a Soul,” in her
Much Depends on Dinner (New York: Collier, 1986),
155–191.
Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in China: A Field Study ofCountry Life in the Yangtze Valley.
London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939.
Reference
E.L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments,
Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe
and Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1987.
Francesca Bray, “The Chinese Contribution to Europe’s
Agricultural
Revolution:
A
Technology
Transformed,” in Li et al, eds., Explorations in the
History of Science and Technology in China, 597–
637.
William Atwell, “Some Observations on the‘Seventeenth-Century Crisis’ in China and Japan.”JAS 45, no. 2 (1986): 223–44.
Wang Yeh-chien, “Secular Trend of Rice Prices in the
Yangzi Delta, 1638-1935,” in Thomas G. Rawski and
Lillian M. Li, eds., Chinese History in Economic
Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), 35–68.
R.H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China. 1932.
Reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1964.
F.H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries. Madison: Mrs.
F.H. King, 1911.
Gudmund Hatt, “The Corn Mother in America and inIndonesia.” Anthropos 46 (1951): 853-914.
Sericulture
Sung Ying-hsing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu, 35–72.

Week 10: Warfare
Robin D.S. Yates and Joseph Needham, SCC, vol. 5, part
6 Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges. 1995.
Albert E. Dien, “The Stirrup and Its Effect on Chinese
Military History.” Ars Orientalis 16 (1986): 33–56.
Sung Ying-hsing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu, 260–78.
Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.

16

ReferenceJohn R. Hale, “The Lost Technique of Ancient Greek
Rowing.” Scientific American 274, no. 5 (1996): 82–
85.
Frank A. Kierman and John K. Fairbank, eds., ChineseWays in Warfare. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1974.
L. Carrington Goodrich and Feng Chia-sheng, “The
Early Development of Firearms in China” [1946] in
STEA, 128–33.
Wang Ling, “On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder
and Firearms in China” [1947] in STEA, 140–58.

3. HEAVEN (TIAN)
Week 11: Time
Robin D.S. Yates, “Body, Space, Time and Bureaucracy:
Boundary Creation and Control Mechanisms in Early
China,” in John Hay, ed., Boundaries in China(London: Reaktion, 1994), 56–80.
Stephan Kern, “Introduction” and “The Nature of Time,”
in his The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983),
1–35.
David Landes, “Introduction” and “Why Are theMemorials Late?” in his Revolution in Time: Clocks
and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press, 1983), 1–13, 37–52.
Kristofer Schipper and Wang Hsiu-huei, “Progressive
and Regressive Time Cycles in Taoist Ritual,” in J.T.
Fraser, N. Lawrence, and F.C. Haber, eds., Time,
Science, and Society in China and the West (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 185–205.
Joseph Needham, “Time and Eastern Man,” in his The
Grand Titration: Science and Society in East andWest (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969),
218–98.
Reference
Yang Lien-sheng, “Schedules of Work and Rest in
Imperial China,” in his Studies in Chinese
Institutional History. Cambridge, Mass: HarvardYenching Institute, 1946.
Joseph Needham and Colin A. Ronan, “Clockwork: Six
Hidden Centuries,” in their The Shorter Science andCivilization in China, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 220–66.
Clifford Geertz, “Person, Time and Conduct in Bali,” inhis The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), 360–411.
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, “Time and Space,” in his The Nuer
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1940), 94–138.
E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism.” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56–97.
E.S. Kennedy, “The Chinese-Uighur Calendar as
Described in the Islamic Sources,” in STEA, 191–99.

Week 12: Astronomy
Edward H. Schafer, “Introduction” and “Embodied
Stars,” in his Pacing the Void: T’ang Approaches to
the Stars (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1977), 1-7 and 120-62.
Nathan Sivin, “Copernicus in China.” Studia Copernica
6 (1973): 63-122.
Jonathan D. Spence, “Schall and Verbiest: To God
Through the Stars,” in his To Change China, Western
Advisers in China 1620–1960 (1969. Reprint, New
York: Penguin, 1980), 3–33.
Jacques Gernet, “Space and Time: Science and Religion
in the Encounter between China and Europe.” CS 11(1993–94): 93–102.
Xu Zhentao, “The Basic Forms of Ancient Chinese
Sunspot Records.” CS 9 (1989): 19–28.
Wolfram Eberhard, “The Political Function of
Astronomers and Astronomy in Han China,” in John
K. Fairbank, ed., Chinese Thought and Institutions(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 33–70.
Reference
Nathan Sivin, “The Limits of Empirical Knowledge in
the Traditional Chinese Sciences,” in Fraser,
Lawrence, and Haber, eds., Time, Science, andSociety in China and the West, 151-69.
Joseph Needham, “The Sciences of the Heavens,” in
SCC, vol. 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the
Heavens and the Earth (1959), 171–494.
John B. Henderson, The Development and Decline ofChinese Cosmology.
New York: Columbia
University Press, 1984.
Limin Bai, “Mathematical Study and Intellectual
Transition in the Early and Mid-Qing.” LIC 16, no. 2(1995): 23–61.
Ho Peng Yoke, “Chinese Astronomy,” in his Li, Qi, andShu, 114–69.

Week 13: Music
Lothar von Falkenhausen, Suspended Music: ChimeBells in the Culture of Bronze Age China. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993. Read thefollowing sections: “Introduction: Setting the Stage,”
1–19; “Rites, Technology, and Political Matrix,” 21–
66; “Music Suspended: Tone Theory and Its PoliticalRamifications,” 310–24. See also “Glossary,” 402–5,
and “Classical Texts” (Bibliography), 415–20.
Reference
Chang Kwang-chih (K.C. Chang), Art, Myth, and Ritual:
The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Joseph Needham (with Kenneth Robinson), “Sound(Acoustics),” in SCC, vol. 4, part 1, Physics (1962),
126–228.

17

David N. Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese
Civilization.
Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983.
Kenneth J. DeWoskin, A Song for One or Two: Musicand the Concept of Art in Early China. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies,
1982.
Ho Peng Yoke, “Chinese Mathematics,” in his Li, Qi,
and Shu, 53–112.

Week 14: Conceptions of Nature
Jacques Gernet, “Christian and Chinese Visions of theWorld in the Seventeenth Century,” CS 4 (1980): 1–
17.
Mitukuni Yosida, “The Chinese Concept of Nature,” inCSe, 71–89.
Sarah Allan, “The Shape of the Cosmos” and“Conclusion,” in her The Shape of the Turtle: Myth,
Art, and Cosmos in Early China (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1991), 74–111, 171–76.
Reference
Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989.
Hsu Dau-lin, “Crime and Cosmic Order.” HJAS 30(1970): 111–25.
Gudmund Hatt, “Asiatic Motifs in American Folk-Lore,”in E. Ashworth Underwood, ed., Science, Medicine,and History: Essays on the Evolution of ScientificThought and Medical Practice (London: Oxford
University Press, 1953), 389–400.
Steven J. Bennett, “Patterns of the Sky and Earth: A
Chinese Science of Applied Cosmology.” CS 3
(1978): 1–26.

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), 15–43.
Reference
Evan S. Connell, “Olduvai and All That,” in his The
White Lantern (San Francisco: North Point Press,
1989), 1–20.
Joseph Needham, “The Pattern of Nature-Mysticism andEmpiricism in the Philosophy of Science: Third
Century B.C. China, Tenth Century A.D. Arabia, andSeventeenth Century A.D. Europe,” in Underwood,ed., Science, Medicine, and History, 361–88.
Joseph Needham, “Introduction,” in his Science inTraditional China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press), 1–26.
Li San-pao, “The Accommodation of Science from theWest and a New Cosmology in Late NineteenthCentury China: The Case of K’ang Yu-wei,” in R.S.
Ellwood, ed., Discovering the Other (Malibu:
Undena, 1984), 55–62.
Timothy Brook, “The Sinology of Joseph Needham.”
MC 22, no. 3 (1996): 340–48.
Shigeru Nakayama, “Joseph Needham, Organic
Philosopher,” in CSe, 23–43.
Derek de Solla Price, “Joseph Needham and the Scienceof China,” in CSe, 9–21.
Qiu Renzong, “Cultural and Intellectual Attitudes That
Prevented the Spontaneous Emergence of Modern
Science in China,” in Fraser, Lawrence, and Haber,eds., Time, Science, and Society, 181–84.
Pierre Ryckmans, “The Chinese Attitude Towards the
Past.” Papers on Far Eastern History 39 (1989), 1–
16.

Up-date to
Directory of Subscribers

Week 15: Problematizing Science in China
Nathan Sivin, “Over the Borders: Technical History,
Philosophy, and the Social Sciences.” CS 10 (1991):
69–80.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, Judith Farquhar, et al, “Is Science
Multicultural? Challenges, Resources, Opportunities,
Uncertainties.” Configurations 2 (1994): 301–30.
A.C. Graham, “China, Europe and the Origins of Modern
Science: Needham’s The Grand Titration,” in CSe,
45–69.
Nathan Sivin, “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not
Take Place in China — or Didn’t It?” CS 5 (1982):
45–66.
A.C. Graham, “The Cosmologists,” in his Disputers of
the Tao, 315–70.
Joseph Levenson, “The Amateur Ideal in Ming and Early
Ch’ing Society: Evidence From Painting,” in his
Confucian China and its Modern Fate, vol. 1

Further corrections, up-dates, and additions may besent to the editor for inclusion in subsequent issues of
the newsletter.
Changes of address/corrections
N.B. Only items in which there has been change areincluded here.
For unchanged particulars, see
original directory or supplements.
Richard Corlett
Department of Ecology and Biodiversity
University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong

18

Elisabeth Grinspoon
Division of Resources, Institutions, Policy andManagement
Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy andManagement
Mulford Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
U.S.A.
E-mail: lis@nature.Berkeley.EDU

environment and development in contemporary
China. Has field research experience in Xinjiang.

Anna Brettell
3433 Stanford St.
Hyattsville MD 20783
U.S.A.
E-mail: v-abrettell@bss2.umd.edu
Tel: 301-422-8563
Global and regional cooperation; the role of sciencein environmental decision-making;
China’s participation in international environmental
conventions; environmental
education in China; the “environmental movement”
in China; and environmental
security in Asia.

T. J. Hinrichs
E-mail: tjhinric@fas.harvard.edu
David L. Keenan
E-mail: dlkeenan@indiana.edu
Cathy Mabry
Department of Botany
Bessey Hall
Iowa State University
Ames IA 50011
U.S.A.
E-mail: mabry@iastate.edu

H. D. Min-hsi Chan
Department of History
University of Newcastle
Callaghan
New South Wales 2308
Australia
E-mail: hichan@cc.newcastle.edu.au
Tel: 61-49-215218 or 215221
Fax: 61-49-216940

Peter J. Matthews
National Museum of Ethnology
Osaka 565Japan
E-mail: pjm@idc.minpaku.ac.jp
Tel: 81-(6)-876-2151
Fax: 81-(6)-878-7503

Jonathan Schwartz
Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
Sidney Smith Hall
100 St. George Street
TorontoOntario M5S 1A1
CanadaE-mail: jschwart@chass.utoronto.ca
China’s state capacity, as reflected in the ability ofprovincial-level governments toenforce environmental regulations.

Wang Jiange
Institute of Chinese Historical Geography
Fudan University
Shanghai
China 200433
Environmental change in North China.

New subscribers
Dirk Betke
Department of Environment and Society
Institute for Management in Environmental Planning
Technical University Berlin
Sekr. FR 2-7
Franklinstrasse 28/29
D-10587 Berlin
Germany
E-mail: betke@berlin.snafu.de
Tel. and fax: 49-30-2155475
Historical development of Chinese institutions related
to the using of natural resources and the protection of
the environment; political, social, and cultural aspectsof the man-nature relationship in socialist China;

Wang Peihua
Department of History
Beijing Normal University
Beijing
China 100875
Tel: Beijing 6220-9506
Chinese history from Song to Qing inclusive.

M. William Wykoff
E-mail: mww7@cornell.edu
Reflections of the onset of the “Little Ice Age” inChinese documents and proxy records.
19

Xie Jialu
Scien-Tech Information Institute
Chinese Academy of Forestry
Wan Shou Shan
Beijing
China 100091
History of forest legislation in China.

requested above to Helen Dunstan at Dept. of ChineseStudies, School of Asian Studies, University ofSydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia. Cheques,
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may send their subscription in local currency (alongwith the subscription information) to their national
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Zhang Jiayan
E-mail: JZHANG@rullet.LeidenUniv.nl
Chinese agricultural and environmental history.

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