Science for the Chinese Common Reader? Myriad Treasures and New Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

C Cambridge University Press 2017 Science in Context 30(3), 359–383 (2017). doi:10.1017/S0269889717000187

Science for the Chinese Common Reader? Myriad Treasures and New Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Joan Judge York University E-mail: [email protected]

Argument This article argues that in order to discern the place of science in the epistemology of Chinese common readers, it is critical to look beyond the coastal enclaves where foreign missionaries and experts interacted with Chinese scholars and officials, beyond the translated treatises they produced, and even beyond the various forms of new media that attempted to more widely disseminate the principles of Western science. Instead, it asserts the need to engage a different register of materials that were less directly tied to foreign expertise, more directly in line with pre-existing lineages of printed materials, and at the same time, integral to early-twentiethcentury Chinese circuits of information. The article focuses explicitly on one print phenomena that has been completely overlooked in the scholarship to date, the expansion and revitalization of the genre of texts known as wanbao quanshu (comprehensive compendia of myriad treasures) in the late Qing (1890-1911) and early Republic (1912-1930).

1. Introduction What did science mean to the common reader in China at the turn of the twentieth century? To date, the literature on the history of science in this period has largely focused on the translation and dissemination of Western scientific works in coastal enclaves where foreign missionaries and experts interacted with Chinese scholars and officials. Few have attempted to discern the place of science in the broader reaches of Chinese epistemology. This article attempts to access these broader reaches by examining a completely overlooked aspect of Chinese print culture: the expansion and revitalization of the genre of texts known as wanbao quanshu (comprehensive compendia of myriad treasures) in the late Qing (1890-1911) and early Republic (1912-1930). While late Ming editions of these texts have garnered significant scholarly interest, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editions of the wanbao quanshu have been completely overlooked by scholars who have been captivated instead by the

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new media that emerged in this era: new-style textbooks, newspapers, and periodicals. Researchers have thus taken no notice of the ongoing publication of the wanbao quanshu in the midst of the explosion of new media, or of the significant material, ideational, and structural changes the wanbao quanshu genre underwent from the mid-1890s. In probing these changes, this article contributes to the literature on the history of the book in China as well as to scholarship on science, technology, and society. It first analyzes the publishing context for the revised wanbao quanshu, traces their print history, and attempts to discern who their readers may have been. It then examines what could be considered “scientific” content in the newly appended sections of the compendia – material on botany and an opium cure, for example – and questions how this material may be suggestive of alternate approaches to science at the turn of the twentieth century in China. 2. Publishing Context a. “Traditional Books” in the Context of New Media Missionaries who required material media to facilitate proselytization across the vast Chinese imperium were the first to introduce new print forms and new print technologies to the Chinese audience. The former included periodicals and newspapers, the latter letterpress and lithography.1 While the importance of lithography, which I will turn to in a moment, has been largely ignored, it was the expansion of letterpress technology that fuelled the rapid expansion of the new media and that has come to define our understanding of this era. China’s first periodicals were edited and printed by missionaries. These included periodicals in English, the first being Robert Morrison’s China Monthly Magazine published in Malacca in 1815. They eventually also included Chinese-language periodicals that not only spread missionary and international news but also introduced new fields in the Western sciences. Liuhe congtan (Shanghai Serial, 1857– 58), and the Gezhi huibian (translated in different periods as The Chinese Scientific Magazine, The Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine, between 1876 and 1892 with some interruptions) are two prime examples. Excerpts of the Gezhi huibian were further disseminated through the pages of the highly influential Wanguo gongbao (Review of the Times), a Protestant missionary publication in print from 1874 to 1907 with an interruption of six years between 1883 and 1889.2 Less well known Jesuit periodicals such as the Yiwenlu (Record of Useful News), published from 1879–1911, also disseminated new scientific ideas.3 The Chinese readership of 1

On the adoption of letterpress and lithography, see Reed 2004, chaps. 1 and 2. On these Protestant missionary science publications, see Elman 2005, 283-319. 3 On the missionary press, see Zhang Xiantao 2008; Kurtz 2010. 2


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even these Chinese-language publications seems to have been minimal, however. Only eight percent of subscribers to the Liuhe congtan were Chinese, for example (Elman 2005, 299). These new print technologies also spawned a plethora of general-interest media that were often published by foreign merchants rather than missionaries. China’s first Chinese-language daily newspaper, Shenbao (Shanghai News), was founded by a British tea merchant in 1872. By 1937 some 1,500 newspapers – dailies, weeklies, and monthlies – had been published in Shanghai alone.4 Similarly, the number and subgenres of periodicals increased exponentially over the early years of the twentieth century – including literary journals, entertainment journals, pictorials, and women’s journals.5 The trajectory of women’s journals offers one example of the proliferation of this form of media: an estimated 44 were published in China and Japan between 1898 and 1911, another 30 appeared between 1912 and 1915, and close to 250 more by the late 1930s (Maeyama 1995; “Fu (Appendix) 3. Scholars have been increasingly attentive to more downmarket forms of these new media such as pictorials, entertainment journals, and women’s journals.6 Few have, however, examined the ongoing publication of what Cynthia Brokaw calls “traditional books,” including woodblock texts, in this period of new media proliferation. Brokaw has argued that the lack of research on these traditional materials – which include wanbao quanshu – in studies of new media in the Republican period has limited our understanding of the early twentieth-century print world. A fuller appreciation of the enduring importance of the “geographically broad and socially deep” late imperial woodblock print culture would also greatly nuance received narratives of radical ruptures in late Qing and early Republican culture.7 I extend Brokaw’s argument to include lithograph printed as well as wood-block printed books, and to encompass the main publishing market of Shanghai where “traditional books” continued to thrive alongside new media. I further emphasize that these texts offer glimpses not only into a separate, co-existing print culture but into the broader knowledge culture. Information – including scientific information – traveled in the late Qing and early Republic from “traditional” texts to new media, and from new media into revised “traditional” texts. We cannot fully understand the network of knowledge circuits in this period without taking these kinds of texts – most notably here wanbao quanshu – into account.

4

On Shenbao, see Mittler 2004. For scholarship in English on other Chinese newspapers, see Judge 1996; Wagner 2007. On the number of newspapers, see Jia Shumei 2000, 236-63. 5 On literary journals, see Gimpel 2001, Hockx 2003; on entertainment journals, see Jun Wang, 2012 on pictorials, see Ye Xiaoqing 2003, Pickowicz et al., 2014. 6 See, for example, Gimpel 2001; Jun Wang 2012; and Judge 2015. 7 These “traditional books” also include a full range of practical guides to family ritual, correspondence, rhymed couplet composition, medical diagnosis and treatment, medicines, divination, geomancy, fate calculation, and the selection of auspicious days (Brokaw 2010, 54-57).


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b. Publication of Wanbao quanshu Wanbao quanshu served as sources of pragmatic, usable, everyday knowledge from the inception of the genre in the late Ming dynasty. The compilations were originally designed to valorize and textualize a form of knowledge that was distinct from traditional learning (xueshu ) and to engage a demographic of readers that was largely separate from the office-seeking literati (Wang Cheng-hua 2003, 6). Shifting the focus of leishu or category books from politically-relevant knowledge to quotidian information, they often referenced daily use (riyong ) in their titles and addressed their broadened audience through accessible prose and the inclusion of abundant illustrations (Wei Shang 2005, 68, 72). The genre of myriad treasures continued to evolve during the next three centuries in ways that reinforced this commitment to practical daily knowledge.8 By the late Qing dynasty a plethora of small commercial publishers not only reprinted but also expanded and updated editions of what had become the dominant version of wanbao quanshu by the late nineteenth century, the Zengbu wanbao quanshu (Expanded Comprehensive Compendium of Myriad Treasures) with a preface by Mao Huanwen (fl. 1720) dated 1739.9 These publishers include the Shanggu shanfang , Qixin shuju , Guangyi shuju , and Saoye shanfang , together with numerous other presses so fledgling that their names only appear on a handful of texts and are nearly impossible to trace. While only a few of these publishers initiated significant changes to the original Mao Huanwen text, numerous others reprinted the updated editions using new means of technological reproduction. These shifts in both technology and structure reflect forward-looking confidence in the ongoing relevance and marketability of the genre. From at least 1894, these commercial publishers shifted from woodblock printing to lithography – the process of manually or mechanically printing texts from slabs of limestone upon which characters or images were drawn using chemically-treated greasy ink or crayon.10 The publishers who adopted this new technology were the first to 8

Over the course of the Qing dynasty, the more theoretical information on a range of topics from cosmography and calligraphy, from medicine to chess, was consistently reduced, heightening the focus on more pragmatic instruction (Wu Huifang 2005, I: 74, 206, 271, 311). 9 The text was allegedly originally compiled by the writer, painter, and calligrapher Chen Jiru (Meigong , 1558-1639) in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. 10 The printing procedure, which involves moistening the stone and applying a layer of thick ink over its surface, is based on the principle that water and grease repel each other and that grease attracts grease. In the final stage, the image is impressed on a piece of paper placed on the stone through hand or mechanical pressing. Lithographic technology had been used in Shanghai from 1876 when it was first introduced at the Tushanwan orphanage. Ernest Major then adopted it at his Dianshizhai lithograph studio in 1878 (see Reed 2004, 89; Wagner 2007, 108-110). This raises the question of why the compendia publishers did not start using lithography until the 1890s, which I have yet to fully answer. The impetus to use lithography may not have come until the period of increased political turmoil in the 1890s. By this time lithographic expertise would have also been more widespread. Reed notes that it was not until 1894 that lithograph shops exceeded woodblock shops in scale,



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invest in significant quantities of foreign printing machinery and the first to promote a mechanized, Western-style form of printing in China (Reed 2004, 89). They used this new technology to reprint existing works including not only wanbao quanshu but a range of texts, most prominently aids for civil service examination candidates and medical works – the lithographed genres that have received the most attention to date.11 This new method of reproduction also enabled publishers to make highly marketable textual innovations including the production of pocket-sized or “kerchief” editions (jinxiang ben , xiuzhen ben ).12 More compact and portable, these lithographed texts were also cheaper than woodblock editions, ensuring that lithograph publishers would quickly supplant woodblock publishers (Reed, 89). The wanbao quanshu publishers who turned to lithography from the mid-1890s simultaneously made significant changes to the content of the compendia. Already from the Xianfeng era (1850-61) the 30 juan of the original Ming compendia were reduced to twenty.13 While some earlier content was thus eliminated, from the 1890s publishers introduced new social and political content into the remaining 20 juan. Post1911 editions detail the political and civic changes that heralded the new Republican regime in 1912, for example. These included changes to the macro-category of “Social Conduct” (Renji men ), the third of the three macro-categories used in all great historical Chinese encyclopedias.14 The new content describes the investiture of the Republican president, Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), the new Republican dress code, and rituals pertaining to the new practice of enlightened marriage (wenming jiehun ). One “newly revised edition” features a portrait of the Prime Minister of the new Republic from March to June of 1912, Tang Shaoyi (1862-1938), on its cover.15

output, and number of employees (Reed 2004, 103). Some 97 lithographic firms existed from 1894 to 1905, the total reached 188 into the Republic (ibid., 120, 124). For descriptions of the lithographic procedure, see Twymen 1970; and for the procedure in China, Fan Muhan 1995, 565-67. 11 On the use of lithography for producing examination aids, see Sim Chuin Peng 2013. 12 The dimensions of the Chinese texts roughly correspond to Western book sizes and format. Octavo editions are 15x23 cm, the Chinese editions closer to 24 cm. Trigesimo-secundo editions are 9x14 cm, the Chinese editions closer to 14.5. Chinese kerchief (so named because they could fit in a box for kerchiefs) or pocket-size editions predated lithography and possibly even predated printing (see Ye Dehui [1911] 1999, 81-83). One of the early Republican editions I study, the Qixin edition was not pocket-sized but closer to crown octavo dimensions at 13.5x20.5 cm. On the ability of lithography to produce reduced-size editions of texts, see also Reed 2004, 89. 13 On 20 juan being the standard length of wanbao quanshu from the Xianfeng period, see Wu Huifang 2005, I:43. 14 The first two macro-categories are Heaven (Tianwen men ) and Earth (Dili men ). This division is based on what Wolfgang Bauer has identified as the earliest classification by categories in Liu Xi’s (fl. 200 CE) Shiming (Explanation of Names), dated to the second century of the common era (Bauer 1966, 671). 15 I have only seen this text online where I tried unsuccessfully to purchase it. From the description of the text and scans of other pages included online, it is evident that this edition includes the same supplements as the other Republican texts discussed in this paper.


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The clearest evidence of the commitment of wanbao quanshu publishers to accommodate new useful knowledge is, however, the addition of a series of supplements starting in 1894. For the first time in the genre’s over three-hundred-year history during which revised information had been repeatedly added and obsolete information deleted from within the compendia’s existing categories, publishers appended a series of additional juan to the core texts. These supplements signal that editors considered it possible to “fill in” what was missing from the wanbao quanshu’s core juan. Rather than jettison the entire epistemic structure, they could add to what was perceived as an originary lack.16 These supplements conformed to the ruling editorial principle of Chinese leishu including wanbao quanshu: they were compilations of other texts rather than original works. Most, but not all, of the source texts for material in the supplements were published in the nineteenth century; the source on botany which I discuss in more detail below was an exception in that it dated from the early Qing dynasty. These source texts were generally handbooks of various kinds written by those with practical skills and experience. The majority (with the text on botany again being an exception) directly or indirectly address the ramifications of the foreign-Chinese encounter in the post-Opium war period. There is no clear epistemological link between the various supplements – again similar to the contents of the main body of the wanbao quanshu, but without even the façade of the overarching macro-categories. The first three include information on foreign coins, trade, commerce and Shanghai, addressing what would have been merchant concerns. The next two on plants and animals, and magic tricks offer instruction on leisure time activities and include what could be considered protoscientific content. The final supplement which seems to have been added in 1906 includes a short section on prognostication followed by two sections on health: one on Western approaches to health maintenance and the second on how to cure an opium addiction. I discuss both of these further below. It is difficult to determine how many editions of these expanded wanbao quanshu circulated in the late Qing and early Republic but between those I have seen and examined in various libraries in East Asia (nine editions), those featured online (three editions), and those mentioned in advertisements and catalogues (nine editions), it is clear that there were well over 20 editions of wanbao quanshu in print between 1894 and at least 1928.17 It is also difficult to get a precise sense of circulation numbers. Disparate evidence suggests that these were high. Given the general resistance to archiving texts such as wanbao quanshu which are widely considered to be of lowly cultural value, the fact that one or two editions can be found in most municipal and major libraries in China and Japan suggests their abundance as does a trove of uncatalogued materials I was able to access in Beijing. Anecdotal evidence indicates that it has been most common to find extant post-1894 editions of wanbao quanshu in old bookstalls in recent years. 16 17

On this notion of supplement, see Derrida 1976, 269-316. Five editions are listed in various catalogues included in Zhou Zhenhe.



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One collector describes the relative profusion of “Republican lithographed editions” with the standard 20 juan, and 6 supplementary juan (Xiao Yifei 2011). This suggests that these post-1894 or even post-1906 expanded texts were produced in significantly greater numbers than other late nineteenth-century editions. There is also evidence that some editions were published outside of Shanghai and that these various texts circulated in other parts of the country. One compendium was published in the “Northern Warlord Area” (Beiyang junfuqu ) and this very text was used as a source by a contemporary scholar researching currency in the southern province of Guangdong in the late Qing dynasty (Chen Jingxi 2002, 207).

c. Readers of Wanbao quanshu While it is difficult to accurately assess the circulation of wanbao quanshu it is even more challenging to determine the readership for these texts. Much of what we can surmise about the consumers of wanbao quanshu has to be gleaned from the materiality of the texts themselves, from their paratexts including advertisements, and from other disparate references. The picture that emerges is of common readers who were driven by the need to find practical information, rather than of model readers who were encouraged by reformers and officials to consume politically sanctioned new knowledge. Demographically, these common readers would have included residents of China’s burgeoning metropolises and smaller urban centers who were equipped with basic general literacy, straddling the worlds of “full” and “fragmented” literacy.18 More specifically, these perusers of wanbao quanshu would most likely have been low-level bureaucrats and merchants, workers, and housewives of modest means. These common readers were not the model readers of new media invoked by reformists, revolutionaries, and radical intellectuals, from Liang Qichao’s (18731929) calls at the turn of the twentieth century for new citizens (xin guomin ) to read newspapers and new fiction (xin xiaoshuo ), to May Fourth activists’ calls for readers to consume new literature (xin wenxue ) imbued with the wisdom of “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy.”19 Nor were these common readers model students. Rather than attend the new-style schools established from 1904 where they would have been exposed to new learning through new-style textbooks, they were most likely schooled in “old-style primers” – the Sanzi jing (Three Character Classic), the Baijia xing (One-hundred Names), the Qianzi wen (Thousand Character Classic), various zazi character texts, and/or wanshi buqiuren (myriad matters you won’t need to ask) collections which

18

For a discussion of these various levels of literacy, see Brokaw 2007, 562-68. On the new novel in the late Qing, see Huters 2005, 112-18; on new literature in the May Fourth era, see Chow Tse-tung 1960, 269-88.

19


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incorporated many elements of the earlier primers.20 These texts, which constituted the building blocks of the common readers’ literacy, were used for instruction in old-style private schools (sishu ) or for informal or self-instruction in the home. While these rudimentarily-educated common readers may have had an interest in the news, they would have been more likely to get it from xiaobao – the entertainment or mosquito press – rather than from mainstream newspapers. And while they most certainly enjoyed reading fiction, they would have been more likely to turn to illustrated serial books (lianhuantu ) than to the less familiar – in terms of both content and grammar– new fiction or new literature. Similarly, these common rather than model readers would have sought information relevant to the conduct of their daily lives not from new compendia of Western learning but from the more culturally legible and pragmatically grounded wanbao quanshu.21 As the title of the compendia suggests, these texts offered myriad treasures to a myriad of readers: one text could serve many readers or satisfy a single reader’s divergent needs. The wanbao quanshu could inspire with wonder about mythical beings and fantastical inhabitants of foreign countries; they could instruct in performing status by offering knowledge of painting, calligraphy, and epistolary protocol; and they could entertain with tips on how to perform a magic trick or win a game of pitchpot. Most significantly, however, the compendia could also enlighten inquiring readers with practical information on how to track a pregnancy, graft a plant, or cure an opium addiction. It is this practical function of the texts that seems to have been preeminent. This is reflected in the phrase bu qiuren which is featured in the Mao Huanwen preface, and which served as the alternate title for wanbao quanshu and as the title of related texts such as wanshi buqiuren, a genre that is still in print today.22 The phrase suggests that these texts would furnish readers with epistemological autonomy by liberating them from the need to ask others for information. This practical function is increasingly emphasized over time. In the original 1759 Mao Huanwen preface which is reprinted verbatim in a number of late nineteenthcentury expanded versions of the compendia, readers are told: “If you take [the compilation] and read it (qu er yue zhi ) you will have about all [the knowledge/information] that you need (dagai yi ju ).” (Mao Huanwen 1828, Preface). In the latest of the wanbao quanshu to include a preface, a 1912 edition, the phrasing is slightly, and arguably, significantly changed. Rather than “take the compilation and read it” readers are instructed to take [the book] and use it (qu er yong zhi ).” Instead of gaining all the knowledge they would need through reading, they would gather necessary information through a quick glimpse at the text. If you take the book and use it, the reader is told, “with one glance you will have about all that you need (yilan dagai yi ju )” (ibid., Tianji shuju, Preface). 20

On these various primers and their uses, see Wu Huifang 2007, 43. On these compendia of new learning, see Doleˇzelová-Velingerová and Wagner 2014. 22 See, for example, Guangyi shuju, ca. 1912. 21



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The frontispiece to this 1912 edition, together with the frontispiece to a 1920 edition further underline this conception of the text as a useful product rather than a storehouse of treasures. The 1912 text announces that it is a “Revised and newly made product” (Xiuzheng xinzhi yongpin ). The cover of the 1920 version similarly declares that it is the latest revised and expanded edition, appropriate for common use in the Republic (zengding zuixin Minguo tongyong ). It further (and repetitively) boasts that it is a newly manufactured product for use in the Republic (Minguo shiyong xinzhi yongpin ) (Tianbao shuju 1920). Such statements beg the question of useful for whom? A variety of paratextual evidence suggests that readers of the wanbao quanshu included low-level bureaucrats and merchants. The original Mao Huanwen preface indicates that the compilation’s main audience would be low-level bureaucrats: “those who wait on high-ranking officials (sihou yu gongqing ) and run around everywhere (benzou yu xingshi zhi tu ) [in search of information], bending and scraping to curry favor (nuyan bixi )” (Mao Huanwen Preface; Shanghai Liuxian shuju 1898, Preface). This accords well with a series of advertisements that appeared in Shenbao for another edition of wanbao quanshu offered by a pharmacy, the Jindu Tongdetang . These advertisements depict low-level merchants and officials throughout China clamoring to get copies of the text. They include an employee at the Yangzhou Lisheng Old-style Bank (Yangzhou Lisheng quanzhuang 1895), an official working in the Hanyang Railway Office in Hubei (Hubei Hanyang qianzheng ju ) (Suzhou Yanjiagang, 1895), a representative of the Nanjing Neighborhood Association Office (Jinling baojia ju ) (Jinling baojia, 1895), and a clerk from the office of the Legal Secretary of Wenzhou prefecture (Wenzhoufu shuxingxi ) (Jinling baojia, 1895). As with testimonials in advertisements for pharmaceuticals in this period, the veracity of these attestations of enthusiasm for the Tongdetang’s compendium is certainly questionable. The kinds of individuals depicted in the advertisements nonetheless reflect the profile of readers the publisher of the wanbao quanshu hoped to attract.23 Advertisements for the Mao Huanwen lineage of texts also appeared in Shenbao. Published in 1894, they state that the revised edition of the text is “popular throughout the land and appeals to the masses (kuaizhirenkou ).” At the same time the advertisements attempt to lend the text legitimacy by stating, “officials and merchants (shitu shanggu ) all have a copy in their houses” (“Shiyin Xiantian” 1894). Advertisements for a Weiwen ge edition in Shenbao similarly claimed that it was officials and merchants who had urged the publisher to add the newly appended supplements (“Shiyin chongxiao” 1894).

23

On testimonials to advertisements, see Judge 2015, 27-28.


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While it is most likely a conceit that high-level officials or merchants would have been avid consumers of wanbao quanshu, it seems those at the lower end of the bureaucratic and commercial hierarchies would have been. These individuals would most likely have considered the information useful in the supplements on recognizing counterfeit coins, negotiating a commercial treaty, or navigating the brothel district of the foreign concessions. They also would have found the texts affordable. A multivolume compendia of myriad treasures which a household would keep on hand indefinitely cost approximately 8 jiao.24 This was comparable to other instructional manuals in the early Republic: a two volume vernacular text on the use of the abacus (Yitian biye baihua zhusuan jiaoben ) cost 1 jiao and an eight volume letter writing manual (Zuixin xiangzhu fenlei chidu kuailan ), 8 jiao (Zuixin huitu, backmatter). It was comparatively cheaper than the cost of a new-style periodical: one issue of a late Qing and early Republican women’s or fiction journal cost approximately 4 jiao and an annual subscription as much as four yuan two jiao (Judge 2015, 18). To put these prices in some kind of perspective, female textile factory workers who would have been less well off than low-level merchants earned a mere 2 to 3 jiao a day in the early Republic (Qin Huirong 1911, 39). A full meal in Shanghai’s Zhang Garden which would have been a luxury for these common consumers of wanbao quanshu, would cost as much as 6 jiao (Ge Tao 2003, 57). The fuzzy picture that we can draw of consumers of the compendia is one of pragmatic, low-level elites who would have absorbed the latest commercial, intellectual, and scientific trends into their daily repertoires to the extent that it made practical sense to do so. While they would have been vaguely cognizant of the introduction of “new learning,” they would not have experienced it as a profound intellectual rupture. Nor would they have viewed the Western knowledge that filtered into the wanbao quanshu supplements as a bounded epistemological category. At the same time, they brought elements of the concerns, predilections, curiosity, and imagination of sub-literate and illiterate members of their community to bear on the ways they conceived of and repurposed new forms of usable knowledge. 3. Wanbao Quanshu, New Knowledge, and Science a. Scientific Content in the Wanbao quanshu Compendia editors and common readers did not use the newly circulating terms for science – whether gezhi or kexue – to label the useful material in the supplements on managing the natural world or maintaining health.25 This material can, however, be deemed scientific if we define science as an intellectual endeavor 24 25

The five wanbao quanshu listed in the catalogues included in Zhou Zhenhe 2005, all cost 8 jiao. On these terms, see Shen Guowei 2014.



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based on empirical testing and grounded in systematic engagement with the natural world. Scholars from mainland China have recently used the term kexue in asserting that material reprinted in the wanbao quanshu supplements was scientific. They also relate this material to Western methods of determining scientific efficacy such as clinical trials. This material includes excerpts from a seventeenth-century treatise on plants, Chen Haozi’s (Fuyao , Xihu huayinweng b. 1612 [1615]) Huajing (Mirror of Flowers) which were reprinted in the fourth juan of the wanbao quanshu supplements. The Huajing had a long history of republication in East Asia in and beyond the period when systematic botanical knowledge entered China. Woodblock editions of the text were frequently reprinted in China and Japan in the late seventeenth through at least the late nineteenth centuries by which time Carolus Linnaeus’ (170778) binomial nomenclature had become a universal practice of botany.26 Two illustrated lithographed versions were published in China in 1914.27 Typeset editions appeared in 1936 and 1937, a photocopied version in 1956, and an annotated version in 1962 (revised in 1980). Two editions with the same title, Mijuan Huajing (Esoteric Lore of the Mirror of Flowers) appeared in 2001 and 2002.28 Chen originally wrote the text to overcome what he considered to be prevailing ignorance about plants in his time. He criticized his compatriots for being obsessed with either commerce or officialdom while knowing nothing about planting and producing (Shen Yuwu 2010, 49). He was also determined to vanquish the “superstitious” notion that planting had to be restricted to a specific growing season by explaining transplanting techniques (Yi Qinheng [1962] 1980, 5). His work was based on personal and textual knowledge. This knowledge included his own lifetime experience, and what he had learned from acquaintances who earned a living growing flowers, from friends interested in flowers, and from his critical reading of previous treatises on flowers (huapu ) (ibid., 1). Chen built on and improved these earlier texts by correcting errors and introducing original ideas.29 Focused on ornamental plants (guanshangzhiwu ) and fruit trees, his treatise records more than 300 kinds of flowers and 26 On Linnaeus, see Meng 2006, 55. Many copies of the Huajing circulated in manuscript and are difficult to trace. On what is possibly a Jiaqing-era (1796-1820) poor, street stall edition manuscript, see Shao Kezhi 2001, 84. Versions of the text were printed in 1688 (two editions, 1783 and 1865). 27 Qunfang huajing quanshu (Comprehensive volume on [all flowers and the mirror of flowers], Shenheji shuju 1914; Huitu yuanlin huajing (Illustrated Garden Mirror of Flowers). Shanghai: Jinzhang shuju 1914. 28 The text was even more revered in Japan than in China. It was used as a textbook, Pan Jixing, 315; printed with Japanese commentary (Shen Yuwu 2010, 50); and translated into Japanese with editions dating from 1688, 1719 (3), 1735, 1773 (4), 1818, and 1829 (9), and 1846. The text continued to be welcomed even in the Western-oriented Meiji period (Pan Jixing 1992, 315). New editions also appeared through the twentieth century, one in 1944, for example. 29 According to recent scholars, Chen Haozi’s work surpassed Wang Zhen’s (d. 1333) Nongsang tongjue (Secrets of mulberry farming) in its exploration of the physiological mechanism of grafting. It also further developed aspects of Jia Sixie’s sixth century Qimin yaoshu (Essential techniques for


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fruit trees together with the growing expertise necessary to cultivate them (ibid., 2; Shen Yuwu 2010, 51). His is also the earliest Chinese record of growing and arranging potted plants (Shu Yinglan 2002, 4). The wanbao quanshu compilers selectively reprinted parts of Chen’s 6-juan (section), 110,000-character text. This includes what commentators unanimously consider its “most brilliant” section, the second juan entitled “Eighteen methods for growing plants” (Kehua shiba fa ).30 Chen’s introduction to this second juan explains that plants are a product of their environment: those in the north are able to endure extreme cold while those in the south can tolerate intense heat (Shanggu shanfang 1912, 52a; Shen Yuwu 2010, 50). The juan includes sections on “Methods for expediting the growth of flowers” (Bianhua cuihua fa ), “Determining whether or not to use fertilizer” (Peiyong kefou fa ), “Growing new plants from cuttage” (Qiancha yisheng ), and “Arranging the soil around transplanted flowers” (Yihua zhuanduo fa ) (Shanggu shanfang 1912, 56a; 56b). It also includes an important section on “Wondrous methods for grafting plants” (Jiehuan shenqi fa” ) (Shanggu shanfang 1912 54a).31 In contrast to his “superstitious” forebearers, Chen believed the cultivation of plants shouldn’t be limited by the seasons. In the subsection on transplanting in juan 2, he claims that it is possible to transplant and replant at any time (“Yihua zhuanduo fa,” Shanggu shanfang 1912, 57a; Shen Yuwu 2010, 50). He further argues that the very nature of plants could be changed by the skilled cultivator. “Red colored ones can become purple, and small can become large. Those which are sour and bitter can become sweet and those that are malodorous can become fragrant. Man can reverse nature through the process of grafting (wei zai jiehuan de qi chuan er

) (Shanggu shanfang 1912, 54a; Shen Yuwu, 50). It was possible, he insisted, to graft plants that were not particularly similar, such as peaches, plums, apricots, and kumquats. This section on “Miraculous methods for creating hybrids” was not only featured in the wanbao quanshu but also continued to appear – unattributed – in a number of later compendia in the daily-use genre. These include the Guangyi shuju’s 1921 Xinbian

the welfare of the people) and Guo Tuotuo of the Tang’s Zhongshu shu (Book on planting trees). Shen Yuwu 2010, 52; Yi Qinheng [1962] 1980, 1. 30 See for example, Yi Qinheng [1962] 1980, 4. 31 In the upper register (what is generally considered to be the register with the less important material) above the section on plants, the various expanded versions of the wanbao quanshu also include a supplement to the sixth juan of Chen’s text “Qinshou linchong kao” (Investigation of birds, animals, fish, insects). It describes the species, form, habits, and ways of raising 45 kinds of birds, animals, fish, and insects. The title of this section in the wanbao quanshu is “Yang shouniao fa” (Methods for raising birds). The third to fifth juan of Chen’s text (which do not appear in the wanbao quanshu) further examine the names, form, habits and properties, growing place, use and cultivation of flowers and trees. Juan 3 includes an important section on the classification of plants: Huamu leikao (Investigation of plant categories).



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riyong wanquan xinshu (Newly edited completely thorough new book for daily use), Saoye shanfang’s 1929 Riyong wanshi baoku choushi bixu (Treasure-house of all daily things necessary for social relations), and Xinhua shuju’s 1930 Jiating baike quanshu (Household encyclopedia).32 As we will see in the conclusion, this section includes information that mainland Chinese scholars have deemed most scientific in Chen’s text: instruction on improving the quality of plant species by crossing particular rootstocks with particular branches. These sections from the Huajing on grafting were initially included in the first set of supplements added to the wanbao quanshu in the 1890s. The last set of supplements added in 1906 included a cure for opium addiction which, similar to Chen Haozi’s text, could be considered scientific. The cure was published in the wanbao quanshu in the very year that the Qing government launched the first coordinated national campaign of opium eradication in Chinese history – 1906.33 The prescription dates to 1833, however, when the official and anti-opium czar, Lin Zexu (1785-1850), commissioned the doctor He Qiwei (Shutian 1774-1837) to develop a treatment for opium addiction. This cure which He labeled Jiumi liangfang (Effective methods for ending addiction), would serve as a critical component in Lin’s quixotic opium suppression campaign. He Shutian had explored several different therapeutic methods for ending opium addiction before ultimately formulating the Jiumi liangfang. This treatment may have been one of the first cures based on the substitution method in Chinese medicine (Zhongyao tidai yaowu ), a method of gradually decreasing the dose of one medicine while increasing the dose of another (dijian dizeng ) (Yang, Zhan, Li, Sun 2014, 95). In the case of the Jiumi liangfang this substitution treatment is based on administering decreasing doses of opium ash (yapian yanhui ) in a pill called Jisuan wan , literally “taboo sour pill,” and increasing doses of a restorative Buzheng wan (Repairing and rectifying pill) to gradually boost the addict’s qi and liberate him from addiction (Xiao Zhongsheng 2009, 216; Wang Mei 2012, 20). Over the course of the treatment, the addict lowers the amount of Jisuan by one granule (li , the size of a parasol tree seed [wutongzi ]) and replaces it with two granules of the Buzheng pill until the Jisuan medicine is completed. He continues to take the Buzheng medicine alone in the last half month of the treatment and for up to another half a year (He Shixi 1984c, 81; He Shixi 1984a, 71; Wang Mei 2012, 20). The Jiumi liangfang also includes prescriptions for two kinds of drinks The sections on grafting plants appear in the Xinbian Riyong wanquan xinshu in Juan 8, Ji 16: “Nongye” (Agriculture); in the Riyong wanshi baoku choushi bixu in Vol. XIV, Bian 28 “Zhongzhi baoku” (Treasury on cultivating plants); and in the Jiating baike quanshu in the section on “Zhongzhi” (Cultivating plants). 33 On the opium eradication campaign, see Brook and Wakabayashi 2000, 11-12. 32


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effective in fighting addiction; one made with pumpkin (nangua ), a second composed of four key ingredients, opium ash among them (He Shutian 1988, 2543, 2548). He’s cure was widely distributed in various print and manuscript editions, and was included in a repeatedly expanded collection of medical works initially compiled by Chen Xiuyuan (ca. 1753-ca. 1823).34 It ultimately became best known, however, through its inclusion in Lin Zexu’s June 28, 1838 memorial to the Daoguang emperor (r. 1820–50), “Chouyi yanjin yapian zhangcheng” (Discussion of regulations for the strict prohibition of opium). The fourth part of the memorial, entitled “Jieyan duanyin qianhou liangfang zonglun” (General discussion of two methods for quitting [opium] smoking and ending [opium] cravings) – the precise title that is used in the wanbao quanshu supplement – features Lin’s slightly revised version of the Jiumi liangfang. Half of the memorial – over 2,200 characters out of 5,000 – is devoted to detailing the cure, making the memorial as much a medical work as a petition to the emperor (Lin Zexu 2013, 184–87). Lin made some modifications to He Shutian’s prescription. He revised the presentation of the two liquid cures and added three ingredients to He’s original recipe of fifteen for the Jisuan pill (He Shixi 1984c, 81).35 This expanded cure became known as “Lin Wenzhong gong jieyan wan” (The honorable Lin’s pill for quitting opium) and in more colloquial language, “Lin shiba” (Lin 1937, 18), referring to the eighteen ingredients in Lin’s prescription (Wang Mei 2012, 21; Xiao Zhongsheng 2009, 216). The popularity of He Shutian’s/Lin Zexu’s method intensified in 1906 not because of but in spite of the government’s anti-opium decree. The regulations the edict gave rise to called on experienced local doctors to formulate opium cures that contained neither morphine (mafei ) which was becoming increasingly widespread in China at this time, nor opium ash – a critical ingredient in the Jisuan pills (Zhu Shoupeng 1958, 5570). Local officials at various ranks and in various capacities resisted this stipulation and continued to promote Lin’s method as among the most effective in an increasingly crowded market of available cures for opium addiction. These included various therapies that medical missionaries had been promoting for decades, together with a plethora of newly minted patent medicines, many of which were

34

Wang Mei 2012, 20, and Xiao Zhongsheng 2009, 216, mention the circulation of ten editions of He’s text; He Shixi 1984b, 69, cites evidence for over sixteen versions; He Shixi 1984c, 80 (He Shutian 1988). The text appeared in different versions of Chen Xiyuan’s collection which included between 21 and 72 medical works and were published between 1892 and 1937. 35 These ingredients, duzhong (eucommia, rubber tree), ganqizi ([sweet wolfberry]) and zaoren (date kernel), must have been added after the memorial was published as they do not appear in the memorial (see Lin Zexu 2013, 186).



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morphine-based.36 Lin Zexu’s prescription continued to be published and promoted through this period, not only in the wanbao quanshu supplement, but in articles and advertisements in the commercial periodical press, and in fiction (Lin Yiqing [1932, 1996] 2002, 193).37 The Lin Shiba therapy was also prominently featured in quasiofficial journals used to advance the Nanjing Government’s efforts to completely eradicate opium from 1936. These include the Jinyan banyuekan

(Fortnightly journal of opium suppression), and the Sichuan jieyan yuekan (The Sichuan anti-opium monthly) (“Huiyi jilu”; “Lin Wenzhong Gong jieyan liangfang” 1936). He and Lin’s original formulations of the cure, together with its repeatedly reprinted versions, include a lengthy discussion of the physiology of addiction. Late Qing and early Republican promoters of the treatment generally emphasize its empirical validity rather than its theoretical principles however. Following Lin Zexu who highlighted the treatment’s empirical efficacy in his memorial, later texts often use a recurring trope–“repeatedly tested” (lüshilüyan )” –to assert the cure’s superiority. (Lin Zexu 2013, 187).38 Shanghai officials who endorsed Lin Wenzhonggong jieyanfang, insisted that other manufactured medicines that had not been vetted as Lin’s cure had, must undergo laboratory testing (huayan ) to ensure that they were not harmful “fake medicines” (“Daopi zhaolu” 1907). The sections of the wanbao quanshu supplements on the opium cure and the Huajing made no references to Western knowledge. The only entry to do so appears in the top register of the final juan (which also includes the opium cure). In the table of contents to some editions the entry is entitled “Important Western Methods for Maintaining Health” (Taixi yangsheng yaofa ). It is, more accurately, a small collection of practical tips largely drawn from two Western-inspired texts: Jiachen riyong baoshu (The 1904 daily digest), a Catholic missionary digest, and Taishi shiwu congkao (Reference work on Western affairs) (Huibao guan 1904; van Hée 1903).39 Topics include methods for cutting glass (jian boli fa ), for avoiding blisters when walking a long distance, and for stamping clothing (yinyi ) (to avoid confusion among garments given to a washerwoman). A few items relate to animals: the period of gestation for pregnant animals, ways to kill mice, and a new method for killing domestic animals. A number offer instruction on new everyday technologies: the need for light in schools with an excursus on different kinds of light, techniques for washing clothing with soap and for storing fresh eggs (jiucang xiandan ). The precise method for the latter includes making a 36

Morphine was first listed as a separate item in the Imperial Customs annual report in 1891; it was widely used by medical missionaries as part of their detoxification cures, and was used in numerous patent medicines from the late Qing into the Republic (Dikötter, Laamann, Zhou 2004, 147-55). 37 On the novel, see Qin Heming 1995, 456-59. 38 On claims for the cure’s empirical efficacy, see for example, “Zhengjie xinwen” 1908, 312; “Zashi jinwen” 1873, 20. 39 There is only slight overlap with the latter text.


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limestone sauce, spreading it over the surface of the eggs, and placing them in an airtight earthenware jar (Qixin shuju ca 1912, 6: 22a). Similar to the wanbao quanshu supplement entries on opium addiction and plants, this short entry on preserving eggs also had an afterlife, if a relatively less extensive one. The method for preserving eggs is repeated word for word in the April 26, 1933, edition of the entertainment journal Linglong (Petite). It appears in a short piece that includes two other kinds of practical instruction (not featured in the wanbao quanshu): how to prevent ink from blotting and four ways to efficiently use waste (“Jiucang”).

b. Approaches to Chinese Science These sections of the wanbao quanshu supplements raise questions about the very nature of science and how it is to be understood in a non-Western and specifically in a Chinese context. If we define science as Western works on biology, physics, and chemistry translated into Chinese in missionary publications in the late-nineteenth century, in commercial periodicals in the early twentieth century, and in Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshu guan ) book series in the Republic, we have to question the inroads this science made into the broader reading culture in this period. Containing often illegible transliterations and numerous foreign terms, circulated in relatively expensive print formats, and often containing abstract knowledge, such works highlight the paradoxical conception of science as uniquely public and highly exclusive (Shapin and Schaffer 2011). How accessible, attractive, or relevant was this translated, abstract science to someone who was most concerned with, for example, keeping eggs in the pantry from rotting or getting his opium addiction under control? And if tacit thought is integral to all knowledge, how can allegedly detached, objective scientific knowledge imported from the West be successfully integrated into Chinese epistemology?40 Focusing on the constitution and dissemination of practical, everyday information in the wanbao quanshu rather than the assimilation of theoretical, Western-derived ideas requires an approach to science that emphasizes the local production of knowledge. Characterized by systematic engagement with the natural world, this approach offers new perspectives on the history of Chinese science, “ethno-scientific” approaches to knowledge formation, and the study of the “popularization” of science. Recent work in the history of Chinese science has sought to sideline “the Needham question” (posed by Joseph Needham [1900-95], British scientist and author of the multi-volume Science and Civilization in China): Why did a divided Europe rather than imperial China develop modern science first? Rather than focus on notions of failure or time lag, these scholars highlight what scientific “dead ends” reveal about the dynamism

40

On tacit knowledge, see Polanyi [1966] 2011.



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of Chinese epistemologies and historical processes.41 We can push this position further by asking why China did not need to have a scientific revolution. Were existing bodies of natural knowledge, of botany and health, for example, sufficiently dynamic and permeable to serve practical human needs even in the context of the imperialist technological challenges China faced from the mid-nineteenth century? While not denying the critical importance of, for example, bio-medicine in reducing Chinese infant mortality rates, an examination of the kinds of useful knowledge disseminated in daily-use texts suggests the need to resist a rigidly bifurcated understanding of universally valid Western science and uniformly backward Chinese knowledge. Viewing knowledge from the vantage point of wanbao quanshu also contributes to efforts to place ethno-science on the same footing as Western science (Burke 2016, 114). This approach asserts that early Chinese “botanical knowledge,” for example, has to be analyzed from an anthropological rather than a teleological point of view, not as the pre-or proto-scientific stage of modern science, and not as part of any “fundamental continuity and universality of all science” as posited by Needham. Only after a situated assessment of the specific historical, cultural, and social context that produced a body of knowledge has been made can any comparison to modern science be attempted; or not, as the danger of such comparisons lies in flattening or familiarizing the distinctiveness of certain individuals’ very particular relationship to the natural objects around them (Métaillié 2007, 66, 48, 83, 84). A close examination of the scientific or ethno-scientific content of the wanbao quanshu, further complicates notions of the popularization of science. Scholarship in this field to date has generally been done by historians of the West: even studies that claim to look “beyond borders” do not stray from the European continent.42 While these works tend to focus on relatively advanced readers of journals or books devoted to science popularization, the process is different when we examine common readers who encountered selected items of imported scientific knowledge in daily-use materials.43 The vantage point of the wanbao quanshu also encourages us to not exclusively trace downward processes of popularization characteristic of studies of Victorian popular science but to probe horizontal or even upward processes through which local empirical texts traveled across genres and time, and interacted with Western scientific ideas. This is the case for the Huajing which served as a source text for the 1918 Zhiwuxue dacidian (Botanical dictionary), one of the first scientific Chinese encyclopedias to appear at the turn of the century. A trilingual dictionary of botanical terms (Chinese, Latin, Japanese), the Zhiwuxue dacidian adopted the Linnean system of plant classification. At the same time, it included brief philological accounts of the original Chinese texts – including the Huajing – that recorded information about particular plants. In referencing historical works such as Chen’s Mirror of Flowers, the 41

See various essays in Jing Tsu and Elman 2014. See, for example, Ruiz-Castell et al. 2009. 43 On Victorian periodicals for science popularization, see Lightman 2010. 42


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Botanical Dictionary thus breaks down seemingly universal botanical knowledge and displays the polycentric origins of such knowledge (Meng 2006, 52–60). 4. Conclusion The material in the wanbao quanshu on grafting plants and treating opium addiction was not formally identified as “science” in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century compendia. Contemporary mainland Chinese scholars who have revisited this material in the last few decades, however, emphasize its scientific validity. They compare the Huajing to the work of recognized experts on scientific agricultural selection, assert that it has served as the basis for scientific research in the People’s Republic of China,44 and have included Zhang Guotai’s (fl. 1670) original preface to the work in a recent collection on early Chinese science and technology.45 Other scholars claim the efficacy of He Shutian’s opium cure which was first formulated in the early nineteenth century has now been proven by clinical trials. Mainland Chinese scholars’ assertions that the Huajing is scientific are most consistently tied to the material on agricultural selection in juan 2 of the text which is reprinted in the wanbao quanshu. These scholars have argued that Chen Haozi’s discussion of grafting reveals a sophisticated level of knowledge. He understood the stages of plant development and the need to select high-yield branches for grafting. He was also aware that the process could improve plant quality and be used to create new species (Shen Yuwu 2010, 50). These scholars further note that Chen Haozi’s claims that artificial culture (rengong peiyu ) can modify botanic characteristics, that “man can conquer nature” (renli keyi duo tiangong , rendingshengtian ), predate those of the Russian botanist I.V. Michurin (Miqiulin , 1855–1935), one of the founding fathers of scientific agricultural selection. Similar to Chen, Michurin developed methods for hybridizing geographically distant plants. His mantra was that man cannot wait for favors from nature but must take them from nature (Shen Yuwu 2010). While contemporary scholars consider the material on grafting to be Chen’s most widely acclaimed “botanical contribution” – and perhaps not fortuitously, the section of his text that was included in a number of daily use texts through the 1930s – some claim that his treatise included other scientific innovations as well. Among these is his material on insecticides. According to one scholar citing Joseph Needham, one-hundred years before his Western European counterparts, Chen devised a method of using bugs to

According to Wang Jian 2003, 191, this scientific research includes Feng Yuhuan’s , Huajing yanjiu (Research on the Mirror of Flowers) (Nongye kexue chubanshe 1959). 45 Ren Jiyu ed. Zhongguo kexue jishu dianji tonghui: nongxue juan

: (Collection of ancient Chinese books on science and technology: volume on agricultural science). , 1994. I am still tracking this volume down. 44



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fight bugs (yi chong zhi chong ) and get rid of plant diseases.46 Chen had also devised a more sophisticated method of botanical classification (fenke suoshu ) than was to be found in earlier agricultural works. These scholars further claim that Chen’s research and experimental data was on a par with post-Renaissance methods of modern scientific research.47 A number of other scholars have, however, taken a more minimalist view of Chen’s scientific contributions. Yi Qinheng , who annotated Chen’s treatise in 1962, states that in terms of science, the Huajing was a product of its time. Chen had limited knowledge of astronomy and meteorology, traveled little, and lacked a full range of specimens. At the same time, he made many misclassifications, confusing certain vines with plants, for example (Yi Qinheng). For Yi, the Huajing is most valuable as a relic of Chinese horticulture (yuanyixue ), a view allegedly shared by Joseph Needham who one Chinese scholar claims called Chen China’s “horticulturalist” (yuanyi jia ).48 Other scholars assert that Chen Haozi’s “secret methods” for cultivating plants continue to be relevant for those cultivating household plants in our own day (Pan Jixing, 315). For scholars like Yi, the volume is ultimately most useful from the perspectives of the cultural history of science and knowledge of early scientific achievements (Pan Jixing 1992, 318.). Similar to researchers who have revisited Chen Haozi’s Huajing, turn-of-the-twentyfirst-century scholars have praised He Shutian and Lin Zexu’s opium cure for its scientific properties. They claim that the cure, which was more sophisticated and more widely used than many others through the Republican period, continues to be medically effective today and that it has been used with success in recent clinical trials (Chen, Zhuo, Wu, and Lu 1997).49 Several mainland researchers claim that while opium addiction is no longer a problem in the PRC, the therapy can be used to help nicotine addicts quit smoking (He Shixi 1984b, 68). And in those areas where people continue to “smoke poison” such as in “Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Taiwan,” it can help addicts break with their past habits (He Shixi 1984a, 71). At the same time, the method of decreasing and increasing the quantity of different medicines, which is the core principle of the Jiumi liangfang therapy, is applicable to other illnesses and other treatments (ibid.). It is used to treat opoid addicts today: drugs like Subozone operate similarly to the Jisuan pills. Practical knowledge of the kind found in the wanbao quanshu not only travels and mutates over time but across genres and demographics of readers. The full range of this 46 Li Yuese (Joseph Needham). Zhongguo kexue jishushi: diliujian :. Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, : , 2006, 401-402 (cited in Shen Yuwu 2010, 51). The passage Shen quotes from Needham does not seem to appear in the English edition. See the following note. 47 Shen Yuwu 2010, 51, citing Needham. I have not found this quote in the Needham volume where the Huajing is mentioned twice, see Daniels, Needham, and Menzies 1996, 596 and 617. 48 Yi Qinheng [1962] 1980, 449; Shen Yuwu 2010, 51, citing Needham. 49 Neither the method nor the prescription in this trial correspond exactly to the Jiumi liangfang, however. Nine of the 15 ingredients in the Jisuanwan were included in the recipe used in the trial.


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circuit of information and the full breadth of its consumers can only be grasped if we read “traditional books” in tandem with new media. An investigation of the circulation of material featured in expanded and revised compendia of myriad treasures reveals the multi-generic diffusion of information found in their pages. The same opium cure, instructions for grafting a plant, and methods for preserving an egg traveled from old to new media, from manuscripts to print, from woodblock engraved manuals to lithographed compendia to letter press periodicals, and from letter press newspapers to daily-use encyclopedias. The opium cure that appears in a compendia supplement in 1906 was, as we have seen, first published as a medical text in 1833; incorporated into a memorial to the emperor in 1838; hand-copied, printed on fliers, and featured in organs of the periodical press from the 1900s through the 1940s; reprinted in Nationalist government anti-opium publications in the 1930s; and integrated into a 1933 novel. An item on preserving eggs which first appeared in a Catholic missionary digest in 1904, was reprinted in wanbao quanshu from 1906, and repeated verbatim in a new-style journal in 1933. This cross-class and cross-genre mobility of information in and beyond the late Qing and Republican periods helps to illuminate the ways usable knowledge was constituted and disseminated in the era of new media and global science. These circuits of information which include cheap, daily-use materials such as wanbao quanshu, reveal the range of audiences seeking techniques to graft a plant, cure an opium addiction, or preserve an egg. They also suggest shared practices by readers we generally think of as inhabiting different epistemological universes – the lowly merchant consumer of a wanbao quanshu, the gentleman gardener and collector of illustrated editions of the Huajing, the model reader of a Nationalist anti-opium periodical, and the urbane female peruser of a life-style journal. Tracking the circulation of particular nuggets of knowledge featured in wanbao quanshu thus deepens our understanding of the level of cultural integration, the state of public knowledge, and the place of “science” in the broader reaches of Chinese epistemology from the mid-nineteenth- to the midtwentieth- centuries.

References Compendia Huibao guan (The Huibao office). 1904. Jiachen riyong baoshu [The 1904 daily encyclopedia]. Shanghai: Hongbao zhai shiyin . Guangyi shuju . ca 1912. Huitu wanshi buqiuren shu [Illustrated text of myriad matters you won’t need to ask]. Shanghai: Guangyi shuju . Mao Huanwen . 1828. Zengbu wanbao quanshu [Expanded complete compendia of countless treasures], 4 vol. Guiwen tang . Shanggu shanfang . 1912. Huitu zengbu wanbao quanshu [Illustrated expanded compendia of countless treasures]. 8 vol. Shanghai: Shanggu shanfang .



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Shanghai liuxian shuju . 1898. Zengbu wanbao quanshu [Expanded comprehensive compendium of countless treasures]. 6 vol. Shanghai: Shanghai liuxian shuju . [Referred to as Liuxian.] Tianbao shuju . 1920. Huitu zengbu zhengxu wanbao quanshu [Illustrated, expanded, corrected and continued comprehensive compendium of countless treasures]. 8 vol. Shanghai: Tianbao shuju . Tianji shuju . 1912. Zengbu wanbao quanshu [Expanded comprehensive compendium of countless treasures]. 8 vol. Shanghai: Tianji shuju . van Hée, Louis (He Shishen ) (compiler). Wu Bangsheng , Zhu Fei transl. 1903. Taishi shiwu congkao [Reference work on Western affairs]. 8 juan. Hongbaozhai . Qixin shuju . ca 1912. Zuixin huitu zengbu zhengxu wanbao quanshu [Newest, illustrated, expanded comprehensive compendium of countless treasures]. 8 vol. Shanghai: Qixin shuju .

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Anemia in Puerto Rico at the turn of the twentieth century.

New horizons in neurology. The twentieth century.

Of means and ends: mind and brain science in the twentieth century.

Comments on Experimentation in Twentieth-Century Agricultural Science.

Italian neuropsychology in the second half of the twentieth century.

Commentary: Wilhelm Johannsen and the problem of heredity at the turn of the 19th century.

The new science of mind and the future of knowledge.

The dynamics of conceptual change in twentieth century immunology.

Twentieth-century attitudes toward masturbation.

Position emission tomography at the turn of the century: a perspective.

Science in the 21st century.

A personal memoir: plastic surgery in the twentieth century.

Pulling British undergraduate medical education into the twentieth century.

From speculation to empiricism in the study of mental disorder: research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in the first half of the twentieth century.

Politics and pellagra: the epidemic of pellagra in the U.S. in the early twentieth century.

[The hospital dynamics at Maternidade Dr. João Moreira, Fortaleza, in the early decades of the twentieth century].

Twentieth-century influences on the development in Britain of services for child and adolescent psychiatry.

The co-evolution of residential segregation and the built environment at the turn of the 20th century: a Schelling model.

[Science provides the knowledge?].

The spread of disease--some important problems in the latter years of the twentieth century.

Stills, status, stocks and science: the laboratories at Apothecaries' Hall in the nineteenth century.

Did the 1918 influenza cause the twentieth century cardiovascular mortality epidemic in the United States?

The first feed of low birthweight infants: changing attitudes in the twentieth century.

MYRIAD AFTER MYRIAD: THE PROPRIETARY DATA DILEMMA.