Obedient Autonomy
Chinese Intellectuals and the Achievement of Orderly Life
Erika Evasdottir, 2004, Chapter 5, p.163-66.
‘The most important thing to remember,’ said Cai one day while we were discussing my soon-to-be-reoriented perception of the rigid nature of archeological lives, is that ‘a person is never simply an archeologist. One is only an archeologist at certain times and for certain reasons.’ Cai then proceeded to tell me how his calculated combination of his different roles and duties in relation to the event of his son’s birth catapulted him to the exalted position of vice director of his provincial institute at the age of thirty-two.
When Cai arrived at his danwei, just after graduation from university, he was already engaged to be married. He lived with his wife a few days after their marriage but otherwise spent his first two years in the field excavating (save for returning briefly at New Year’s). This lengthy stint in the field is believed appropriate for young archeologists because they need training and experience. And, in any case, there was no place ready for the couple to live together, so he lived at the field site, while she continued to live with her parents. Eventually, her danwei, the railway danwei (much better financed than the archeologists), managed to get her a flat, and Cai returned and moved in for a few months, during which time she became pregnant. Continue reading…
In 1912 and 1913, the new Ministry of Education began to design a school system that would manifest the Republican spirit. Its first edict was terminological: the modern schools established in the late Qing period would now be called “schools” (xuexiao) rather than “study halls” (xuetang). The ministry tried to erase all traces of imperial education by banning official Qing textbooks, the terms that referred to the imperial system and the Qing court, the study of Confucian classics in primary school, and the practice of awarding imperial titles to graduates. The unified educational system was meant to create enlightened citizens (guomin) for the new republic.
Late in 1889, a few months after Mori’s death and a year before the Rescripton Education that would cause Uchimura so much trouble was promulgated, Kanzô delivered a speech that demonstrated how in fact typical of his day were his attitudes toward the great symbols of his nation. What he said there is remembered now because it contrasts with the image of the traitor that resulted from his later refusal to bow. He spoke to the students of a girls’ school in Azabu. One member of the audience recalled that Uchimura chose as his topic evidences of God’s favour to Japan. First he referred to the chrysanthemums that adorned the lecture platform to illustrate the beautiful botanical specimens in Japan; then he pointed out the window to the cone of Mount Fuji, visible on the clear horizon of a November day. He climaxed his talk with reference to the Imperial family, “the one great pride of the Japanese people.” No statement or act before his refusal to bow would have led any Japanese to suspect his loyalty. 
Although his progeny, in the form of typography, printing presses, and printing machines, appeared in Shanghai in the nineteenth century, Johann Gutenberg (1400?-68) himself did not figure as a recognizable name or noteworthy personality in the Shanghai consciousness before the mid-1920s. His appearance then reflected growing public awareness of the importance of technology in national development as well as the widespread dissemination of the industrially manufactured book and journal. Gutenberg was absent from China’s first modern dictionary, Xin zidian (New Dictionary)issued by the Commercial Press in 1912.Likewise,he did not appear in the Commercial Press’s 1915 phrase dictionary, Ciyuan, or in Zhonghua da zidian (Zhonghua Big Dictionary), issued the same year by Zhonghua Books. Nonetheless, all three modern dictionaries, the most important to appear in Chinese since Kangxi zidian (Kangxi Dictionary) of 1716, were printed using technology that could be traced to Gutenberg.
