Animals through Chinese history : earliest times to 1911 / edited by Roel Sterckx, University of Cambridge, Martina Siebert, Berlin State Library, Dagmar Schäfer, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Knowing animals in Chinese history: an introduction / Dagmar Schäfer, Martina Siebert and Roel Sterckx -- 1. Shang sacrificial animals : material documents and images / Adam C. Schwartz -- 2. Animal to edible : the ritualization of animals in early China / Roel Sterckx -- 3. Noble creatures : filial and righteous animals in early medieval Confucian thought / Keith N. Knapp -- 4. Walking by itself : the singular history of the Chinese cat / Timothy H. Barrett and Mark Strange -- 5. Bees in China : a brief cultural history / David Pattinson -- 6. Where did the animals go? : presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises / Francesca Bray -- 7. Animals as text : producing and consuming 'text-animals' / Martina Siebert -- 8. Great plans : Song dynastic (960-1279) institutions for human and veterinary healthcare / Dagmar Schäfer and Han Yi -- 9. Animals in nineteeth-centry eschatological discourse / Vincent Goossaert -- 10. Reconsidering the boundaries : multicultural and multilingual perspectives on the care and management of the emperors' horses in the Qing / Sare Aricanli -- 11. Animals as wonders : writing commentaries on monthly ordinances in Qing China / Zheng Xinxian -- 12. Reforming the humble pig : pigs, pork and contemporary China / Mindi Schneider.

This volume opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. As environmental historians turn their attention to expanded chronologies of natural change, something new can be said about human history through animals and about the globally diverse cultural and historical dynamics that have led to perceptions of animals as wild or cultures as civilized. This innovative collection of essays spanning Chinese history reveals how relations between past and present, lived and literary reality, have been central to how information about animals and the natural world has been processed and evaluated in China. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, ranging from ritual texts to poetry to veterinary science, this volume explores developments in the human-animal relationship through Chinese history and the ways in which the Chinese have thought about the world with and through animals. This title is also available as Open Access.

Local access dig.pdf. [Animals through Chinese history.pdf]

Knowing "things and affairs" in premodern China -- Nature, crafts, and knowing -- Private affairs -- The Ming dynasty and the Song family -- Childhood and education -- Driving forces: the appointment of Chen Qixin -- Song's writing campaign -- Affairs of honor -- Knowledge in terms of qi: universal rulings and rationality -- The truth in heaven and the order of qi -- The power of heaven: omens and eclipses -- Systems of value: the sage-kings, the authority of the past, and man's role -- The knowledge in crafts -- Public affairs -- Crafts and the Ming state -- Man's nature (xing) and talents -- Abilities and education -- Social permeability and the commercialization of society: the merchant -- Customs and habits -- Written affairs -- Rhetoric of knowledge inquiry: texts and experience -- Images, technology and argument -- Observing the nature of qi: theory and practice in knowledge construction -- The complexity of qi transformations: composites and compositions of qi -- Formulating the transformation -- Reading the signature of yin-yang qi in gas, salt, wind, and rain -- Growth and decay: wood, corpses, and the proportional relation of yin and yang -- Glitches in the matrix of qi: the concepts of ashes and particles -- Acoustics -- An anatomy of sound -- The human voice -- Volume and velocity -- Resonance and harmony -- Conclusion. leaving the theater -- Epilogue. aftermath -- By virtue of friendship: literary sponsorship -- By virtue of position: outside and opposition -- By virtue of loyalty: moral obligations -- An artifact in transmission: The editions of the Works of heaven -- Writing about practical knowledge in the Chinese literati world -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix 1. Chinese dynasties and various rulers -- Appendix 2. Song Yingxing curriculum vitae -- Appendix 3. Editions of the Tiangong kaiwu.

Local access dig.pdf. [Schafer-10,000.pdf]

Cultures of knowledge : technology in Chinese history / edited by Dagmar Schäfer.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [349]-385) and index.

Introduction / Dagmar Schäfer -- Political, social and economic factors affecting the transmission of knowledge in early modern China / William T. Rowe -- Silken strands: making technology work in China / Dagmar Schäfer -- Technological transmission in China and Europe: a comparative view / Pamela O. Long -- Picturing Yu controlling the flood: technology, ecology, and emperorship in Northern Song China / Heping Liu -- Sympathetic relations: foreign craftsmen at the Qing court / Luo Wenhua -- Symbolic technology politics / Wolfgang Lèfevre -- Ceramics for local and global markets: Jingdezhen's agora of technologies / Anne Gerritsen -- Temples, technology, and material culture in Shouzhou, Anhui / Susan Naquin -- Framing European technology in seventeenth-century China: rhetorical strategies in Jesuit paratexts / Joachim Kurtz -- The knowledge agora: the role of the officials / Matteo Valleriani -- Making technology history / Martina Siebert -- The biographer's view of craftsmanship / Martin Hofmann -- Chinese literati and the transmission of technological knowledge: the case of agriculture / Francesca Bray -- Two cultures speaking with one voice? Invention, ingenuity, and agricultural innovation in pre-industrial European and Chinese discourse / Marcus Popplow.

Local access dig.pdf [Schafer-Cultures of knowledge.pdf]

Looking at knowledge transmission as a cultural feature, this book isolates and examines the individual factors that affect knowledge in the making and created uniquely Chinese cultures of knowledge. The volume is organized into four sections: Internode, Imperial Court, Agora, and Scholarly Arts. Each has a theoretical introduction, followed by two core contributions from experts in Chinese history. The section concludes with a ‘reflection’ by a historian of Western Technology who scrutinizes each sphere and identifies the points that reflect universal technological experience. The combination of broadly sketched theoretical introductions and detailed core contributions provides an unparalleled insight into pre-modern Chinese history from the Song to early Qing dynasty, revealing Chinese attitudes towards innovation and invention.

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