"....highly readable history dates from the late nineteenth century, starting with the earliest known legends of China as the "Middle Kingdom," and ranging forward to an intriguing series of portraits of the author's Chinese contemporaries. Subjects include functions and powers of government; prisons and forms of punishment; religion, gods, and Confucian philosophy; marriage and divorce; servants and slaves; festivals, amusements, and sports; funerals; and benevolent institutions. Commercial activities--agricultural techniques, tea and silk production, and maritime pursuits--also receive detailed and informative treatments. The text is complemented by 140 evocative illustrations of scenes from daily life. Unabridged republication of the classic 1878 edition."--Publ. note.

Contextualizing Chaoben: on the popular manuscript culture of the late Qing and Republican period in China -- Apologia in Chaoben -- Written in the margins: reading into texts -- Teacher Xu: entering a classroom in late Qing China -- A Qing dynasty astrologer's predictions for the future -- Constructing the family in Republican China: Shandong in text: comma here 1944 -- Mr. Bai and Mr. Qian earn their living: considering two handwritten in text: without hyphen notebooks of matching couplets from China in the late Qing and early Republic -- The troublesome ghosts: part 1 -- The troublesome ghosts: part 2.

Local access dig.pdf. [Suleski-Chaoben.pdf]

Introduction -- Historical geography -- Exotic Guangzhou -- Confucian incursions -- We and they -- The land -- From registered households to lineages -- Early Ming society -- The recession of labor service -- The Yao wars and ritual orthodoxy -- Administrative transition -- Lineages gentrified -- Lineage building: the Huo surname of Foshan -- Magnates on the sands -- From Ming to Qing -- Gentry leadership in local society -- The end of empire -- The proliferation of lineage institutions -- The ordering of community in ritual life -- Incorporation: the power of an idea -- A note on prosperity -- The nineteenth-century transformation -- The Mulberry Garden dike -- From paramilitary to militia -- Local power in the Taiping rebellion -- The foreign element in Pearl River Delta Society -- Contradictions of the nation-state: the backwardness of lineages -- Epilogue -- Beyond the Pearl River Delta.

Topics: Duty and subordination, clan relationships and harmony, keeping the peace, farming and mulberry culture, thrift and economy, schools and academies, heretical sects, laws and penalties, courteousness, abiding in ones vocation, education of the young, prevention of false accusations, sheltering deserters, payment of taxes, wards and tithings, making up quarrels.

".... originally sixteen maxims of the Emperor Kang-hsi, each containing words issued as a Hortatory Edict in 1670. In 1724 Yong-cheng republished the Edict in an enlarged form. Wang-iu-puh...rendered this Exposition into colloquial..."--p. iii.

Includes index.

Topics: Duty and subordination, clan relationships and harmony, keeping the peace, farming and mulberry culture, thrift and economy, schools and academies, heretical sects, laws and penalties, courteousness, abiding in one's vocation, education of the young, prevention of false accusations, sheltering deserters, payment of taxes, wards and tithings, making up quarrels.