The Quest for Gentility in China Negotiations Beyond Gender and Class (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia) (Daria Berg, Chloe Starr) (Z-Library)

The Quest for Gentility in China The quest for gentility has shaped Chinese civilization and the formation of culture in China until the present day. This book analyses social aspirations and cultural practices in China from 1550 to 2000, showing how the notion of gentility has evolved and retained its relevance in China from late imperial times until the modern day. Gentility denotes the way of the gentleman and gentlewoman. The concept of gentility transcends the categories of gender and class and provides important new insights into the ways Chinese men and women lived their lives, perceived their world and constructed their cultural environment. In contrast to analyses of the elite, perceptions of gentility relate to ideals, ambitions, desires, social capital, cultural sophistication, literary refi nement, aesthetic appreciation, moral behaviour, femininity and gentlemanly elegance, rather than to actual status or power. Twelve international leading scholars present multi-disciplinary approaches to explore the images, artefacts and transmission of gentility across the centuries in historical and literary situations, popular and high culture, private and offi cial documents, poetry clubs, garden culture and aesthetic guidebooks. This volume changes the ways we look at Chinese cultural history, literature, women and gender issues and offers new perspectives on Chinese sources. Daria Berg is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham. She has published extensively on Ming/Qing and post-Mao Chinese cultural history and literature, including Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (2002). She recently edited Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse – Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge (2007). Chloë Starr is a Departmental Lecturer in Classical Chinese at the University of Oxford. She works on text and narrative: her most recent publication is Red-light Novels of the Late Qing (2007) and she is currently editing a volume on Chinese biblical hermeneutics.

Routledge studies in the modern history of Asia 1 The Police in Occupation Japan Control, corruption and resistance to reform Christopher Aldous 2 Chinese Workers A new history Jackie Sheehan 3 The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya 4 The Australia–Japan Political Alignment 1952 to the present Alan Rix 5 Japan and Singapore in the World Economy Japan’s economic advance into Singapore, 1870–1965 Shimizu Hiroshi and Hirakawa Hitoshi 6 The Triads as Business Yiu Kong Chu 7 Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism A-chin Hsiau 8 Religion and Nationalism in India The case of the Punjab Harnik Deol 9 Japanese Industrialisation Historical and cultural perspectives Ian Inkster 10 War and Nationalism in China 1925–1945 Hans J. van de Ven 11 Hong Kong in Transition One country, two systems Edited by Robert Ash, Peter Ferdinand, Brian Hook and Robin Porter 12 Japan’s Postwar Economic Recovery and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1948–1962 Noriko Yokoi 13 Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 Beatrice Trefalt 14 Ending the Vietnam War The Vietnamese Communists’ perspective Ang Cheng Guan 15 The Development of the Japanese Nursing Profession Adopting and adapting Western infl uences Aya Takahashi

16 Women’s Suffrage in Asia Gender nationalism and democracy Louise Edwards and Mina Roces 17 The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922 Phillips Payson O’Brien 18 The United States and Cambodia, 1870–1969 From curiosity to confrontation Kenton Clymer 19 Capitalist Restructuring and the Pacifi c Rim Ravi Aarvind Palat 20 The United States and Cambodia, 1969–2000 A troubled relationship Kenton Clymer 21 British Business in Post-Colonial Malaysia, 1957–70 ‘Neo-colonialism’ or ‘Disengagement’? Nicholas J. White 22 The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism Kullada Kesboonchoo Mead 23 Russian View of Japan, 1792–1913 An anthology of travel writing David N. Wells 24 The Internment of Western Civilians under the Japanese, 1941–1945 A patchwork of internment Bernice Archer 25 The British Empire and Tibet 1900–1922 Wendy Palace 26 Nationalism in Southeast Asia If the people are with us Nicholas Tarling 27 Women, Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle The case of the cotton textile industry, 1945–1975 Helen Macnaughton 28 A Colonial Economy in Crisis Burma’s rice cultivators and the world depression of the 1930s Ian Brown 29 A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan Prince Cuong De (1882–1951) Tran My-Van 30 Corruption and Good Governance in Asia Nicholas Tarling 31 US–China Cold War Collaboration, 1971–1989 S. Mahmud Ali 32 Rural Economic Development in Japan From the nineteenth century to the Pacifi c War Penelope Francks 33 Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia Edited by Karl Hack and Tobias Rettig

34 Intra Asian Trade and the World Market A.J.H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu 35 Japanese–German Relations 1895–1945 War, diplomacy and public opinion Edited by Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich 36 Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China The Chinese maritime customs service, 1854–1949 Donna Brunero 37 Colonial Cambodia’s ‘Bad Frenchmen’ The rise of French rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 1840–1887 Gregor Muller 38 Japanese–American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941–45 Bruce Elleman 39 Regionalism in Southeast Asia Nicholas Tarling 40 Changing Visions of East Asia, 1943–93 Transformations and continuities R.B. Smith (Edited by Chad J. Mitcham) 41 Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China Christian inculturation and state control, 1720–1850 Lars P. Laamann 42 Beijing – A Concise History Stephen G. Haw 43 The Impact of the Russo- Japanese War Edited by Rotem Kowner 44 Business–Government Relations in Prewar Japan Peter von Staden 45 India’s Princely States People, princes and colonialism Edited by Waltraud Ernst and Biswamoy Pati 46 Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality Global perspectives Edited by Debjani Ganguly and John Docker 47 The Quest for Gentility in China Negotiations beyond gender and class Edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr

The Quest for Gentility in China Negotiations beyond gender and class Edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Editorial selection and matter, Daria Berg and Chloë Starr; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The quest for gentility in China : negotiations beyond gender and class / edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr. p. cm. – (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia : 47) “First published 2006 by Routledge … Abingdon Oxon … ” “Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge. ” Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. China–Social life and customs–9601644. 2. China–Social life and customs–1644-1912. 3. China–Social life and customs–1912-1949. 4. Gentry–China–Conduct of life–History. I. Berg, Daria, 1964– II. Chloë, 1971- DS753.2.Q47 2007 302.0951–dc22 ISBN13: 978–0–415–43586–4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–93823–2 (ebk) ISBN 0-203-93823-2 Master e-book ISBN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Contents List of fi gures ix Contributors x Acknowledgements xiii Preface xv The quest for gentility in China: an introduction 1 CHLOË STARR AND DARIA BERG PART I Event 19 1 Gentility in transition: travels, novels, and the new guixiu 21 ELLEN WIDMER 2 Washing the wutong tree: garden culture as an expression of women’s gentility in the late Ming 45 ALISON HARDIE 3 Gentility in a Shanghai literary salon of the 1930s 58 MICHEL HOCKX 4 Negotiating gentility: the Banana Garden poetry club in seventeenth-century China 73 DARIA BERG PART II Refl ection 95 5 Female gentility in transition and transmission: mother–daughter ties in Ming/Qing China 97 PING-CHEN HSIUNG

viii Contents 6 Virtuous surrogates: moral action and substitution in the case of Yang Jisheng 117 KENNETH J. HAMMOND 7 Sartorial modesty and genteel ideals in the late Ming 134 SARAH DAUNCEY 8 The aspirant genteel: the courtesan and her image problem 155 CHLOË STARR PART III Transmission 177 9 Textbooks on an aesthetic life in late Ming China 179 YASUSHI ÔKI 10 Searching for gentility: the nineteenth-century fashion for the late Ming 188 ANNE GERRITSEN 11 In spite of gentility: women and men in Linglong (Elegance), a 1930s women’s magazine 208 BARBARA MITTLER 12 The Chinese gentlewoman in the public gaze: Ling Shuhua in twentieth-century China and Britain 235 JEESOON HONG Glossary 253 Bibliography 270 Index 286

Figures 7.1 ‘A painting of Wu Lingchun’ 141 7.2 ‘A true likeness of concubine Dong’ 142 7.3 ‘Ms Ji refuses money’ 144 11.1 ‘Frightening woman’ 209 11.2 ‘On how not to kiss’ 210 11.3 ‘I have just arrived, too’ 216 11.4 ‘Comparing the two sides’ 218 11.5 ‘Men and babies’ 219 11.6 ‘Courageous fi re(wo)man’ 220 11.7 ‘Cannibal’ 221 11.8 ‘How men would like women to be’ 223 11.9 ‘The brutality and false nature of men’ 224 11.10 ‘Who is playing with whom?’ 228

Contributors Daria Berg is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and has published extensively on Chinese cultural history and literature. She received her doctorate in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford in 1995. Her monograph Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan was published by Brill in 2002 and she is editor of Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse – Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge (Leiden: Brill, 2007). She is currently working on consumer culture and cyberspace in contemporary China. Sarah Dauncey completed her doctorate on the Ming novel Jin Ping Mei at the University of Durham in 2000. Since then she has held a lectureship in Chinese Studies at the University of Sheffi eld and has published on material culture and female relationships in late imperial China. More recently she has turned to researching the representation of disability in modern and contemporary Chinese culture, and has published on the rise of Chinese fi lms about disability. Anne Gerritsen is Associate Professor of History at Warwick University. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in 2001. Her monograph, a study of the religious culture of Ji’an prefecture in Jiangxi province from 1100 to 1600, was published by Brill in 2007. She has also published on male friendship in Yuan-Ming China, and on the cult of Kang Wang. Kenneth J. Hammond is Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at New Mexico State University. He received his PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. Specializing in the cultural and political history of the Ming dynasty, his current research and writing projects include a biographical study of the sixteenth-century scholar-offi cial Yang Jisheng, and a set of annotated translations of texts on gardens in Luoyang and Nanjing. Alison Hardie took a fi rst-class degree in Chinese from Edinburgh University before working in business in China and Hong Kong for sixteen years. On her return to the UK she completed a PhD at Sussex University in garden design in the late Ming, and then took up a post at Newcastle University. Since 2006

Contributors xi she has been a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. Her translation of Ji Cheng’s important text on garden design, Yuanye (The Craft of Gardens), was published by Yale University Press in 1988. Her main research interest is the social and cultural history of early modern China, and she is currently working on issues of identity in the life and work of Ruan Dacheng. Michel Hockx (PhD Leiden 1994) is Professor of Chinese at SOAS, University of London. He researches modern Chinese literature and poetry. His recent publications include Questions of Style: Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China (Leiden: Brill, 2003) and Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary Theory (edited with Ivo Smits, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Jeesoon Hong has recently completed her doctorate at Cambridge University, where she also teaches Korean. Her dissertation, entitled ‘Gendered modernism in twentieth-century China: Lu Yin, Ling Shuhua and Zhang Ailing’ considered a reconfi guration of modernist traditions in Chinese literature and culture, focusing on the modernist practices of female writers. Ping-chen Hsiung took her PhD in History at Brown University and MS in Public Health at Harvard University. She is currently Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taibei. Her research interests focus on the social and cultural history of early modern China, particularly the history of childhood, youth and health issues in early modern China. Major publications include A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Refl ections on Childhood in the Past – A History of Chinese Children (Taibei: Rye Field, 2000); and Yu-yu: Infant Care in Traditional China (Taibei: Lianjing, 1995). Barbara Mittler is Professor of Chinese and Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg. She received her PhD from Heidelberg in 1994, and published her dissertation as Dangerous Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China since 1949 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997). Her Habilitation volume considers the press in nineteenth-century Shanghai, and is entitled A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai’s News-Media, 1872–1912 (Harvard University Press, 2002). She is currently fi nishing a volume on Cultural Revolution culture. Yasushi Ōki received his doctorate in literature from Tokyo University in 1998. He is currently Associate Professor at The Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. His research focus is Chinese literature in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and he has written on publishing culture in the late Ming Jiangnan region. Chloë Starr is departmental lecturer in classical Chinese at the University of Oxford. Her DPhil thesis (Oxford, 2000) was on nineteenth-century fi ction,

xii Contributors and she has published a volume on the topic, Red-light Novels of the late Qing (Brill, 2007). She has also worked on Qing religious texts, and is editor of a collection entitled Reading Christian Scripture in China (T&T Clark, 2008). Ellen Widmer received her doctorate from Harvard in 1981. She is Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of East Asian Studies at Wellesley College. Her current research interests are late-Ming literature, late-Qing literature, nineteenth- century women and fi ction, and missionaries and Christian colleges. She has edited four conference volumes and has published two monographs: The Margins of Utopia: Shui-hu hou-chuan and the Literature of Ming Loyalism and The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China.

Acknowledgements It is a great pleasure to see this book take shape and to acknowledge the initial debt this project has to Professor David Faure. Professor Faure stressed in many conversations during our time at Oxford that the quest for gentility in China merited further exploration and that the concept of gentility would be found at the root of many other issues in Chinese culture and history. We would also like to express our gratitude to all the contributors to this volume for their cooperation, for sharing our enthusiasm, and for venturing with us across traditional disciplinary boundaries into uncharted territory. We debated the theme of gentility at an interdisciplinary international conference on ‘Perceptions of Gentility in Chinese Literature and History’ at the University of Durham in March 2002. The discussants at this conference, Professors Glen Dudbridge, Harriet Zurndorfer, Katherine Carlitz and Mr Don Starr, provided invaluable comments, ideas and stimulation for further debate and research. Each paper benefi ted from their insights and suggestions. In particular Professor Dudbridge’s comments on the intellectual, philosophical and literary origins of gentility in ancient and medieval China helped sharpen the focus as we drafted the Introduction and shaped the manuscript. Apart from the contributors to this volume, other participants at the conference who made signifi cant contributions to the debate on gentility in late imperial and modern China include Professors Luo Suwen, Tang Lixing, Achim Mittag, Dr Andrew Lo, and Mr Joseph Poon. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer for constructive comments. Research for this project was in part supported by a fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust awarded to Daria Berg. The British Academy, the Universities’ China Committee London, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation provided grants to support the conference at Durham and the production of this book. Mr Starr helped provide a supportive work environment during the initial gestation period of this project at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Durham. We would also like to thank Peter Sowden, our editor at Routledge, for his knowledgeable support during the production process and his team, including Tom Bates, for editorial guidance. Mohammed Shafi ullah provided intellectual, practical, and emotional support that helped keep the project going over the years.

xiv Acknowledgements The picture on the front cover, a section from a set of twelve screen paintings by anonymous court artists, ‘Twelve Beauties at Leisure Painted for Prince Yinzhen, the Future Yongzheng Emperor’, late Kangxi period (between 1709 and 1723), in ink and colour on silk, 184 × 98 cm, Palace Museum Beijing Gu6458, and also Figures 7.1 and 7.2 have been reproduced with the kind permission of The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 7.3 has been reproduced with permission of Shanghai guji Publishing House. Parts of Chapter 3 by Michel Hockx contain a revised version of material published in Michel Hockx, Questions of Style: Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China, 1911–1937 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), reprinted with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV. Portions of Chapter 1 by Ellen Widmer were published in the following two places: Ellen Widmer, ‘Infl ecting Gender: Zhan Kai/Siqi zhai’s “New Novels” and Courtesan Sketches,’ Nan Nü 6.1 (2004): 136–68; Ellen Widmer, ‘Foreign Travel through a Woman’s Eyes: Shan Shili’s Guimao lüxing ji in Local and Global Perspective’, Journal of Asian Studies, 65(4) (2006): 763–91.

Preface Gentility denotes the way of the gentleman and gentlewoman. It describes the perceptions, social aspirations and cultural ideals that the image of the gentleman or gentlewoman evokes. The concept of gentility transcends the categories of gender and class by probing beyond: this volume analyzes social and cultural aspirations both in traditional and modern China. This concept has its roots in ancient Chinese thought and has shaped Chinese ideals, aspirations and ambitions until the present day. This volume is concerned with the exploration of perceptions of gentility in both modern China and the late imperial period, in particular the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) eras. In the context of late imperial China, the concept of gentility relates to attributes that mark the status of gentlefolk, i.e. the literati and scholar-offi cials (shidafu) and gentlewomen (shunü, guixiu), offi ce holders and their descendants legally distinguished from the commoner (liang) people. The focus on gentility presents a different way of looking at Chinese sources. It breaks new ground in providing the modern reader with new insights into the ways Chinese men and women lived their lives, perceived their world and constructed their cultural environment. The period under investigation in this volume extends from around 1500 to 2000, showing how the notion of gentility has evolved and retained its relevance from imperial times until the end of the twentieth century. This volume brings together twelve contributions by scholars from the US, Europe and East Asia who show how the focus on gentility crosses the traditional boundaries between disciplines, changing the ways we look at aspects of Chinese cultural history, literature, and gender, while offering new perspectives. The contributions in this volume rethink the uses of orthodox sources, tap into unoffi cial materials as well as the offi cially recognized cultural output in imperial and modern China, and call into question the classifi cation into conventional schemes and analytical categories. In this sense, the book presents an interdisciplinary forum that invites the modern reader to take a new look at China’s past and present and see beyond the traditional confi nes of more conventional approaches to Chinese sources and the cultural discourse. The contributors to this volume, too, follow in the footsteps of the circles of Chinese writers who gathered to celebrate and

xvi Preface exchange their ideas from the time of Wang Xizhe and his friends in the fourth century, and the Banana Garden poets of the early Qing period, to the twentieth- century literary salons, endeavouring to present new ways of defi ning culture and looking at their world. Daria Berg and Chloë Starr

The quest for gentility in China An introduction Chloë Starr and Daria Berg In the ninth year of the Yonghe reign of Emperor Mu, in 353 AD, a group of friends out on a late spring excursion met up in a pavilion in the mountains, near the town of Kuaiji. They sat admiring the scenery, breathing in the fresh air, laughing, drinking and reminiscing together, then composed poems to mark the occasion and celebrate their friendship. This brief trip into the countryside left a remarkably profound legacy in China, expressing and shaping the contours of a genteel ideal for dynasties to come. The friends’ picnic was both event and record: enjoying the scenery and convivial company, refl ecting on that enjoyment, and transmitting a record of both processes for the next generation. Wang Xizhi’s famed ‘Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection’ describes the excursion and introduces the collection of poems that his friends, including Xie An and Sun Chuo, wrote to mark the trip. It is not the event, nor the description, however, that have made the greatest impact, but the material artefact recording the event: Wang’s preface is recognized as a masterpiece of running script calligraphy, and Wang is looked to as one of the greatest calligraphers in Chinese history. The trip to the pavilion, the record, and the artefact together begin to give some pointers towards the concept of gentility. The elevated language of Wang’s prose, the pictorial aesthetic of the scene, and the sentiments of those present all reinforce the genteel epitome. Wang Xizhi was, as it happens, from one of the great clans of the Jin dynasty. He held both civil and military offi ce during his career, and is renowned for his statesmanship as well as literary and calligraphic pursuits. The microcosm of this spring gathering brings out an aspect germane to notions of gentility: the status, education and background of individuals. The friends had gathered at the time of the spring rite of purifi cation; and the cathartic function of the outing is echoed symbolically in the description of streams and rapids and the tall bamboos, washing away defi lement and cultivating moral good. Having withdrawn to the refuge of the mountains, emotions and intellect are fully engaged: the companionship of qun xian, a group of like-minded worthies, is the setting for celebration of an extraordinary harmony between humans and nature. To a backdrop of lofty mountains and fresh breeze, a goblet is fl oated on water and poetry spontaneously recited at each resting point. As the ear and eye are delighted, the correlation between the heavens and material things on earth is

2 Chloë Starr and Daria Berg apparent, as Wang looks up to the great universe, and down towards the categories of the world. The heightening of emotion and sense of the connectedness of phenomena provokes a tone of elegiac lament, as the weight of life and death suffuses the friends’ awareness of the moment. In their verse, they attempt to capture the traces of these emotions. The act of writing transmits text, values and self, passed on ‘as if speaking face to face’ across the generations. The cosmic and the particular are brought together. Wen, literary patterning, is both the mode of transmission and the quality of the writing, provoking a spiritual resonance in readers. As the friends refl ect together on their gathering in the light of the ancients’ records of similar gatherings, a series of paradoxes strikes: the conjunction of the ephemeral and the lasting, self and others, enlightenment and the inexplicable. Life, death and immortality are a lie, a paradox. In writing and recording, the friends take part in an ongoing transmission of sentiment, aligning themselves with the ancients, drawing on and re-creating the same emotions. Several of the essays in this volume on gentility take the circumstances of literary gatherings as their theme: enthusiastic writers self-consciously relating to the tradition of Wang Xizhi’s early gathering, to its commemoration of sentiment and celebration of those present. Other essays trace the act of enjoyment itself – the refi nement of pleasure in one’s garden, for example – while others address the exquisite material record as the site of celebration. The motif of aligning oneself with noteworthy fi gures – by actions, words, or possessions – is a recurrent theme, as is refl ection on the moral preoccupation of recording and transmitting. The theme of self-cultivation and of inner rectitude links Wang Xizhi and his friends back with an older tradition, on which later would-be genteel draw: that of the junzi. The term is often translated as ‘gentleman’, but with wider connotations than a class-bound English version. The junzi was a man of virtue who practised self-cultivation, honing his moral personality to bring tranquillity to all.1 These two aspects – the moral perfecting of the self, and the ordering of family and society – endure as Confucian ideals from the time of the Master through until the late Qing. Prior to Confucius, the term junzi referred to one’s social status, but the sage made an important amendment. As Raymond Dawson writes, ‘A man could be a gentleman without benefi t of high birth, so in the Analects, as in our use of “gentlemen,” chün-tzu implied either superior social status or superior moral accomplishment or both.’2 Later commentators, even when birth no longer governed aspiration to such a degree, would make much of the sense that one could be fi t for offi ce without attaining it. If the junzi was the embodiment of the ideal male, explanations of the term that run through the Analects (and likewise that of the da ren, or ‘great man’ in Mencius) are worth pondering, since subsequent writings on the élite, and what is good, worthy and noble in a person stand in apposition to this text, studied by all educated Chinese. The junzi was a generalist rather than a specialist, skilled in leadership by dint of his well-rounded morals; moreover, he did not care if others did not recognize his worth (Analects 1.1) but delighted in values for their own sake. The sense of virtue being its own reward recurs throughout

The quest for gentility in China 3 the Analects; the junzi is not cowed by others’ opinions; he ‘does not worry that he has no status, he worries about the means by which he obtains status; he does not worry that no-one knows of him, but seeks rather to be worthy to be known. (4.14). In food, he does not seek to gratify his appetite, and in living does not seek for ease (1.14); careful of speech, he is cheerful even when poor, and obeisant to ritual even when rich. The junzi was not an instrument of others, a utensil (2.12), but was ‘sociable, but not a partisan’ (15.21).3 Benevolence was his trade mark. Four virtues that Confucius ascribes to his disciple Zichen, and commends as characteristic of the junzi, are care in deportment; respect in affairs; quick-wittedness in nurturing others and righteousness in serving others. While the concept of gentility may be used to trace changing aspects of the role and regard of the junzi, some traits remain constant. Of these, the high moral perfection of benevolence remains strong in late imperial values. As late as 1898 the radical thinker Liang Qichao penned a courtesy preface to his friend Tan Sitong’s Ren xue (Exposition on Benevolence).4 As the paragraph above highlights, many of the qualities that a junzi nurtures are interior ones, and this points to one of the strengths and weaknesses of a study of gentility. Values which are internal have to be perceived and ascribed by others; when expressed and externalized they are in danger of being fl aunted and destroyed in the process. Gentility, unlike other discourses, attempts to describe or quantify these interior perspectives, opening itself up to the possibility of generalizing on the basis of the specifi c, or giving too much weight to the ephemeral. The importance of interior development and moral righteousness in Chinese cultural discourse can been seen in the parallel tendency throughout imperial history to valorize the arts and intellectual accomplishments over any practical skills – whether engineering, mercantile or scientifi c, with the possible exception of the military – well documented in studies of status. The roots of this may be traced back to the Analects’ view of the junzi. While Confucian rationale placed state service as the goal of every right- minded male, and Confucian norms are prominent in any discussions of value, the theme of veiled, or unperceived goodness, independent of its recognition by the conferral of honours or offi ce, fi nds echoes in other traditions, particularly Daoism. Here, the fi gure of the recluse, shunning offi ce out of a sense of higher call, fi nds numerous exemplars. Those who have reneged on traditional markers of the élite, or who have refused power or the trappings of power, can also be genteel (though they might not be élite): admired, set forth as models, and invested with a sense of worth. The tradition of Zhuangzi, the morally worthy one outside of state systems of power or prestige, fi nds a place in the Chinese psyche alongside more socially-minded philosophic colleagues. This volume argues that there are important differences between the categories of ‘gentility’ and ‘élite’. At one level, gentility describes the changing attributes of the élite, those characteristics which make the élite élite, but the term is not limited to these. Questions of ‘real’ status, whether termed ‘aristocracy’ in earlier dynasties, or ‘élite’ when state-sponsored examinations conferred power from the centre, have been discussed by historians and scholars of China for centuries. The