Oracle Bones (79 page)

I am grateful to William Jefferson Foster, who helped me interview his parents and relatives about the oral history of Number Ten Village.

“The Overnight City”

For the history of Shenzhen and China’s Special Economic Zone strategy:

Reardon, Lawrence C.
The Reluctant Dragon: Crisis Cycles in Chinese Foreign Economic Policy
. Seattle: University of Washington Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2002.

———. “The Rise and Decline of China’s Export Processing Zones.”
The Journal of Contemporary China
5 (November 1996): 281-303.

“Hollywood”

For background on contemporary Uighur culture and the class system:

Rudelson, Justin Jon.
Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China’s Silk Road
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

For background on Falun Gong and the government crackdown:

Johnson, Ian.
Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China
. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.

“The Voice of the Turtle”

For the history of Chinese archaeology, the Anyang excavations, and the early oracle-bone scholars:

Bonner, Joey.
Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Lawton, Thomas. “A Time of Transition: Tuan-fang, 1861-1911.”
The Franklin D. Murphy Lectures XII
. Lawrence, Kansas: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1991.

Li Chi.
Anyang: A Chronicle of the Discovery, Excavation, and Reconstruction of the Ancient Capital of the Shang Dynasty
. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.

Liu E.
The Travels of Lao Can
. University Press of the Pacific, 2001.

Trigger, Bruce G.
A History of Archaeological Thought
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

For background on Shang culture and the oracle-bone inscriptions:

Chang Kwang-chih.
Shang Civilization
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

Keightley, David N.
The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045
B.C
.)
. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Press, 2000.

———.
Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Loewe, Michael and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds.
The Cambridge History of China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221
B.C
.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

“At Night You’re Not Lonely”

Miao Yong.
Wode Shenghuo Yu Ni Wu Guan
. Guangzhou: Huacheng Chubanshe, 1998.

“The Courtyard”

For background on the history of Beijing and the destruction of the old city, I relied on Ian Johnson’s
Wild Grass
, as well as:

Wang Jun.
Chengji
. Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2003.

For background on Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin:

Fairbank, Wilma.
Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China’s Architectural Past
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

“Bronze Heads”

Bagley, Robert, ed.
Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization
. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press, 2001.

———. “Shang Archaeology.”
The Cambridge History of China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221
B.C
.
Edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Von Falkenhausen, Lothar. “On the Historiographical Orientation of Chinese Archaeology.”
Antiquity
67 (1993): 839-49.

“The Book”

Chen Mengjia.
Yin Xu Buci Zong Shu
. Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1956.

Kaogusuo, bianji.
Mei Diguo Zhuyi Jieluede Wo Guo Yin Zhou Tongqi Tulu
. Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1962.

Paper, Jordan. “The Meaning of the ‘T’ao-T’ieh’.”
History of Religions
18 (1978): 18-41.

Wu Ningkun.
A Single Tear: A Family’s Persecution, Love, and Endurance in Communist China.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993.

“The Uncracked Bone”

Chen Mengjia’s poetry has not been published in English. I am deeply indebted to Frances Feng, who translated many of Chen’s poems so they could be reprinted in this book. All of my quotes are from Frances Feng’s translations.

Chen’s poems and other writings in the original Chinese may be found in the following sources:

Chen Mengjia.
Chen Mengjia Juan
. Wuhan: Changjiang Wenyi Chubanshe, 1988.

Chen Mengjia.
Tie Ma Ji
. 1934.

Xin Yue Shi Xuan
. Shanghai: Xin Yue Shudian, 1933.

Elinor Pearlstein of the Art Institute of Chicago researched Chen Mengjia’s years in the United States, visiting the archives of the Rockefeller Foundation and many museums. She generously allowed me to read her manuscript, “Chen Mengjia in the West: Scholarship Realized, Lost, Preserved.” I am indebted to her for many of the details of Chen’s American and European travels. My quotes from Chen’s letter to the Rockefeller Foundation and from Langdon Warner’s letter to Chen are from Elinor Pearlstein’s paper.

I am also grateful to Jason Steuber of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, who provided me with copies of Chen’s letters from 1945, which are in the museum archives in Kansas City.

I also relied on the following Chinese publications:

Wang Shimin. “Chen Mengjia.”
Zhongguo Shixuejia Pingzhuan (Xia Ce)
. Beijing: Zhongguo Guji Chubanshe, 1985.

Zhao Luorui.
Wode Du Shu Shengya
. Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 1996.

For the oracle bones and other aspects of David N. Keightley’s research, I relied on the previously mentioned volumes (
Sources of Shang History
and
The Ancestral Landscape
), as well as the following:

Elvin, Mark.
The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpretation.
Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1973.

Keightley, David N. “Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China.”
Representations
56 (1996): 68-95.

———. “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets: Heroic Action in Early Chinese and Greek Culture.”
Religion and the Authority of the Past
. Edited by Tobin Siebers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

———. “The Making of the Ancestors: Late Shang Religion and Its Legacy.”
Religion and Chinese Society
. Edited by John Lagerwey. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2004.

———. “The Origins of Writing in China: Scripts and Cultural Contexts.”
The Origins of Writing
. Edited by Wayne M. Senner. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

———. “Shamanism, Death, and the Ancestors: Religious Mediation in Neolithic and Shang China (ca. 5000-1000
B
.
C
.).”
Asiatische Studien Études Asiatiques
LII.3 (1998): 763-831.

———. “What Did Make the Chinese ‘Chinese’?: Musings of a Would-Be Geographical Determinist.” Warring States Working Group, Amherst, Massachusetts. 8 October 2000.

“The Games”

Bredon, Juliet.
Peking
. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1920.

Chinese Olympic Committee, eds.
5,000 Years of Physical Culture & Sports in China
. Beijing: Beijing Physical Education University, 1996.

Jennings, Andrew.
The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Senn, Alfred E.
Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games: A History of the Power Brokers, Events, and Controversies That Shaped the Games
. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1999.

“The Word”

Lewis, Mark Edward.
Writing and Authority in Early China
. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Takashima, Ken-ichi. “A Cosmography of Shang Oracle-Bone Graphs.”
Actes du Colloque International Commémorant le Centenaire de la Découverte des Inscriptions sur Os et Carapaces
. Edited by S. C. Yau. Paris: Cenre Recherche Linguistiques sur l’Asia Orientale, 2001.

“Translation”

Chuang Tzu.
Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu
. Translated by Victor H. Mair. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.

“The Horse”

Hadingham, Evan. “The Mummies of Xinjiang.”
Discover
April 1994: 68-77. (A condensed version of Hadingham’s article was subsequently published in
Reader’s Digest
, August 1994)

Mair, Victor H., ed.
The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia: Volume I
. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications, 1998.

———. “The Horse in Late Prehistoric China: Wresting Culture and Control from the ‘Barbarians.’”
Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse
. Edited by Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003.

———. “Mummies of the Tarim Basin.”
Archaeology
March/April 1995: 28-35.

———. “The North(west)ern Peoples and the Recurrent Origins of the ‘Chinese’ State.”
The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China.
Edited by Joshua A. Fogel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

———. “Prehistoric Caucasoid Corpses of the Tarim Basin.”
The Journal of Indo-European Studies
23 (1995): 281-307.

Wang Binghua.
The Ancient Corpses of Xinjiang: The Peoples of Ancient Xinjiang and Their Culture
. Translated by Victor H. Mair. Urumqi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1999.

“Wonton Western”

For Jiang Wen’s role in the Chinese intellectual climate of the early 1990s:

Barmé, Geremie R.
In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

“Election”

Shih Chang-ju, with the assistance of Liu Hsiu-wen, Feng Jong-meei, and Lai Shu-li.
Hou Chia Chuang (The Yin-Shang Cemetery Site at Anyang, Honan): Volume X: Descriptions of Small Tombs: One
. Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 2001.

The following book, whose title translates as, “The Returned Swan: Memoirs of an Intelligence Agent Who Worked Behind Enemy Lines,” tells the story of Jacky Lin’s father:

Lin Kunrong.
Gui Hong: Yige Dihou Qingbaoyuan de Huiyi
. Taipei: Renjian Chubanshe, 1989.

“The Criticism”

Li Xueqin. “Ping Chen Mengjia
Yin Xu Buci Zong Shu
.”
Kaogu Xuebao
Di San Qi (1957): 119-29.

Wang Shixiang.
Classic Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties
. Translated by Sarah Handler and Wang Shixiang. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2000.

———. “In Memory of Mengjia.”
Journal of the Classical Chinese Furniture Society
Summer (1991): 70-72.

“The Lost Alphabets”

For background on the Chinese spoken languages, the writing system, and the reform movement:

Boltz, William G. “Language and Writing.”
The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221
B.C.
Edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

———.
The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System
. New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 1994.

DeFrancis, John. “China’s Literary Renaissance: A Reassessment.”
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
17.4 (Oct.-Dec. 1985): 52-63.

———.
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy
. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

———. “Language and Script Reform.”
Current Trends in Linguistics: Linguistics in East Asia and South East Asia
. Edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton, 1967.

———. “Mao Tse-tung and Writing Reform.”
Perspectives on a Changing China
. Edited by Joshua A. Fogel and William T. Rowe. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979.

———.
Nationalism and Language Reform in China
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.

Mair, Victor H. “Review of
The Representations of Cantonese with Chinese Characters
by Cheung Kwan-hin and Robert S. Bauer.”
Journal of Chinese Linguistics
32.1 (2002): 157-67.