Fulbright University Vietnam
© 2025 Korea University Institute for Sinographic Literatures and Philology
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1) David Marr, “The Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc” in Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971), pp.156-184.
5) Vũ Đức Bằng, “Tonkin Free School Movement 1907–1908” (1973), op.cit., 30-95; see also National Archives of Japan, “Đông Du – A Political Movement to Gain Education from Japan” (2013) accessible at https://shorturl.at/Pobnw. In his doctoral dissertation titled “The Vietnam Independent Education Movement (1900-1908)” (University of California, Los Angeles, 1971)81-104, Vũ also reserves a chapter called “The Dong Kinh Free School” to discuss the school in its socio-political, cultural and economic contexts of the time.
11) Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, Bức thư bí mật của cụ Huỳnh Thúc Kháng trả lời cụ Kỳ Ngoại Hầu Cường Để năm 1943 (The secret letter from Huỳnh Thúc Kháng in response to Kỳ Ngoại Hầu Cường Để in 1943), (Huế: Anh Minh, 1957), p.36.
12) This is, in fact, Yan Fu’s 嚴復 Chinese translation of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, first published in 1903.
14) Nguyễn Hiến Lê, Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục, 2nd edition, (Saigon: Lá Bối, 1968), “Preface” for the second edition, no page numbers.
16) Vũ Đức Bằng, “Đại học tư lập đầu tiên tại Việt Nam hiện đại” (The First Private University in Modern Vietnam), Tư tưởng, 12 (1974): 103-115; and 2 (1975): 142-163.
19) Chương Thâu, Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục và Phong trào cải cách văn hoá đầu thế kỷ XX (Tonkin Free School and the Cultural Reform Movement at the Early 20th Century), (Hanoi: Hà Nội Publishing House, 1982), p.24: “Tân Thư is a rather broad term referring to books that contain new knowledge/learning (tân học), as opposed to the old knowledge/learning (cựu học) found in Confucian classics. (...) Most of these books were translations of Western works. In some cases, they were not translated directly from Western languages but through Japanese. Sometimes, only the fundamental ideas were summarized, with the primary goal being to introduce “Western civilization,” highlight its features, and promote imitation and reform. Thus, New Books became closely associated with reformist and modernization movements influenced by Western bourgeois thought in late 19th-century China. (...) These new books and newspapers had a profound impact on many patriotic intellectuals of the time. (...) It can be said that most of the Vietnamese patriots who later became key figures in movements such as the Duy Tân [Modernization Movement], Đông Du [Go East Movement], and Tonkin Free School were, in their early years, to some extent ‘enlightened’ by these passionate literary and poetic works.” This work is reprinted in Chương Thâu, Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục và Văn thơ Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục(Hanoi: Hà Nội Publishing House, 2010): vol. 1, pp.29-164.
20) Ibid., pp.8-9: “The issue of the Tonkin Free School received significantly more attention from researchers in socialist North Vietnam than in the South. (...) Through discussions, historians reached a consensus on several key points: the organization and leadership of the movement were led by progressive patriotic Confucian scholars, often referred to as ‘Confucian scholars in the process of bourgeois transformation.’ The movement itself was characterized as having a bourgeois (national democratic) nature, though it was not entirely radical.”
22) Nguyễn Nam, “Traveling Knowledge: Publications from Japan and China in Early Twentieth-Century Vietnam” in Japanese Studies Around the World 世界の日本研究 (2021): 10–27.
23) Nguyễn Nam, “Traveling Ethics Textbooks in East Asia at the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Centuries” 「19 世紀末から 20 世紀初頭にかけて東アジアの旅行倫理教科書」, 『上智大学教育学論集』51 (March 2017): 67-78.
24) Nguyễn Nam, “Thiên hạ vi công: Đọc lại Tân đính Luân lý Giáo khoa thư trên bối cảnh Đông Á đầu thế kỷ 20” (All under Heaven Belongs to the Public: Rereading Tân đính luân lý giáo khoa thư 新訂倫理教科書 in the East Asian Context of the Early Twentieth Century), Tạp chí Nghiên cứu và Phát triển (Journal of Research and Development), vol. 5, 122 (2015): 121-141.
25) Traveling in place: This concept closely aligns with ngoạ du 臥遊, which can be understood as a type of imagined travel. When physical travel is not possible, one can experience distant places vicariously through paintings, travelogues, pictures, and other materials. This expression is notably employed in the VMTHS.
26) Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, L. S. Roudiez, ed., T. Gora, A. Jardine, & L. S. Roudiez, trans., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024), p.64.
28) Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign” in L. Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), p.287.
29) Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond, rev. ed., (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2012), pp.76-77.
30) Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (London: Routledge, 1995), p.17.
32) Trần Huy Liệu’s Lịch sử tám mươi năm chống Pháp (History of Eighty Years of Resistance Against the French), (Hanoi: Ban Nghiên cứu Văn Sử Địa, 1956) has a chapter titled “Tonkin Free School thành lập và Ảnh hưởng của nó” (The Establishment of Tonkin Free School and Its Impacts) that is based on the 1936 unpublished manuscript (p.142, note 3). In his manuscript’s preface written in Hanoi in 1957, Hoa Bằng recalls, “To write about Tonkin Free School, including its history, literature, and key figures, since 1936, in addition to collecting documents from books and newspapers, I also sought out and inquired directly with key individuals who had founded or participated in Tonkin Free School, such as Lê Đại, Hoàng Tăng Bí, Nguyễn Hữu Cầu, and Đàm Xuyên Nguyễn Phan Lãng, among others. // By 1945, having gathered a relatively complete set of materials, I compiled them into a book titled Tonkin Free School, under the pen name Mai Lâm. However, before I could publish it, war broke out, and as a result, both the manuscript and its author were each swept away in different directions by the tide of events. // Twelve years have passed. Over time, I have continued to collect more materials. Now, in order to contribute to the available references on Vietnamese modern history and literature, I have revised and published this book, Tonkin Free School, hoping to receive constructive feedback from dear friends near and far.”
34) “A New Method to Study Civilization” in Trương Bửu Lâm, Colonialism Experienced – Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (MI: University of Michigan, 2000), pp.141-156; and Jayne Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, trans., Tonkin Free School, “A Civilization of Learning” in George E. Dutton, Jayne S. Werner, and John K. Whitmore, eds., Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp.369-375.
36) George E. Dutton, Jayne S. Werner, and John K. Whitmore, eds., Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, p.369.
37) Here is an example. When discussing civil service examination reforms in Vietnam, the VMTHS employs the phrase mại tính chi vi 賣姓之圍. Based on Đặng Thai Mai’s Vietnamese translation, Trương Bửu Lâm renders it as “selling your name,” explaining that students often took examinations on behalf of others—a phenomenon referred to as “selling one’s name.” Another form of this practice involved cheating on the exam (p.155, note 13). In contrast, Jayne Werner and Lưu Doãn Huỳnh omit the phrase in their translation. Both extant woodblock-printed and handwritten copies of VMTHS contain the character vi/wei 圍, which may be an alternative form of 闈, meaning “doors of the palace.” This character frequently appears in terms related to the civil service examination. Notably, Giles’ English-Chinese Dictionary records weixing 闈姓 as “examination names, a form of lottery on the names of successful competitors.” This refers to a popular betting pool in China, in which people wagered on the surnames of top scorers in local and national examinations (weixing 闈姓) (Koos Kuiper, 2017). The Early Dutch Sinologists (1854-1900): Training in Holland and China, Functions in the Netherlands Indies (2 vols.), (Leiden; Boston: Brill), vol. 2, p.856, note 5. This practice lasted for several decades but ended with the abolition of the civil service examination in China in 1905. Reports on such betting pools appeared in Chinese newspapers, which may have been imported and circulated in Vietnam. The VMTHS likely cited this phenomenon as a striking example to critique the outdated civil service examination system in both China and Vietnam. Given this context, mại tính chi vi should be translated as “the Palace doors of ‘selling names.’”
38) All citations in this section are from Anonymous, Văn Minh Tân Học Sách 文明新學策—New Learning Strategies for the Advancement of Civilization, 1904 (New Annotated Translation), translated and annotated by Nguyễn Nam, Nichibunken (International Research Center for Japanese Studies), 2021. It is translated directly from the woodblock-printed text reproduced in Chương Thâu (2010). Tonkin Free School và Văn thơ Tonkin Free School (The Tonkin Free School and Its Prose and Poetry), op. cit., vol. 1: 203-242. The Chinese origin of the citation reads, 文明美名也非粉飭可以致之文明諸學辛福也非旦夕可以得之 (205). The numbers in the special brackets 【 】refer to the English translation’s numbering on the same text.
42) From silk and satin, cotton and felt, cloth and brocade, shoes and socks, handkerchiefs, eye glasses, umbrellas 把遮傘, petrol 燈火油, porcelain, crystals, enamel, watches 鐘錶, barometers 風雨針, thermometers 寒暑表, telephones 德律風, microscopes 顯微鏡, photos 炤相片 to stationaries, cinnabar ink, needles and threads, buttons, pigments, 【2b】 soap, perfume 花露, matches, steamed bread, candies, medicines, cigarettes 巴菰煙, opium 芙蓉烟, tea, wine, all kinds of commodities are purchased either from the North (China) or from the West (France): 綢緞絨壇布帛鞋韈手巾眼鏡把遮傘燈火油磁器玻璃琺壚鍾錶風雨針寒暑表德律風顯微鏡炤相片以及避險筆箋硃墨緘線鈕釦顏料肥皂花露燐鑽镘頭糕糖菓品藥材巴菰炯芙蓉炯茶酒諸貨項不購之北則資之西. (207-208).
59) See John DeFrancis, “First Chinese Reformers” in The Chinese Language – Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), pp.242-243.
60) Elisabeth Kaske, The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895-1919, (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), p.251: “However, a closer look shows that given the limited time allocated to the teaching of Chinese, which was obviously insufficient also to learn writing in the literary language, educators were in fact taking recourse to a double language standard—literary reading vs. vernacular writing.”
61) Sun Jiahui 孙佳慧, “Letters of Revolution: The Failed Movement to Eradicate Chinese Characters,” The World of Chinese (2024), https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2024/05/the-failed-movement-to-eradicate-chinese-characters/
62) In his Riben shumuzhi 日本書目志 (Catalogue of Japanese Books), (Shanghai: Datong yishuju 大通譯書局, ca. 1897), Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858-1927) describes Japan’s writing system as follows, “’Japanese script looks like ours but slightly mixed with Kūkai’s 空海thirteen-iroha script 日本文字猶吾文字也但稍雜空海之伊呂波十之三耳.’ Kūkai (also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi 弘法大師, 774–835) was the founder of the Esoteric Shingon 真言 (mantra) school of Buddhism in Japan. According to Ryūichi Abe, ‘Kūkai was also said to have invented kana, the Japanese phonetic orthography, and the Iroha, the kana syllabary. In the Iroha table, the kana letters are arranged in such a manner as to form a waka that plainly expresses the Buddhist principle of emptiness.’” Ryūichi Abe, The Weaving of Mantra – Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p.3.
66) This may be another name for Wu dazhou tushuo 五大洲圖說 by Ai Rulue 艾儒略 (Giulio Alenio), edited by Qian Xizuo 錢熙祚, published by Shanghai shuju 上海書局 in 1898.
67) This may be a shorter title of Gujin wanguo gangjian 古今萬國綱鑑 (Singapore: Jianxia shuyuan 堅夏書院, 1838); see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=151372&remap=gb. Although the extant publication has no author’s name printed, it has been attributed to Karl Friedrich Gützlaff (aka. Guoshila 郭實臘, or Guoshili 郭士立, 1803-1851; see Guo Xiuwen 郭秀文, “Dongxiyang kao meiyue tongjizhuan de zhongjiao chuanbo celue《東西洋考每月統記傳》的宗教傳播策略”, Xueshu yanjiu 學術研究, no. 8/2016, p. 114). However, there is another book with a quite similar title, Guojin wanguo gangjianlu 古今萬國綱鑑錄 by Robert Morrison (aka. Molisong 模禮崧, or Malisun 馬禮遜, 1782-1834), as seen in a version of it printed in Japan: Moreishô 模禮崧. Kokon bankoku kōkanroku 古今萬國綱鑒錄, with Japanese guiding marks (kunten 訓点) by Ōtsuki Seishi 大槻誠之, corrected by Yanagisawa Shindai 柳澤信大, Tokyo: Tōsei Kamejirō 東生亀次郎, 1874. Confused by the resemblance of the two titles, some modern scholars consequently identify Gujin wanguo gangjian as Morrison’s work, as in the case of Chou Yu-wen 周愚文, “WanQing jiawuqian zai Hua Zhongwai renshi duiyu Meiguo jiaoyu de jieshao 晚清甲午前在華中外人士對於美國教育的介紹 (The Introduction of American Education by Missionaries and Chinese Officials and Commoners in Late Ch’ing China before 1894), Jiaoyu yanjiu jikan 教育研究集刊/ Bulletin of Educational Research, vol. 65:1 (3/2019): 121.
69) This may be a shorter title of Xixue kaolue 西學考略 by Ding Weiliang 丁韙良 (William Alexander Parsons Martin), Tongwenguan 同文館, 1883.
70) Linhan Chen and Danyan Huang, “Internationalization of Chinese Higher Education,” Higher Education Studies, vol. 3:1 (2013): 94.
71) Masao Watanabe, trans. by Otto Theodor Benfey, The Japanese and Western Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), p.7: After Japan opened its doors in the second half of the nineteenth century, in order to catch up with the West it adopted Western knowledge as well as institutions in one fell swoop. Modern educational institutions were created that began to train their own research and teaching staffs.” (p.6); Japanese scientist Yamagawa Kenjirō (1854-1931) recalls, “In those days there were few schools in Tokyo where foreign texts could be studied. These were the Daigaku-Nankö [the precursor of the University of Tokyo], the Keio Gijuku of Fukuzawa Yukichi, the Döjinsha of Nakamura Masanao in Koishikawa, as well as the Kyökan-Gijuku, which Fukuchi Gen’ichiro had opened in Shitaya.” (p.7).
72) Ibid., pp.1-5, “Introduction: Japan’s Modern Century”; pp.23-40, “Japan Studies of Foreign Teachers in Japan: Investigations of the Magic Mirror”.
73) Shigeru Nakayama, “Independence and Choice: Western Impacts on Japanese Higher Education,” Higher Education, vol. 18: 1 (1989), From Dependency to Autonomy: The Development of Asian Universities (1989): 31-48.
76) In 1904, Zheng Guangong selected humorous writings and traditional Chinese telling and singing pieces of art printed in newspapers and periodicals, and published them together in a magazine called Shixie xinji 時諧新集 (New Collection of Contemporary Laughing Matters). One of its main categories is called “Wenjie 文界” (Literary World) divided into a number of sections, of which is the “Hexagram of the Civil Service Examination.” See Li Wanwei 李婉薇, “Qingmo Minchu Yue Gang gemingpai baokan” 清末民初粵港革命派報刊, Wenshi zhishi 文史知識, no. 12 (2012): 31-32.
77) On August 29, 1901, an imperial edict was issued, officially abolishing the eight-legged essay in the civil examinations, “all examination essays whether political discourses (celun 策論) or extrapolation of the Confucian Classics (jingyi 經義) had to be written in unbound non-metrical prose.” Elisabeth Kaske. The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, p.254. The abolition was a critical decision made after several memorials sent to the throne by Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟 and Kang Youwei (ibid., p.85), “signaling that examination questions for the shengyuan degree would now include Western learning (Xixue) as well as Chinese learning (Zhongxue). Moreover, it became clear that at the higher examination levels (for the juren and jinshi degrees) at least one set of policy questions would focus on ‘world politics.’” Richard J. Smith, The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p.393.
78) Liu Haifeng, “Influence of China’s Imperial Examinations on Japan, Korea and Vietnam,” Frontiers of History in China, vol.2:4 (1/2007): 493-512.
80) Both the prefaces for the Society in Beijing and Shanghai by Kang Youwei and Zhang Zhidong respectively do not contain the cited sentence. See “Jingshi qiangxuehui xu 京師強學會序”, Qiangxuebao 強學報, no. 1 (1895); “Shanghai qiangxuehui xu” 上海強學會序, Xinwen bao 新聞報, (December 4, 1895). However, a similar sentence is found in Liang Qichao’s letter addressed to Chen Baozhen 陳寶箴, titled “Lun Hunan yingban zhi shi 論湖南應辦之事” (On What Hunan Should Do). Liang’s sentence reads, “Thus, if we now want to enlighten the people’s mind, we need to enlighten the gentry’s mind; and as we should pass it on to the mandarin force whom we still do not know all, we therefore must enlighten the mandarin’s mind, making it the starting point of everything 即今日欲開民智，開紳 智，而假手於官力者，尚不知凡幾也，故開官智，又為萬事之起點”. The text reads, 欲開民智，先開紳智. (p.221).
82) 四曰皷舞人才彊學會之序曰欲開民智先開紳智此採本之至言也葢民之則傚視紳董後生之觀摩視前輩其耳目固有相關焉者也今書籍正矣試法改矣衹可以待夫數百千萬之侁侁衾纓而通仕籍之承辨行走候補訓教諸員登科册之進仕副榜舉人秀才以及尊生廕生學生諸人猶未有以擴充新聞闡發新理而使之一新不幾於舊界新界两相撞灾乎? (pp.221-222).
83) In the reign of King Gia Long of the Nguyễn Dynasty, the Imperial Academy was founded in Huế in 1803 under the name of Đốc Học Đường 督學堂. It was renamed Quốc Tử Giám 國子監 in March 1820 under the reign of King Minh Mạng. An article by Robert de La Susse, titled “L’Enseignement en Annam” (Education in Annam) printed in Les Annales Coloniales (June 03, 1913), also shows that French education had been introduced in this imperial institution around the time of its publication, “In addition, there is a special third-grade school in Hue called College Quốc Tử Giám. Quốc Tử Giám is the Vietnamese Prytanée; it receives the sons of royal or princely families and the children of the mandarins. There also modernism begins to do its work, and in the pagoda where the young Vietnamese used to learn exclusively the [Chinese] characters, the word of a French master comes today to be heard. The fact that French lessons are not the least assiduously attended is the best proof of the success of our teaching.” (p.2).
85) Kenichi Ohno. “Meiji Japan: Progressive Learning of Western Technology” in Arkebe Oqubay and Kenichi Ohno, eds., How Nations Learn: Technological Learning, Industrial Policy, and Catch-up, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p.91 “On top of all this, education became a national fad from top samurai to commoners. For adults, official and private courses were offered in ancient Chinese literature and philosophy as well as, in later years, Western languages, medicine, and navigation. For children aged roughly seven to thirteen, around twenty thousand unregulated for-profit private primary schools (terakoya) emerged all over Japan where self-appointed teachers taught reading, writing, and arithmetic (abacus) with flexible and individualized curriculums.”.
86) Eddie Guan, “The Domino Effect: Abolishing the Imperial Examination System and the Downfall of the Qing Dynasty,” The National High School Journal of Science (2023): 5-6, accessible at https://nhsjs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/The-Domino-Effect-Abolishing-the-Imperial-Examination-System-and-the-Downfall-of-the-Qing-Dynasty.pdf: “To guarantee a smooth transition from the old to the new system, the Qing government established a reward system for those who were willing to study abroad. The government adopted a set of guidelines proposed by the Viceroy of Huguang Zhang Zhidong: ‘Students who receive a high school diploma or attend school for 8 years will be given the title of “juren” (equivalent to the second rank in Chinese scholar degree standard). Students who receive an undergraduate degree will be given the title of jinshi (equivalent to the first rank).”
88) This account is from the multivolume encyclopedic work titled Lịch Triều Hiến Chương Loại Chí 歷朝憲章類誌 (Categorized Records on Administrative Systems of Successive Dynasties of Vietnam) by Phan Huy Chú 潘輝注 (1782-1840), compiled over ten years (1809-1819).
91) The Agricultural School (“Trường Canh Nông” or “Ecole d’agriculture”) was founded in Hue at the end of 1898 by Emperor Thành Thái’s royal ordonnance. This agricultural school is “certainly among the number of works whose success would contribute the most, by training heads of indigenous culture, to facilitate the Europeans established in Annam the development of their agricultural holdings.” It is also interesting to learn about the school’s first class of students, “At the beginning of the 1900-1901 school year, the choice was preferably made of former boys speaking and understanding French. This recruitment, however, only provided mediocre subjects, too old and fathers of family, having consequently occupations which prevented them from attending the courses regularly and fruitfully.” At this school, a variety of subjects were taught, such as general notions of botany, agriculture, arboriculture, vegetable growing, French language, and elementary arithmetic. Comité de l’Asie française, “L’École d’agriculture de Hué,” Bulletin du Comité de l’Asie française – Année (Paris: Comité de l’Asie française, 1901), pp.26-27.
92) The Polytechnic School (“Trường Bách Công”, literally “Ecole de cent métiers” or “School of one hundred métiers”) was established according to a royal ordonnance issued in the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Thành Thái (1899). In terms of its name, “The expression exceeded reality a little but it well characterized an establishment where we trained blacksmiths, farriers, fitters, turners, boilermakers, tinsmiths, molders-founders, carpenters, sculptors, masons, stonecutters, carvers, painters, saddlers, designers, etc.” Direction générale de l’instruction publique, Annam scolaire: De l’enseignement traditionnel annamite à l’enseignement modern franco-indigène (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-orient, 1931), p.133.
93) This long and informative paragraph is from chapter “Daily Newspaper” (Ribao 日報) in Zheng Guanying’s 鄭觀應 (1842-1922) Shengshi weiyan zengding xinbian 盛世危言增訂新編（8卷）(Warnings to a Prosperous Age – Updated New Edition), Guangxu gengzi 光緒庚子 edition (1900), reprinted by Taiwan Xuesheng shuju 臺灣學生書局 in 2 volumes(1965), pp.310-312.
94) 夫!工藝之有關於國家也大矣我弗勝人人將棄.我財用漏卮莫此為甚似宜延明師購儀器擇靈巧有才者充之以辰炤顧而訓勅之不令國中諸有能學得新式製得新器者傲歐洲攻牌憑炤之例榮之以品御,厚之以廪糈予之以專利諸有能格致氣化諸學者其榮貴出大科上如是而不衒巧爭奇以求勝人未之有也. (pp.227-228)
95) See Ardath W. Burks, “The West’s Inreach: The Oyatoi Gaikokujin,” in The Modernizers – Overseas Students, Foreign Employees, and Meiji Japan (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), pp.187-206.
96) See W.J. Macpherson, Chapter 8 “Capital, Technology and Enterprise” in The Economic Development of Japan 1868-1941 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp.64-69.
97) 法國一千二百三十餘家德國二千三百五十餘家英國二千一百八十餘家俄國四百三十餘家美國一萬四千一百五十餘家日本無郡不有報舘. (p.228) This long and informative paragraph is from chapter “Daily Newspaper” (Ribao 日報) in Zheng Guanying’s 鄭觀應 (1842-1922) Shengshi weiyan zengding xinbian 盛世危言增訂新編（p.8 j.）(Warnings to a Prosperous Age – Updated New Edition), Guangxu gengzi 光緒庚子 edition (1900), reprinted by Taiwan Xuesheng shuju 臺灣學生書局 in 2 volumes(1965), pp.310-312.
98) See Barbara Mittler, Chapter 6 “The Nature of Chinese Nationalism: Reading Shanghai Newspapers, 1900-1925” in A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai’s News Media, 1872-1912 (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), pp.361-408.
100) Đồng văn is the shortened title of Đại Nam đồng văn nhật báo 大南同文日報 (Đại Nam Newspaper in Shared Chinese Script, possibly initiated in 1891); see Đỗ Quang Hưng, Nguyễn Thành, and Dương Trung Quốc. Lịch sử báo chí Việt Nam 1865-1945 (History of Vietnamese Newspapers 1865-1945)(Hanoi: Đại học Quốc gia, 2000), p.40.
101) James L. Huffman, Creating a Public – People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), p.226.
102) Alberta A. Altman, “The Press and Social Cohesion during a Period of Change: The Case of Early Meiji Japan,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15:4 (1981): 865-876.
111) The printed text A.567 reads, 文明者非徒購之以價值而已又購之以苦痛. This is a citation from Liang Qichao's 梁啓超 (1873-1929) article Shizhong Dexing Xiangfan Chengyi 十種德性相反相成義 (The Complementary Theses and Antitheses of Ten Virtues, 1901), first printed under Liang's style-name Ren'gong 任公 in Qingyi bao 清議報, no. 82, 5151-5157; no. 84, 5267-5273. Here Liang seemingly refers to what is discussed in John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) Civilization: “In the case, however, of the most influential classes – those whose energies, if they had them, might be exercised on the greatest scale and with the most considerable result – the desire of wealth is already sufficiently satisfied, to render them averse to suffer pain or incur much voluntary labor for the sake of any further increase, “ and “There has been much complaint of late years, of the growth, both- in the world of trade and in that of intellect, of quackery, and especially of puffing: but nobody seems to have remarked, that these are the inevitable fruits of immense competition.” John Stuart Mill. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill Vol. XVIII: Essays on Politics and Society (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977), p.130 and 133.
112) The opening of Chapter “Qiushui” 秋水 (Autumn Floods) in Zhuangzi 莊子reads, “At the time of autumn floods when hundreds of streams poured into the Yellow River, the torrents were so violent that it was impossible to distinguish an ox from a horse from the other side of the river. Then the River God was overwhelmed with joy, feeling that all the beauty under heaven belonged to him alone. Down the river he travelled east until he reached the North Sea. Looking eastward at the boundless expanse of water, he changed his countenance and sighed to the Sea God, saying, ‘As the popular saying goes, ‘There are men who have heard a lot about Tao but still think that no one can surpass them.’ I am one of such men.’ 望洋向若而嘆曰: '野語有之, 曰: 聞道百以爲莫己若者, 我之謂也.” Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi 莊子, translated into English by Wang Rongpei 汪榕培; translated into modern Chinese by Qin Xuqing 秦旭卿 and Sun Yongchang 孫雍長 (Changsha, Hunan People’s Publishing House and Foreign Languages Press, 1999), p.261.
113) Huang Zunxian 黃尊憲 (1848-1905) in his Reben guozhi 日本國志 (Treatises on Japan) writes, “The Unofficial Historian states that having the remainder to discuss Western statutes, the fact that their established instructions originate from Mozi 墨子I have clearly talked about . Their application methods are similar to those of the legalists Shen Buhai 申不害 (395 BCE-337 BCE) and Han Fei 韓非 (280 BCE-233 BCE); the setup of their mandarin system similar to Zhouli 周禮 (Rites of the Zhou dynasty); their administration similar to what described in Guanzi 管子 up to 7 or 8 out of 10. In regard to the studies of natural science, the knowledge is dispersed and can be found in a greater number in books from the Zhou 周 and Qin 秦 dynasties. Having studied Western learning, I’ve found it in fact the learning from Mo Di 墨翟 (470 BCE-319 BCE) 3-日本國志(下卷)外史氏日：以餘討論西法, 其立教源於墨子, 吾既詳言之矣. 而其用法類乎申韓, 其設官類乎周禮, 其行政類乎管子者, 十蓋七八. 若夫一切格致之學, 散見於周秦諸書者尤多. 余考泰西之學, 墨翟之學也.
114) The printed Chinese text reads, 薄海內外推為聲名文物之邦. Once considered to be a citation from Lao Chongguang, this is in fact a corrupt quote: its first half is from another sentence praising China’s administrative principles that were observed by its neighboring and far-distant counterparts, 薄海內外, whereas the second half is not only for Vietnam. Lao Chongguang’s original sentence reads, “Located near the Chinese Middle Kingdom, Korea and Vietnam must be named as the states advocating Confucianism and greatly admiring Confucian classics, and both being promoted to the appellation of the ‘realms of famous historical relics’” 密邇中夏, 崇儒術好詩書, 共推為聲名文物之邦, 必稱朝鮮·越南二國. An eminent scholar whose score in the jinshi examination was impressively high, Lao Chongguang (1802-1867) served as “the Qing inspector general and later governor-general to Guangdong 廣東 and Guangxi 廣西 along the Vietnamese border from 1852” Kathlene Baldanza, “Books without Borders: Phạm Thận Duật (1825-1885) and the Culture of Knowledge in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Vietnam”, Journal of Asian Studies vol. 77, no. 3 (2018): 728-729. Extant copies of Lao’s preface can be found in Tập mỹ thi văn 集美詩文 (Collection of Literary Delicacies, preserved in the Han-Nom Research Institute’s Library, A.2987), Nhật Nam phong nhã thống biên 日南風雅統編 (Edited Collection of Nhật Nam's Airs and Odes Poetry, Han-Nom library, A.2822), or in a handwritten copy of verse and prose with no title but headed by a piece of writing called 謝林侍郎爲舉啟 A Memorial Expressing Gratitude to Vice Minister Lâm For the Promotion (accessible online at: https://lib.nomfoundation.org/collection/1/volume/575/page/77) For Lao Chongguang’s interactions with Vietnamese envoys and officials, see Liu Yujun 劉玉珺, “Vietnamese Envoys and Sino-Vietnamese Exchanges” 越南使臣與中越文學交流, Xueshu Yanjiu 學術研究 no. 1 (2007): 146.
115) The phonetic transcription of Wate 瓦忒 for James Watt appears to be a mixed result of two different ways to transcribe his name into Chinese, one is Huate 華忒, as seen in Kang Youwei’s “Ruidian youji” 瑞典遊記 (Sweden Travelogue) and the more popular one Wate 瓦特.
116) Aidisun/Ai địch tôn 哀狄孫 is the way Ding Weiliang丁韙良 (William Alexander Parsons Martin, 1827-1916) transcribed the name of Edison into Chinese. See Fu Deyuan 傅德元, Ding Weiliang and Modern Cultural Exchanges between China and the West 丁韙良與近代中西文化交流 (Taibei, Guoli Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2013), p.385.
117) In an essay titled “On Newspapers’ Benefits to National Affairs” 論報館有益於國事 (August 9, 1896), Liang Qichao argues that, “Westerners’ major newspapers are the place where the parliament’s discussions are recorded (…) Since newspapers’ benefits to national affairs are as such, talent and virtuous scholars could be their editors-in-chief in the past, and now become administrators of the government. There are also those who retired from government business in the morning, and enter the newspaper publishing house in the evening, being responsible for the state policy.” 西人之大報也, 議院之言論紀焉 (…) 其益於國事如此, 故懷才抱德之士, 有昨為主筆而今作執政者, 亦有朝罷樞府而夕進報館者, 其主張國是, 每與政府通聲氣.
118) Both the printed A.567 and the hand-copied R.287 have it as Binsisai 賓斯塞. It should be correctly spelled out as Sibinsai 斯賓塞 (Spencer).
119) Liang Qichao’s essay “On the World’s Power of Knowledge” 論學術之勢力左右世界, first published in “Huibian” 彙編 of Xinmin Congbao in 1900 with no Western names written alphabetically, 35-48, and reprinted on no. 1, 1902, 69-78 lists a number of most influential Western scientists, explorers, politicians, and thinkers, such as Gebaini 哥白尼 (Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1453), Mazhilun 瑪志侖 (Ferdinand Magellan, 1480-1521), Mengde siqiu 孟德斯鳩 (Montesquieu, 1689-1755), Lusuo 盧梭(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778), Fulankeling 富蘭克令 (Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790), Yadan simi 亞丹•斯密 (Adam Smith, 1723-1790), Bolunzhili 伯倫知理 (Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, 1808-1881), or Daerwen 達爾文 (1809-1882). It is also worth mentioning that at the end of the essay, Liang wrote, “There have been also people who unnecessarily advocated new theories, but thanks to their sincere spirit, noble thoughts, splendid words, could transmit the new ideas of civilization from other countries, and implement them in their own countries in order to bring benefit to their compatriots. The power of those people is also great and unimaginable.” 亦有不必自出新說, 而以其誠懇之氣, 清高之思, 美妙之文, 能運他國文明 新思想, 移植於本國, 以造福於其同胞, 此其勢力, 亦複有偉大而不可思議者. In the list of such outstanding characters, was Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉 cited among other Western thinkers, such as Fuluteer 福祿特爾 (Voltaire, 1694-1778), or Tuoersitai 託爾斯泰 (Tolstoy). For Fukuzawa, Liang adds a note “qunian zu 去年卒” (died last year, i.e., 1901). In the same year (1902), under the title “Two Great Persons of Japan’s Reforms” 日本維新二偉人, Xinmin Congbao presented two portraits of Saigō Takamori 西鄕隆盛 (1828-1877) and Fukuzawa Yukichi together with their short biographies. As for Fukuzawa, his biography clearly points out him as the advocator of Western studies, and the founder of Keiō gijuku 慶應義塾, which was at that time, the top among private schools in Japan.” (no. 7, p. 15). As an obituary composed for the passing of Herbert Spencer, the article “A Short Biography of the Great Philosopher Spencer” 大哲斯賓塞略傳” indicates that even though Darwin initiated the theory of evolution, it was fully developed by Spencer (Xinmin Congbao, “Huibian 彙編”, 1903, p. 447. It should also be noted that in the early twentieth century, a series of introductory research on Spencer by Japanese scholar Aruga Nagao 有賀長雄 was translated into Chinese, which identified Spencer with the theory of evolution, for instance Theory of Evolution for the Common Herd 人群進化論, translated by Shunde Mai Zhonghua 順德麥仲華 (Shanghai, Guangzhi shuju, 1903). See also Han Chenghua 韓承樺, “Spencer Reaching China: A Historical Translation Discussion” 斯賓塞到中國: 一個翻譯史的討論, Bianyi luncong 編譯論叢vol. 3, no.2 (2010): 42.
As for Montesquieu, a record named “A Memorandum from Huang Zunxian” 東海公來簡, published in Xinmin Congbao, vol. 13 (1902), reports that, “Around the twelfth or thirteenth year of the Meiji reign(1879 or 1880), the theory of people’s rights reached its zenith. I was quite surprised when first hearing about it. Having chosen Rousseau and Montesquieu’s theories to read, my mind changed immediately." 明治十二三年民權之說極盛. 初聞頗驚怪·既而取盧梭·孟德斯鳩之說讀之·心志為之一變. Thus, minquanpian/dân quyền thiên 民權篇 in the VMTHS should not be taken as Montesquieu’s work, but his trend of thought.
120) In his essay "Shizhong dexing xiangfan chengyi” (op. cit.), after briefly describing the development of the republic system 共和政體 of the United States, Liang Qichao introduces France’s political regime, “In France, since the Great Revolution of 1789, the two Republic and Monarchical parties have mutually gone up and down over half a century, but up until now, people’s rights in France remain incomparable to those of Britain and America.” 法國則自一七八九年大革命以後, 君民兩黨, 互起互 仆, 垂半世紀餘, 而至今民權之盛猶不及英美者. Nishimura Shigeki 西村茂樹 also talks about “Dictatorship” 人君獨裁, “Rule Shared by the King and the People” 君民同治, and “Civilian Republic” 平民共和. Nishimura Shigeki, Discussion on Three Political Systems 政體三種說, Meiroku zasshi no. 28 (1875), recited from Zhang Yunqi 張允起, ed. Historical Documents of Japanese Law and Politics in the early Meiji Period 日本明治前期法政史料 (Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 2016), p.91.
121) Youwu/Hữu võ 右武 (Honoring the military) is a term Liang Qichao employed in an essay called “China’s Way of Warriors” 中國之武士道”; see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=548363.
122) In an essay titled “On the Age of Transition” 過度時代論, in Yinbingshi 飲冰室合集 (1901), Liang Qichao reserved a section called “Characters of the Age of Transition and Their Indispensable Virtues” 過度時代之人物與其必要之德性, in which he pointed out three required virtues: adventurous 冒險性, patient 忍耐性, and discriminately selecting 別擇性. Moses’ travel to Canaan, and Columbus’ adventure in the Atlantic were mentioned in this essay. See https://shorturl.at/zKRR6 Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci first arrived at Macau in 1582 and spent the rest of his life in China until 1610 when he passed away in Beijing. Xinmin Congbao also discusses Matteo Ricci’s case in a few articles, such as “A Brief History of Natural Sciences“ 格致學沿革考略, no. 14 (1902): 9-17; or “The Eastward Movement of Western Religions during the Tang Dynasty” 唐代西教之東漸, vol. 3, no. 9 (1904): 37-46.
123) The VMTHS only reads as binghai/băng hải 冰海 (glaciomarine) without specifically identifying it as Arctic or Antarctic Oceans. Xu Jishe’s 徐繼畬 (1795-1873) section called “Diqiu 地球” (The Globe) in Concise Records of the World 瀛寰志略 reports an interesting account of how Chinese people learned about the existence of Arctic and Antarctic Oceans: “Arctic Ocean is what everyone had known, but people had not been aware of Antarctic Ocean. When reading the map of the globe drawn by Westerners, and finding a note stating ‘Antarctic Ocean’ down at Antarctica, people thought that due to their limited knowledge of Chinese language, the Westerners mistakenly named it based on the Arctic Ocean.” 北冰海人人知之, 南冰海未之前聞, 頃閱西洋人所繪地球圖, 於南極之下, 注曰 南冰海, 以為不通華文, 誤以北冰海例稱之也.
124) Kang Youwei discusses zhimin zhi xue 殖民之學 (Colonial studies/Colonialism) in a travel diary called “Concise Records of the World” 印度遊記 (1901), “Besides the ancients, starting from the two dynasties of Sui 隨 (581–618), and Yuan’s 元 (1279–1368) conquers of Java, or the expansion down to the South Seas by Zheng He 鄭和 (1371-1433) of the Ming dynasty, rarely have any other cases existed. China has stuck to old ways of thought and allowed very few changes; it did not talk about colonial studies/colonialism, but set up prohibitions on maritime trade with foreign countries, and consequently, sit still and yielded the South Seas to others.” 古者自隨·元兩朝征瓜哇·明鄭三寶下南洋外·鮮有過之. 中國泥古少變·不講殖民之學·久設海禁·故坐以南洋之地讓人也.” See Kang Youwei 康有為, Travelogues through Various Countries – Kang Youwei’s Posthumous Manuscripts 列國遊記——康有為遺稿 (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin chubanshe, 1995), p.2. In the early twentieth century, colonialism became attractive to East Asian countries, such as China, as a way to strengthen the nation and to join the world of civilization. Thus, even though not directly using the term zhimin (zhi) xue 殖民(之)學, Liang Qichao promoted colonial studies/colonialism in a number of essays. For instance, in section fifteen called “On Untiring Efforts” 論毅力 of Discourse on the New Citizen 新民說 published in Xinmin Congbao in 1902, Liang Qichao wrote, “Haven’t you seen the case of Britain? Since Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) took commercial colonization as the state policy, a few hundreds of years later, it has been following it without any step back.” 不觀英國乎？自克林威爾以來以通商殖民為國是·爾後數百年不一退轉. see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=634263&remap=gb. In another work titled “The Biographies of Eight Great Colonialists from China” 中國殖民八大偉人傳 (1905), through the biographies, Liang provides eight accounts of China’s colonial history realized in Sumatra, Philippines Island, Java Island, Borneo Island, Myanmar, Vietnam, Siam, Malaysia Peninsula; see https://shorturl.at/J1Tan.
125) Huanghua fengyu/Hoàng hoa phong vũ 黃花風雨 are two symbolic images often found in Li Qingzhao’s 李清照 (1084-1156) poetry. A female poet and essayist of the Song Dynasty, Li employed chrysanthemum and winds and rains to express what happens in both the external and internal worlds. Basically, the combination of the symbolic chrysanthemum and winds-and-rains in the expression huanghua fengyu shows both the physical and spiritual sufferings. See Wu Zhongyun 吳忠耘. “The Life Connotation of “Chrysanthemum” and “Wind and Rain” in Li Qingzhao’s Poem” 李清照词中 “风雨“·”黄花“意象的生命内涵, Mianyang shifan xueyuan xuebao, vol. 30, no. 12 (2011): 38-41.
126) Chunqiu春秋(Spring and Autumn Annals) points out the way of thought in distinguishing “interior” from “exterior” within ancient states, especially between Xia 夏 and the others in early China, “To regard one’s own state as interior and all the Xia as exterior, to regard all the Xia as interior and the Yi-Di as exterior.” 又內其國而外諸夏·內諸夏而外夷狄. Yuri Pines, Paul R. Goldin, and Martin Kern, eds. Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China (Leiden: Brill, 2015): p.113. In a preface titled “Chunqiu Zhongguo YiDi bian xu” 春秋中國夷狄辯序 published in Shiwu bao 時務報 (August 18, 1897), written for Xu Qin’s 徐勤 On China’s Concept of Yi-Di 中國夷狄辯, Liang Qichao tried to prove that there was no geographical and racist discriminations. In later dynasties, when China was placed at the center and other states surrounding it were named accordingly to their directional relationship to the center as Northern Di 狄, Eastern Yi 夷, Southern Man 蠻, or Western Rong 戎, “Inner Civilized, Outer Barbarian” 內夏外夷, it was practiced not only by the Middle Kingdom, but also its neighboring states, including Vietnam (which, in its turn, put itself at the center as civilized, and treated its Southern bordering states as barbarians). However, the thought of “inner civilized, outer barbarian” was strikingly challenged when China witnessed the transition between Ming and Qing dynasties, and later, when this country and other East Asian nations were facing Western civilization. During the transitional period of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there appeared the topic of Changing Conditions of Chinese and Barbarians 華夷變態 initiated by Japanese Hayashi Harukatsu 林春勝and Hayashi Nobuatsu林信篤 in their work with the same title (1732), describing the dramatic changes from “civilized” to “barbarian” of the HuaXia 華夏. The critical review of the thought “inner civilized, outer barbarian” reflected in VMTHS more or less appears close to the kai hentai.
128) Chapter “Qishi” 齊世 in Wang Chong’s 王充 (27 –100) Critical Essays 論衡 reads, “Scholars of the present generation revere antiquity and demean the present.” 今世之士者, 尊古卑今也. Michael Puett, “Listening to Sages: Divination, Omens, and the Rhetoric of Antiquity in Wang Chong’s Lunheng“, Oriens Extremus, vol. 45 (2005/06): 277.
129) Mencius, 盡心下 part II, 14, “Mencius said, 'The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest. 孟子曰：”民為貴, 社稷次之, 君為輕.” Mencius, The Work of Mencius, translated by James Legge (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960): p.483
130) Libing/lợi bệnh 利病 is a term found in the title of Gu Yanwu’s 顧炎武 (1613-1682) famous voluminous work On Benefits and Faults of the Empire’s Local Administration 天下郡國利病書; see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=478756. It was praised as Politico-Geographical Studies 政治地理學 in Liang Qichao’s China’s History of Scholarship during the Last Three Hundred Years 中國近三百年學術史 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1926)
131) The phrase the mechanism of the evolution of civilization 文明進化之機 is also found in Liang Qichao’s essay “Shizhong dexing xiangfan chengyi” (op. cit.), when Liang pointed out the hesitating attitude of scholar-officials toward the new could turn to be a great obstruction, dazhi 大窒, for the mechanism of the evolution of civilization.
132) In the early twentieth century, such a group of script-inventors had become a common and popular knowledge widely accepted within China, as exemplified in a solicitation of portraits of the four script-inventing sages Cang Jie, Ju Song, Qulu, and Zhu Xiang printed in the front page of Xinwen bao (徵求倉頡·沮誦·佉盧·朱襄四聖遺像, March 10, 1916). Regarding the three inventors mentioned in the VMTHS, both Cang Jie and Ju Song are the mythical chronicler and the historian, respectively, of the ancestor of the Chinese – the Yellow Emperor; whereas Qu Lu stands out as an interesting case. In his Buddhist encyclopedia called Forest of Gems in the Garden of the Dharma 法苑珠林 (compiled in 668), Tang Buddhist monk Daoshi 道世 “personified the names Brahmā and Kharosthī as script inventors by analyzing them to and fraternally ranking them with Cang Jie.” According to Daoshi, “In the past, there were three persons who created the writings. The elder is named Fan 梵 whose writings goes rightward. The second is named Qulu 佉盧 whose writing goes leftward. And the youngest is named Cang Jie whose writing goes downward. Fan and Qulu reside in India. The Yellow Emperor’s historian Cang Jie lives in central China. Fan and Qu have taken scriptures from pure heaven.” 昔造書之主. 凡有三人. 長名曰梵. 其書右行. 次曰佉盧. 其書左行. 少者蒼頡. 其書下行. 梵佉盧居於天竺. 黃史蒼頡在於中夏. 梵佉取法於凈天. See Penglin Wang, Linguistic Mysteries of Ethnonyms in Inner Asia (MD: Lexington Books, 2018): 13-14. In “Discussions on Poetry from Yinbing Hall” 飲冰室詩話, Liang Qichao also writes, “Efforts required to master Qulu’s script are greater than those spent for Cang Jie’s” 要之佉盧字力大過倉頡. Xinmin Congbao, vol. 9 (1902): 3.
133) Yinpan 殷盤 (Chapters on the Yin King Pan Geng 殷王盤庚) and Zhougao 周誥 (Zhou Dynasty’s twelve Imperial Mandates) are writings from Shangshu 尚書 (Book of Documents). In 1898, Qiu Tingliang 裘廷梁 (1857-1943), a well-known scholar from Wuxi 無錫 published an article on China Vernacular Journal 中國官音白話報 that helped the journal gain fame. Qiu’s article is titled “On Baihua Being the Root of Reforms” 論白話為維新之本. Some scholar believes that Qi’s use of the term baihua 白話 is significant, as he “popularized the new name for vernacular style hitherto mostly known as suhua 俗話 (vulgar speech), using the euphemism baihua 白話 (clear speech) instead.” Elisabeth Kaske, The Politics of Language in Chinese Education 1895–1919 (Boston: Brill, 2008): 106. Noteworthy is his claim that, “Normally, sages proficient in manufacturing must compose books; when composing their books, they must employ clear speech (…) Let’s prove it again: during the time of the Three Kings of the Xia 夏, Shang 商, and Zhou 周 dynasties, there were dictions when taking vows before their troops, announcements when moving the capital, for every single extraordinary move without minding declaring it out loud, and the intention was only their fear of their voices not loud enough to be heard by all under heaven. Hence, proclamations were all in clear speeches/vernacular language, but people of later generations found them difficult to comprehend, or inexplicable. Written ages long ago, the script remained intact, but the language changed. (…) Haven’t you heard that people who recite Shijing 詩經, Chunqiu 春秋, Lunyu 論語, Xiaojing 孝經 all intermittently use dialects” 凡精通製造之聖人必著書·著書必白話 (…) 再證之三王時誓師有辭·遷都有誥·朝廷一二非常舉動不憚反覆演說大聲疾呼. 彼其意惟恐不大於天下. 故文告皆白話而後人以為佶屈難解者. 年代緜邈·文字不變而語變也 (…) 不聞人人誦習詩·春秋·論語·孝經皆雜用方言. Zhongguo guanyin baihua bao, no. 20 (1898): 1b. Qiu’s essay was reprinted in contemporary newspapers, such as Beijing’s Newspaper Collective Report 北京新聞彙報, 8th month (1901): 2785-2799; according to Deng Wei 鄧偉, the essay was also republished in Wuxi baihua bao 無錫白話報, even reprinted by Liang Qichao in Qingyi bao, and became a piece of Classic Literature of the Vernacular Movement 白话文运动的经典文献, in the Late Qing period. See Deng Wei, “On the Cultural Logic of the Vernacular Movement in the Late Qing Dynasty – With a Focus on Qiu Tingliang’s ‘On Baihua Being the Root of Reforms’” 試論晚清白話文運動的文化邏輯—以裘廷梁論白話為維新之本為中心, Dongyua luncong 東嶽論叢, vol. 30, no. 3 (2009): 79.
134) Originally a term specifically describing one of the six principles of forming Chinese characters 六書, xiesheng/hài thanh 諧聲 used to be defined by Western scholarship as characters “joined to a sound (Sono adjunctos in orig.), of which one half is merely phonetic and is used simply to indicate the name of the things which are signified by the other half” Tai T’ung, The Six Scripts or the Principles of Chinese Writing, translated by L. C. Hopkins (London: Cambridge University Press, 1954): 8. Modern linguists have treated this principle as the use of “the phonetic components” of Chinese characters “to be grouped into phonetic 諧聲 series. A phonetic series consists of one basic character together with any other characters that employ that basic character as a phonetic component.” C.T. James Huang, Y.H. Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson, The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2014): 585. During the Late Qing period, this term was quite freely used for phonetic combinations of other languages, such as in the section “Script studies” 自學 in Comprehensive Compilation of Writings on the Statecraft from the Royal Dynasty 皇朝經世文統編 (1901).
135) In his Riben shumuzhi 日本書目志 (Catalogue of Japanese Books, Shanghai: Datong yishuju, 1897), Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858-1927) describes Japan’s writing system as follows, ““Japanese script looks like ours but slightly mixed with Kūkai’s 空海thirteen-iroha script 日本文字猶吾文字也但稍雜空海之伊呂波十之三耳.” Kūkai (also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi 弘法大師, 774–835) was the founder of the Esoteric Shingon 真言 (mantra) school of Buddhism in Japan. According to Ryūichi Abe, “Kūkai was also said to have invented kana, the Japanese phonetic orthography, and the Iroha, the kana syllabary. In the Iroha table, the kana letters are arranged in such a manner as to form a waka that plainly expresses the Buddhist principle of emptiness.” Ryūichi Abe, The Weaving of Mantra – Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999): p.3. It should be noted that the Meiji period also witnessed a number of script reform movements, among which there were various groups working toward the reforms of the iroha system: “The members of the Iroha Kai, inaugurated also in 1882 after two years of discussion, were mostly educators (…) Those involved in formal education were naturally more enthusiastic than others about spreading popular education, and the object of the Iroha Kai was to search for a way more efficiently achieving this objective. The Irohabun Kai was started in the same year by businessmen, journalists, and graduates of Keiō Gijuku 慶應義塾, a school founded by Fukuzawa Yukichi.” Navette Twine, “Toward Simplicity: Script Reform Movements in the Meiji Period “, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 38, no. 2 (1983): p.121.
136) A note by F. Paillart in the Review of the History of French Colonies (1926) reads, “It was in 1624 that Father Alexandre de Rhodes (1593-1660), born in Avignon, but whom all contemporaries qualified as French, arrived in Cochinchina the fact has a certain importance, Father Alexandre de Rhodes being the real inventor of the quoc-ngu that some insist on attributing to the Portuguese.” (p. 303, note 1). However, the Indochina in the Past – Exposition of Documents Relevant to the History of Indochina (Hanoi: Le Van Tan, 1938) emphasizes, “Father de Rhodes has the great merit of codifying and making more practical the transcription of Vietnamese language into Latin characters, which the Portuguese had adopted.” (no pagination). This viewpoint has now been widely accepted within Vietnam. The Britannica also writes, “De Rhodes perfected a romanized script, called Quoc-ngu, developed by the earlier missionaries Gaspar de Amaral and Antonio de Barbosa, and he added special marks to the roman letters, denoting tones, which in Vietnamese indicate the meaning of words.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexandre-de-Rhodes
137) Khâm Định Việt Sử Thông Giám Cương Mục 欽定越史通鑑綱目by the Nguyễn Dynasty’s Academia Historica 阮朝國史館, compiled during the reign of Emperor Tự Đức 嗣德 (1847-1883), first printed in 1884.
138) Đại Nam Thực Lục 大南實錄 is the Nguyễn Dynasty’s official and primary source, providing historical records in the imperial annal format, from the rise of the Nguyễn Lords until 1925.
139) Accompanying the Đại Nam Thực Lục, Đại Nam Liệt Truyện 大南列傳 consists of two parts Qianbian/Tiền biên 前編 (Prequel Biographies of the Nguyễn Lords’ period) and Zhengbian/Chính biên 正編 (Principal Biographies of the Nguyễn Dynasty).
140) Also compiled under the reign of Emperor Tự Đức, Đại Nam Nhất Thống Chí 大南一統志 is the Nguyễn Dynasty’s official geographical records of Vietnam.
141) Lịch Triều Hiến Chương Loại Chí 歷朝憲章類志 is an encyclopedic work compiled by Phan Huy Chú 潘輝注, 1782-1840) during a period of ten years (1809-1819).
142) Vân Đài Loại Ngữ 蕓薹類語 is also an encyclopedia by Lê Quý Đôn (黎貴惇, 1726–1784), collecting essential knowledge of philosophy, literature, geography, or cosmology shared by Vietnamese literati up to the eighteenth century.
144) Kiến Văn Tiểu Lục 見聞小錄 is another encyclopedic work by Lê Quý Đôn, selectively presenting historical, literary, geographical and ideological records from Vietnam through times until the eighteenth century.
145) Hoàng Việt Nhất Thống Dư Địa Chí 皇越一統輿地志 was compiled by Lê Quang Định 黎光定 (1759-1813) in 1806, only four years after the foundation of the Nguyễn Dynasty by Emperor Gia Long 嘉隆 in 1802.
146) Gia Định Thành Thông Chí 嘉定城通志 was compiled during the 1820s (or 1830s) by Trịnh Hoài Đức 鄭懷德 (1765-1825), describing various aspects of the Gia Định region (including the nowadays Mekong Delta), such as mountains and rivers, custom, local products, or citadels.
147) The printed version A.567 lists it as Nghệ An Phong Thổ Thoại 乂安風土話. However, the correct title should be Nghệ An Phong Thổ Ký 乂安風土記, which is a work by Bùi Dương Lịch 裴楊瓑 (1757-1828), recording geography, custom, sceneries, and outstanding figures of the province.
148) Đồ Bàn Thành Ký 闍槃城記 is a section from Nguyễn Thị Tây Sơn Ký 阮氏西山記 (Records on the Nguyễn Clan of Tây Sơn) by Nguyễn Văn Hiển 阮文顯. See Đồ Bàn Thành Ký 闍槃城記, translated into modern Vietnamese by Tô Nam, Sử Địa, no. 19-20 (1970): 232-248.
149) In Collection of One Hundred Vietnamese Texts, 2nd edition (Hanoi: F. H. Schneider, 1905), there is an account on châu, “The word Châu 州, administrative division of Annam, only applies to mountainous territories and peoples in whole or in part of aborigines Thổ, Mán, Mường, Xá, Mèo, Bông, Xá Bông etc. A large number of Châu are designated by a single word, unlike the Huyện 縣 whose name always includes two words. In Tonkin, we specifically call: 1. Thập-lục-châu, that is to say the sixteen Châu, sixteen of these districts, formerly belonging to the province of Hưng Hoá, and distributed today between the provinces of Phương Lâm, Hưng Hoá, Lão Cay and Sơn La which counts the most.” (p. iv, note 10). Since there is no extant information about the work Hưng Hoá Thập Lục Châu Ký 興化十六洲記, it remains unclear about its author, date of composition, and contents. It should also be noted that the term Châu in the title should have been written as 州 instead of 洲.
150) Phủ Man Tạp Lục 撫蠻雜錄 is a work compiled in 1871 by Nguyễn Tấn 阮縉 reporting the Nguyễn Dynasty’s pacification of the ethnic minorities’ rebellions in the West of Quảng Ngãi province.
151) The Zuozhuan 左傳 reports the case of a senior official by the name of Ji Tan 籍談 from the Jin 晉state in the Spring and Autumn period (770 BCE–476 BCE). In a diplomatic mission to the Zhou 周 state, Ji did not answer well the queries raised by the King of Zhou. The King satirically criticized him, saying that he “gave all the historical accounts except those about his own ancestors” 數典忘祖. This set-phrase (alternatively written as “Ji Tan wangzu” 籍談忘祖) has been used as a criticism against those who forget their past, or their origins.
152) The phrase is believed to come from Zuozhuan. However, following Liu Shangci’s 劉尚慈 Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan yizhu 春秋公羊傳譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010, vol. 1): p1, Thomas Jülch concludes that, “In fact this passage does not appear in the Zuozhuan but in the Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, chapter ‘Yingong 隱公’” see Thomas Jülch, Zhipan’s Account of the History of Buddhism in China, vol. 1 “Fozu tongji” (Boston: Brill, 2019): p.99, note 272; see also Wang Zichu 王子初, “Significance of Zhang Yining' Critic on Zhou Calendar” 張以寧對周正問題的總結及地位, Lantai shijie 蘭台世界, no. 4 (2019): 140-144.
153) Ma Yuan led the Chinese troops invading Jiaozhi during the period of 42-43 AD. The biography of Ma Yuan 馬援列傳 recorded in the vol.24 of the Annals of the Later Han dynasty 後漢書 requoted a citation from Records of Guangzhou 廣州記 by Li Xian 李賢 of the Tang dynasty, saying that, “Ma Yuan arrived in Jiaozhi (i.e., Northern part of Vietnam nowadays), erected bronze pillars to mark the far-end borders of the Han dynasty.” 援到交阯, 立銅柱, 為漢之極界也.
154) All of those accounts are recorded in the Khâm Định Việt Sử Thông Giám Cương Mục. See Quốc sử quán Triều Nguyễn, The Imperial Approved Outline of the General Reflections of the History of Việt, translated from literary Chinese into modern Vietnamese by Viện Sử Học (Hanoi: Giáo Dục, 2007): pp.110-111.
155) Xiaoxue zuanzhu 小學纂註 is originally composed by Zhu Xi 朱熹 and annotated by Gao Yu 高愈 of the Qing dynasty; see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=995100. As a model scholar-official of the Qing dynasty, Chen Hongmou 陳宏謀 (1696-1771) mandated it to be included in the “daunting collection” of texts for the charitable schools he founded in Yunnan. See Cynthia J. Brokaw, Commerce in Culture – The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press, 2007): p.405, note 118.
156) Zuofei’an rizuan 昨非蓭日纂 is a work by Zheng Xuan 鄭萱 (ca. 1602-1646) of the Late Ming dynasty, whose contents can be classified into three main topics as regimen 養生, official admonition 官箴, and virtuous persuasion 勸善. It became a compilation model during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties; it was also introduced to and circulated in Japan and Korea. See Chieh-Min Chou 周婕敏, “The Study of Zuofeian rizuan by Zheng Xuan in Late Ming dynasty” 晚明鄭萱昨非蓭日纂研究, Master’s Degree dissertation, Taiwan Chenggong University, Liberal Arts College, Department of Literature, 2014.
157) This may be another name for Wu dazhou tushuo 五大洲圖說 by Giulio Alenio, edited by Qian Xizuo 錢熙祚, published by Shanghai shuju 上海書局 (1898).
158) This may be a shorter title of Gujin wanguo gangjian 古今萬國綱鑑 (Singapore: Jianxia shuyuan, 1838); see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=151372&remap=gb. Although the extant publication has no author’s name printed, it has been attributed to Karl Friedrich Gützlaff (1803-1851); see Guo Xiuwen 郭秀文, “Dongxiyang kao meiyue tongjizhuan de zhongjiao chuanbo celue” 東西洋考每月統記傳的宗教傳播策略, Xueshu yanjiu 學術研究, no. 8 (2016): 114. However, there is another book with a quite similar title, Guojin wanguo gangjianlu 古今萬國綱鑑錄 by Robert Morrison (1782-1834), as seen in a version of it printed in Japan: Moreishô 模禮崧. Kokon bankoku kōkanroku 古今萬國綱鑒錄, with Japanese guiding marks 訓点 by Ōtsuki Seishi 大槻誠之, corrected by Yanagisawa Shindai 柳澤信大 (Tokyo: Tōsei Kamejirō, 1874). Confused by the resemblance of the two titles, some modern scholars consequently identify Gujin wanguo gangjian as Morrison’s work, as in the case of Chou Yu-wen 周愚文, “The Introduction of American Education by Missionaries and Chinese Officials and Commoners in Late Ch’ing China before 1894 晚清甲午前在華中外人士對於美國教育的介紹, Jiaoyu yanjiu jikan 教育研究集刊/ Bulletin of Educational Research, vol. 65, no.1 (2019): 121.
161) Học cứu tiên sinh 學究先生 is a term close to English word “pedant, “ referring to a person who “A person who excessively reveres or parades academic learning or technical knowledge, often without discrimination or practical judgement. Hence also: one who is excessively concerned with accuracy over trifling details of knowledge, or who insists on strict adherence to formal rules or literal meaning.” (Oxford English Dictionary).
162) Often ranked as the second revolutionary newspaper (only after Sun Zhongshan’s 孫中山 Zhongguo ribao 中國日報), Shijie gongyibao 世界公益報 is a Hong Kong publication inaugurated in November 1903, by Lin Hu 林護 and Tan Sanmin 譚三民 as founders and Zheng Guangong 鄭貫公 (1880-1906) as editor-in-chief. Its supplement Yijuebao 一噱報 employed humorous and satirical language to criticize contemporary politics; see Li Jiayuan 李家園, Xianggang baoye zatan 香港報業雜談 (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1989): p.53; Chen Ming 陳鳴, A History of the Press in Hong Kong 1841-1911 香港報業史稿 (Hong Kong: Huaguang baoye youxian gongsi, 2005): pp.127-128.
In 1904, Zheng Guangong selected humorous writings and traditional Chinese telling and singing pieces of art printed in newspapers and periodicals, and published them together in a magazine called New Collection of Contemporary Laughing Matters 時諧新集. One of its main categories is called “Wenjie” 文界 (Literary World) divided into a number of sections, of which is the “Hexagram of the Civil Service Examination.” See Li Wanwei 李婉薇, “Qingmo Minchu YueGang gemingpai baokan” 清末民初粵港革命派報刊”, Wenshi zhishi, no. 12 (2012): 31-32.
Based on the six-line structure of a hexagram 卦 in the Classic of Changes 易經, accompanied by judgment 彖/hexagram statements 卦辭, and line statements 爻辭, the “Hexagram of Civil Service Examination” allows writers to express their critiques against the examination system in fourteen short paragraphs. This established format and topic became inspiring and was practiced by a number of literati. An extant example called “Hexagram of the Abolition of the Civil Service Examination” 廢科舉卦 can be found in the supplement Xiaoxian lu 消閒錄 (no. 593, September 27, 1905, Shanghai’s Tongwen Hubao 同文滬報). Judged by the quoted phrases, the “Hexagram of the Civil Service Examination” mentioned here seems to be reprinted in the supplement Zhuangxie zazhi 莊諧雜誌, in a section called “Xin Yilin 新易林” (vol. 2, no. 1-10, 1909).
163) In his Liaozhai Zhiyi 聊齋誌異, Pu Songling 蒲松齡(1640-1715) points out seven similarities with which a candidate may be identified in his commentaries on the tale of “Wang Zi’an” 王子”. When entering the examination hall, a county candidate finds his seven similarities there: (1) Being barefooted and carrying a basket, he looks like a beggar; (2) Being called and shouted by the examination official, he looks like a prisoner; (3) Finding himself in the isolated examination cell, he looks like a bee chilled by the last days of autumn; (4) Getting out of the examination hall, he looks like a sick bird released from its cage; (5) Dreaming of a success and imagining of a failure, he cannot relax and looks like a tied up monkey; (6) Hearing others’ success, he feels so depressed and looks like a poisoned fly; and (7) Having learned the result of the exam, he looks like a dove whose egg has been broken is now preparing to rebuild a new nest and to hatch a new egg.
164) Although both the extant woodblock-printed and hand-written copies of VMTHS have the same character vi/wei 圍, it might have been an alternative of 闈 (doors of the palace). This character is specifically used in a number of terms relevant to the civil service examination, such as ruwei 入闈 (“to enter the examination-hall, as the examiners for the 2nd and 3rd degrees”), chuwei 出闈 (“to leave the examination-hall, as the examiners, after issuing the list of successful candidates”), chunwei 春闈 (“the spring examination, for the 3rd degree, held triennially at Peking”), or qiuwei 秋闈 (“the autumn examination, for the 2nd degree, held triennially in every provincial capital”); see Giles’ English-Chinese Dictionary, p.1556. Noteworthy is that Giles also records weixing 闈姓 as “examination names, a form of lottery on the names of successful competitors.” This is, in fact, weixing 闈姓 (“the popular betting pool based on the surnames of top scorers in the local and national examinations in China”); see Koos Kuiper, The Early Dutch Sinologists (1854-1900): Training in Holland and China, Functions in the Netherlands Indies vol.2 (Boston: Brill, 2017): p.856, note 5. existed for a few decades and ended with the abolition of the civil service examination in China in 1905, “In 1860, weixing was formally introduced in Guangdong as a means of raising public revenues. It was banned in Guangdong in 1876 (…). Thus, gambling operators fled to Macao and Hong Kong and set up operations there. In 1867, gambling was made legal in Hong Kong (…). Faced with such direct and severe competition, the gambling business in Macao was hit very hard. Some gambling operators even moved their businesses from Macao to Hong Kong in search of better returns.”; see Victor Zheng, Po-san Wan, Gambling Dynamism: The Macao Miracle (London: Springer, 2013): p.41. In weixing, candidates’ family names were sold as lottery tickets, and like any other gambling games, cheatings also occurred. Gamblers aimed at candidates whose family names appeared rare or unpopular, and hired professionals to take the examination for them to ensure their success. Although producing great revenues for the government (it was reported that Guangdong Governor Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909) enjoyed a revenue of more than 5,000,000 taels of silver from weixing), this consequently gambled and corrupted the examination system; see An Guanglu 安廣祿, “Civil Service Examination and Gambling” 科舉考試與賭博”, Wenshi tiandi, no. 9 (2010): 74; Yu Yongpin 俞勇嬪, A Brief Investigation on Weixing during the Late Qing Dynasty 清末廣東「闈姓」考略, Lingnan luntan, no. 1 (1995): 15-20. Contemporary newspapers, such as Zilin Hubao 字林滬報, or Xinwen Bao 新聞報, had several articles on this socio-political phenomenon, among which the long essay titled “On Guangdong Governor's Recruitment of Weixing Merchants” 論粵督招充闈姓商人事 (Xinwen bao, March 3, 1896) is noteworthy. Vietnamese literati might have learned about weixing through those Chinese newspapers, although it did not happen in their country.
165) Rui Wang, The Chinese Imperial Examination System: An Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013): p.154.
166) There is a mistake with the date here, as the gengzi year (1900) was not the time for the abolition of the eight-legged essay in Chinese civil examination. On January 19, 1900, the Qing Court announced that, “by imperial decree, in honor of the emperor’s thirtieth birthday in 1901…there are to be special examinations at the provincial level in the gengzi year of 1900, and at the metropolitan level in the xinchou year of 1901.” Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1895-1912 State-Sponsored Reforms and China's Late-Qing Revolution: Selected Essays from Modern Chinese History, 1840-1919 (Armonk: Taylor & Francis Group, 1995): p.87. Unfortunately, due to the Boxer Rebellion, the planned special examinations did not take place. On August 29, 1901, an imperial edict was issued, officially abolishing the eight-legged essay in the civil examinations, “all examination essays whether political discourses or extrapolation of the Confucian Classics had to be written in unbound non-metrical prose.” Elisabeth Kaske, The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, op. cit., 254. The abolition was a critical decision made after several memorials sent to the throne by Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟 (1867-1959) and Kang Youwei (ibid., p. 85), “signaling that examination questions for the shengyuan degree would now include Western learning as well as Chinese learning. Moreover, it became clear that at the higher examination levels at least one set of policy questions would focus on ‘world politics.’” Richard J. Smith, The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture (Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015): p.393.
167) Founded in Beijing in October 1895, this society lasted for only five months because of the Qing Dynasty’s ban on the establishment of private societies. However, it had tremendous socio-political impacts on Chinese society as it was spreading out from the capital to provinces; see Rebecca E. Karl, Peter Zarrow, eds. Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2002): p.142.
168) Both the prefaces for the Society in Beijing and Shanghai by Kang Youwei and Zhang Zhidong respectively do not contain the cited sentence; see “Jingshi Qiangxuehui xu” 京師強學會序, Qiangxuebao, no. 1 (1895); “Shanghai Qiangxuehui xu” 上海強學會序, Xinwenbao, December 4, 1895). However, a similar sentence is found in Liang Qichao’s letter addressed to Chen Baozhen 陳寶箴 (1831-1900), titled “On What Hunan Should Do” 論湖南應辦之事. Liang’s sentence reads, “Thus, if we now want to enlighten the people’s mind, we need to enlighten the gentry’s mind; and as we should pass it on to the mandarin force whom we still do not know all, we therefore must enlighten the mandarin’s mind, making it the starting point of everything.” 即今日欲開民智, 開紳 智, 而假手於官力者, 尚不知凡幾也, 故開官智, 又為萬事之起點.
169) In the reign of King Gia Long of the Nguyễn Dynasty, the Imperial Academy was founded in Huế in 1803 under the name of Đốc Học Đường 督學堂. It was renamed Quốc Tử Giám 國子監 in March 1820 under the reign of King Minh Mạng. An article by Robert de La Susse, titled “Education in Annam” printed in Les Annales Coloniales (June 03, 1913), also shows that French education had been introduced in this imperial institution around the time of its publication, “In addition, there is a special third-grade school in Hue called College Quốc Tử Giám. Quốc Tử Giám is the Vietnamese Prytanée; it receives the sons of royal or princely families and the children of the mandarins. There also modernism begins to do its work, and in the pagoda where the young Vietnamese used to learn exclusively the Chinese characters, the word of a French master comes today to be heard. The fact that French lessons are not the least assiduously attended is the best proof of the success of our teaching.” (p. 2).
170) Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應 in the chapter “Civil Examination, Part 1 考試上” of his book Warning Words to a Prosperous Word 盛世危言 writes that, “Although they are heroic learned people who must have their unity of heart-and-strength, they are worn out by the useless literature for the civil examination.” 雖豪傑之士, 亦不得不以有用之心力, 消磨於無用之時文.
171) “College Quốc Học” or “Quốc Học High School” (The School for National Studies) was established by the French Governor General’s ordinance issued on November 18, 1896. The teaching at the school was covered by five French professors with the assistance of three native teachers particularly chosen; see Les Annales Coloniales, June 03, 1913, p. 2.
172) This is from Book 3B of Mencius (孟子, 滕文公下, 11): “Mencius said to Dai Busheng 戴不勝, “You, sir, want your king to be good, do you not? Let me be clear in explaining this to you. Here is a high official from Chu who wishes his son to speak the language of Qi. Will he provide for him to be instructed by a man of Qi or by a man of Chu?”
“He will provide for a man of Qi to instruct him.”
“But if there is one man of Qi instructing him and a whole crowd of Chu people clamoring all around him, then, although he may be beaten daily in an effort to get him to speak Qi, he will not be able to do so.” 一齊人傅之, 眾楚人咻之, 雖日撻而求其齊也, 不可得矣. Mencius, translated by Irene Bloom, edited with an introduction by Philip J. Ivanhoe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009): p.67). Mencius’ conversation shows the importance of language environment in learning a foreign language.
173) This is from “Ranggong 26th year” 襄公二十六年 in Zuozhuan左傳. “Although Chu State has talents, Jin State actually employs them.” 雖楚有材, 晉實用之.
174) The Mandarin Institute 仕學院 was a German institutional model introduced to China in the nineteenth century, “Between 1873 and 1874, the German missionary Ernst Faber (1839–1899) published two detailed reports on schools in Western countries, especially the German school system, which at that time was regarded as exemplary.” Faber’s two reports in question are Schools in the Western Countries 西國學校 and Outline of Schools in Germany 德國學校論略; see Elisabeth Kaske, The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, op. cit., 57 and footnote 209. In the latter, Faber provides readers with a description of the “Mandarin Institute” which is the first stage in the training for future officials (the next stage will be the required attendance of Taixueyuan 太學院, where specific disciplinary trainings are offered).
Xu Bao’an 徐保安 believes that the training furnished by the German Mandarin Institute may be equal to general politics at high school level. However, in China, it was heightened to a much higher level as the highest educational institution to train mandarins already well-versed in traditional Chinese studies in a new field of Western studies; see Xu Bao’an, “Zaizao ‘yishi rencai’ jingshi daxuetang shixueyuan de kaiban yuanqi yu yingxiang 再造‘已仕人材’京師大學堂仕學院的開辦緣起與影響”, Xuehai 學海, no. 1 (2020): 198-204. In addition to training incumbent mandarins in Western studies, the Mandarin Institute in Beijing also served “the employment of foreign advisers, in order to provide blueprints and experience for the reform”; see Ye Qianying 葉倩瑩, “The Strategy for the Employment of Foreign Advisers in the Reform of the Late Qing Dynasty and the Proposal for Building a Capital Officials College “ 清末新政「借材異國」與京師仕學院的議設, Xueshu yanjiu, no. 11 (2012): 104-112, 160.
During the first five years of the twentieth century, Chinese newspapers often reported activities of this type of institution, such as “Qing she Shixueyuan” 請設仕學院, Jicheng bao, no. 38 (1901); “Zouqing she Shixueyuan zhe” 奏請設仕學院摺, Lujiang bao 鷺江報, no. 8 (1902); “Shixueyuan kaoxuan chuyang renyuan jiwen (Hu Bei) ” 仕學院考選出洋人員紀聞（湖北）(Shibao, november 2, 1904). VMTHS author might have learned about the Mandarin Institute from Chinese newspapers.
175) This could be a shortened title of Wanguo gongfa 萬國公法, which, in its turn, is William M. P. Martin’s Chinese translation of the Elements of International Law by Henry Wheaton (1785-1848). The Han-Nom Institute preserves a few copies of Vạn Quốc Công Pháp 萬國公法 catalogued with different call numbers VHv.1535/1-2, VHv.1540/1-3, and A.49.
176) This could be a shortened title of Taixi xinshi lanyao 泰西新史攬要, which is the Chinese translation of Robert Mackenzie’s The 19th Century: A History (London: T. Nelson and Sons, Paternoster Row., 1880). The Chinese translation was first published by Guangxuehui 廣學會 in 1895, and became an essential documents, on which candidates’ political discourses were based in the civil examination; see Wang Yanjun 王艷娟, Li Shaojun 李少軍, “Yingju zhi jian de xuanze: Qingmo keju gaishi celun yu Xishi jieyin 迎拒之间的选择: 清末科举改试策论与西史接引”, Lishi - Gansu shehui kexue 歷史-甘肅社會科學, no. 3 (2015): 230-233. The Chinese translation of Mackenzie’s work was widely circulated not only in China, but also in Japan and Korea; see Tʻaesŏ sinsa namyo: 24 kwŏn (Hansŏng: Hakpu Pʻyŏnjipkuk, 1897).
177) This could be a shortened title of Geguo luli 各國律例 (1839), a Chinese translation of Emer de Vattel’s Le droit des gens, ou Principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des Nations et des Souverains vol.2 (1758). Vattel’s work was first translated anonymously into English in 1760, and retranslated several times afterward; see “English Editions of The Law of Nations”, in Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury, edited and with an introduction by Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008): 21. According to Lu Yuqin 陸玉芹, Lin Zexu 林則徐 had The Law of Nations translated as Guoji fa 國際法 “and applied its principles to waging a fierce diplomatic war against Charles Ellio (the British Superintendent of Commerce and Trade to China) concerning issues such as confiscating opium, punishing smugglers and recognizance.” The Chinese translation was later incorporated into volume 83 of Wei Yuan’s 魏源 Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志under the title “滑達爾各國律例”; see Lu Yuqin 陸玉芹, “Lin Zexu yu ‘Huada’er Geguo luli’” 林則徐與滑達爾各國律例, Yancheng shifan xueyuan xuebao, vol. 26, no. 3 (2006): 11-15. It could also be Faguo luli 法國律例, which is Anatole Billequin’s Chinese translation of the Code Napoleon, completed in 1880; see Wan Qizhou 萬齊洲, Lai Lixian 賴麗嫻, and Jiang Wei 蔣 煒, “The French Law Statutes – The Civil Law and the Influx of Modern West Civil Law and Its Terminology” 法國律例·民律與近代西方民法及其術語的輸入, Huizhou xueyuan xuebao, vol. 35, no. 2 (2015): 20-24.
However, since Luli 律例 is followed by another title Huidian 會典, it might have also been The Great Qing Code 大清律例. According to Ting Zhang, there was a market for legal information as we can see quite a number of commercial publications of this voluminous and most important work of the Qing legal world. During the Guangxu period (1875-1908) alone, there existed 38 commercial editions of it; see Ting Zhang, “Marketing Legal Information: Commercial Publications of the Great Qing Code, 1644-1911” in Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s (Boston: Brill, 2015), pp.231-253.
178) This could be the Collected Statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty 大清會典, or the Collected Statutes of the Guangxu Reign 光緒會典 completed in 1899 and printed by Shangwu in 1904. Chinese scholar Chen Linghai 陳靈海 believes that, “Huidian is the fundamental law, taking a pivotal status as yard of measurement. Among historical archives, it has been discovered that plenty of them are concerned with Huidian’s promulgation, queries, explanation, revision, addition, reversion. It proves that Huidian is not a compilation of lawful regulations, but a fundamental law of Qing Dynasty in practice”; see Chen Linghai, “DaQing huidian yu Qingdai ‘dianli’ falu tixi” 大清會典與清代「典例」法律體系, Zhongwai faxue, vol. 29, no. 2 (2017): 402-428. See also Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual, Revised and Enlarged (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000): pp.946-947.
179) It is unclear whether if this is a shortened title of a book such as Wang Xiqi’s 王錫祺 Wanguo dili quantu ji 萬國地理全圖集 (Shanghai: Zhuyitang 著易堂, 1897), or a general terms for maps.
180) It is also unclear if Suanxue in this case is a shortened title, or a category of books on mathematics. According to Guo Yanyi 郭延以, Xu Shou 徐壽 (1818-1884) and several colleagues translated several books on sciences, among which there were about 23 books on mathematics. Starting from 1871, more than 31, 000 copies of science books were published; see Guo Yanyi, Jindai Zhongguo shigang 近代中國史綱 (Hong Kong: Zhongwen daxue chubanshe, 1979), p.212.
181) This is a book in the multivolume encyclopedic work titled Categorized Records on Administrative Systems of Successive Dynasties of Vietnam 歷朝憲章類誌 by Phan Huy Chú 潘輝注 (1782-1840), compiled over ten years (1809-1819).
182) The “Treatise on Rites” mentions that mandarins from Left and Right Vice Ministers 左右侍郎 down to supervising secretaries 給事were allowed to used crockery decorated with brass, but designs of dragons or phoenixes are prohibited. Lower-ranking officials were allowed to use Vietnamese crockery only; see Phan Huy Chú, Lịch Triều Hiến Chương Loại Chí vol.4: “Lễ Nghi Chí“, translated into Vietnamese by Nguyễn Thọ Dực (Saigon: Bộ Giáo Dục và Thanh Niên, 1974): pp.43-45, 48 (for Vietnamese translation); 35a-36a, 39b (for the original text written in classical Chinese).
183) The biography of Xie An 謝安 (320-385) recorded in Jin shu 晉書 does not have any account similar to the anecdote told here.
184) Based on the following phrases “Rumor has it that Tonkin people have recently found an outstanding new method for cultivating mulberry plants and raising silkworms.” 聞北圻栽枲育蚕別出新法 and “In the capital, an Agricultural School has been established…” 京師近設耕農場 one may assume that the author might be in Huế when composing the VMTHS.
185) The early twentieth-century Vietnam witnessed a number of significant technological changes with direct impacts on the ways the locals made their living. One of such changes occurred in sericulture. French colonialists soon found it a great and precious resource. In a brochure titled La Sériciculture coloniale et l’industrie française de la soie (1905), E. Pelleray wrote that, “Silk is just like rice, sugar cane or tea, one of the natural products of Indo-China. Rather than focusing our efforts on the acclimatization, at great expense, of commodities, the least of which we can say and which we do not even know, is the question of whether they will ever acclimatize, is it not preferable to continue improving already existing cultures, certain to be with them safe from any disappointment? As such, it would be highly desirable that one day we owe to Indochina the greater part of our consumption of greige silk, which no other of our colonies could ever produce in such large quantities. This privileged situation, which we would be, if not the only ones, at least among the few to have, would be infinitely precious to us.”
To serve the French metropole’s interests, J. B. Paul Beau, the Indochina’s Governor General (1902-1908), was determined to develop it. To this end, Mr. Emery, Silk Inspector at Canton, was entrusted with a special mission and attached to the Directorate of Agriculture. Mr. Gachon, Senior Writer in the same Department, was added to him as a collaborator. Mr. Gachon, who had been in Tonkin for several years, had already dealt with the issue of silks on behalf of the Maison Seu in Lyon, then with Mr. Dadre and finally in Phu-lien. According to Delignon, “After a few months of study, Mr. Emery concludes that all attempts to introduce more robust varieties will be abandoned and that the Indochinese worm will be improved by individual selection and application of the Pasteur method. For this, he recommended the creation of both industrial and experimental graining and this program was approved by the Administration and Mr. Emery was commissioned in 1905 to carry it out.” L. Delignon, “La Production de la soie en Indochine“, Revue de botanique appliquée et d’agriculture coloniale, 3rd year, bulletin no. 24 (1923): pp.533-534.
Mr. Emery soon realized that if spun in the European way, the cocoons of Indochina could give a good quality silk. On his advice, the Department of Agriculture built the so-called “a feu-vu” bassines (fire-ponds) quickly introduced into practice by the locals: “These basins were given free of charge to the natives and operated under the supervision of Emery and Gachon. Samples of the silk produced were sent to the Exposition de Marseille and to Lyon where they were appreciated.” Furthermore, Emery observed that the Vietnamese spun cocoons as soon as they were harvested and did not suffocate them. As the development of the pupa was rapid, cocoons could not be transported over great distances. In order to remedy this inconvenience, Emery studied the possibility of suffocating them; he built a damper in a simple handling, easy transport, which allowed to keep the cocoons for shipping. P. Vieil, “Le Sériciculture en Indo-Chine”, op. cit., 958-959.
186) The Agricultural School was founded in Hue at the end of 1898 by Emperor Thành Thái’s royal ordonnance. This agricultural school is “certainly among the number of works whose success would contribute the most, by training heads of indigenous culture, to facilitate the Europeans established in Annam the development of their agricultural holdings.” It is also interesting to learn about the school’s first class of students, “At the beginning of the 1900-1901 school year, the choice was preferably made of former boys speaking and understanding French. This recruitment, however, only provided mediocre subjects, too old and fathers of family, having consequently occupations which prevented them from attending the courses regularly and fruitfully.” At this school, a variety of subjects were taught, such as general notions of botany, agriculture, arboriculture, vegetable growing, French language, and elementary arithmetic. Comité de l’Asie française, “L’École d’agriculture de Hué”, Bulletin du Comité de l’Asie française – Année 1901 (Paris: Comité de l’Asie française, 1940) : pp.26-27.
187) The Polytechnic School was established according to a royal ordonnance issued in the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Thành Thái (1899). In terms of its name, “The expression exceeded reality a little but it well characterized an establishment where we trained blacksmiths, farriers, fitters, turners, boilermakers, tinsmiths, molders-founders, carpenters, sculptors, masons, stonecutters, carvers, painters, saddlers, designers, etc.” Direction générale de l’instruction publique, Annam scolaire: De l’enseignement traditionnel annamite à l’enseignement modern franco-indigène (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-orient, 1931), p.133.
188) This long and informative paragraph is from chapter Ribao 日報 in Zheng Guanying’s 鄭觀應 (1842-1922) Warnings to a Prosperous Age – Updated New Edition 盛世危言增訂新編, Guangxu gengzi 光緒庚子 edition (1900) (Taipei: Taiwan Xuesheng shuju, 1965): pp.310-312.
189) In Saigon, there existed a number of newspapers published in French, such as Bulletin officiel de l’expédition de la Cochinchine (first published on September 29, 1861), Bulletin des communes (1862), Courrier de Saigon (January 1, 1864), Le Saigonnais (1883-1889), Le Mekong (1892-1897), or L’Opinion (1899-1934). In Hanoi, the Bulletin du comité d’études agricoles, industrielles et commerciales de l’Annam et du Tonkin (1883) and Avenir du Tonkin(1884) should be counted as the first newspapers published in French language there. The Courrier d’Haiphong was founded in 1886. See Huỳnh Văn Tòng, History of Vietnamese Journalism: From the Beginning to 1930 1930 (Saigon: Trí Đăng, 1973): pp.49-50, p.58, 60, 67.
190) Đồng văn is the shortened title of Đại Nam đồng văn nhật báo 大南同文日報; see Đỗ Quang Hưng, Nguyễn Thành, and Dương Trung Quốc, Lịch sử báo chí Việt Nam 1865-1945 (Hanoi: Đại học Quốc gia, 2000), p.40.
191) Zheng Guanying writes that, “For instance, the editors-in-chief of the England’s Times newspaper house all were retired politicians and renowned subjects.” 如英國泰吾士日報館主筆者皆歸田之宰相·名臣 (Shengshi weiyan zengding xinbian, op. cit., 312). Both John Walter II (1776-1847) and John Walter III (1818-1894) served in the Parliament before taking charge of the role of the newspaper’s editor during the periods from 1803 to 1847, and from 1847-1894 respectively.
192) Daxue zhangju 大學章句 reads, “From then on, vulgar Confucians devoted twice as much effort to memorization and recitation, and to the composition of ornate essays as they did to lesser learning, yet what they achieved was of no use.” 自是以來, 俗儒記誦詞章之習, 其 功倍於小學而無用. Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p.83.
193) Unable to travel in person, one can imagine the experience through paintings, travelogues, pictures, and other materials. In The Peach Blossom Fan 桃花扇by Qing-dynasty writer Kong Shangren 孔尚任, Act 40: “That recluse, Lan Tian Shu, also came to convert and painted the four walls with depictions of Penglai and Yingzhou for me. On this desolate mountain, one can both read and 'travel from one’s couch.' From here, to ascend and achieve transcendence would no longer be the folly of an ignorant immortal.” 那山人藍田叔也來皈依, 替我畫了四壁蓬瀛. 這荒山之上, 既可讀書, 又可臥遊, 從此飛昇尸解, 亦不算懵懂神仙矣.
194) These two phrases are written in Chinese as follows, Nam quốc sơn hà 南國山河 and Thiên thư định phận 天書定分, which, in their turns, are from a poem attributed to General Lý Thường Kiệt 李常傑 (1019-1105). The poem’s first two lines reads, “In the Southern country’s mountains and streams the Southern emperor resides / A clear division is fixed by Heavenly writ” O. W. Wolters. “Phạm Sư Mạnh’s Poems Written while Patrolling the Vietnamese Northern Border in the Middle of the Fourteenth Century”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 13, no.1 (1982): 115. See also Alexander L. Vuving. “The References of Vietnamese States and the Mechanism of World Formation“, ASIEN, no. 79 (2001): 65.
195) The term wenxian/văn hiến 文獻 first appeared in Book 3 Bayi 八佾 of the Analects, “As for the rites of the Shang Dynasty, I can speak of them, but there is little remaining in the state of Song to document them. This is because there is not much in the way of culture or moral worthies left in either state.” 殷禮, 吾能言之, 宋不足徵也. 文獻不足故也, 足則吾能徵之矣. Confucius, Analects, translated by Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2003), 20. In Slingerland’s translation, it is understood as “culture or moral worthies.” Also frequently used for “documents/literary remains” (for instance, in Ma Duanlin’s 馬端臨 (1245–1322) Wenxian tongkao 文獻通考 (General Study of the Literary Remains)), the VMTHS seemingly talks about it as a concept cited from Nguyễn Trãi’s 阮廌 (1380–1442) “Bình Ngô đại cáo 平吳大誥” (Proclamation of Victory over the Ming Dynasty’s Forces). A line from the Proclamation reads, “Truly a nation of culture and moral worthies is only our realm of Đại Việt 實為文獻之邦惟我大越.”; see also Stephen O’Harrow, “Nguyen Trai’s Binh Ngo Dai Cao of 1428: The Development of a Vietnamese National Identity”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (1979): 159-174.
196) The set phrase, chenmai yinfu/trầm mai, ẩn phục 沈埋隱伏 is found in Liang Qichao’s essay “Chengbai” 成敗 (1899). The essay’s opening sentence claims that, “Those who take charge of important affairs in the world must first and foremost get rid of the view of ‘success and failure.’” 凡任天下大事者, 不可不先破成敗之見. Liang also points out that ‘civilization’ never stays intact, but on the contrary, continuously moves forward for better, “The evolution of the world has no ends: having moved up to an upper level, one will face another higher level ahead; having gone through a new stage, one will find another newer stage ahead. Viewed from someday in the future, what is called the ‘Great Civilization Enterprise’ these days will be laughed at as something uncivilized and unworthy even of a penny.” 天下進化之理, 無有窮也, 進一級更有一級, 透一層更有一層, 今之所謂文明大業者, 自他日觀之, 或笑為野蠻, 不值一錢矣. The essay concludes that, “In terms of the world’s matters, there often exist some dream that no one has never ever thought of a few hundreds of years previously, but all of a sudden a man promotes it, then a few people join him, and within not a few years, it is spread out all over the world. If there is not a single man promoting it, it will be sunken and buried, obscured and concealed, and a few decades, a few hundreds of years later, it will not manifest as if a stone sinking into the ocean, or clouds being scattered in the sky.” 天下之事, 往往有數百年夢想不及者, 忽焉一人倡之, 數人和之, 不數年而遍於天下焉. 苟無此倡之之一人, 則或沈埋隱伏, 更歷數十年·數百年而不出現, 石沈大海, 雲散太虛而已. See Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi heji 飲冰室合集 vol. 40 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936): pp.1-3.
197) Scholars believe that the term “closed country” 鎖國 enters the Japanese language only in 1801 with the translation of Kaempfer’s defense of the system by Nagasaki interpreter Shizuki Tadao. Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800 (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), p.151. It describes the Japanese foreign relations during the Edo period. According to Tashiro Kazui, sakoku “was not just a reactionary ban or limitation on all foreign relations. Instead, when understood in the context of Northeast Asian history as a whole, it represents a constructive policy of foreign relations adopted by Japan in an effort to free itself from Chinese control.” See Tashiro Kazui, “Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined“, translated by Susan Downing Videen, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 8, no. 2 (1982): 304. Liang Qichao also used this term in an essay titled “Xinmin yi” 新民議 to describe the seclusion of China through ages, “For a few thousands of years, our country has been established on the foundation of seclusionism.” 我國數千年來, 以鎖國主義立於大地. Xinmin Congbao, “Huibian” 彙編 (1902).
198) In “On the Disadvantages of Not Conducting Institutional Reforms“ 論不變法之害 printed in Shiwu bao 時務報 (August 19, 1896), Liang Qichao lists a number of socio-political reforms, technical and scientific inventions in the Europe, accompanied by reign dates of Chinese Emperors. Among them, “electric wires” (in the 17th year of the reign of Daoguang, 1837) and “steam engines” (in the 34th year of the reign of Qianlong, 1769), p.3.
199) Those lines are from the biography of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179 BCE–104 BCE) recorded in Hanshu 漢書, “Now, what the Qin has left to the Han is like rotten wood or a wall of dung; nothing can be done with it (…) This is comparable to a lute that is out of tune. In extreme cases, you must release the strings and re-stretch them; then you will be able to play it 竊譬之琴瑟不调, 甚者必解而更张之, 乃可鼓也.” Clark, Anthony E., "Han Shu, Chapter 56: Biography of Dong Zhongshu", in History Faculty Scholarship, Paper 26 (Washington: Whitworth University, 2005), p.16.
200) The sentence in question is modeled after a statement asserted by Liang Qichao. In an essay written in 1901, titled “Guodu shidai lun” (op. cit.), Liang wrote that, “Like a thousand-year-old house that is unrenovatable and uninhabitable, but people still wish to renovate it, they must first abandon its old stuffs.” 譬有千年老屋, 非更新之, 不可複居, 然欲更新之, 不可不先權棄其舊者.
201) Reading the statement of thirty-year reform of the Meiji period, readers can easily think of Takayama Rinjirō’s 高山林次郎 (1871-1902) Tokyo Tento Thirty Years: History of Meiji’s Thirty-year Reform: An Overview of Meiji’s Situations during Thirty Years 奠都三十年 : 明治三十年史・明治卅年間国勢一覧 (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1898). Takayama’s book was first translated into Chinese under a new title Riben weixin sanshinian shi 日本維新三十年史 and published by Guangzhi shuju 廣智書局 in Shanghai in 1902. Noteworthy is Hashimoto Kazutaka’s 橋本和孝 supplementary essay “New Learning Strategies for Civilization and Japan’s Reforms Thirty Years” 『文明新学策』と『日本維新三十年史』, printed in his book titled Lost under the Cyclo – Vietnam’s Society and History 失われるシクロの下でベトナムの社会と歴史 (Tokyo: Hābesuto-sha, 2017): pp.183-194. In this essay, Hashimoto tries to point out the connection between the two works.
202) When the printed version A.567 has it as a few decades ago 數十年前, the hand-copied version reads as seventy years ago 七十年前. Based on the composition time of the VMTHS (1904), if we take the time indication from the hand-copied version, the timepoint in question here (“seventy years ago”) must be around 1834. A number of historical landmarks should be noted during the 1820s and 1830s in Siam: The First Trade Treaty with Britain negotiated and signed with John Crawfurd in 1822 (Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p.17); Burney Treaty between Siam and Britain signed in 1826 (Ellon London, Thailand Condensed – 2000 Years of History and Culture (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2008), p.14); and the Siam’s defeat in Siamese-Vietnamese War in early 1834 (Ben Kiernan, Việt Nam – A History from Earliest Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p.283).
203) On April 16, 1900, Xinwen bao published two articles about new policies initiated in Thailand: one is a piece of news and the other an editorial. The news titled “Siam’s New Policies” 暹羅新政 reports the return of the Siamese King after his visits to European countries the previous year (1899), and his political reforms carried out immediately after that. In addition to the King’s great care about agriculture, industry, and commerce, his interests in learning from the West were observable. A number of Siamese princes studied overseas in Western countries; one of them graduated the year before and already returned home. The news concludes that compared to Meiji, the way the King speedily conducted reforms for the country’s self-reliance and self-renewal should be a model to follow. Based on the Siamese case, the editorial called “On Siam’s New Policies” 論暹羅新政 also rhetorically raised a number of questions, such as “Is the imitation of Western laws not more painful than falling behind” to promote reforms in China. In his “Lun bubianfa zhi hai” (already discussed above), after analyzing various examples of how Asian countries responded to Western threats and invasions (including Japanese Meiji’s reforms), Liang also brings up the case of Siam, “Located between Burma and Vietnam, and sharing the same weakness with them, Siam has exerted itself and still solitarily survive.” The Siamese King in question is Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), who “during his reign had learned to appreciate the benefits which his country would derive from the influence of western culture on the civilization of the East“ and whose “own sons and the sons of those with whom to a certain extent the future government of the country would rest, should make acquaintance with western civilization.” For further information of King Chulalongkorn’s reforms, see Prachoom Chomchai, Chulalongkorn The Great (Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1965).
204) The A.567 describes China as forever-old country 永舊國, whereas the hand-copied version has it as conservative country 守舊國. These two descriptions must have certain connections to Liang Qichao’s “On Young China” 少年中國說 (1900). In this essay, Liang tried to distinguish an old China from a young one. According to Liang, a China that is conservative remains forever-old China, whereas a China that is advancing will be a China of daily improvement.
205) “Waijie 外界” (external world) and “Neijie 內界” (internal world) are two terms frequently found in Liang Qichao’s writings. In On the Age of Transition (already discussed above), Liang analyzed China’s socio-political conditions, pointing out that besides the class of old and worthless people 老朽者流, there still existed the other class of young people 青年者流, with a big display of flags and drums, playing the role of the pioneers in the age of transition, but being irritated by the internal and external worlds, and consequently, not yet able to really taking the lead to open the path for the transition age.
206) The printed version of VMTHS (A.567) reads as “Fangzao you ju/phỏng tạo hữu cục” 仿造有局, while the hand-copied version (R.287) reads as “zhizao you ju/chế tạo hữu cục” 製造有局. Fangzao (reproduction or manufacture according to pattern) became an essential issue of East Asian countries when facing modern Western technologies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fangzao is also one of the key terms in Zheng Guanying’s Shengshi weiyan, especially in its updated new edition printed in 1900 (already discussed above). In this specific edition, Zheng added four additional chapters on “Shangwu” 商務 (Commerce), making a total of five chapters in his seminal work exclusively dealing with this topic. More specifically, in part II of this topic (商務二), Zhang discussed two remarkable issues, one on the Japanese case of fangzao as a model for China, and the other on the establishment of managing bureaus, ju 局, for the nation’s commercial development. According to Zhang, since the Meiji reforms that selectively learned from Western achievements, Japan “has reproduced not only China’s local merchandises but also merchandises from other foreign countries.” (Shengshi weiyan zengding xinbian, op. cit., 688). Zheng pointed out that, “Based on Western examples, those that are founded by mandarins in order to manage state affairs are called ‘managing bureau’.” (691), and emphasized that “China was now petitioning high authorities to set up companies. Although founded by merchants’ collected shares, it was still called a ‘managing bureau’.” (ibid., p. 692). For Zhang, fangzao was crucial to the country, not only in terms of commerce, but also of national development, starting with the cases of Marquises Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811-1872) and Zuo Zongtang 左宗棠 (1812-1885), who “were aware of the urgency of building up government dockyards/arsenals, and as a result, founded factories in Min (Fujian 福建) and Hu (Shanghai 上海) to reproduce steamers. From there, Chinese people gradually could understand Western methods of manufacturing machineries and fill up shipowners. Their initiation of this enterprise had very great merit.“ (ibid, p.903).
During 1904, Xinwen bao reported a number of products manufactured according to their Western original patterns, including Western-style papers (“Fangzao Yangzhi” 仿造洋紙, April 4, p. 9), Western-style rifles (“Fangzao Yangqiang” 仿造洋槍, June 5, p. 4), wheels/bicycles (“Fangzao jiaoche” 仿造腳車, July 7, p. 4), or looms (“Fangzao buji” 仿造布機, November 16). By the year of 1904, there already existed a market of goods reproduced according to Western patterns (“Fangzao shichang” 仿造市場, August 13, p. 3). Chinese authorities around that time recognized the “benefits of reproduction towards practical uses in people’s life” as written in the joint-memorial on the methods for the relocation of the Jiangnan Arsenal New Factory by the Viceroy of the Two Jiangs (Jiangnan and Jiangxi) Wei Guangdao 魏光燾 (1837-1916) and the Viceroy of the Two Hus (Hunan and Hubei) Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909); see “LiangJiang zongdu Wei, LiangHu zongdu Zhang huizou Jiangnan zhizaoju yijian xinchang banfazhe” 兩江總督魏兩湖總督張會奏江南製造局移建新廠辦法摺, Dongfang zazhi, no. 6 (1904): 73. All of the above cited goods were reproduced under the management of certain bureaus. As in the hand-copied version, the phrase “zhizao you ju/chế tạo hữu cục” 製造有局 induces the association of the term zhizaoju 製造局 used for arsenals in the Late Qing period. In his “An Autobiography at the Age of Thirty” 三十自述 (1902), Liang Qichao recalls his trip back home from Beijing via Shanghai when eighteen-years old, “When reaching Shanghai, I bought Yinghuan zhilue 瀛環志略 and only after reading it did I begin to know about various countries of the five continents; I also saw a few translations of Western books from Shanghai Arsenal. Fond of those works, I could not resist to purchase them. Of course, one of the most famous among them was Jiangnan Arsenal, Jiangnan zhizaoju 江南製造局, which significantly contributed to the outspread of Western knowledge. Most influential, however, since related more closely to official sponsored modernization efforts in China were the translations done and published by Jiangnan Arsenal.” Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, and Georges Métailié, eds. Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China – The Warp and the Weft (Boston: Brill, 2007), p.694.
207) Similarly, the phrase “guangxue you hui/quảng học hữu hội” 廣學有會 can easily make readers think of Guangxuehui 廣學會 established in Shanghai in late nineteenth century.
208) In an essay titled “Discussion of the Origins of China's Weakness” 中國積弱溯源論 (1901), having described the backwardness and passivity of Chinese mandarins of his time, Liang Qichao asked the same rhetoric question, “How can we hold a place in the contemporary civilized world of scramble for progress?”
209) As previously discussed, Liang Qichao’s essay “Chengbai” (Success and Failure) clearly has certain impacts on the author of the VMTHS. The sentence in question is obviously modeled after Liang’s statement in “Chengbai“
210) The three phases of evolution from barbarian 野蠻, through semi-developed 半開, to civilization 文明 were frequently discussed in Xinmin Congbao during the period from 1903 to 1904 in specific essays. For instance, “Japanese Great Scholar Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Sayings” 日本大儒福澤諭吉語錄 translates some of Fukuzawa Yukichi’s writings, whose statement defines the monarchical regime as barbarian semi-developed 野蠻半開; see Xinmin Congbao, no. 38/39, 1903: 172. Another essay titled “A Brief Biography of Great Philosopher Spencer” 大哲斯賓塞略傳 also emphasizes that the evolution would take a long time to move from “barbarian” to “civilized” phases, “It is infeasible to take only one or two years to jump from barbarian, or semi-developed to civilized phases.”; see Xinmin Congbao, “Huibian” 彙編, 1903, 418.
211) The original citation (qiong ze bian, bian ze tong, tong ze jiu 窮則變·變則通·通則久) comes from the Book of Changes 易經. After the death of Shennong 神農, there was the rise of Huangdi 黃帝, Yao堯and Shun 舜 who carried out a series of changes. The English translation is from The I Ching – The Book of Changes, James Legge, Second Edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1963), p.383.
213) The original Chinese phrase in the text reads, hushan zhi gewu/hồ sơn chi ca vũ 湖山之歌舞 (Singing and dancing around ponds and mountains). The set phrase gewu hushan 歌舞湖山can be found in Song dynasty XuanHe Memorabilia 大宋宣和遺事 to indicate literary pleasures enjoyed by the literati, “At the moment, scholar-officials willingly make peace, jovially dedicated themselves to the pleasure of singing and dancing around ponds and mountains, and forgot the absolutely irreconcilable enemy of their fathers and elder brothers !” 一時士大夫甘心講和, 酣絭於湖山歌舞之娛, 而忘父兄不共戴天之仇矣. However, it is noteworthy that the expression appears again in Kang Youwei’s famous fifth memorial submitted to Qing Emperor Guangxu in 1897, “The German invasion of Jiaozhou Bay in 1897 provided the opportunity for Kang's Fifth Memorial to the Qing Emperor. In this memorial, he went beyond his earlier arguments about the rigidity of the traditional system to a sweeping indictment of the weakness, turmoil, and philistinism of the Qing system. To rescue the Qing, he believed, a modern nation-state form of government, including a ‘national assembly’, had to be emulated. Kang recommended that the Emperor forcefully tell the whole country, as had been done by Peter the Great and in the Meiji Restoration, that reform was necessary.” Young-tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898”, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 3 (1992): 519. Kang’s statement reads, “I am afraid from that moment on, although looking for only imminent peace, Your Majesty and your subjects cannot even obtain the pleasure of singing and dancing around ponds and mountains.”
214) The expression of dadao kuofu 大刀闊斧 is found in Liang’s essay “Guodu shidai lun” (op. cit.). In Liang’s context, it means “bold and resolute”: “Therefore, there must be bold and resolute power, to be able to fulfill the pioneers’ resolve to open up virgin lands.” 故必有大刀闊斧之力, 乃能收篳路藍縷之功.
215) The old wall (gulei/cố luỹ 故壘) is described in Liang’s “Guodu shidai lun”(op. cit.) as defending the old trend to the very end is also the great enemy of the Transition Period.” 老朽者流, 死守故壘, 為過渡之大敵.
216) The image of the thermometer is employed in Liang Qichao’s essay “On the Backtracking of China’s Weakness” 中國積弱溯源論 (1901), “The question of whether the Government is good or not is always comparable to whether the country’s people are good or not, like the response of the thermometer to the air.” 政府之良否, 恆與國民良否為比例, 如寒暑針之與空氣然.
