Study on the techniques of wallpaper (“Biaohu”) in the Palace Museum: Case on Lodge of Bamboo Fragrance(Zhu Xiangguan)

"Biao Hu" was one of the eight famous traditional crafts in the late Qing dynasty.Its function was decorating the interior of ancient buildings and making burial objects, including ceilings, walls and windows. It was popular in the buildings of northern China in the early Qing dynasty. There were white and patterned wallpaper in the Forbidden City, the latter included traditional and rare patterns in the Palace. Take the wallpaper in Lodge of Bamboo Fragrance( Zhuxiang Guan ) as an example, in this article, its structure and composition are studied by morphological observation and spectral analysis. Combined with the analysis of the patterned wallpaper in other buildings of the Forbidden City, the traditional technology is studied .

New Research on Confucian Christian Liu Ning during early Qing Dynasty

Researches on common Christians in the early Qing dynasty is relatively scarce. ’I'his essay tried to uncover and investigate the family? lives? writings?communications and thought of Liu Ning> who was a Christian and also a Confucian adept in studying ancient Confucian classics and Chinese philology and phonology in the early Qing. Some new historical materials prove that Liu was born in 1 620, not as some scholars said in 1625; and he died nearly in 1715 when he was 96 years old. He was probably baptized by Prosper Intorcctta (1625——1696.) in Nanfeng County or by other missionaries before Liu went to Chongyi County to hold the position of Confucian instructor in 1687. This essay also discusses some of Liu's thoughts?such as Restoring Confucianism and Replacing Buddhism and so on. The last part points out the changes of Christianity's legitimacy from the late Ming to the early Qing dynasties and concludes some main reasons for these changes.

From the Open Seas to the Guangzhou System

The transformation from the open sea policies of the early Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) to the rise of the Guangzhou System was a process that took many years. It began with the capture of Taiwan from the Zheng family regime in 1683 and the opening of multiple Chinese ports to trade in 1684. Over the next four decades, Qing officials experimented with different ways of managing trade, and by about 1700, Guangzhou had emerged as one of the most successful at attracting foreign ships. The practices that were found to be most effective at maintaining control—while at the same time encouraging foreigners to return each year—were gradually incorporated into the city’s commercial policies. By the 1720s, all of the basic features of what came to be called the Guangzhou System were firmly in place. In 1757, the Qing government closed other Chinese ports to foreign trade, which guaranteed that Guangzhou would remain the center of commerce up to the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842.

Establishing a Literati Spirit-Writing Altar in Early Qing Suzhou: The Optimus Prophecy of Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719)

In recent years the Suzhou literatus Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719) has attracted scholarly attention as a figure embodying the rich diversity of elite religiosity in the early Qing dynasty Yangzi delta. The present article employs Peng Dingqiu’s previously neglected manuscript autobiography Shijiang gong nianpu to hone in on a prophecy he claimed to have received in 1674 of his two-fold optimus success in 1676. It provides detail on the social conventions of verification of spirit-altar communications and probes the challenges Peng Dingqiu’s solitary method of communicating posed to communal verification. Concurrently, the article establishes a baseline of historically plausible events and identifies the narrative elements most likely modified by Peng Dingqiu and his admirers after the achievement of the prophecy.