September 30, 2011

　It was with much delight that I participated in this first ever Cross-Straits History and Culture Summer Research Institute on Sichuan History at Sichuan University in Chengdu. This was an unexpected honor as the original plan was for mainland Chinese and Taiwanese scholars only, but I and my fellow student from the University of California, Irvine, Chris Heselton, were invited to join the group as the only two foreign participants.It is from this perspective—as an outsider looking in—that I write this personal report of my experience at the Institute.

　Aside from language classes, which I have taken at Guangxi Normal University（廣西桂林師範大學）and Taiwan’s Foguang University（台灣宜蘭佛光大學）, my academic experience has all been in the United States (this excludes study abroad I have done in France and Mexico, which is outside the purview of this report). Academia is a strange creature, and adheres to the shape of the culture in which it resides. To this end, I perceived a rather vast chasm between the training that I have received in the United States, and that undertaken by my Taiwanese and mainland Chinese colleagues. In the lectures we attended, these differences were most cogently addressed by Professor Liu Fusheng（劉復生）, who spoke of the competition between exegetical scholarship （經學）and historical scholarship（史學）for academic and intellectual space. As I understand it, the former represents historical practice before what we term in the West the cultural or linguistic turn（語言的轉向）: the pursuit of unearthing historical fact from its dusty tomb, gently brushing off the years of grime and declaring it truth. Because the American academy is now beyond the linguistic turn, this kind of history is precisely what I have learned to critique and regard with suspicion. Therefore, Professor Liu’s discussion of this discursive battle in Chinese historiography was truly fascinating and enlightening.

　Yet given my personal research interest in public health, the most enjoyable lectures for me were those delivered on day four, Professor Lin Fusheng's（林富士）analysis of the Daoist medical exorcism ritual called zhuyou（祝由）, and Doctor Cai Jin's（蔡進）discussion of the unique nosology he has developed over decades of treating patients with Chinese medicine. In regard to the former lecture, one of the aspects I found most fascinating was the gradual disappearance of and reaction against zhuyou, a process which Professor Lin asserted began in the Ming dynasty and perhaps even as early as the Yuan. Already at this time, defenders of the process likened it to science, while its detractors declared it superstition. Of course this conflict between superstition and “Mr. Science” only intensified in the twentieth century [1], a period when Chinese medicine thoroughly remade itself in order to adapt to the exigencies of the time and maintain a degree of social relevance even as the invention of sulfa drugs and antibiotics gave scientific biomedicine clinical superiority over infectious diseases.

　It was with the knowledge that “Traditional” Chinese Medicine is a modern invention [2] that I listened intently to Doctor Cai discuss the invention of his own medical tradition, a mapping of illness entering the body through the feet and alternately progressing and stagnating in the primary organs. His nosology is holistic, and he stated that aggressive ambition and uncurbed desires also create illness, though the precise way in which this manifests differs by individual. Doctor Cai's medical theory strikes me as not only brilliant and awe-inspiring, but also distinctly modern: a post-industrial world offers many temptations that constantly titillate the senses, and a post-aristocratic social order allows more people to dream of professional success and nurture personal ambition. He provides an excellent example of TCM as both utterly traditional—Doctor Cai built his medical episteme on a foundation of Chinese medical classics such as the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor（黃帝內經）—and thoroughly modern—speaking to the medical needs of contemporary people from a twenty-first century cultural framework.

　I would be remiss not to mention the element offieldwork investigation during the Institute. Visiting all of these sites alongside other scholars was both pleasurable and informative, and in each locale I learned much more than I would have had I gone alone. As a Unitarian Universalist (a religion derived from Christianity), I was delighted to experience Mt. Emei along with 見證法師 and 在家人陳漢傑, as well as Buddhist lay followers such as 黃郁晴. Their profound sensitivity to the sacred nature of the mountain enabled me to feel it more deeply and experience it partially as a pilgrimage despite being carried the entire way by petroleum- and electricity-powered conveyances.Exploring the relics of Sanxingdui and Jinsha with 胡川安, who has some elementary archeological knowledge, was enlightening for this student of the twentieth century.

　Overall, this inaugural meeting of the Cross-Straits Cultural History Institute was a grand success, as it introduced me to the brightest upcoming scholars from mainland China and Taiwan, with whom I hope to maintain friendships throughout my career. Seeing their brilliant minds in action gave me great humility and put me into deeper touch with my own flaws and limitations as a foreign scholar whose language ability will never be close to native, and whose understanding of Chinese history shall always be tempered with, colored by and reflected through my own experiences as an outsider.

 

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[1] One excellent monograph on this topic is Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009).