More Information About The Power and Glory of the Ming Dynasty

Website

http://www.humanitieswest.org

Description

In 1368, a military genius born a peasant reunited China and drove the once-invincible Mongol cavalry back to the homeland of Genghis Khan. The Hongwu emperor revitalized the world's largest economy yet eschewed both military and commercial adventurism. But his half-Mongol son, the Yongle emperor, rebuilt the Mongol capital at Beijing and lavished resources on vast fleets led by the Muslim eunuch Zheng He. Decades before Columbus sailed, maritime power extended Ming military and diplomatic influence to Southeast Asia, India and East Africa. Trade flourished, spurred by Ming productivity, the unquenchable European thirst for porcelain and the vast silver reserves of Mexico and Peru. Ming urban culture transmuted that silver into a blossoming of arts, crafts, literature, and drama that rivaled the cultural riches of the Renaissance. By 1644, desperation among the rural poor, declining fiscal control, and a renewed challenge from the north brought down the Ming dynasty, leaving the less exuberant Qing regime to warily fend off ever-increasing European maritime power and arrogance.

Friday, February 10, 2012, 7:30pm-10:00pm

Opening Performance:
Yangqin Zhao and Gangqin Zhao, Melody of China, San Francisco, performing on the Yangqin and Guzheng
The Yangqin is a Chinese hammered dulcimer with a near-squared soundboard. The instrument is very similar to Santur, played with two bamboo sticks. The Guzheng is a Chinese zither with movable bridges and 16 - 25 strings. In the same family there are the Japanese koto, the Vietnamese dan tranh, the Korean kayagum and the Mongolian Yagtaof.

Ming China and the Larger World
Timothy Brook (Chinese History, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia)
The Ming founder came to power by defeating the Mongol occupation and declaring that he would restore China to its original character as a village society. That he failed was not for want of trying. But the world had changed since the Song dynasty, and the Ming had to change with it. There would be no return to arcadia when goods could be traded, trade routes followed and money made. His son Yongle would be more aggressive in casting the Ming as a maritime power, famously sending his Muslim eunuch Zheng He on diplomatic excursions into the Indian Ocean. But the bigger story is that Chinese, slowly but surely, were discovering profitable links with economies elsewhere. The flood of trade was unstoppable, fueling a prosperity that Chinese had not known for centuries and drawing Europeans around the world in unprecedented numbers. A global economy was on the horizon.

Art and Visual Culture at the Ming Court
Michael Knight (Chinese Art, Asian Art Museum, SF)
Great changes occurred in court arts during the 276 years of the Ming dynasty. In the early decades of the dynasty, the main concerns were building an appropriate imperial capital and demonstrating the legitimacy of the emperor. By the end of the dynasty some estimates place the number of members of the imperial family as high as 60,000; each member both a drain on state resources and a potential consumer of art. Throughout the dynasty, a vast array of objects was required to serve the needs of the court; these ranged from the simplest bowl for serving rice to items used in the most elaborate court rituals. This lecture provides an overview of the function of art at the Ming court in four sections: the court environment at the primary capital of Beijing and the secondary capital at Nanjing; daily life and entertainment at court; visual symbols of hierarchy and rank; and court religion.

Saturday, February 11, 2012, 10:00 am to noon and 1:30 to 4:00 pm

Welcome
Wen-hsin Yeh, Moderator
The Zheng He Voyages: Manifesting Heaven's Mandate. Sarah Schneewind (History, UC San Diego). The Yongle emperor, son of the Ming founder, usurped the throne in a bloody civil war. Throughout his reign, he strove in numerous ways to prove his legitimacy, within the framework of the Mandate of Heaven ideology that had justified rulership since 1045 BCE. For even this most powerful of emperors had to work with public opinion. The dramatic pre-Columbian sea voyages led by one of Yongle's right-hand men, the Muslim eunuch Zheng He, were part of that effort. And they were ended by his successors precisely to uphold their own vision of the Mandate, again responding to public pressure.

Late Ming Drama
Sophie Volpp (East Asian Languages & Cultures, UC Berkeley).
The late Ming (roughly 1570-1644) ushered in the golden age of the Chinese literary drama, when a gentleman might be expected to have some skill as a playwright. Literati composed plays in unprecedented numbers and owned private acting troupes, often coaching the actors themselves. The stage so dominated the cultural sensibility of the period that theatricality came to occupy an important ideological niche in diverse genres of cultural production. This lecture focuses on the particular quality of relations among literati and actors in the privileged and precarious world of the late Ming. The Peach Blossom Fan (1698) is not a late-Ming play, but we include it here not only because it dramatizes the fall of the Ming but because it provides a fully-realized incarnation of the concerns regarding theatricality that are so dominant in late-Ming drama.

Lunch
Theatre closes from noon to 1:00pm. Program resumes at 1:30 pm

Late Ming Drama: The Peony Pavilion in Performance
Sophie Volpp
Late Ming drama has had a renaissance in China and Taiwan after the revival in 2004-05 of Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) in a "Youth edition" by producer Pai Hsien-yung performed at China's top universities (and UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall). Kunqu —the style of opera—had been a dying art with an aging audience of cognoscenti. Pai Hsien-yung's production revived it with a production that featured vivid staging on lavish sets and starred young actors with rigorous training. Kunqu became popular among younger audiences, and a host of Ming plays were revived. Most recently, small-scale chamber opera has become fashionable, in response to the block-buster productions of the kunqu revival. This presentation considers Pai Hsien-yung's production of Peony Pavilion against the backdrop of two East-West collaborations: Chen Shizheng's 1999 Lincoln Center production, which showcased traditional Chinese popular arts, and Peter Sellars's 1998 experimental version, which featured music by experimental composer Tan Dun, best known for his score for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The Ming in Retrospect
Lynn Struve (History, Indiana University)
Members of the educated social stratum who faced the collapse of the "Great Ming" were filled with conflicted feelings about the impending demise. On one hand, they were acutely aware of the dynasty's numerous present problems, which typically signaled the end of Heaven's patience with any Chinese ruling order. On the other, the two fatal challenges to the dynasty's existence—insurrections of commoners and invasions by "barbarians"—brought directly to mind the principal reasons why the Ming founder, Taizu, had never ceased to be revered as a great dynastic progenitor. Ironically, many placed blame for the dynasty's difficulties on the emperor who actually had brought the Ming to the pinnacle of its geopolitical greatness, the third emperor Chengzu. He increasingly was seen to have marred the dynasty's cosmic moral legitimacy in his fratricidal usurpation of the throne—a violation that was being finally paid for in the seventeenth century.

Closing
Panel discussion with all presenters and written questions from the audience.