4 To “Turn the Historical Clock Back”: Past, Text, and the Politics of Yuan Shikai’s Monarchy

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Introduction: Time, Text, and History in China 1
4. 1 Tulišen’s Embassy to Distant Territories: The Travels of a Text 15
5. 2 Struggles over the Historical Memory of a Heterodoxy: Chinese Commentaries on the Nestorian Stele 32
6. 3 How Much Does an Understanding of History Help? Naitō Konan’s Reading of “Communism” in China 51
7. 4 To “Turn the Historical Clock Back”: Past, Text, and the Politics of Yuan Shikai’s Monarchy 69
8. 5 Wenxue and New Practices of Writing in Post-1840 China 93
9. 6 Cai Yuanpei’s Politico-Philosophical Languages 118
10. 7 Vernacular Knowledge in Time: Sinology outside the Archive 141
11. 8 In Search of a Standard National Language in Republican China 159
12. 9 A Guangxu Renaissance? Manchu Language Studies in the Late Qing and Their Republican Afterlife 180
13. 10 The Textual Time Machine: Truth, Facts, and the Shuowen, 1770–1932 204
14. 11 A Time to Heal or a Time to Kill: Confessions in the Anti-Shaman Campaign at Communist Yan’an, 1944–1945 220
15. Bibliography 241
16. Contributors 273
17. Index 275