Volume 13, Issue 2

In 1908, The Disciples of Christ from the U. S. established a mission in Batang/Ba’an located in the Border Region of Sichuan, aiming to launch evangelistic, educational, medical work, etc. Chuanbian Ba’an Jiduhui was established by the baptized Chinese and western Christians in 1919. This paper discusses the localized characteristics of the Disciples’ evangelistic work in Batang and its interaction with a local society through the examination of the initial Contract signed by all the baptized members in 1919, the organizational features and membership structure, evangelistic work, the situation of local pastors and other employees, and the entrustment of the mission work to the local Board of Trustees before all the missionaries evacuated Batang in 1932. It reveals how missionary activities affected the social lives of both Hans and Tibetans through organized activities in Batang, and how complex local factors, especially armed conflicts, conversely restricted missionary activities. Serving as a typical case, the study indicates that a local society in modern China, with its own logic for development, did not passively accept the impacts of the West and globalization.

This paper examines the twenty-one letters from a Chinese scholar Gu Hongming to a German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm. It is essential to empower the right of speech on the side of Wilhelm by restoring a dialogic discourse from the epistolary space and revealing the innate nature of polemic in Gu’s internally dialogized publications. Their interconnected cultural and social activities represented in these letters may all be regarded as concrete rejoinders that signify their meanings and are signified by their previous context. The interaction between Gu and Wilhelm has cast a far-reaching impact on their developments in either academic thoughts or cultural identities, so much so that only by perceiving their reciprocally infiltrated ideas and related activities in coexistence are we able to understand their richer and fuller personalities developing along a mutual reference line and in a context of an unfinalized dialogue.

In this dialogue, Dr. Xuetao Li and Dr. Fabian Heubel approach the concepts of Hanxue (Sinology) and Guoxue (Traditional Chinese Studies) from the perspectives of history and intercultural philosophy. Their in-depth analysis suggest that one of the most important problems of Chinese culture lies in the transformation of traditional values in the contemporary context. The two scholars discuss the question how Chinese studies can transcends rigid, narrow-minded, and arbitrary ways of thinking and knowledge production.