Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China
- Shih-Pei Chen Dagmar Schäfer Qun Che Sean Wang
Local gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志) take been major primary sources for the written report of Communist china's local history. About 8,000 titles of local gazetteers dating from the tenth to the nineteenth century are still extant, covering almost all well-populated regions of historical Communist china. The authors of local gazetteers were officials and local gentry who delineated the landscape, flora and animal, local products, temples and schools, officials and celebrities, local culture and customs, and much more. This project unlocks this treasure chest of local riches by transforming textual formats into a scholarly, enhanced database for new forms of digital historical analysis. A set of digital tools has been adult to help historians to quickly extract data from the digitized text, to store and share the produced data with peers as a new form of academic collaboration, and to apply analysis tools (including GIS maps) on the produced data in order to discover patterns on larger scales. We have started extracting and visualizing information on regional products from 2,000 digital local gazetteers to unravel their role in the historical structure of People's republic of china's "local materialities." In the 2nd phase, the project will facilitate comparison of literary with artefactual and environmental bear witness. We are especially interested in exploring how the change of scales—by turning local records from private gazetteers into a single global database—can reshape the study of historical Communist china.
Media and Features
Working Groups
Past Events
- Dept. Three
Chinese Local Gazetteers: Historical Method and Computerized Data Collection and Analysis
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- Dept. III
Chinese Local Gazetteers: Local Materiality in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
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- Dept. Iii
Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Building Materials in Chinese Local Gazetteers: Brain-Storming
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- Dept. III
Chinese Local Gazetteers "Terminology"
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- Dept. 3
Chinese Local Gazetteers "Terminology" Public Sessions
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- Dept. III
The Schistosomiasis Epidemic and Environmental Modify
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- Dept. Three
Know Your Remedies: Chemist's and Early Modern Culture in Red china, 1500–1800
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- Research IT Dept. III
From Local Gazetteers Projection to Asia Network: Working with Licensed Materials in Digital Humanities
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- Dept. III
Conditions Events or Climatic change? Yuan Dynasty, Local Gazetteers, and Sericulture
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- Dept. Iii
The Utilise of the Song Notebooks (biji 筆記) in the Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Knowing an Empire: Imperial Science in Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Empires
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- Dept. Iii
What One Should Know nigh a Locality: Analyzing Knowledge Categories from the Chinese Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Locality and Geographical Knowledge in Regal China I
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- Dept. III
Locality and Geographical Knowledge in Majestic Mainland china Ii
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- Dept. Iii
Data Collection, System, and Presentation in Ming-Qing Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. III
Visual Materials in Local Gazetteers
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- Dept. 3
Visual Materials in Local Gazetteers
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Projects
Publications
Peng, Weiqian, Hui Cheng, and Shih-Pei Chen (2018). "Cong quan wen dao biao ge: di fang zhi zhi guan zhi zhong zi liao zhi ban zi dong xie qu 從全文到表格：地方志職官志中職官資料之半自動擷取 [From Text to Data: Extracting Posting Information From Chinese Local Gazetteers]." Shu wei dian cang yu shu wei ren wen 數位典藏與數位人文 one: 79–125. https://doi.org/10.6853/DADH.201804_1.0004.
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Chen, Shih-Pei (2016). "Remapping Locust Temples of Historical Mainland china and the use of GIS (重制陳正祥之蝗神廟分佈圖與淺談 GIS 的使用)." Review of Religion and Chinese Gild 3 (two): 149–163. https://doi.org/x.1163/22143955-00302002.
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Chen, Shih-Pei, Zoe Hong, Dagmar Schäfer, Martina Siebert, and José Urzúa (2016). "Compiling a database on historical Red china from local records : the Local Gazetteers Project at MPIWG." In Digital Humanities 2016 : briefing abstracts ; Kraków eleven–xvi July 2016, ed. M. Eder and J. Rybicki, 452–455. Kraków: Jagiellonian University & Pedagogical Academy. http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/160.
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Chen, Shih-Pei, Kenneth Hammond, Anne Gerritsen, Shellen Wu, and Jiajing Zhang (2020). "Local Gazetteers Research Tools: Overview and Research Application." Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 iv (Special Issue two): 544–558. https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2020.26.
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Conference Activities
Kathlene Baldanza
- "Centring the Margins: Environmental Histories of Yunnan and Red china's Southwestern Frontiers," Fudan University, Shanghai, Red china, May 25, 2018.
- Southeast Asian Natures Conference, Academy of California, Riverside, March 12, 2018.
Qun Che
- "Treating a Genre every bit a Database: the Chinese Local Gazetteers, the LG tools, and Enquiry Based on this New Digital Methodology," Digital Humanities, August 2017.
- "Water Conservancy Works as Indicators of Environmental Transformations in the Dongting Lake Region in the Ming-Qing Dynasty," Panel 195: "Local Gazetteers as a Database: New Digital Research Methods," AAS 2018, March 2018.
Shih-Pei Chen
- "Treating a Genre as a Database: the Chinese Local Gazetteers, the LG tools, and Research Based on this New Digital Methodology," Digital Humanities, August 2017.
- "LoGaRT: Local Gazetteers Research Tools," Console 195: "Local Gazetteers as a Database: New Digital Inquiry Methods," AAS 2018, March 2018.
Desmond Cheung
- "Scaling Locusts: Environmental Statecraft in Ming China," Scaling the Ming International Conference, May 2018.
Hilde de Weerdt
- "Linking, Visualizing and Interpreting Chinese Datasets" (with Jialong Liu and Huei-Lan Xiong), at University of Freiburg's "Statistics, Categories, and Politics: Interpreting and Visualizing Data from Modern Chinese History" workshop, May ten, 2018.
Joseph Dennis
- "息訟歌的出版與傳播 (The Publication and Broadcasting of Songs to Encourage the Cessation of Litigation)," Nankai University 南开大学, September 21, 2017.
- "息訟歌的出版與傳播 (The Publication and Broadcasting of Songs to Encourage the Cessation of Litigation)," Constitute for Enquiry in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, November 6, 2017.
- "Reconstructing Book Circulation and Reading Using LoGaRT: A Database of School Library Collections in Ming, Qing, and Republican China," Panel 195: "Local Gazetteers as a Database: New Digital Research Methods," AAS 2018, March 2018.
Yan Gao
- "Local biodiversity from historical perspective: preliminary findings from records on bird (从历史角度来看生物多样性：以鸟类为例)," Fudan Academy, June 2017.
Ian Miller
- "Tax Surveys and Information Structures in Song, Yuan and Ming Gazetteers," Panel 195: "Local Gazetteers equally a Database: New Digital Research Methods," AAS 2018, March 2018.
Gregory Scott
- "The Taiping State of war and its Touch on Buddhist Monasteries in Mainland china, 1850–1898," Annual Conference of the Britain Clan for Buddhist Studies, SOAS, University of London, July i, 2017.
- "Local Gazetteer Data on the Postal service-Taiping Reconstruction of Religious Institutions," Almanac Coming together of the American Academy of Organized religion, Boston, November 20, 2017.
Griet Vankeerberghen
- "Writing Memories: The Sanfu huangtu on the Qin and Western Han Capital Region," European Association for Chinese Studies Conference, August 30, 2018.
Huiyi Wu
- "Reality, Legend, Local Identity: Traces of Jesuits in Local Gazetteers," Needham Inquiry Constitute, November 2016.
- "What Remains: The Persistence and Adaptation of the Field Allocation (fenye) Scheme in Local Gazetteers after the Affect of Western Learning," Needham Research Plant, May 2018.
Huei-Lan Xiong
- "Linking, Visualizing and Interpreting Chinese Datasets" (with Hilde de Weerdt and Jialong Liu), at University of Freiburg's "Statistics, Categories, and Politics: Interpreting and Visualizing Data from Modern Chinese History" workshop, May 10, 2018.
Social Media
Blog Post: Elites, Networks, and Ability in Modern Mainland china
Pierre Magistry on applying natural language processing (NLP) to Chinese local gazetteers.
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Blog Post: Pismire, Spider, Bee
Shih-Pei Chen on Ant, Spider, Bee: "Material Network Assay."
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Weblog Mail service: Roots and Branches
Ian Miller on Medium.com web log, Roots and Branches: "Footprint of the Capitals."
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Presentation: YouTube
Gregory Scott on Youtube, "Survey of Religious Reconstruction in Modern Cathay."
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Source: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/departmentSchaefer_SPC_MS_LocalGazetteers
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