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Resources on Ming Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources from the Ming in English translation.

For a variety of sources:

  • Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol 1., pp. 779-799, 831-7, 841-924.
  • Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chinese Civilization:  A Sourcebook has some Ming things.
  • Check past issues of Renditions, a journal of translation

 

Check the on-line Ming History English Translation Project for translations from the official Ming History published in 1739, and for miscellaneous other things. https://knit.ucsd.edu/minghistoryinenglish/translations-from-the-mingshi/

 

Family instructions

“Letter to my sons” by matriarch and poet Gu Ruopu, in Mann & Cheng, Under Confucian Eyes

1576 “Family Teachings” translated in Sidney Gamble, North China Villages 1963, pp. 242-7

1574 Preface to a genealogy, Dennis, Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers, 89-90.  Other bits and pieces.

 

Informal and miscellaneous writings, including travel:

  • Yang Ye, translator, Vignettes from the Late Ming
  • Learning from Mount Hua: A Chinese Physician’s Illustrated Travel Record and Painting Theory, by Wang Lü, 1381, transl. Kathryn Liscomb, wonderful long passages and the paintings themselves
  • Xu Xiake, Hsü Hsia-k‘o's Huang Shan travel diaries, translated by C. Li in Two studies in Chinese literature
  • Various travel narratives from Ming in Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes.   
  • Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, Beginnings to 1911, has exerpts from The Romance of the Gods and informal prose by writers including Li Zhi, Yuan Hongdao, Tu Long, Chen Jiru, and Zhang Dai.
  • Longish passages from various writers in Pei-yi Wu, A Confucian’s Progress
  • Foccardi, Gabriele.  The Chinese travelers of the Ming period.  Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1986.
  • David Pollack, the Chinese Essay, pp. 66-83, essays by Fang Xiaoru (on mosquitos) , Yuan Hongdao (on tourism at Tiger Hill, and stupid servants), Gui Youguang (on his mother and on his studio)
  • Jonathan Chaves, Pilgrim of the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming Dynasty China, has poems and essays by Yuan Hongdao and his brothers (White Pine Press, 2005)

 

Letters

  • two books by Dániel Z Kádár: Historic Chinese Letter-Writing and Model letters in late imperial China: 60 selected epistles from 'Letters from snow swan retreat'. The former is available on e-brary and other electronic sources; I'm not sure about the latter.

 

“A Letter and Fan Painting by Ch'iu Ying,” by Jean-Pierre Dubosc, in Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 28, (1974/1975), pp. 108-112 – has full translation of letter and facsimile and discussion of how he found it to be genuine.  Should of course check with Ellen Laing.

Government sources:

  • Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1, pp. 779-797  
  • For an early Ming attempt to regulate village life, Ming Taizu's "Placard of the People's Instructions" is translated in Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation" and also by George Jer-lang Chang in the journal Ming Studies 7 (1978) at the end of his article there on the village elder system.
  • Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation, various laws & regulations translated, including the “Placard of the People’s Instructions”
  • Parts of Taizu's "Great Warning" or Grand Pronouncements are also translated in Lin Tai-yung's dissertation, "Ming T'ai-tsu and His Administration of Justice" (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1979).
  • also translates a very interesting questionnaire that magistrates were supposed to fill out when they arrived at a new county.
  • John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, has lots of Taizu’s “The Grand Pronouncement” or “The Great Warning”, and I have bits of it translated too.
  • Jiang Yonglin, translator, The Great Ming Code
  • Lief Littrup, trans.,  “The Yellow Registers of the Ming Dynasty: Translation from the Wan-li Da-Ming Hui-dian,” Papers on Far Eastern History 16 (1977): 67-106
  • Romeyn Taylor, trans. The Basic Annals of Ming T’ai-tsu (from the official Ming History) in available on the Ming History English Translation Project.
  • Yongle principles of local gazetteer compilation, giving categories to be included and what should be in them.  In Joseph Dennis, Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers, pp. 38-42 and 43-46.

 

John D. Langlois, Jr., "The Reversal of the Death Verdict against Wang Shizhen's Father," _Ming Studies_ 53 has long swaths of translation of Wang Shizhen's petition to the throne on his father Yu's behalf, indented, on pp. 81-3, 83, 84, 84-5, 85, 86.  The article and the others in the same volume also have paragraph-long quotations from other primary sources related to the case and to Shizhen.

 

Local History:

Eduard B. Vermeer, trans., Chinese Local History: Stone Inscriptions from Fukien  in the Sung to Ch’ing Periods, #s1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23

 

Gender and women:

  • Susan Mann, ed., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History, chapters 6-11
  • Excerpts from women writing about the Ming fall in Kang-I Sun Chang, “Women’s Poetic Witnessing” in David Der-wei Wang and Shang Wei, editors, Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation.
  • Lü Kun's "Education for Women" in de Bary, Sources, I pp. 896-8.
  • Struve, Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm – some stuff on women.
  • Tender Voyage, by Ping-chen Hsiung, pp. 197 gives Gui Youguang’s epitaph for his daughter Er-er
  • women/suicide/Ming fall: ten suicide poems by Du Xiaoying translated by Grace Fong in Paul S. Ropp et al., eds. Passionate Women: Female Suicide in Late Imperial China (Brill 2001)
  • Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, Red Brush:
    • Opera with poems by a Ming courtesan about a Song courtesan, including a great poem railing at the madam, and the story of Ming courtesan “Smartass Wang.”  Pp. 336-345
    • Gu Ruopu poems, including rebuttal of criticism of hiring a teacher for her daughters.
    • Liang Mengzhu 421-4
    • Shang Jinglan (1602-76), wife of Qi Biaojia d. 1645, pp. 426-431
  • Hsieh Bao Hua, Concubinage and Servitude in late Imperial China:
    • P. 16 transl from Zhang Dai on “thin horses” and maybe more in books on Zhang Dai by Spence and Kafalas.
    • 22-23 contracts for bondservants & concubines
    • 78 poem by Li Su, concubine of Shi kefa
    • 79 poem and letter by Liu Shi, concubine of Qian Qianyi
    • 56-7 other writings
    • And there may be other places.

 

The Ming fall and Ming-Qing transition:

  • Pei-kai Kang and Michael Lestz with Jonathan Spence, ed., The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (NY: Norton, 1999) has some Ming or Qing transition things, including one of Nurhaci’s seven grievances against Ming on pp. 21-3
  • Nurhaci’s offer to Li Yongfang, who surrendered to him, is translated in Franz Michael, The Origin of Manchu Rule in China: Frontier and Bureaucracy as Interacting Forces in the Chinese Empire (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1942), pp. 121-2.
  • Excerpts from women’s writings in Kang-I Sun Chang, “Women’s Poetic Witnessing” in David Der-wei Wang and Shang Wei, editors, Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation.
  • Lynn Struve, Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm
  • Ming fall, relations between farmers and officials and local gentrymen: Big swaths of stories from various histories and a novel about Li Yan, who was involved in the Li Zicheng rebellion that brought down the Ming are translated in Roger V. Des Forges, "The Story of Li Yen: Its Growth and Function from the Early Ch'ing to the Present," in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.2 (1982): 535-587.  There is some discussion, but much of the detail is not discussed.
  • Long translation (pp. 88-105) about life at the Ming/Qing transition in Li Xiaosheng, et al., "Li Tingsheng's 'A Record of Hardship:' A Recently Discovered Manuscript Reflecting Literati Life in North Henan at the End of the Ming, 1642-44" in _Late Imperial China_ 15.2 (December 1994): 85-122.

 

Religion, philosophy, education, etc:

Ming morality books:

1. Donald Lopez, ed. Religions of China in Practice,  #34, Brokaw, “Supernatural Retribution and Human Destiny” – there are other Lopez collections that may have Ming sources too.

2. de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 899-915

 

Three commemorative records for particular community schools are translated in Schneewind, Community Schools and the State in Ming China (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006), Appendices, pp. 173-176.

 

Wang Yangming & his school:

1. Julia Ching, trans., The Philosophical Letters of Wang Yang-ming

2. de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 841-864

3. check under Wang Yangming in the library catalogue.

4. There are some longish passages by Wang Yangming in de Bary, Learning for One’s Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought,

5. other Ming thinkers excerpted in de Bary, Learning for One’s Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought,in chapters 5-9.

 

Li Zhi: de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 865-873

 

Other Ming metaphysical thinkers, de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 874-886, 923-4

 

Lü Kun and his practical learning, de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 887- 899

 

Donglin Academy: de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 1, pp. 916-923

 

Huang Zongxi, The Records of Ming Scholars: A Selected Translation by Julia Ching.

 

Huang Zongxi, Waiting for the Dawn – a critique of Chinese government, trans. de Bary.

 

Technology and objects:

Translation on things in Clunas, Superfluous Things, pp. 41-45

John Goodall, Heaven and Earth: Leaves from a Ming Encyclopedia is a translation of part of Sancai tuhui.  The original, mostly pictures, can be used if you know enough Chinese to read the headings.

Song Yingxing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu: Chinese technology in the 17th century, translated by E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun.

Chinese Connoisseurship:  The Ko Ku Yao Lun. The Essential Criteria of Antiquities. ed. trans. David, Sir Percival). London: Faber, 1971.

 

Material on the early Ming emperors:  

see above category of Ming government.

  • Taizu's announcement that the Mandate of Heaven has passed to him, from the Veritable Records, is translated in Daniel Overmyer, Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976), p. 147.

 

See articles by Hok-lam Chan: they have long translated excerpts.

1. “Ming T’ai-tsu’s Manipulation of Letters: Myth and Reality of Literary Persecution.”  Journal of Asian History 29, no. 1 (1995): 1-59.

2. “The Prophecy of Chang Chung: The Transmission of the Legend of an Early Ming Taoist.”  Oriens Extremus 20, no. 1 (June 1973): 65-102. 

3. “The Rise of Ming T’ai-tsu (1368–98): Facts and Fictions in Early Ming Official Historiography.”  Journal of the American Oriental Society 95, no. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1975): 679–715.  Also reprinted in Chan, China and the Mongols: History and Legend under the Yüan and Ming, part VI. Aldershot, Eng., and Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1999.

4. “Two Ming Biographies: The Crazy Chou Immortal and the Iron-cap Taoist.” Renditions 4 (Spring, 1975): 85-90.

5. “Xie Jin (1369–1415) as Imperial Propagandist: His Role in the Revisions of the Ming Taizu Shilu.”  T’oung Pao 91 (2005):1-3, 58-124.

6. “Ming Taizu’s Problem with his Sons: Prince Qin’s Criminality and Early-Ming Politics,” Asia Major, Third Series 20.1 (2007): 45-103 has long, long translations of the charges against this prince and related materials by Taizu and others. 

             Romeyn Taylor, “Ming T'ai-tsu's Story of a Dream,” Monumenta Serica 32 (1976): 1 -20

 

Ming Taizu, “on whether there are gods and ghosts” 

 

Early European visitors:

  • Various, translated in Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century
  • Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci. Search under Ricci, Matteo as author.
  • Donald Ferguson, transl. Letters from Portuguese captives in Canton, written in 1534 & 1536:with an introduction on Portuguese intercourse with China in the first half of the sixteenth century. (Bombay : Educ. Steam Press, Byculla, 1902)

 

Christianity

  • Matteo Ricci, The true meaning of the Lord of heaven (Tianzhu shiyi); translated, with introduction and notes, by Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Guozhen ; edited by Edward J. Malatesta (St. Louis : Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985)
  • Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 142-154 (section 27).

 

Korea and Vietnam, including military matters:

  • John Meskill, trans.,  Choe Pu’s Diary: A Record of Drifting across the Sea
  • Sanh Thong Huynh, ed., The Heritage of Vietnamese Poetry. 
  • Peter H. Lee, trans., The Record of the Black Dragon Year, about the Imgen War
  • The Book of Corrections: Reflections on the National Crisis during the Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592-1598 by Yu Sŏngnyong; translation by Choi Byonghyon's Yu Songnyong's "Chingbirok," Imgen War
  • Choi has now translated the Basic Annals of the Choson founder, which will have Ming-related stuff in them
  • Wanli edict to Choson translated in Haboush, The Great East Asian War, 94-6

 

On Japan and "Japanese" piracy in the Ming:

  • So, Kwan-wai, Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the 16th century
  • Wang Yi-tung, Official Relations between China & Japan, 1368-1549 (great letters back and forth between the governments)
  • Sagacious Monks & Bloodthirsty Warriors: Chinese Views of Japan in the Ming-Qing period, Joshua A. Fogel, editor  and
  • Like Froth Floating on the Sea: the world of pirates and seafarers in late imperial south China, by Robert J. Antony

 

Minority populations:

The Jews of China, ed. Jonathan Goldstein, Volume II: A Sourcebook and Research Guide.

 

Foreign Lands

Johannes L. Kurz, “Two Early Ming Texts on Borneo,” Ming Studies 70 (2015): 60-72 has translations of an account by Song Lian of an 1371 Ming embassy to Borneo and a 1408 epitaph by Hu Guang for the Borneo king who died while visiting the Yongle court.

 

Zheng He and the voyages:

  • Sources translated in Edward Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty
  • Ma, Huan (fl. 1414-1451), _Yingyai shenglan_. 'The overall survey of the ocean's shores' [1433] Translated from the Chinese text edited by Feng Chengjun; with introd. notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills (Published Cambridge [Eng.] Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1970) Permanent link for this record: https://search-library.ucsd.edu/permalink/01UCS_SDI/ld412s/alma991005390979706535
  • Gabriele Foccardi, _The Chinese Travelers of the Ming Period_. 
    • Excerpts from Ma Huan, "Triumphant Visions of the Boundless Ocean";  (same as above)
    • Fei Xin, "Marvellous Visions from the Starry Raft"; and
    • Zhang Xie, "Researches into the Eastern and Western Oceans."  (Venice:Otto Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden), 1986)

 

A Poet’s self-presentation: Gao Qi’s “Song of the man of the green hill,” and a couple of other autobiographical poems in Frederick W. Mote, “Kao Ch’i” in Confucian Personalities, ed. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett pp. 235-259

 

Literature:

  • Cyril Birch, trans., Anthology of Chinese Literature
  • Cyril Birch, trans., The Peony Pavilion
  • Feng Menglong, various translators, Stories Old and New
  • Feng Menglong, Stories from a Ming Collection
  • Victor Mair, ed. The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Literature and The Shorter… includes lots of stuff, including jokes.
  • Chi-chen Wang, Traditional Chinese Tales, “The Oil Peddlar and the Queen of Fairies” and “The Three Brothers”
  • Patrick Hanan, Falling in Love: Stories from Ming China
  • David Roy, trans., The Plum in the Golden Vase, vols 1 & 2
  • John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Classical Chinese Literature (Ming parts)
  • Wang Jiusi, “Zhongshanlang”  (The Wolf of Zhongshan – or the ungrateful wolf -- a play): James I. Crump, trans., “Wang Chiu-ssu: The Wolf of Chung Shan,” Renditions 7 (1977):29-38.  Also in William Dolby, Eight Chinese Plays: From the Thirteenth Century to the Present (London: Paul Elek, 1978: 93-102.  For a longer version of the same story, by Kang Hai, the only translation is in an unpublished 1968 undergraduate honors thesis from Harvard: Andrew J. Kopoecki, “Mr. Tung-kuo mistakenly saves the wolf of Mt. Chung,” 23-84.  

 

Some earlier sources were so important in Ming that they can be used for Ming research in combination with Ming sources.  The “Four Books” are an example; also Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, translated by Patricia Ebrey.

 

Medicine and Science

Paul Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas translates 2 Ming sources, pp. 324-333. Also check other books by Paul Unshuld.

 

Martial arts and Military Matters

            Meir Shahar, article on the Shaolin temple, has translations, diagrams, illustrations pp. 367-8, 369, 375-6, 383-4 and other places.