Sample Mid-term
In this assessment, you will apply historical knowledge and reasoning skills that you have developed in the class to a new set of sources.
Once you begin, you will have 120 minutes (2 hours) to read and write an essay based on ONE extract from the following documents:
- Primary sources: texts that were written in the time period you are asked about;
- Secondary sources: texts written by later historians that explain the time period;
- Multimedia sources: typically artworks – cartoons, posters, paintings, videos – from the time period.
When preparing your response, you may consult any external sources, such as your notes and the Internet, including AI tools, provided that you give proper citations.
Xue Fucheng on Reform
In the following excerpt from Suggestions on Foreign Affairs (1879), Xue Fucheng (1838-1894), secretary and advisor to self-reformers Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, calls for reform on the ground that historical change is inevitable and nothing new to Chinese history.
Sometimes in the succession of one sage to another there cannot but be changes in the outward forms of government. Sometimes when a sage has to deal with the world, sooner or later there must be changes made. . . . Now there is rapid change in the world. It is my opinion that with regard to the immutable Way we should change the present so as to restore the past [the Way of the sages]; but with regard to changeable laws, we should change the past system to meet present needs. Alas! If we do not examine the differences between the two situations, past and present, and think in terms of practicability, how can we remedy the defects?
Western nations rely on intelligence and energy to compete with one another. To come abreast of them, China should plan to promote commerce and open mines; unless we change, the Westerners will be rich and we poor. We should excel in technology and the manufacture of machinery; unless we change, they will be skillful and we clumsy. Steamships, trains, and the telegraph should be adopted; unless we change the Westerners will be quick and we slow. . . . Unless we change, the Westerners will cooperate with each other and we shall stand isolated; they will be strong and we shall be weak.
Some may ask: “If such a great nation as China imitates the Westerners, would it not be using barbarian ways to change China?” Not so. For while in clothing, language, and customs China is different from foreign countries, the utilization of the forces of nature for the benefit of the people is the same in China as in foreign countries. The Western people happen to be the first in adopting this new way of life, but how can we say that they alone should monopolize the secrets of nature? And how do we know that a few decades or a hundred years later China may not surpass them? . . . Now if we really take over the Westerners’ knowledge of machinery and mathematics in order to protect the Way of our sage kings Yao and Shun, Yu and Tang, Wen and Wu, and the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, and so make the Westerners not dare to despise China, I know that if they were alive today, the sages would engage themselves in the same tasks, and their Way would also be gradually spread to the eight bounds of the earth. That is what we call using the ways of China to change the barbarians.
Source: Bary, Wm. Theodore de, and Richard Lufrano, eds. 2001. Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.
Xu Jilin on Tianxia
Xu Jilin, professor of history at East China Normal University, is a historian of 20th Century Chinese thought and culture. In the following excerpt, he discusses how to reform the traditional notion of tianxia (literally “all under heaven”) which, in Xu’s words, connoted both “an ideal civilizational order, and a world spatial imaginary with China’s central plains at the core.”
As a great power with global influence, what China must achieve today is not just its dream of rejuvenating the nation and the state, but more importantly the redirection of its nationalistic spirit toward the world. What China needs to reconstruct is not just a particularistic culture suited to one country and one people, but rather a civilization that has universal value for all humanity. A value that is “good”for China, particularly core values that touch on our shared human nature, must in the same way be “good”for all humanity. The universal nature of Chinese civilization can only be constructed from the perspective of all humanity, and cannot be grounded solely in the particular interests and values of the Chinese nation-state. Historically speaking, Chinese civilization was tianxia. To transform tianxia, in today’s globalized era, into an internationalism integrated with universal civilization is the major goal of a civilizational power. China is a cosmopolitan power, a global nation that bears Hegel’s “world spirit.” It must take responsibility for the world and for the “world spirit”it has inherited. This “world spirit”is the new tianxia that will emerge in the form of universal values. […]
In today’s era of the nation-state, with our respect for the equality of peoples and their right to independence and self-determination, any plan to return to the hierarchical tianxia order, with China as its center, is not only historically reactionary but is in fact merely wishful thinking. For this reason, tianxia needs to pick and choose and revitalize itself in the context of modernity, so as to develop towards a new configuration: tianxia 2.0. […]
What is new about the new tianxia? In comparison with the traditional concept, its novelty is expressed in two dimensions: one, its de-centered and non-hierarchical nature; two, its ability to create a new sense of universality. […]
Traditional tianxia was a hierarchical concentric politico-civilizational order with China as its core. What the new tianxia should discard first is precisely this centralized and hierarchical order. What is “new”about the new tianxia is the addition of the principle of the equality of nation-states. In the new tianxia order, there is no center, there are only independent and peaceful peoples and states who respect one another. […]
The universality sought by the new tianxia transcends both Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism. It does not seek to create a civilizational hegemony on the basis of an axial civilization and national culture.
Source: Jilin Xu, “The New Tianxia: Rebuilding China’s Internal and External Order,” trans. Mark McConaghy, Xiaobing Tang, and David Ownby, Reading the China Dream, 2015, https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin-the-new-tianxia.html.
Zhou Xuan sings “Songstress at the Ends of the Earth”
Set in the slums of Shanghai in 1935, Street Angels (1937, director Yuan Muzhi) presents the lives of the urban lower classes. Xiao Hong, a young woman in her late teens, and her elder sister, Xiao Yun, have fled their home in northeast China due to armed conflict and ended up in the slums of Shanghai. There they live with a married couple who run a teahouse and who abuse and exploit them. They compel Xiao Hong to sing for customers and force Xiao Yun to work as a streetwalker. Xiao Hong is in love with Chen Shaoping, a poor young man who works occasionally as a musician. Shaoping lives across the alley with his friend Wang, who sells newspapers, and three other friends who work as barbers and peddlers. Sometimes, they share a duet across the alley, with Xiao Hong singing and Shaoping playing the fiddle.
Xiao Hong’s singing for the teashop customers attracts the attention of a thug known as Mr. Gu. In the following excerpt (4’28’’), Shaoping is misled into thinking that Xiao Hong has jilted him for Gu; drunk, he forces her to sing for him, like any other customer, “their” song for him, for money. They sang and played this song together in earlier, happier times.
To the ends of the earth, and across the oceans I seek and seek my soulmate I sing a song while my darling plays the tune My darling, our two hearts beat as one Aiya, Aiya My darling, our two hearts beat as one
From my mountain home, I gaze to the north My sleeve soaked with tears Ever since you left I have missed you, my dear Oh my dear, hardship only strengthens our bond of love Aiya, ai aiya Oh my dear, hardship only strengthens our bond of love
Source: Street Angels 马路天使 (1937)