Bannermen Tales (Zidishu)：Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 105

ISBN 9780674975194
Publication: July 2017
330 pages
$49.95 • £39.95 • €45.00


Bannermen Tales is the first book in English to offer a comprehensive study of zidishu (bannermen tales)—a popular storytelling genre created by the Manchus in early eighteenth-century Beijing. Contextualizing zidishu in Qing dynasty Beijing, this book examines both bilingual (Manchu-Chinese) and pure Chinese texts, recalls performance venues and features, and discusses their circulation and reception into the early twentieth century.

To go beyond readily available texts, author Elena Chiu engaged in intensive fieldwork and archival research, examining approximately four hundred hand-copied and printed zidishu texts housed in libraries in Mainland China, Taiwan, Germany, and Japan. Guided by theories of minority literature, cultural studies, and intertextuality, Chiu explores both the Han and Manchu cultures in the Qing dynasty through bannermen tales, and argues that they exemplified elements of Manchu cultural hybridization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries while simultaneously attempting to validate and perpetuate the superiority of Manchu identity.

With its original translations, musical score, and numerous illustrations of hand-copied and printed zidishu texts, this study opens a new window into Qing literature and provides a broader basis for evaluating the process of cultural hybridization.




About the Author

Elena Suet-Ying Chiu is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She received her BA in Chinese Language and Literature from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her PhD in Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. She studied Manchu language, a critically endangered language, in both Beijing and the U.S. She is currently Associate Professor of Chinese literature in East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Prof. Chiu is the author of Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty.  She is working on a new project pertaining to Chinese novels/novellas focusing on contemporary issues (shishi) written in the late Qing.

Professor Chiu’s research and teaching interests include traditional Chinese narrative and drama, Ming-Qing oral and performing literature, Manchu language, literature, and culture, as well as ethnicity and gender issues in late imperial and early Republican China. 

RESEARCH AREAS
Traditional Chinese narrative and drama
Oral and performing literature in late imperial and early Republican China
Manchu language, literature, and culture
Ethnicity and gender issues in late imperial China
Ming-Qing fiction and fiction commentary
Popular culture in late imperial and modern China

PUBLICATIONS
Monograph
Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty. Harvard University Asia Center (forthcoming spring 2017).
Articles and Translation

“The Quotidian Life of Imperial Bodyguards in the Qing Dynasty: The Self-Reflexive Tendencies in Yigeng’s Bannermen Tales (Zidishu).” Journal of Tongren University, 18.1 (2016): pp. 41-47.

“The Origins and Original Language of Manchu Bannermen Tales (ZidiShu),” CHINOPERL Papers, no. 30 (2011): pp. 1-24.

Co-translator, “The Manchu Preface to Jakdan’s Selected Stories Translated from Liaozhai zhiyi.” China Heritage Quarterly, no. 19 (Sept. 2009).
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=019_man...

“Some Intertextual Relations between The Dream of the Red Chamberand Manchu Zidishu” in Stephen Wadley and Carsten Naeher eds.,Proceedings of the First North American Conference on Manchu Studies: Studies in Manchu Literature and History, pp. 27-61. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006.

“Ernü yingxiong zhuan: An Integrative Reflection of Manchu and Han Cultures.” Saksaha: A Review of Manchu Studies 7 (2002): pp. 29-48.