Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s

410 Pages·2015·2.524 MB·English

by  Li Chen, Madeleine Zelin

Chinese Law
Brill’s Series on Modern East Asia
in a Global Historical Perspective
Edited by
Billy K.L. So (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Madeleine Zelin (Columbia University)
volume 3
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/meah
Chinese Law
Knowledge, Practice and Transformation,
1530s to 1950s
Edited by
Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: “A legal plaint by Qu Guangming to recover the balance of his father’s deposit in a
farming-land lease, with reply of Magistrate Wang of Nanbu county, Sichuan, in 1888 (Gangxu 14/9/7).”
Courtesy of the Nanbu County Archives now at the Nanchong Municipal Archives in Sichuan, China.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chinese law : knowledge, practice and transformation, 1530s to 1950s / edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin.
  pages cm. — (Brill’s series on modern East Asia in a global historical perspective ; volume 3)
 Includes papers presented at the International Workshop on Chinese Legal History, Culture, and
Modernity, held at Columbia University in New York City in early May 2012.—Acknowledgement
 ISBN 978-90-04-28848-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-28849-2 (e-book)
1. Law—China—History—Congresses. 2. China—History—Republic, 1912–1949—Congresses. 3. China—
History—Qing dynasty, 1644–1912—Congresses. I. Chen, Li (Professor of History and Sociolegal Studies),
editor. II. Zelin, Madeleine, editor.
 KNN107.C48 2015
 349.5109’03—dc23
2014041889

issn 2212-1730
isbn 978-90-04-28848-5 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-28849-2 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
For Jonathan Ocko†
A great friend, scholar and mentor
∵

Contents
Acknowledgements  ix
List of Contributors  x
Rethinking Chinese Law and History: An Introduction  1
Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin
part 1
Meaning and Practice of Law
1 Classifications of Litigation and Implications for Qing Judicial
Practice  17
Jianpeng Deng
2 Kinship Hierarchies and Property Institutions in Late Qing and
Republican China  47
Taisu Zhang
3 Social Practice and Judicial Politics in “Grave Destruction” Cases in Qing
Taiwan, 1683–1895  84
Weiting Guo
4 Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and Its
Implications for Legal Practice and Legal Principle 124
Janet Theiss
5 “Law is One Thing, and Virtue is Another”: Vernacular Readings of
Law and Legal Process in 1920s Shanghai  148
Bryna Goodman
6 Wayward Daughters: Sex, Family, and Law in Early Twentieth-Century
Beijing  176
Zhao Ma
viii contents
part 2
Production and Application of Legal Knowledge
7 The Community of Legal Experts in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-
Century China  207
Yanhong Wu
8 Marketing Legal Information: Commercial Publications of the
Great Qing Code, 1644–1911  231
Ting Zhang
9 Regulating Private Legal Specialists and the Limits of Imperial Power
in Qing China  254
Li Chen
10 Court Case Ballads: Popular Ideals of Justice in Late Qing and
Republican China  287
Margaret B. Wan
11 Old Forensics in Practice: Investigating Suspicious Deaths and
Administering Justice in Republican Beijing  321
Daniel Asen
12 Simplified Legal Knowledge in the Early prc: Explaining and
Publishing the Marriage Law  342
Jennifer Altehenger
Index  367
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all the participants of the International
Workshop on Chinese Legal History, Culture, and Modernity, organized by the
two editors and held at Columbia University in New York City in early May
2012. They also would like to acknowledge their gratitude to the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences of Columbia University for funding this workshop and to the
staff of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and our
research assistants for helping with the logistics.
The two-day-long workshop generated very interesting and fruitful discus-
sions among a large number of participants from different countries and mul-
tiple disciplines, including Daniel Asen, Jennifer Altehenger, Thomas Buoye,
Yi-hsiang Chang, Li Chen, Pengsheng Chiu, Xiaoping Cong, Elizabeth Dale,
Jianpeng Deng, Maura Dykstra, Bryna Goodman, Weiting Guo, Quinn Doyle
Javers, Yonglin Jiang, Margaret Kuo, Michael Ng, Jonathan Ocko, Nancy Park,
Johanna Ransmeier, Billy So, Philip Thai, Janet Theiss, Glenn Tiffert, Margaret
Wan, Yanhong Wu, Taisu Zhang, Ting Zhang, and Madeleine Zelin. With one
exception, all the chapters of this volume developed from the papers originally
presented at the workshop. In the last one and a half years since the workshop,
the editors have been working with the authors, reviewers, series editors and
editors at Brill to revise the chapters and move this project through the various
stages of revision. We regret that we have been unable to include more papers
in this volume but the comments and participation of all the scholars who
attended the workshop at Columbia University benefited the analysis of this
volume in different ways. We greatly appreciate their input and participation.
We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and to the
series editors, Madeleine Zelin and Billy So, and the editors and staff at Brill,
particularly Qin Higley, Judy Pereira, and Patrick Hunter, for their efforts to
bring this project to completion. Last but not least, it has been a great pleasure
to work with our contributors and we thank them for their unfailing patience
with and prompt responses to our many queries and requests.
List of Contributors
Jennifer Altehenger
Dr. phil. in Modern Chinese Studies (University of Heidelberg, 2010) is
Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese History at King’s College London. She is
interested in modern Chinese history, in particular the history of the People’s
Republic of China, publishing and propaganda production, popular legal
knowledge, and the exchange of legal expertise among socialist countries
during the Cold War and after. Recent publications include “A Socialist Satire?
Manhua Magazine and Political Cartoon Production in the prc, 1950–60,”
Frontiers of History in China (2013), and “Between State and Service Industry:
Group and Collective Weddings in Communist Shanghai, 1949–56,”
Twentieth-Century China (forthcoming). She is currently completing a book
manuscript that examines the dissemination of legal knowledge via
propaganda in the prc.
Daniel Asen
Ph.D. in History (Columbia University, 2012), is Assistant Professor of
History at Rutgers University—Newark. His research interests include the
intersection of law, science, and medicine in late imperial and Republican
China, the cultural and social politics of expertise, and the history of death
and the body. His publications include “The Only Options?: ‘Experience’ and
‘Theory’ in Debates over Forensic Knowledge and Expertise in Early
Twentieth-Century China,” in Historical Epistemology and the Making of
Modern Chinese Medicine, ed. Howard Chiang (Manchester University Press,
2015), and “Vital Spots, Mortal Wounds, and Forensic Practice: Finding Cause
of Death in Nineteenth-Century China,” East Asian Science, Technology and
Society (2009): 453–74.
Li Chen
J.D. (University of Illinois, 2002) and Ph.D. in History (Columbia University,
2009), is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Toronto and
founding President of the International Society for Chinese Law and History.
His research focuses on Chinese law and history, Sino-Western relations,
empire and international law. His recent publications include “Law, Empire,
and Historiography of Sino-Western Relations,” Law & History Review (2009),
“Universalism and Equal Sovereignty as Contested Myths of International
Law,” Journal of the History of International Law (2011), “Legal Specialists and
Judicial Administration in Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China (2012),