All posts by mengfensu

Read, Hot and Digitized: Maritime Asia: War and Trade

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

Maritime Asia: War and Trade is a multi-media Drupal site which introduces viewers to the complexities of 17th century war and trade in East and Southeast Asia. The open educational resource (OER) is a collaboration among UT History Professor Adam Clulow, Professor Xing Hang at Brandeis University, and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University (RRCHNM). This open educational resource can be used effectively for outreach and teaching.

In the historical documents presented and examined on the site, six power contenders are involved: two armed maritime powers, the Zheng family of China & Taiwan and the Dutch East India Company (VOC), two major land agrarian powers, Qing China and Tokugawa Japan, and two continental trade powers, Siam (now Thailand) and Cambodia who took advantages in this global trade and diplomacy competition among major powers. It is interesting to note that the main actors involved were all extensively global.

The website for Maritime Asia: War and Trade has five main themes through which the viewer can explore this multifaceted history:

  • Maritime Exercise. This part of the website functions as an open educational resource (OER) classroom simulation exercise targeted to 11th and 12th graders and post-secondary students. An instructor’s packet of lesson plans and interesting and inspiring questions for student debate can be downloaded.  
  • Exhibits. Included here are exhibitions of documents that highlight the history of the Zheng family and the Dutch VOC. For example, the first generation of the Zheng family, Zheng Zhilong of southeast China, was globally successful in both piracy and trade from Japan to Siam (now Thailand).  As a player in the Ming Dynasty, Zheng Zhilong was appointed “Admiral of the Coastal Seas.” His son, Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga), was born in Japan to a Japanese mother. Koxinga continued his father’s powerful maritime trade and military pursuits after his father’s had surrendered to Qing China in 1644 (and was executed in 1661). Koxinga defeated the Dutch in 1662, forcing out their colonial powers from Taiwan, and he shifted the Zheng family stronghold from China to Taiwan. Another exhibit from the website displays Dutch VOC highlighting their ships and the fort they built in Taiwan.

  • Timeline.  This portion of the website graphically documents major events among the 6 powers throughout the 17th century, from 1600 to 1683.     
  • Key actors.  Exploring individual personalities is one of the most compelling ways to dive into history.  Included here are presentations of individuals such as Zheng Zhilong, the founding patriarch of the Zheng family, Joan Maetsuycker, a governor-general from the VOC, Tokugawa Ietsuna of Japan, Kangxi Emperor of China, King Paramaraja VIII of Cambodia and King Narai of Siam (now Thailand).
  • Archive.  The Maritime Asia website highlights and provides contextualized access to primary source documents.  While the physical artefacts are housed in the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, users can access the digital surrogates through the website. 

Further readings on related subjects:

大航海時代與17世紀台灣 Age of exploration and the 17th century Taiwan)
鄭成功來臺 (Zheng Chenggong came to Taiwan)
Two open source Chinese learning websites created by the Research Center for Digital Humanities, National Taiwan University.

Pillaging the Empire Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500-1750. / Kris Lane. 2016.

Sea rovers, silver, and samurai: Maritime East Asia in global history, 1550-1700 / edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang. 2016.

Encounters: the meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 / Edited by Anna Jackson & Amin Jaffer. 2004.

Maritime Taiwan: historical encounters with the East and the West / Shih-shan Henry Tsai. 2009.

The colonial ‘civilizing process’ in Dutch Formosa, 1624-1662 / Chiu Hsin-hui, 2008

Formosa under the Dutch: described from the contemporary records / by Rev. Wm. Campbell. 2019.

Lost colony: the untold story of China’ first great victory over the West / Tonio Andrade. 2011.

How Taiwan became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in the seventeenth century / Tonio Andrade. 2008.

The Dutch impact on Japan (1640-1853) / Goodman, Grant Kohn. Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967.

Japan and the Dutch, 1600-1853 /  Grant Kohn Goodman. 2000.

The quest for civilization: encounters with Dutch jurisprudence, political economy, and statistics at the dawn of modern Japan / Okubo Takeharu. 2014. 

Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600-1817; an essay on the cultural, artistic and scientific influence exercised by the Hollanders in Japan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries / C.R. Boxer. 1936.

Dawn of Western science in Japan. Rangaku kotohajime / Genpaku Sugita.  1969

On the Road to Korea

Thanks to generous funding from donors to a 2019 Hornraiser crowdfunding effort and support from UT Libraries, I was able to visit Korea and Taiwan in October.  In this blog post, I highlight the Korea portion of my trip—if you’d like to learn more about Taiwan, just ask!  I’m happy to share my experience with all interested!  While in Korea, I was able to do much of my usual liaison librarian work but with considerably increased efficiency and depth because I was “in context.”  For example, I was able to (re)connect with vendors, to attend scholarly and cultural events, and to participate in conferences, all related to and in support of the Korean Studies programs here at UT.

The primary focus of my trip was to attend the “2019 Overseas Korean Studies Librarian Workshop”  sponsored by and held at the National Library of Korea (NLK) in Seoul on from October 14-17.I arrived in Korea a week before the workshop so that my colleague Julie Wang of SUNY Binghamton Libraries and I could attend the 24th Busan International Film Festival, one of the most significant film festivals in Asia, to visit vendors, and to meet with the Korea Foundation. At the film festival, we were lucky to have the opportunity to listen to a group of rising documentary Asian directors about their films—films in all languages not just Korean.

Meeting the directors of Asian Short Film Competition.

We also visited our database vendors KSI and Nurimedia to learn of their current programs and future plans. We were delighted to learn that KSI is working on an English interface for its database KISS  and that they expected to launch it in the summer 2020. (Nurimedia’s database DBpia & KRpia already have English interfaces.)  Along the way, we were joined by Wen-ling Liu of Indiana University and the three of us U.S.-based librarians to visit the Korea Foundation (KF). The Korea Foundation has been partially supporting our subscription of KSI and Nurimedia’s e-resources and providing the Library with print materials, both through annual grant applications. The Foundation headquarters is in Jeju Island (a 70-minute-flight away from Seoul) and so we were particularly grateful that three of the Foundation staff flew in to Seoul to meet with us, explain their programs, and listen to our concerns.

The following week, we were all participants in the “Overseas Korean Studies Librarian Workshop,” a workshop generously funded by the National Library of Korea.  This workshop is designed for overseas librarians who are non-Korean-native and whose job responsibilities include Korean subject areas. Participants came from ten countries (in three continents!), including 17 librarians from academic, national, public and theological seminary libraries and one art historian from a university. None of the participants is solely a Korean studies librarian; in fact, a lot of us are East Asian or Asian studies librarians whose responsibilities also cover Korean studies. Only a few participants have “adequate” Korean language skills, most of us have very limited or not any Korean language skills.

In front of National Library of Korea.
In the classroom.

At the workshop, the National Library of Korea (NLK) introduced us to its digitization projects and services. Since 1982, it has been working with oversea libraries (China and Japan as well as western countries), local organizations, and private collections to digitize Korean rare books and to provide metadata and services through KORCIS: Korean Old and Rare Collection Information System. Currently, there are over 50,000 titles in KORCIS.

NLK also offers various international exchange & cooperation programs, the most notable is its “Window on Korea” (WOK). As of October 2019, NLK has signed MOUs with 25 overseas libraries for this program. To each WOK library, NLK provides funding for equipment (computers, chairs and desks, signboard etc.) in addition to 1500-4000 volumes of Korean books over a five year period. The mission of the WOK project is to introduce foreign researchers and ordinary library users to the history, tradition, culture, language and literature of Korea as well as Korea’s new achievements in the field of information technology.  I’m hopeful that UT Libraries might pursue an MOU with the Window on Korea program one day!   

 All workshop participants—including me!– gave presentations about Korean studies and Korean library resources at their home institutes or countries. This was one of the most interesting and valuable parts of the workshop for me. I regularly meet with our US colleagues at conferences but I rarely have opportunity to learn of Korean studies and Korean library resources in other part of the world.  For example, I heard about Korean Studies programs in Uzbekistan, France, Russia, Germany and beyond!

The memorable farewell dinner party was held at a traditional Korean building where we all changed to hanbok (traditional Korean dress). As you can see, people were having fun and wanted to take lots of photos in hanbok!

All participants in hanbok.
Having fun!

The cultural tours took us to National Hangeul (or Hangul) Museum and National Museum of Korea. At the Hangeul Museum, we used hammers to punch letters into leather to inscribe our hangul names. We also made a book from block printing and in traditional Korean binding. This kind of hands-on project reminded me of our own maker-spaces here at UT such as the Foundry.

Punching your hangul (Korean alphabet) name onto leather penholder.
Making block printing.
Demonstrating traditional Korean book binding.
In front of National Museum of Korea. Participants are holding the book he/she just made.

All eighteen participants stayed in the same hotel and had every meal together. The workshop provided a rare opportunity for participants to really get to know our fellow Korean librarians from across the world. We have learned from one another not only from the formal presentations, but also from chatting and discussions at each meal and on bus trips. At the end of the workshop, we all had become old friends. We have created a mailing list and have since begun to communicate with one another. Because of this unique experience, I now know whom to turn to especially when there are difficult questions involving Korea/Korean and the countries where my fellow participants come from.

My trip was made possible by funding from Hornraiser donors. Thanks to their generosity, I was able to fly to and from Seoul (and Taiwan for another workshop) and to extend my trip in Korea to attend the Busan Film Festival and to visit our vendors and sponsor.

The China Biographical Database(CBDB) 中國歷代人物資料庫 

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. 



The China Biographical Database is a freely accessible relational database with biographical information of approximately 427,000 individuals as of April 2019, primarily from the 7th through early 20th   centuries. Users can query the system in terms of place, time, office, social associations and kinship, and export the results for further analysis with GIS, social networks, and statistical software.

The China Biographical Database (CBDB) originates with the work of Chinese social historian Robert Hartwell. Hartwell’s research employed data as evidence to form and support his arguments. He built a relational database in dBase for MS DOS format to capture biographical data as it relates to five elements: (1) people, (2) places, (3) a bureaucratic system, (4) kinship structures and (5) contemporary modes of social association. He created an advisory committee for the database and made copies of his datasets and applications available to the committee members. When Hartwell died in 1996, the project included a large number of multi-variant biographical and genealogical data for over 25,000 individuals. He bequeathed his database to the Harvard Yenching Institute. Later, the Harvard Yenching Institute transferred its rights to the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and changed its name to the China Biographical Database (CBDB).

Hartwell’s database has since gone through many redesigns to make it work with modern computer technology. The FoxPro application has been used to make easier searches and queries. An online application for public access querying and reporting has been added. Python is used to write procedures for names entity recognition for text-mining and text-modeling. Other facilities that have been built into CBDB includes an XML export ability,  a save/load ability, and a handy list of pre-made regular expression examples. The long-term goal of CBDB is to systematically include all significant biographical material from China’s historical record and to make the contents available free of charge, without restriction, for academic use. Users can query CBDB through an online database in both a Chinese and an English interface. Users can also download the entire database, together with query forms and utilities for exporting data for network and spatial analysis, from the CBDB website and explore the database on any computer with Microsoft Access. 2

The data in CBDB is taken from multiple biographical reference sources, including modern syntheses of biographical data, traditional biographical records, evidence for social associations from literary collections, evidence for office holding from modern and traditional sources, and other biographical databases. 3  Data is regularly being added and updated and is categorized and coded for various aspects of the life histories of Chinese people. The CBDB project also accepts volunteered data as it is thought that the more biographical data the project accumulates, the greater the service to research and learning that explore the lives of individuals.

Research methodologies supported by CBDB:

  • Prosopography
    An investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group by means of a collective study of their lives.
  • GIS: Mapping and Analyzing
    Statistical and geographic information system (GIS) software can be used to work with CBDB data. For example, ArcGIS, MapInfo or even Google Earth can be used to combine freely available China Historical GIS (CHGIS) with CBDB output
  • Social NetworksSocial network analysts find that people need and seek emotional and economic support of different kinds. All social network queries in the stand-alone version of CBDB export data for visualization and some analysis to Pajek, freeware for social network analysis for Windows in UTF-8, GBK or pinyin romanization.

CBDB has grown to be a massive internationally corroboration with three major supporting research institutes.
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Harvard University (US)
Institute of History and Philology. Academia Sinica (Taiwan)
Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History. Peking University (China)

Peter Bol, who was the chair of Hartwell’s advisory committee and a professor of Chinese history at Harvard, is now the chair of the CBDB Project’s executive committee. There are many committees overseeing CBDB: a steering committee (composed of scholars of pre-modern Chinese studies and computer scientists), editorial committees from the participating research institutes, working groups on each of the four historical periods, and functional committees who work on  text mining and web maintenance. All committees are composed of scholars from around the world and CBDB has been promoted widely, for example a recent special program at the 2019 Association for Asian Studies Conference on “Digital Technologies Expo.

References

  1. The Late Robert M. Hartwell “Chinese Historical Studies, Ltd.” Software Project “ / Peter Bol, http://pnclink.org/annual/annual1999/1999pdf/bol.pdf
  2. Chinese biographical data: text-mining, databases and system interoperability / Bol, Peter Kees, Harvard University, http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/conference/programme/abstracts/prosopographical-databases-text-mining-gis-and-system-interoperability-for-chinese-history-and-literature.1.html
  3. CBDB Sources, https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb/cbdb-sources
  4. Digital Technologies Expo Schedule (2019 AAS Special Program, https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/AAS/agenda.asp?pfp=dteS

Examples of search and data analysis using CBDB

1.

Search results for Sima Guang

Sima Guang social associates (464 listed, of various types: Patron of, Friend of, Friend in the same graduating class, Impeached, Impeached by, Recommended, Recommended by, Opposed or attacked, Opposed by or attacked by, Praised or admired by, Coalition associate of, Supported by, Purged by, Prefaced book by, Preface of book by, Epitaph written by, Epitaph written for, etc. )

Sima Guang social associates (464 listed, of various types: Patron of, Friend of, Friend in the same graduating class, Impeached, Impeached by, Recommended, Recommended by, Opposed or attacked, Opposed by or attacked by, Praised or admired by, Coalition associate of, Supported by, Purged by, Prefaced book by, Preface of book by, Epitaph written by, Epitaph written for, etc. )

2.

Spatial extent of the marriage networks of the Northern Song statesman Sima Guang and the Southern Song statesman Shi Hao.
Spatial extent of the marriage networks of the Northern Song statesman Sima Guang and the Southern Song statesman Shi Hao. Source: CBDB – https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb/gis-mapping-and-analyzing

 

3.

 

An example of network visualization. The tie can reflect the number of letter between individuals, centered on Neo-Confucians of Zhu Xi
An example of network visualization. The tie can reflect the number of letter between individuals, centered on Neo-Confucians of Zhu Xi. Source: Source: CBDB – https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb/social-networks

 

Some examples of biographical indexes included in CBDB  and held in the University of Texas Libraries.

宋元方志傳記索引 / 朱士嘉編 ; 中華書局上海編輯所編輯.
北京 : 中華書局 : 新華書店上海发行所发行, 1963.
DS 735 C5266 1963

遼金元人傳記索引 / 梅原郁, 衣川強編.
京都 : 京都大学人文科学研究所, 昭和47
DS 734 U46

二十四史紀傳人名索引 
北京 : 中華書局 : 新華書店北京發行所發行, 1980.
Z 3106 C387

 

Taiwan Studies Gets Attention from Conference, Books

The North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) Annual conference was held at UT on May 24-26, 2018, the third time in Austin since its inauguration in 1994 (previously 1998/2009/2018), reflecting the strong interest in Taiwan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin.

This year, the theme of the conference was “Beyond an Island: Taiwan in Comparative Perspective.” Thirty invited scholars, sixty presenters and thirty NATSA staff gathered on campus to discuss their research on Taiwan. Despite the tight schedule, a number of the international participants were able to join Meng-fen Su, East Asian Studies Liaison Librarian, for a library tour of PCL, during which they shared their admiration for the library’s rich collection and innovative use of spaces.

As one of the funding sponsors, many of TECO Houston (Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston which functions like Taiwan’s consulate Office in Houston) officers also attended the conference. Meng-fen Su was contacted early in the planning so that TECO could donate a collection of books to the University of Texas Libraries and so that a book donation ceremony could be held during the NATSA Conference Welcome Ceremony. Five librarians from UT Libraries attended the ceremony and Catherine Hamer, Director of Academic Engagement, received the books on behalf of the library.

 

Catherine Hamer received a representative pack of donated books from Peter Chen, Director General of TECO, Houston.
Catherine Hamer received a representative pack of donated books from Peter Chen, Director General of TECO, Houston.

 

UTL librarians with TECO representatives, including Ms. Sophie Chou, Director of Education Division (right 2nd), Mr. Peter Chen, Director General (right 4) and Mr. Yintso Lin, Deputy Director General (left 2).
UTL librarians with TECO representatives, including Ms. Sophie Chou, Director of Education Division (right 2nd), Mr. Peter Chen, Director General (right 4) and Mr. Yintso Lin, Deputy Director General (left 2).

 

The books donated by TECO are primarily books by or about Su Shi (or Su Shih in Wade-Giles romanization, 蘇軾 / 苏轼 in traditional / simplified Chinese scripts, 1037-1101) who is better known by his literary name: Su Dongpo  (or Su Tung-p’o in Wade-Giles romanization, 蘇東坡/苏东坡), who was “unquestionably one of the most extraordinary men ever to grace the world of Chinese arts and letters.” (from Beata Grant’s Prologue to her Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the life and writings of Su Shih). Su Dongpo was also a major political figure of his time, not to mention a painter, calligrapher, Buddhist, philosopher, classicist and connoisseur of the arts. The TECO donation includes 93 Taiwan publications of contemporary writings about Su Dongpo and 31 facsimiles of rare fine editions of books related to Su Dongpo, produced from the collection of National Central Library (Taiwan).

Link to UTL’s catalog of books by Su Dongpo

Link to UTL’s catalog of books about Su Dongpo

Two of the facsimiles titles UT received from TECO Houston:

 

A translation of one of Su Dongpo’s most famous song lyric (ci) from Word, Image and Deed in the Life of Su Shi 

To the tune “Recalling Her Charms” Cherishing the Past at Red Cliff. 念奴嬌: 赤壁懷古.

The great river flows east,

Its waves scouring away

The dashing heroes of a thousand ages.

West of the abandoned fortifications,

People says, is

Master Zhou’s Red Cliff of the Three Kingdoms,

Crags and boulders poke through the sky,

Frightening waves pound the bank,

Enveloping a thousand piles of snow.

The river and mountains are like a painting,

How many brave warriors were here!

 

Dimly I picture Gongjin then:

He had just married Little Qiao,

Valor shone everywhere in his bearing

His fan of plumes, kerchief of silk—

As he chatted and laughed,

Masts and hulls became flying ashes and smoke.

My soul wanders the ancient realm,

So full of feeling, other will laugh at me,

My hair turns grey prematurely.

Life is like a dream,

Let me pour a libation to the river moon.