#505 “The Land”

Fact vs. fiction

To start out, let’s pick on the thread we were examining at the end of class yesterday:

• Is it useful to read fiction when we’re interested in fact? How should we see Pu Songling’s accounts as we grapple with local life of this area?

Life-shaping forces in “The Land”

Chart some of the big forces shaping the lives of people in Tancheng (we’ll do this together on the board). Two questions that might help answer this question can be drawn from the homework:

• What were some of the notable local conditions that might have impacted life in Tanchang? How might locals been more or less vulnerable to the demands of the state or environmental conditions? Can you think of places where this might be similarly true today?
• In 1965, British historian AJP Taylor observed that, “Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman” (Taylor, 1). How might you modify this statement if you were writing about a farmer in Tancheng in the 1670s?

A dinner guest from Yizhou

Also as a group exercise, you are going to imagine that the different parts of this chapter are brought into dialogue with one another. Imagine that a newly appointed magistrate of neighboring Yizhou (WG: I-Chou) has come to Tancheng. Huang Liuhong hosts a dinner for the visitor and invites Liu Tingyuan and Xiao Er.

At dinner, the visitor asks, “How should a magistrate best serve the people?”

Process:

• Review the part of the chapter that most closely correspond with your character with this question in mind.
• Prepare a response to the visitor from Yizhou while thinking about where you might agree or disagree with the others around the table.
• We’ll enact this simulation in the last part of class.