Assistant Professor Weiting Guo of the Department of History is among the recipients of the 2019 ... more Assistant Professor Weiting Guo of the Department of History is among the recipients of the 2019 Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies. The awards were created in 1989 by the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan and are given in recognition of outstanding research on Taiwanese or Chinese studies. Dr. Guo joined the Department of History at SFU in 2015, teaching a wide range of courses in Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian history. His research concerns the social and legal history of late imperial China and nineteenth-century Taiwan, especially the dynamic relationship between law and disorder. His current book manuscript, Justice for the Empire: Summary Execution and the Legal Culture in Qing China, examines the dialectical process of legal formation of empire, with a focus on the tension between judicial expediency and the cost of political decentralization in the Qing Empire (1636–1912). He is a participant in a collaborative project called Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Modern East Asian History, coordinated by University of California Santa Barbara and North Carolina State University. He is a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History (Routledge, forthcoming).
The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, e... more The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, open a new window onto the historical foundation and transformation of Chinese law and legal culture in late imperial and modern China. Their interdisciplinary analyses provide valuable insights into the multiple roles of law and legal knowledge in structuring social relations, property rights, popular culture, imperial governance, ideas of modernity, and an emerging revolutionary ideology and policies that continue to affect China to the present day.
If you are interested in more information about this book once it is published in Feb. 2015, please bookmark this.
Update in Jan. 2015: This book has just come out and is now available for purchase. here is the information:
http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law#.VMf4CyzKWL0.facebook
Just learned this from the press: A regular paperback might be available in a year or so, but there is an alternative of earlier access for individual buyers: If the university library purchases an e-copy of the book, all the individual students/faculty affiliated with the university can get a MyBook copy (which is a paperback with a generic cover) at $25 or EUR 25, depending on where they order the book. This MyBook copy is available now. Here is the link: http://www.brill.com/products/books/brill-mybook.
“Interview of Stevan Harrell: Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies,” in 《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」:北美人類學家訪問紀錄》:... more “Interview of Stevan Harrell: Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies,” in 《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」:北美人類學家訪問紀錄》: Lengzhan xia de “Taiwan yanjiu”: Beimei renleixuejia fangwen jilu (Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan), edited by Derek Sheridan, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, and Tseng Wen-liang (Taipei: Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, 2024), 343–438.
Using an autobiography written by a Qing local official, Duan Guangqing (段光 清, 1798-1878), this a... more Using an autobiography written by a Qing local official, Duan Guangqing (段光 清, 1798-1878), this article explores the personal experiences of local officials who developed ways of coping with atrocities, trauma, and various local affairs during the Taiping War (1851-1864). Contrary to studies that focus on largescale combat operations in Taiping China, this essay adopts a decentered approach to explore the small-scale wars in which local officials and various actors strategized their actions and manipulated their relationships. This article argues that the strategies and actions of local figures during small-scale conflicts provide a vivid and decentered picture of Taiping China.
By Weiting Guo and Nora Van den Bosch A Diary with Digital Tools On February 5, 2021, we presente... more By Weiting Guo and Nora Van den Bosch A Diary with Digital Tools On February 5, 2021, we presented “The Elites in China: New Approaches, New Methods” at the IrAsia seminar. In our presentation, we discussed how to use digital tools to explore a Chinese local elite’s diary, which covers over 50 years of local history and the everyday life experiences of ordinary people. The diarist, Zhang Gang (1888–1942), was a member of the lower gentry who had wide connections with various actors ..
Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2013
Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an un... more Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an understudied area of Chinese legal history: the everyday practice of community mediators in the late Qing and Republican eras. The records of the Zhang Gang Diary reveal how social, political, and judicial transformations impacted the practice of local mediation during a period of significant political and cultural change. The community mediator of this generation had increasingly limited room for mediation. However, as the diary reveals, community mediators also swiftly adapted to the new changes. Through a close reading of the life history of one village mediator, this paper examines a relatively low-status gentleman’s strategy for survival and how he responded to the grand societal and political transformations of late Qing and Republican China.
This article explores the life and images of Huang Bamei (1906-1982)-a female bandit, guerrilla l... more This article explores the life and images of Huang Bamei (1906-1982)-a female bandit, guerrilla leader, and women's organization coordinator. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Huang was involved in smuggling and trade with pro-Japanese forces. The Nationalist authorities recruited her troops and hid her past by portraying her as a wartime heroine and model housewife. Yet, in later times she participated in guerrilla warfare and was portrayed as a pirate queen and a Han traitor, and her roles and images changed dramatically with the wars. Drawing on government archives, newspapers, memoirs, and films, this article examines how Huang developed survival strategies during turbulent times and how competing regimes used her images discursively to promote various social and political agendas and stimulate Chinese patriotism and war commemoration in different historical periods. Through a close reading of the life history of a woman made legendary by the state and the media, the article shows how Huang's changing roles and competing representations were deeply embedded in the wartime politics of modern China and Taiwan. The author argues that Huang's guerrilla practices, as well as her involvement in banditry, formed an integral part of not only her survival strategies but also a range of options for achieving legitimization.
Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an un... more Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an understudied area of Chinese legal history: the everyday practice of community mediators in the late Qing and Republican eras. The records of the Zhang Gang Diary reveal how social, political, and judicial transformations impacted the practice of local mediation during a period of significant political and cultural change. The community mediator of this generation had increasingly limited room for mediation. However, as the diary reveals, community mediators also swiftly adapted to the new changes. Through a close reading of the life history of one village mediator, this paper examines a relatively low-status gentleman’s strategy for survival and how he responded to the grand societal and political transformations of late Qing and Republican China.
Assistant Professor Weiting Guo of the Department of History is among the recipients of the 2019 ... more Assistant Professor Weiting Guo of the Department of History is among the recipients of the 2019 Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies. The awards were created in 1989 by the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan and are given in recognition of outstanding research on Taiwanese or Chinese studies. Dr. Guo joined the Department of History at SFU in 2015, teaching a wide range of courses in Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian history. His research concerns the social and legal history of late imperial China and nineteenth-century Taiwan, especially the dynamic relationship between law and disorder. His current book manuscript, Justice for the Empire: Summary Execution and the Legal Culture in Qing China, examines the dialectical process of legal formation of empire, with a focus on the tension between judicial expediency and the cost of political decentralization in the Qing Empire (1636–1912). He is a participant in a collaborative project called Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Modern East Asian History, coordinated by University of California Santa Barbara and North Carolina State University. He is a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History (Routledge, forthcoming).
The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, e... more The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, open a new window onto the historical foundation and transformation of Chinese law and legal culture in late imperial and modern China. Their interdisciplinary analyses provide valuable insights into the multiple roles of law and legal knowledge in structuring social relations, property rights, popular culture, imperial governance, ideas of modernity, and an emerging revolutionary ideology and policies that continue to affect China to the present day.
If you are interested in more information about this book once it is published in Feb. 2015, please bookmark this.
Update in Jan. 2015: This book has just come out and is now available for purchase. here is the information:
http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law#.VMf4CyzKWL0.facebook
Just learned this from the press: A regular paperback might be available in a year or so, but there is an alternative of earlier access for individual buyers: If the university library purchases an e-copy of the book, all the individual students/faculty affiliated with the university can get a MyBook copy (which is a paperback with a generic cover) at $25 or EUR 25, depending on where they order the book. This MyBook copy is available now. Here is the link: http://www.brill.com/products/books/brill-mybook.
“Interview of Stevan Harrell: Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies,” in 《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」:北美人類學家訪問紀錄》:... more “Interview of Stevan Harrell: Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies,” in 《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」:北美人類學家訪問紀錄》: Lengzhan xia de “Taiwan yanjiu”: Beimei renleixuejia fangwen jilu (Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan), edited by Derek Sheridan, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, and Tseng Wen-liang (Taipei: Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, 2024), 343–438.
Using an autobiography written by a Qing local official, Duan Guangqing (段光 清, 1798-1878), this a... more Using an autobiography written by a Qing local official, Duan Guangqing (段光 清, 1798-1878), this article explores the personal experiences of local officials who developed ways of coping with atrocities, trauma, and various local affairs during the Taiping War (1851-1864). Contrary to studies that focus on largescale combat operations in Taiping China, this essay adopts a decentered approach to explore the small-scale wars in which local officials and various actors strategized their actions and manipulated their relationships. This article argues that the strategies and actions of local figures during small-scale conflicts provide a vivid and decentered picture of Taiping China.
By Weiting Guo and Nora Van den Bosch A Diary with Digital Tools On February 5, 2021, we presente... more By Weiting Guo and Nora Van den Bosch A Diary with Digital Tools On February 5, 2021, we presented “The Elites in China: New Approaches, New Methods” at the IrAsia seminar. In our presentation, we discussed how to use digital tools to explore a Chinese local elite’s diary, which covers over 50 years of local history and the everyday life experiences of ordinary people. The diarist, Zhang Gang (1888–1942), was a member of the lower gentry who had wide connections with various actors ..
Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2013
Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an un... more Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an understudied area of Chinese legal history: the everyday practice of community mediators in the late Qing and Republican eras. The records of the Zhang Gang Diary reveal how social, political, and judicial transformations impacted the practice of local mediation during a period of significant political and cultural change. The community mediator of this generation had increasingly limited room for mediation. However, as the diary reveals, community mediators also swiftly adapted to the new changes. Through a close reading of the life history of one village mediator, this paper examines a relatively low-status gentleman’s strategy for survival and how he responded to the grand societal and political transformations of late Qing and Republican China.
This article explores the life and images of Huang Bamei (1906-1982)-a female bandit, guerrilla l... more This article explores the life and images of Huang Bamei (1906-1982)-a female bandit, guerrilla leader, and women's organization coordinator. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Huang was involved in smuggling and trade with pro-Japanese forces. The Nationalist authorities recruited her troops and hid her past by portraying her as a wartime heroine and model housewife. Yet, in later times she participated in guerrilla warfare and was portrayed as a pirate queen and a Han traitor, and her roles and images changed dramatically with the wars. Drawing on government archives, newspapers, memoirs, and films, this article examines how Huang developed survival strategies during turbulent times and how competing regimes used her images discursively to promote various social and political agendas and stimulate Chinese patriotism and war commemoration in different historical periods. Through a close reading of the life history of a woman made legendary by the state and the media, the article shows how Huang's changing roles and competing representations were deeply embedded in the wartime politics of modern China and Taiwan. The author argues that Huang's guerrilla practices, as well as her involvement in banditry, formed an integral part of not only her survival strategies but also a range of options for achieving legitimization.
Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an un... more Using a newly available personal journal, Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942), this study explores an understudied area of Chinese legal history: the everyday practice of community mediators in the late Qing and Republican eras. The records of the Zhang Gang Diary reveal how social, political, and judicial transformations impacted the practice of local mediation during a period of significant political and cultural change. The community mediator of this generation had increasingly limited room for mediation. However, as the diary reveals, community mediators also swiftly adapted to the new changes. Through a close reading of the life history of one village mediator, this paper examines a relatively low-status gentleman’s strategy for survival and how he responded to the grand societal and political transformations of late Qing and Republican China.
Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History 2.0, edited by David R. Ambaras and Kate McDonald, 2021
“Constructing a Water Town: The River, the Sea, and the Communities in Wenzhou,” in Bodies and St... more “Constructing a Water Town: The River, the Sea, and the Communities in Wenzhou,” in Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History 2.0, edited by David R. Ambaras and Kate McDonald (Scalar, November 10, 2021). https://scalar.chass.ncsu.edu/bodies-and-structures-2/water-town-landing-page.
Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China (ENP-China), European Research Council (ERC) Project, 2020
“My Article on a Chinese Pirate Queen,” in Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China, edited by... more “My Article on a Chinese Pirate Queen,” in Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China, edited by Christian Henriot, April 23, 2020. https://enepchina.hypotheses.org/3166.
Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China (ENP-China), European Research Council (ERC) Project, 2021
“Digital Zhang Gang Presentation: A Summary,” co-authored with Nora Van den Bosch, in Elites, Net... more “Digital Zhang Gang Presentation: A Summary,” co-authored with Nora Van den Bosch, in Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China, edited by Christian Henriot, May 10, 2021. https://enepchina.hypotheses.org/3537.
This dissertation examines the history of summary execution in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) and i... more This dissertation examines the history of summary execution in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) and its significant impact upon Chinese politics and legal culture. The practice of this extraordinary punishment initially increased in the eighteenth century, when the Qing Empire encountered the challenges of a growing population, an overburdened judicial system, and an increased number of popular protests. The Qianlong emperor (1711-1799) extensively used expedient procedures and bestowed upon regional authorities the power of summary execution to battle the threats from both borderland and inland—including the emerging underclass and the protesters. However, the problems remained unresolved and the court continued to institutionalize this informal punishment. In the nineteenth century, the increasing social turmoil and continuously overwhelmed judicial system led to several reforms at the regional level. Following the trend of local militarization, the spread of men using force became an inevitable trend. The authorities continued to rely on braves in order to quench local revolts and save government expenditures. Yet this approach blurred the boundary between legality and illegality and forced the authorities to severely punish soldiers and unorganized “roaming braves” (youyong 游勇) through the informal procedure of summary execution. Although the practice of summary execution helped the authorities to overcome the lack of judicial resources and suppress the threats in an efficient manner, it also evaded central authority over death penalty and enhanced political intervention in the judicial process. The extensive use of this punishment created a space for not only the state but also regional authorities and local forces to manipulate judicial expediency and the death penalty. It also led to the rise of what I call the “economy of punishment”—the spread and distribution of penal resources related to crime and violence. This trend shifted the practice of Chinese death penalty toward a system where routinized and exceptional, centralized and decentralized, and formal and informal forces consistently negotiated judicial expediency and mutually shaped one another. More importantly, it reveals that a series of significant reforms predated the Westernization of law and continued to influence Chinese criminal justice during the first half of the twentieth century.
If care of the dead is firmly tied to social and geographic emplacement in most Chinese societies... more If care of the dead is firmly tied to social and geographic emplacement in most Chinese societies, it does not necessarily follow that dead bodies are static. Alongside the historical development of rituals, procedures, and networks for moving bodies to their proper places rest legal statutes and moral imprecations attesting to the fear of the exposed or desecrated corpse. Grave removal and rapid shifts in the space allocated the dead has received particular attention in the mass media during recent years, but it has been a periodic feature of Chinese life whenever economic and social dislocation or state-building imperatives rise to the fore. What happens in such moments of extreme change? Can the dead find new sorts of proper places? Have developmental imperatives rendered the dead homeless, or have they spawned ritual innovation? Is concern over the displaced dead simply a metaphor for the problems of the living, or does it raise another set of cosmological and ritual complications altogether? What is the proper scale and framework for understanding such phenomena? This workshop will attempt to shed empirical, methodological, and theoretical light on the often murky topic of displacement in death.
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News by Weiting Guo
Dr. Guo joined the Department of History at SFU in 2015, teaching a wide range of courses in Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian history. His research concerns the social and legal history of late imperial China and nineteenth-century Taiwan, especially the dynamic relationship between law and disorder. His current book manuscript, Justice for the Empire: Summary Execution and the Legal Culture in Qing China, examines the dialectical process of legal formation of empire, with a focus on the tension between judicial expediency and the cost of political decentralization in the Qing Empire (1636–1912). He is a participant in a collaborative project called Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Modern East Asian History, coordinated by University of California Santa Barbara and North Carolina State University. He is a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History (Routledge, forthcoming).
Books by Weiting Guo
You can find out more information here: http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law
The table of contents is attached here.
If you are interested in more information about this book once it is published in Feb. 2015, please bookmark this.
Update in Jan. 2015: This book has just come out and is now available for purchase. here is the information:
http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law#.VMf4CyzKWL0.facebook
Just learned this from the press: A regular paperback might be available in a year or so, but there is an alternative of earlier access for individual buyers: If the university library purchases an e-copy of the book, all the individual students/faculty affiliated with the university can get a MyBook copy (which is a paperback with a generic cover) at $25 or EUR 25, depending on where they order the book. This MyBook copy is available now. Here is the link: http://www.brill.com/products/books/brill-mybook.
Papers by Weiting Guo
Reviews by Weiting Guo
Dr. Guo joined the Department of History at SFU in 2015, teaching a wide range of courses in Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian history. His research concerns the social and legal history of late imperial China and nineteenth-century Taiwan, especially the dynamic relationship between law and disorder. His current book manuscript, Justice for the Empire: Summary Execution and the Legal Culture in Qing China, examines the dialectical process of legal formation of empire, with a focus on the tension between judicial expediency and the cost of political decentralization in the Qing Empire (1636–1912). He is a participant in a collaborative project called Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Modern East Asian History, coordinated by University of California Santa Barbara and North Carolina State University. He is a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History (Routledge, forthcoming).
You can find out more information here: http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law
The table of contents is attached here.
If you are interested in more information about this book once it is published in Feb. 2015, please bookmark this.
Update in Jan. 2015: This book has just come out and is now available for purchase. here is the information:
http://www.brill.com/products/book/chinese-law#.VMf4CyzKWL0.facebook
Just learned this from the press: A regular paperback might be available in a year or so, but there is an alternative of earlier access for individual buyers: If the university library purchases an e-copy of the book, all the individual students/faculty affiliated with the university can get a MyBook copy (which is a paperback with a generic cover) at $25 or EUR 25, depending on where they order the book. This MyBook copy is available now. Here is the link: http://www.brill.com/products/books/brill-mybook.