The End of Western Sinology Ben Hammer Shandong University Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies Jinan, Shandong, China I The study of China by Westerners started to become widespread in the 1600s. This was mainly the result of frequent communication between the missionaries stationed in China and European savants who were diligently searching for a basis for a universal language and philosophy. Since then, the Western world’s interest in China’s people, language, and culture has sometimes waned but has never ceased. This discipline of sinology, like all disciplines, eventually became reflexive. During the last century, researchers started to pay increasing attention to the ways in which Westerners study China in contrast to the ways in which the Chinese study China. The object of study, regardless of where the student is from, remains the same, and is usually confined to the ancient or historical aspects of Chinese language, philosophy, etc., which is why sinology has sometimes been equated with Chinese philology. (Mote 1964: 531, Franke 1967: 145) The terms for distinguishing between these two fields are somewhat ambiguous in English, for they all fall under the broad category of “sinology”. They are much clearer in Chinese: guo xue 国学 “national studies,” is the term used by the Chinese to refer to the study of their own ancient culture; han xue 汉学, or xifang han xue 西方汉学, “Western sinology,” is the term used for the study of China’s culture by Western outsiders. Although the object of these two “ologies” is the same, they are often seen as distinct and even competing fields. The Chinese engage in national studies from a uniquely Chinese point of view, using their Chinese way of thinking; Westerners approach it from a Western point of view, using a distinctly Western way of thinking. The aim of this paper is to discuss the origins of this dichotomy, and to evaluate the extent to which it represents historical and contemporary reality. The thesis of this paper is that, although the clear division between the Western and Chinese approaches to the study of China is based on historical fact, the line that once served to distinguish between the two has diminished and blurred to such an extent that it is no longer relevant. To continue to insist that a Chinese scholar’s findings and a Western sinologist’s findings represent necessarily distinct and even opposing viewpoints is a misrepresentation, one that unfairly and inaccurately diminishes the value of both. This idea of a dichotomy between Chinese academic methodology and that of the West, stems from a belief in an even greater dichotomy of cultures. Among both Eastern and Western observers, there has been a long-standing and pervasive belief that there are fundamental, insurmountable differences in our world views, values, priorities, and perspectives. For Edward Said, this was the basis for his theory of Orientalism. “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident.’ Thus a very large mass of writers, … have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient.” (Said 1979: 2-3) This cultural dichotomy makes a few basic assumptions. First, Chinese (as the usual representative of the Far East) and Western traditional ways of thinking are always and necessarily distinct. Second, this distinction can usually be manifested in terms of strict opposition, that is to say, they are neatly opposing or polar ways of thinking. Third, these modes of thinking can faithfully encompass all the individuals in their respective cultures. This means that once we determine the purported “Chinese way of thinking” and the “Western way of thinking,” we can safely apply these characteristics to all the scholars (and the research) that come out of China and the West. Let us look at an example of these stereotypes being put to use by one of China’s most influential thinkers in the twentieth century. Liang Shu Min (梁淑敏1893-1988), often referred to as “the last Confucian”, was a student of both Eastern and Western traditions. In his work, The Culture and Philosophy of the East and West (东西文化及其哲学), he borrows the words of a contemporary, Li Dazhao, to express the fundamental differences between the two cultural traditions, listing set after set of diametrically opposed characteristics in an attempt to encapsulate the natures of Eastern and Western culture, respectively: One emphasizes what is natural, one what is artificial; one emphasizes rest, the other, war; one is passive, the other is active; one emphasizes dependence, the other, independence; one is complacent, one is explorative; one inherits and succeeds, the other creates; one is conservative, the other is progressive; one is intuitive, the other is rational; one is visionary, the other is experiential; one is artistic, one is scientific; one is mental, the other is material; one is of the soul, the other is of the body; one gazes towards the heavens, the other roots itself in the ground; one seeks to follow the will of nature, the other seeks to conquer nature. (Liang 2012: 34-35) When we confine these differences to the sphere of academic discourse - sinology, in particular - we notice that modern scholars tend to use very similar language to separate and categorize our “opposing” ways of thinking. Westerners take things apart: they dissect and analyze. Chinese put things together: their approach is holistic and comprehensive. Westerners use logic to reason. Chinese intuit and imply. Chinese approach national studies as insiders; having grown up in China and having the benefit of native knowledge of the language and culture, they are privy to an intuitive insight that can rarely be achieved by Western scholars. Western scholars, on the other hand, by virtue of being outsiders, possess a degree of objectivity with regard to certain issues that is difficult for Chinese scholars to achieve, although at the same time, Westerners bring Western biases and values to their research that find their way into their considerations. No matter how we look at it, a Chinese scholar and a Western scholar are destined to use opposing methodologies to arrive at very different levels of understanding. To understand why these stereotypes are so widely accepted, we must briefly examine the origin of these assumptions. II Widespread, academic European interest in China began to develop in the 17th century, during the age of European renaissance and mercantilism. European missionaries were sent to Eastern Asia to spread Western ideas, not only related to religion, but also in many fields of the sciences and humanities. In the process, however, much information was transmitted in the other direction. Different Christian orders, such as the Dominicans and Franciscans, sent missionaries to China, but the most influential, relatively speaking, were the Jesuits. Like so many European savants at that time, the Jesuits were well-educated and sensitive to cultural issues. Their general observations and commentaries on China became popular reading back in Europe, and an important source of information on China to the general European audience. Another source was the Jesuits’ personal correspondence with contemporary European intellectuals. Some of the missionaries were also appointed official procurators for the China mission (Frs. Martino Martini, Michael Boym, Prospero Intorcetta, Phillipe Couplet), which required them to make trips back to Europe to gather support (intellectual, financial, papal) for their mission abroad. This afforded some European intellectuals direct contact with these men who lived and worked in China for extended periods of time. (The length of stay of the average missionary in China could be measured in decades.) What we have then are two groups of people who contributed to the birth of sinology. On the one hand, the Jesuit missionaries, although well educated, were not academics and their ultimate goal was not to study China, but to proselytize among the Chinese. On the other hand, there were the European intellectuals who were academics, but in the context of sinology, were far removed from their subject matter. As active observers, the Jesuits had an intimate but often distorted knowledge of Chinese culture and thought. They would selectively observe, interpret, and transmit information back to Europe, where the intellectuals would further selectively interpret this information. These European intellectuals were not sinologists by today’s standards, specializing in the study of China. Rather, to borrow a term from David Mungello, they were proto-sinologists, whose research and interests extended to numerous other fields. (Mungello 1989: 13) The information they collected on China was incorporated into larger, more universal theories and notions about history, philosophy, and language. We can safely say that they were not studying China for the sake of becoming expert in Chinese matters, but in order to use the information to buttress their own theories, with Leibniz featuring as one of the earliest exceptions. Here, the potential for distortion and misrepresentation is immediately clear. The Jesuits, on the other hand, should not be held any less accountable for cultural misrepresentation. The founder of the Jesuits’ China accommodation policy, Fr. Matteo Ricci, took much liberty in deciding which Christian tenets should be firmly upheld and which could be loosely followed to accommodate and incorporate native Chinese customs and beliefs. The Jesuit missionaries also had a vested interest in rereading Chinese history and philosophy to render it more compatible with monotheism and other principles of Christianity. They wanted to be able to fuse the two cultures, with Christianity at the spiritual core, while maintaining a certain degree of Chinese aesthetic value and morality. This allowed a smooth and agreeable transition for Chinese converts, rather than requiring that they completely renounce and abandon their own traditional culture. As a result of so much interpretive maneuvering, the information on China that arrived in Europe was rarely thorough or objective, and the findings of the proto-sinologists were thus rarely accurate. It is not our intention here to criticize the inaccuracies or mistakes in anyone’s research, whether Chinese or Western, but rather to analyze the assumed “cultural characteristics” of their respective methodologies. As a methodology, the proto-sinologists’ approach left much to be desired. The European intellectuals did not have any first-hand information about China, nor did they have any direct experience with the land or its people; they certainly could not speak, read, or write the language (despite a few claims to the contrary: Andreas Muller, for example, claimed to have developed a “key” to mastering the Chinese language). For the following two centuries, a more specialized focus was placed on China, and sinology as a discipline matured greatly. The proto-sinologists gave way to “semi-professional sinologists” (Honey 2001: 23), such as the Frenchmen, Etienne Fourmont and Theophilus Bayer, who both lived from the end of the 17th century to the middle of the 18th. They were professional scholars with a background in Western classics and language but later in life they increasingly committed themselves to Chinese studies. While their academic motives were more focused than those of previous generations, their enthusiasm far exceeded their knowledge. The 19th century saw the birth of dedicated and outstanding sinologists, with many of the French again at the forefront. Most notable were Edouard Chavannes, Paul Pelliot, and Henri Maspero, and then Henri Cordier, Marcel Granet, and Bernhard Kalgren (Swedish). British and American sinology emerged in the 19th century primarily as a result of the British and American missionary, mercantile, and diplomatic presence in China. While many of these Protestant missionaries (e.g. Alexander Wylie, Samuel Wells Williams) and officers-turned-scholars (e.g. Herbert Giles, William Rockhill, and again Samuel Wells Williams) produced a panoply of impressive translations and monographs, their backgrounds still precluded more scholarly and objective work that did not infuse European, Judeo-Christian ideas into their interpretations of China. As Westerners, they relied on their own concepts of religion and philosophy to judge those of China. They would often impose their definitions of theistic religion and analytical thought upon China’s spiritual and academic history in order to be able to demonstrate how China failed to meet Western standards. All this drawing of academic and social comparisons just happened to take place at a time in world history when the West was strong and advanced and China was weak and stagnant. For the people of that time, it would have been difficult not to see that fact as confirming the superiority of the Western humanities and sciences. This cursory introduction to Western sinology shows that many of the assumptions regarding the shortcomings of Western sinology and the fundamental differences between the foreign and internal perceptions of China are grounded in fact. (Although this paper concedes the historical accuracy of these cultural traits, there is much to be said for the analytical acumen of ancient Chinese scholars and the comprehensiveness of European philosophies. This does not, however, fall within the scope of this paper). These differences, their causes, and their manifestations have become just as important a topic in the field of sinology as are the actual products of sinological research themselves. The irony is that, just as these “cultural characteristics” of methodology are finally being recognized and codified, they are also becoming obsolete. The historical and academic conditions that existed for so long, the ones that created this dichotomy of methodologies, are not the same conditions that surround sinological research today. III Today, when we say that national studies, guo xue, and Western sinology, xifang han xue, are two separate approaches to the same subject matter, we are really saying that the scholars involved are necessarily using two distinct points of reference. That is to say guo xue is not only sinological research conducted by a Chinese individual, but also that he/she is using a typical, traditional Chinese academic approach. Similarly, han xue is conducted by a Westerner who is relying on typical Western theories, values and assumptions to analyze China. The division and, indeed, the existence of these disciplines as separate entities is dependent on each one’s possessing these dual characteristics. However, the trend in sinological research over the last century has been towards the blurring or even erasure of these lines of demarcation. The “Chineseness” of guo xue and the “Westernness” of han xue are no longer mutually exclusive. The best way to illustrate this is through examples. The early Qing Dynasty saw the growth of a robust philological movement. Its methods were based on the rigorous textual scholarship of the Han Dynasty, but the rise of the movement itself was a response to (among many other things) the abstract and increasingly groundless philosophizing of the Ming Dynasty Confucianists. (Yu 2005: passim) The progress made in philological fields such as paleography, phonology, and textual criticism was monumental, but as far as methodology and theory were concerned, their approach never strayed from traditional textual scholarship. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republican Era, the academic environment had completely changed. Convinced that China’s stubborn insistence on its own cultural superiority was precisely what caused it to lag behind the West, droves of scholars went abroad to be educated in foreign ways. Modern guo xue pioneers such as Hu Shi 胡适, Feng You Lan 冯友兰, Fu Si Nian 傅斯年, Xu Xu Sheng 徐旭生, Chen Ying Que 陈寅恪, Li Ji 李济, Cai Yuan Pei 蔡元培, etc., were of a very different ilk from their predecessors. Having traveled to and studied in America or European countries (or Japan in the cases of Wang Guo Wei 王国维, Guo Mo Ruo 郭沫若, and Zhang Tai Yan 章太炎), they returned to China to continue their national studies, and they produced much ground-breaking work. A common trait of their scholarship, it must be noted, was the conscious use of Western theories, Western classification, empiricism and skepticism, and even Western styles of prose and punctuation, to reread ancient Chinese literature and philosophy. They were deliberate in their decision to use Western methods in their “national studies.” So we are faced with the question: does the work of these scholars fall under the category of guo xue or xifang han xue? At about the same time as these Chinese scholars was the celebrated sinologist, James Legge. Although he was a missionary in China and his spiritual goals were necessarily aimed at converting Chinese locals to Christianity, his academic pursuits were much more culturally sensitive. In his great translation opus, The Chinese Classics (1861), we see a cultural transmitter who is surprisingly faithful to the native Chinese exegetical traditions, with almost no trace of the Judeo-Christian ideology or Bible-derived terminology that might be expected. In one of the prolegomena to this work, entitled “Lists of the principle works which have been consulted in the preparation of this volume,” we see that the Chinese works he referenced for his translation were authoritative and widely-recognized commentaries or editions of the classics, and that they outnumbered the European language works almost two to one. He also freely admits that his interpretation of the passages was modeled primarily on the commentaries of Zhu Xi 朱熹. In light of the trend in China, at that time and since, to employ Western models of analysis to dissect the Chinese classics, the question arises as to whether Legge’s work is a true example of Western sinology, with a culturally biased and semi-informed translator imposing Western or Christian standards on a helpless Chinese classic. Or should his work rather be seen as coming directly out of the mold of the Chinese tradition of researching Chinese commentaries throughout the dynasties and, based on his own intimate knowledge of all the classics and the intricate system of Confucian philosophy within, meticulously selecting what he deems the most reasonable and accurate of Chinese interpretations to render into English? The common denominator of all these scholars is a perspective based on first-hand travel, experience, and direct contact with “the other side.” While the American author, Mark Twain, was living in Europe, he once wrote in a correspondence to an American newspaper: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” The growing ease of travel was an important factor in the evolution of sinology. While the study of China was in its infancy in Europe, those who had first-hand contact with the Chinese people and their literature (the Jesuits), were not the ones doing the sinological work. The ones who were engaged in sinological work, conversely, did not have any direct contact with China. This, today, is no longer true. The most natural result of world travel becoming more convenient is world travel becoming more frequent. This is one of the important conditions that allowed Chinese scholars to leave their own shores and to return with Western ideas. This is even more applicable given the growing efficiency of world travel over the last several decades. Not only can a Western university student choose to major in Chinese studies, often with the benefit of Chinese teachers, but he/she can also choose to travel to China or Taiwan and also to live there, in order to become acquainted with the language, culture, and thought. This is the sort of educational background which modern professional sinologists are bringing to their research. Compare this to Arthur Waley, celebrated philologist, poet, and translator of Oriental works, who never set foot in Asia and never learned to speak modern Chinese or Japanese. In fact, given the highly developed academic specialization that is common today, it is no longer even safe to assume that Western students of sinology are all well versed in the history of Western philosophy or religion, which is precisely the content that they supposedly force upon their Chinese subject matter. This idea of cultural characteristics in sinology or methodology, the idea that a Western scholar can always and only see China from a purely Western vantage point, is becoming less and less tenable. What exactly do we mean when we say “Western sinology”? This entails not just academic predispositions to analytical-style thinking, rationalism, or any of the myriad “isms” that have appeared between Plato and Rawls. There are many normative and pernicious characteristics in question. To separate xifang han xue from guo xue is to say that all the scholarship of han xue is in essence defined by the Westerner’s cultural background and history. This inescapable subjectivity that they bring to China and China-related studies is one deriving from capitalism, imperialism, liberal democracy, racism, assumptions of overall cultural superiority——basically all the negative characteristics attributed to the archetype “orientalist” in Edward Said’s Orientalism. In today’s global community, none of the above characteristics accurately defines the average Western sinologist. (My thesis does not extend to Western politicians or policy-makers.) Further blurring the line between what has traditionally been seen as Western sinology and Chinese sinology is the complexity of geographical demarcation. The “margin areas” of the greater Chinese nation, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Chinese diaspora, and also the non-Han areas of China, have historically appeared in the discussion of cultural and linguistic traditions more as objects of study than as participants in the conversation. However, just as globalization has led to a greatly diminished sense of insiders and outsiders, as discussed above, it has also brought these areas on the margins of China into the fold. It is important to note that most of these regions and groups of people, while owing their cultural roots to the Central Kingdom, have been irrevocably influenced by Western colonizers, once again demonstrating the near impossibility of any type of “culturally pure” sinology. Rather, what we see today are Western sinologists who deliberately adopt a Chinese interpretive framework for their research, and who more often than not extol China’s literature and philosophy purely on the basis of its own merit. For instance, the works of David Hall, Michael Nylan, Edward Shaughnessy, Michael Puett, Stephen Owen, Henry Rosemont, and Roger Ames, to name but a few, are clearly aimed at viewing Chinese antiquity through a Chinese lens. Roger Ames, in his recent monograph, Confucian Role Ethics, does not only take great pains to establish a thoroughly Chinese interpretive context in which to analyze concepts in traditional Confucian morality, but goes even one step further and offers it up as a viable alternative to today’s Western-dominated, rights-based concepts of ethics and justice. It does not matter whether we agree with his conclusions or not; what does matter is that in this type of research at the forefront of modern Western sinology, the old divisions between guo xue and han xue hardly apply. Strict adherence to the dichotomy arising between guo xue versus han xue leads us to unfairly and inaccurately ascribe cultural causes to academic conclusions. On the Chinese side, Chinese students today become acquainted with Western ideas, analytical thinking, the scientific method, and the English language from an early age. Great educational reforms were instituted by the famous educator and former president of Beijing University, Cai Yuan Pei, after he had traveled to Germany and France to study philosophy, literature, aesthetics, psychology, and culture. Numerous aspects of China’s modern university system, from the structure of the curriculum to the degree system (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., post-doctorate), to the writing and defense of a thesis, to standards of research, citation, and plagiarism, are based on the Western model. Western influence is ubiquitous. Is pure guo xue without any hint of Western influence even possible today? This, of course, is to say nothing of the increasing numbers of Chinese students and scholars who are able to live and study abroad, as were those scholars a century ago, and to return to China with an enhanced pedagogical arsenal containing Western ideas and methods. Then there are the scholars, such as Du Wei Ming 杜维明, Yu Ying Shi 余英时, Cheng Zhong Ying 成中英, and Zhang Guang Zhi 张光直. Even after completing their higher education in the West, they have chosen to remain there. The influence of Western thought on their research is undeniable, but they are still Chinese-born scholars engaged in (among other things) Chinese studies. If scholars and disciplines are classified according to their cultural characteristics, should this group be labeled as guo xue jia 国学家? Or are their methods “Western enough” to qualify them as xifang han xue jia 西方汉学家? Or perhaps these labels have outgrown their purpose and are no longer helpful. If these cultural characteristics no longer accurately represent any real group of people, then they have lost their function. Continuing to use them would only serve to obfuscate matters, not clarify them, which is of course the intention of any method of classification. Our discussion, up to now, has concentrated on the agents of sinology, the Westerners and Easterners who no longer neatly fit into culture-based paradigms of methodology. This argument can, however, can go in a different direction: the object of sinology itself is constantly changing and being redefined. Literally, sinology means the study of China, but in practice it has been applied more narrowly to the study of the ancient aspects of China’s (Han) culture, such as history, language, philosophy, and religion, using traditional methods of scholarship, such as phonology, bibliography, and textual criticism. The celebrated American sinologist, John K. Fairbank (1907-1991), consciously changed the approach to China studies by introducing “area studies”—a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding thoroughly one specific block on a map by means of modern social science analysis. David Honey describes Fairbank as “an historian with a decided anti-philological bias, he makes an interesting foil to contrast with traditional sinologists.” (Honey 2001: 270) He goes on to describe Fairbank’s view of traditional methodology: Fairbank was careful to separate the useful tool of language from the onerous, even distracting, task of language study. …His overriding goal was to utilize the facts of Chinese history, culled from whatever source was relevant and accessible, to confirm an interpretive framework designed from the models generated by the social sciences. But this basic gulf between the methodologies of philology and social science were [sic] more than mere functional differences of operation and procedure; it marked a more fundamental question of the superiority and utility of one approach over another. Fairbank regarded traditional sinology as, at base, an individual—and hopeless, if not even vain—effort to master a boundless, pre-modern literary corpus of little relevance for understanding and ameliorating the human condition in modern China. …On the contrary, “Regional Studies—China” was a corporate endeavor of an American-led community of scholars, utilizing scientific techniques of universal applicability, regardless of area. In such a view, sinology did not represent a competing methodology, but merely an antiquarian and attenuated one. (Honey 2001: 272-273) Conceptually, “area studies” was a Western invention, which begs the question as to whether the Chinese still hold that coveted position of “sole insiders”, and whether they still have some innate advantage in the context of China-related studies, simply by virtue of being Chinese? Skipping forward to today, we are witnessing the emergence of yet another novel approach to Chinese studies - Sinophone studies. This new area is not just a redefinition of the agents of sinology, but more importantly a redefinition of the object of study. Analogous to “Anglophone” and “Francophone” studies, the objects of Sinophone studies are the people that speak the Chinese language and the areas where it is spoken. Just as “area studies” was a product of its time, Sinophone studies examine Sinitic-language cultures born of colonial and postcolonial influences. Since the focus is precisely on the groups of Chinese language communities beyond China proper, the discipline of sinology can now be described as a study of people and language spanning the globe, not just one Asian country. For further information on this topic, see Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards eds. Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (2013). My description of this shift, this fusion of what were previously distinct and opposing disciplines, considers the issue from two levels: natural and judgmental. What I mean by this is that this change is clearly happening, and that it should happen. In rehearsing the history of sinology, we surely need to recognize these past phenomena and be aware of the impact of culture on so much past work. We also need to recognize that, like anything else, circumstances change, and the researcher’s cultural background is no longer the defining characteristic of sinological research. I argue that continuing to use this division in disciplines—these “cultural characteristics”-- to guide our understanding of current research should change, because many, especially in mainland China, still hold quite firmly to these old precepts. When a Westerner presents a new book or delivers a lecture in China, it is more often than not introduced as “the Western perspective on...” or “China through the eyes of an American,” etc. This description can not only be misleading, but is also unfair to the author as well as the audience who, before even having read or heard the sinologist’s arguments, is assuming the existence of a cultural bias at the foundation of all his conclusions. A perfect case in point is a book by the German sinologist and philosopher, Hans-Georg Moeller. He is well-read and well-informed on Chinese philosophy, and specializes in Daoist thought. He published one book in particular on the thought of Lao Zi, originally in German, in 2003. The book was so well-received that it was translated into English, Italian, Chinese, and Korean. The original (English) title of the book is The Philosophy of the Dao De Jing, which was faithfully rendered into Chinese as 《道德经》的哲学. However, on the cover of the mainland Chinese version, a subtitle was added: 一个德国人眼中的老子 (“Lao Zi in the eyes of a German”). Of course, financial profit was an important motive behind the decision to add this subtitle. The “exotic” nature of this book as coming from a European is a lucrative selling-point, and the Chinese publishers no doubt intended to highlight this fact to their advantage. However, this is not by any means an innocuous addition. What this subtitle is telling the reader is 1) this is how all Germans see Lao Zi, and 2) all Moeller’s insights and arguments come from his “Germanness.” The decision to continue to label and divide sinological work based on the categories of national and foreign identities perpetuates all the stereotypes that follow. We could carry the analogy into an unrelated field to further illustrate this point. When reviewing books on the history of Western architecture, for example, we find that some of the authors of these books are male and some are female. So long as the female author has not decided to approach the topic from an overtly feminist or gender studies’ point of view, there is no need for the reviewer to place an asterisk next to the book title to remind the readers that this is an evaluation of architecture from a woman’s perspective. Such a distinction is irrelevant. Today, the same can be said for sinology. The distinction between national studies, as representing traditional Chinese perspectives and methodology, and Western sinology, understood as Western scholars imposing Western values and standards on Chinese studies, is almost completely irrelevant. Valuable work – as well as mediocre work!- is being done on both sides. The outdated categories of “insiders” and “outsiders” must be given up in favor of familiarity with the subject, clarity of insight, strong argumentation, and lucid exposition, all supported by textual and other evidence, as the kinds of standards that need to be employed when judging the value of an academic work. List of References Franke, Wolfgang (1967). China and the West, trans. R.A. Wilson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Honey, David B. (2001). Incense at the Alter: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Liang, Shu Min (2012). Dong Xi Wen Hua ji qi Zhe Xue. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (梁淑敏《东西文化及其哲学》，北京：商务印书馆，2012年.) Mote, Fredrick (1964). “The Case for the Integrity of Sinology”. Journal of Asian Studies 23. Mungello, David (1989) Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (2nd ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Said, Edward (1979) Orientalism. New York, NY: Random House. Shih, Shu-mei and Chien-hsin Tsai, Brian Bernards (2013) eds. Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Yu, Ying Shi (2005) Lun Dai Zhen Yu Zhang Xue Cheng. Beijing: Sanlian Shu She. (余英时《论戴震与章学诚》，北京：三联书社，2005年) PAGE 16 PAGE 15