Travel in the Ming Dynasty

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Around the same time as the Mayflower was landing at Cape Cod, on the other side of the world tourism was thriving in China, giving rise to a fascinating genre of travel writing.

To mark the start of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Tiger - Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the wonderfully rich prose and travel diaries of the period with Professor James Hargett. His research and translations reveal extraordinary insights into the society and culture of the late Ming Dynasty.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	February 1st, 2022, was the first day of the Chinese New Year, and one thing that many people in China
0:08.2	do to celebrate New Year is to travel. So today's episode explores the wonderfully rich history of
0:15.8	travel and travel writing in Imperial China. We're especially going to focus on the late Ming dynasty.
0:24.0	The Ming ruled China from 1368 to 1644, and around the same time that the Mayflower was landing
0:31.5	on Cape Cod, on the other side of the world in China, a thriving tourist industry, and a whole
0:37.0	and variegated literary genre of travel writing sprung up. This phenomenon produced for historians
0:44.1	sources that give extraordinary insight into the society and culture of the late Ming.
0:50.5	My guest today is James Hargett, his professor of Chinese studies at the University of Albany, the state
0:57.8	University of New York. His research focuses on the prose literature, travel diaries, and cultural
1:04.4	history of traditional China. He's the author of six books of which his most recent is Jade Mountains
1:12.4	and Sinabar Pools, the history of travel literature in Imperial China 2018.
1:18.7	I started by asking him the significance of the Chinese New Year.
1:31.4	I've spent New Year's in China many, many times. It is a time when everyone, if they have the means,
1:37.7	they must go home. If their parents are alive, grandparents are alive, the pressure to go home is
1:43.6	even greater. China is on a lunar calendar. It follows faces of the moon rather than the sun.
1:51.7	So typically Chinese New Year comes sometime mid-late January, early mid-February on our calendar.
2:00.5	Here in the States, in UK, we typically celebrate holidays for a day or two, right? The New Year
2:06.4	celebration in China lasts for two weeks. Firecrackers, fireworks, lots of eating, lots of drinking of alcohol,
2:15.6	lots of more drinking of alcohol, spending time with family. First time you experience it is
2:21.8	pretty cool, but after the fireworks go off at three o'clock in the morning for about 10 days,
2:28.2	oh, it gets a little old. But it's still a fun time if you've never been to China during the new year.
2:34.3	They caught the spring festival there, although it's typically in winter time. I encourage you to go.
	...

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