1 00:00:09,559 --> 00:00:14,759 So good afternoon and welcome. I'm Andrea Bachner and the director of the East Asia 2 00:00:14,759 --> 00:00:20,220 Program and it is my absolute pleasure and privilege to welcome you to this 3 00:00:20,220 --> 00:00:26,480 year's distinguished Hu Shih lecture. The lecture commemorates one of Cornell's 4 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:33,090 Distinguished Alumnus the Chinese writer statesman and intellectual Hu Shih. It was 5 00:00:33,090 --> 00:00:39,030 inaugurated on the 100th anniversary of Hu Shih's graduation from Cornell which 6 00:00:39,030 --> 00:00:43,890 was in 1914 and it marked the beginning of a series of initiatives for 7 00:00:43,890 --> 00:00:49,440 engagement with modern and contemporary China at Cornell. Today's lecture 8 00:00:49,440 --> 00:00:53,760 sponsored by the East Asia Program is made possible thanks to the generous 9 00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:58,920 contribution of the Department of History. In addition to Professor Ko's 10 00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:03,899 talk today there will also be a workshop tomorrow in the context of the Cornell 11 00:01:03,899 --> 00:01:09,780 Classical Chinese Colloquium. Even as the Hu Shih lectures are one of the key 12 00:01:09,780 --> 00:01:15,030 events of Cornell's academic community engaged in research in East Asia their 13 00:01:15,030 --> 00:01:20,790 resonance and importance lies well beyond that particular community and it 14 00:01:20,790 --> 00:01:26,460 seems especially apt during Homecoming Week to call on Hu Shih's example and see 15 00:01:26,460 --> 00:01:32,310 continued inspiration there. By invoking the name of Hu Shih these lectures 16 00:01:32,310 --> 00:01:37,020 celebrate the adventure of cultural and intellectual work as such. More 17 00:01:37,020 --> 00:01:42,659 specifically they recognize some of the key values of academic work as embodied 18 00:01:42,659 --> 00:01:48,240 at Cornell and beyond. First of all the importance of movement and contact 19 00:01:48,240 --> 00:01:54,840 across different cultures as Hu Shih came from China to the U.S. to further studies at 20 00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:58,619 Cornell later Colombia, is path echos the 21 00:01:58,619 --> 00:02:03,280 multicultural and multinational backgrounds of students as scholars here. 22 00:02:03,280 --> 00:02:08,289 By the same token research by scholarship students at Cornell wouldn't 23 00:02:08,289 --> 00:02:13,840 be what it is without being informed and inspired by places beyond Ithaca and 24 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:19,870 beyond the U.S., for instance, China. Second a combination of theoretical 25 00:02:19,870 --> 00:02:25,060 knowledge, philosophical reflection, creative experimentation, and a view 26 00:02:25,060 --> 00:02:30,610 towards pragmatic change, Hu Shih in his multiple roles as diplomat, poet, 27 00:02:30,610 --> 00:02:36,940 philosopher, cultural agitator, researcher, educator, and academic leader models for 28 00:02:36,940 --> 00:02:41,739 us a scholarly ideal in which policy making and the effecting of real life 29 00:02:41,739 --> 00:02:47,170 changes are closely tied to if not outright dependent on philosophical 30 00:02:47,170 --> 00:02:52,989 reflection and cultural and social analysis. And third an attention to the 31 00:02:52,989 --> 00:02:58,569 past as a way of engaging with the present. Hu Shih not only wrote what 32 00:02:58,569 --> 00:03:04,209 is seen by many as the first modern Chinese poem, he was also a scholar of 33 00:03:04,209 --> 00:03:14,840 Chinese philosophy and of - for example in English 'Redology' - right the study of the Chinese novel, "The Dream of Red Chamber" or story of the stone. 34 00:03:15,060 --> 00:03:20,980 Shaping the present and the future depends on an understanding of historical context and 35 00:03:20,980 --> 00:03:26,319 cultural analogies. Hence many of the Hu Shih lectures engage explicitly in 36 00:03:26,319 --> 00:03:31,989 the type of scholarly work that rejects present-ism: the exaggerated emphasis on 37 00:03:31,989 --> 00:03:37,870 the contemporary and show instead that historical matter deeply. But Hu 38 00:03:37,870 --> 00:03:43,959 Shih's life has also an example of the vicissitudes of intellectual formation 39 00:03:43,959 --> 00:03:49,660 and work, its dependence on real-life events as people's lives are marked by 40 00:03:49,660 --> 00:03:54,370 the impact of national and global conflict. Hu Shih studies 41 00:03:54,370 --> 00:03:59,230 here in the U.S. were made possible through the Boxer Indemnity Fund a grand 42 00:03:59,230 --> 00:04:04,090 scheme that was the direct consequence of the Allied intervention in China to 43 00:04:04,090 --> 00:04:09,760 suppress the Boxer Rebellion at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. Later 44 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:14,280 in his life upon the communist victory of the Chinese mainland Hu Shih 45 00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:19,780 relocated to Taiwan and concluded his life and career displaced and far away 46 00:04:19,780 --> 00:04:23,260 from home. Speaking of factors that impact 47 00:04:23,260 --> 00:04:27,730 intellectual and creative work, I'm particularly pleased that this is Hu 48 00:04:27,730 --> 00:04:32,830 Shih lecture which will be delivered by Professor Dorothy Ko on the topic of 49 00:04:32,830 --> 00:04:37,780 gender and material culture pivots on questions of gender. Questions of 50 00:04:37,780 --> 00:04:42,490 difference in diversity such as gender and sexual orientation and the ways in 51 00:04:42,490 --> 00:04:46,030 which they intersect with other categories remain crucial to our 52 00:04:46,030 --> 00:04:51,880 cultural and intellectual endeavors and in fact as you will have seen or will 53 00:04:51,880 --> 00:04:57,910 see many of the initiatives of East Asia Program this semester this year focus on 54 00:04:57,910 --> 00:05:03,700 such issues. I want to believe that what Hu Shih stands for is capacious enough 55 00:05:03,700 --> 00:05:09,370 to extend also to such areas of engagement and challenge but I will stop 56 00:05:09,370 --> 00:05:13,870 there and hand things over to my colleague Suyoung Son who will introduce 57 00:05:13,870 --> 00:05:24,220 today's speaker. (applause) Welcome to the Annual Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture. It is my great 58 00:05:24,220 --> 00:05:28,840 honor and pleasure to introduce today's speaker Professor Dorothy Ko. 59 00:05:28,840 --> 00:05:32,770 I'm Suyoung Son and I'm an assistant professor in the Asian Studies 60 00:05:32,770 --> 00:05:36,220 studying the literature and the cultural history of so-called early modern 61 00:05:36,220 --> 00:05:40,830 China roughly defined from the 16th to the 19th century. 62 00:05:40,830 --> 00:05:45,370 Because my area of research is a little bit overlapped with the historical 63 00:05:45,370 --> 00:05:56,460 period the Professor Dorothy Ko is working I can say a bit about how much significantly her work has changed the field of Chinese cultural history, 64 00:05:56,560 --> 00:06:03,220 gender studies and visual and material culture. I can also share about how her 65 00:06:03,229 --> 00:06:08,449 intellectual trajectory informs new directions and perspectives to examine 66 00:06:08,449 --> 00:06:14,689 Chinese history in general and history of Chinese women in particular. Professor 67 00:06:14,689 --> 00:06:20,419 Ko earned both undergraduate and PhD degrees at Stanford University and since 68 00:06:20,419 --> 00:06:25,330 2001 she has been teaching at Barnard College of Columbia University. 69 00:06:25,330 --> 00:06:32,569 She is now a professor and chair of History and Women's Studies. Professor 70 00:06:32,569 --> 00:06:37,780 Ko's first book, "Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in 17th 71 00:06:37,780 --> 00:06:42,320 Century China," which came out in 1994 is a groundbreaking study in the 72 00:06:43,580 --> 00:06:50,780 exploration of the social and emotional lives of upper-class Chinese women in early modern China. 73 00:06:50,780 --> 00:06:54,700 The book takes us on a journey into the inner chambers, the 74 00:06:54,860 --> 00:07:05,140 space in which women not only read and wrote, but also appeared as active participants in the literary scene and elite culture of the day. In doing so, 75 00:07:05,300 --> 00:07:10,580 her book does not just, does not merely vividly flesh out the voices of the women 76 00:07:10,580 --> 00:07:16,490 who have not been well recognized, but it also radically revises the prevailing 77 00:07:16,490 --> 00:07:22,460 assumptions of Chinese women as "cloistered, crippled, and victimized". By 78 00:07:22,460 --> 00:07:27,259 demonstrating that this stereotype of Chinese women was far from the historical 79 00:07:27,259 --> 00:07:32,000 reality, promoting, actually it was promoted by the ideological agendas of 80 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,710 the early 20th century reformers, the Communist Party and Western 81 00:07:36,710 --> 00:07:42,289 feminist scholarship. So one of the main aims of her book is to distinguish 82 00:07:42,289 --> 00:07:47,479 normative prescriptions of an elite Confucian discourse of gender from the 83 00:07:47,479 --> 00:07:51,339 experienced realities of women themselves. 84 00:07:51,339 --> 00:07:57,379 Indeed, her book successfully portrays not only how women themselves perceived 85 00:07:57,379 --> 00:08:01,200 vested, or negotiated with prescriptions for their conduct 86 00:08:01,200 --> 00:08:07,220 but also how their gender awareness serves as a basis for networking and 87 00:08:07,220 --> 00:08:13,770 reorganizing the social community. In short, her work establishes itself as one 88 00:08:13,770 --> 00:08:20,010 of the most pioneering gendered history in a genuine sense and raises the gender as 89 00:08:20,010 --> 00:08:26,820 one of the most important and useful categories of historical analysis. Professor Ko's research extends 90 00:08:26,820 --> 00:08:32,070 well beyond the highly educated elite women 91 00:08:32,070 --> 00:08:37,289 who could leave their voices and traces in written form. One of the perennial 92 00:08:37,289 --> 00:08:43,380 problems in the study of Chinese women is lack of enough written materials. And I think this is where her creativity shines. 93 00:08:43,380 --> 00:08:48,420 To compliment the paucity of historical materials to capture women's every-day lives and emotions, 94 00:08:48,420 --> 00:08:58,680 she turns her focus to the everyday objects that women have used and 95 00:08:58,680 --> 00:09:03,870 treasured. Following the reconstruction of women's lives embedded in the material 96 00:09:03,870 --> 00:09:08,880 artifacts, such as embroidered slippers, which came out as the book 97 00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:16,520 titled, "Every Step a Lotus: Shoes of Bound Feet" in 2001, her following monograph, 98 00:09:16,520 --> 00:09:22,589 "Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding" in 2005, directly 99 00:09:22,589 --> 00:09:26,820 tackles the practice of footbinding which is considered to be one of the 100 00:09:26,820 --> 00:09:32,310 most notorious physical symbols of Chinese women's subservience to 101 00:09:32,310 --> 00:09:37,290 patriarchy. By searching for the explanations for the longevity of the 102 00:09:37,290 --> 00:09:43,260 practice and the reason why women embraced and perpetuated these seemingly torturous 103 00:09:43,260 --> 00:09:50,280 custom, she persuasively argues that footbinding was far from a uniform and 104 00:09:50,280 --> 00:09:57,000 timeless practice motivated by a single cause; instead it served as the locus of 105 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:02,550 diverse meanings by changing economic, social, and cultural forces expressed in 106 00:10:02,550 --> 00:10:08,450 various local styles and rituals. Shifting our focus on the perspectives 107 00:10:08,450 --> 00:10:13,310 of the Chinese women themselves, who carried out, managed, and experienced and 108 00:10:13,310 --> 00:10:18,980 explore what they made out of this practice, she argues that footbinding is 109 00:10:18,980 --> 00:10:23,780 shaped and evolved as intertwining inspiration that configured female as 110 00:10:23,780 --> 00:10:31,490 well as male subjectivities. This book won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association 111 00:10:31,490 --> 00:10:39,410 for the best book in women's history and feminist history in 2013. Professor Ko's 112 00:10:39,410 --> 00:10:45,080 most recent book "The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China", 113 00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:50,720 which we will hear more about today, further advances her 114 00:10:50,720 --> 00:10:55,250 engagement with the material culture by following the life of the inkstone 115 00:10:55,250 --> 00:11:01,130 and the process of its production and consumption. By giving due weight to the 116 00:11:01,130 --> 00:11:06,140 artisans who made inkstones, including women artisans, rather than just the 117 00:11:06,140 --> 00:11:11,900 scholars who used them, she sheds light on the intangible physical labor, skills, and 118 00:11:11,900 --> 00:11:16,940 desires of artisans, and raises the need to reconsider the relationship 119 00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:24,050 among gender, technology, and art in early modern China. 120 00:11:24,050 --> 00:11:30,260 Aside from her monographs, Professor Ko co-edited two books: "The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential 121 00:11:30,260 --> 00:11:35,450 Texts in Transnational Theory" and "Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern 122 00:11:35,450 --> 00:11:42,040 China, Korea, and Japan." In this way progress was wonderfully imaginative, 123 00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:47,240 wide-ranging, and provocative studies cut across the temporal division between the 124 00:11:47,240 --> 00:11:52,220 pre-modern and the modern as well as the national border between China and other 125 00:11:52,220 --> 00:11:55,240 East Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea. 126 00:11:55,240 --> 00:12:02,000 In addition, her historical research intersects anthropology, literature, and the material 127 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:08,329 visual culture. The grand historical discourse tends to overlook women, artisans, 128 00:12:08,329 --> 00:12:14,119 everyday practices, and ordinary objects, but she brings them to the central stage 129 00:12:14,119 --> 00:12:19,549 of historical analysis and shows how much they enrich our understanding of 130 00:12:19,549 --> 00:12:26,119 historical experiences and practices. Every step of her research opens up 131 00:12:26,119 --> 00:12:31,549 a new level of scholarly engagement, serving as an exemplary model for us to keep 132 00:12:31,549 --> 00:12:36,230 questioning how we have come to know what we 133 00:12:36,230 --> 00:12:41,569 believe to be true about the world. I'm very proud to have her present here 134 00:12:41,569 --> 00:12:53,619 today. Please join me in welcoming Professor Dorothy Ko. PROF.KO: Thank you so much for welcoming me here. I feel that my 135 00:12:53,619 --> 00:13:00,949 my self image is still that of a craft woman so to share the same podium with 136 00:13:00,949 --> 00:13:07,579 the father of the Chinese Renaissance, Dr. Hu Shih, is a bit much for me and I'm 137 00:13:07,579 --> 00:13:14,569 also really grateful for to meet Professor Mei who has been instrumental 138 00:13:14,569 --> 00:13:20,319 in setting up this Hu Shih Distinguished speaker series and I'm really grateful 139 00:13:20,319 --> 00:13:26,929 to be here. I also want to thank Suyoung, TJ, Amala, 140 00:13:26,929 --> 00:13:34,209 Joshua, and especially the East Asia Program, Department of History 141 00:13:34,209 --> 00:13:40,160 for giving me such a warm welcome and I'm so happy to see all the students 142 00:13:40,160 --> 00:13:56,959 here. Because the future is yours. So um Hu Shih as we know is a famous Chinese 143 00:13:56,959 --> 00:14:08,419 thinker, intellectual, and statesman was one of the most famous Cornellians and 144 00:14:08,419 --> 00:14:17,250 although I have to thank for saying that after that he came to Columbia. (laughter) 145 00:14:17,250 --> 00:14:23,920 In his portrait that is exhibited in the newly-opened Hu Shih Memorial Hall in 146 00:14:23,920 --> 00:14:34,390 Nangang in Taiwan he is smiling at us and his usual desk holding a writing brush 147 00:14:34,390 --> 00:14:41,350 and wearing an open collar western style white shirt. Hu Shih was said 148 00:14:41,350 --> 00:14:49,270 to love to tell his friends and students that when he wants to write poetry he 149 00:14:49,270 --> 00:14:55,900 would use the Chinese writing brush and when he wants to do other kinds of 150 00:14:55,900 --> 00:15:02,320 writing presumably the more kind of analytic form of writing he would use a 151 00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:09,390 fountain pen. So this is how he negotiated between east and west. 152 00:15:10,590 --> 00:15:18,070 However, Hu Shih was not as traditionally Chinese as his choice of 153 00:15:18,070 --> 00:15:23,140 a writing brush may seem for I discovered that he drew ink from a 154 00:15:23,140 --> 00:15:29,890 ceramic box instead of grinding his own ink with a inkstone and ink-stick so 155 00:15:29,890 --> 00:15:40,600 he is very efficient. So the ink grinding stone, the subject of my talk today seems 156 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:47,020 to be so alien to 20th century writers that I would like to introduce you to 157 00:15:47,020 --> 00:15:54,760 him first. Chinese writers and painters before prefer to grind their own ink 158 00:15:54,760 --> 00:16:03,900 with this ink-stick on the surface of the inkstone with this lightly 159 00:16:03,900 --> 00:16:12,610 controlled circular motion by adding water to control the color and also the 160 00:16:12,610 --> 00:16:19,750 thickness of the ink. The reason why traditional writers and painters prefer 161 00:16:19,750 --> 00:16:25,380 to grind their own ink or have a monkey or a butler grind the ink for them fresh at the desk 162 00:16:25,380 --> 00:16:29,820 is because that way you can control 163 00:16:29,820 --> 00:16:41,160 the nature and the color of the image so that you can produce Fifty Shades of 164 00:16:41,160 --> 00:16:43,220 Grey if you want for your paintings and your calligraphy. (laughter) 165 00:16:45,620 --> 00:16:55,410 So it's a very laborious process but it's important to their art so um although in 166 00:16:55,410 --> 00:17:02,310 theory any stone can be made into an inkstone, Chinese artists believe that 167 00:17:02,310 --> 00:17:07,290 some stones are better than others so I have in front of you or both on the 168 00:17:07,290 --> 00:17:17,160 screen and on the table three famous stones of three famous quarries and the 169 00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:22,800 stones that made from them. I'm actually gonna pass them around.(audience gasps) They're not 170 00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:27,830 fragile so just don't kill your neighbor with them. (laughter) When each 171 00:17:27,830 --> 00:17:36,090 comes to you so the first is a drawn stone from southern China in the 172 00:17:36,090 --> 00:17:43,170 province of Guandong it is actually it comes with a box and you are welcome and 173 00:17:43,170 --> 00:17:48,420 I'll keep the cover here so that you don't have to handle too many pieces you 174 00:17:48,420 --> 00:17:56,730 are welcome to spit on it if you have an umbrella um if there is is if there is 175 00:17:56,730 --> 00:18:05,070 moisture in your hair try to do what the Chinese connoisseurs do and put a fresh 176 00:18:05,070 --> 00:18:11,570 coat of water on the surface of the stone and that way you can notice the 177 00:18:11,570 --> 00:18:17,520 specific colors and the mineral pigments and the patterns more clearly so that 178 00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:23,580 you can identify them. So the first stone is from Duan and it 179 00:18:23,580 --> 00:18:32,990 goes from here. The second stone I don't have a box for is from Shexian or 180 00:18:32,990 --> 00:18:42,059 present day Jiangxi. It used to be part of Anhuei in Huizho in China, you would notice that this is a 181 00:18:42,059 --> 00:18:49,320 much harder stone and you are also welcome to put to spit on it but you 182 00:18:49,320 --> 00:18:56,640 actually don't need to because the veins are much more visible for both of these 183 00:18:56,640 --> 00:19:10,490 stones I would welcome you to try to grind ink with an ink-stick but there are actually 184 00:19:10,490 --> 00:19:18,299 four different questions I would like you to make a mental impression of. One 185 00:19:18,299 --> 00:19:25,140 is try to notice the color of the stone and how different they are all three of 186 00:19:25,140 --> 00:19:31,500 them. The second is to notice as I said the pigmentation and the mineral 187 00:19:31,500 --> 00:19:38,309 features on the stone. The third is the shape, form or design of the stone. And 188 00:19:38,309 --> 00:19:48,929 the fourth - the fourth point is actually, if it does have a box what is the 189 00:19:48,929 --> 00:19:53,880 relationship from a design point of view from the maintenance point of view 190 00:19:53,880 --> 00:20:03,870 between the stone and the box because all three are different that way. The 191 00:20:03,870 --> 00:20:10,320 last stone is the most interesting actually - from Manchuria, from Jilin 192 00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:18,450 or now called Songhua stone named after the Songhua river or the Sungari River. This one 193 00:20:18,450 --> 00:20:27,179 is actually three pieces and I would just ask you to notice that there 194 00:20:27,179 --> 00:20:33,390 are three pieces. I'm gonna put them back. This is a stone 195 00:20:33,390 --> 00:20:39,570 discovered by the Qing Emperor Kangxi in the 17th century until the 17th century 196 00:20:39,570 --> 00:20:45,180 no one has seen this stone and no one had used this to make inkstones so it's kind 197 00:20:45,180 --> 00:20:50,550 of like the emblem of Chang material culture actually that was invented by 198 00:20:50,550 --> 00:20:58,830 the Manchus. It's also quite hard the color is different so I also want you to 199 00:20:58,830 --> 00:21:10,440 pay attention to these four questions. And I will give the people on the edge a chance to 200 00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:21,540 be first. So if you can bear with me please keep those questions in your head 201 00:21:21,540 --> 00:21:29,660 and afterwards if there is interest and time we can do a little kind of 202 00:21:29,660 --> 00:21:35,780 discussion on the connoisseurship and a history of connoisseurship of ink-stones 203 00:21:35,780 --> 00:21:44,190 after an hour you all would be masters of it or mistresses. But today I want 204 00:21:44,190 --> 00:21:52,110 to think about a question that actually had bothered me for a long time I still don't 205 00:21:52,110 --> 00:21:59,460 have an answer and that is especially in a northern societies like ours we are so 206 00:21:59,460 --> 00:22:06,690 accustomed when we think of women's relationship with things we are so 207 00:22:06,690 --> 00:22:14,190 accustomed to think of women as shoppers as consumers. Women could be cooking 208 00:22:14,190 --> 00:22:20,340 dinners at home but how many of us know women who build houses, who make 209 00:22:20,340 --> 00:22:27,690 furniture or women who design cars? Why is it so difficult for us in the modern 210 00:22:27,690 --> 00:22:34,420 times and actually in the pre-modern times in China? Why is this 211 00:22:34,420 --> 00:22:42,340 so difficult to imagine women as producers as makers of sophisticated things that 212 00:22:42,340 --> 00:22:50,410 required a highly specialized level of skill and training? So the protagonist of 213 00:22:50,410 --> 00:22:55,000 my talk is one such woman from the 18th century 214 00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:01,000 an artisan by the name of Gu Erniang who became the most famous and ink-stone maker 215 00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:07,660 and carver of her generation. There were a handful of women before her who were 216 00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:15,280 celebrated embroiderers or artists and painters in Chinese history but none has 217 00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:22,060 really excelled as an artisan as a crafts woman who ran her own workshop 218 00:23:22,060 --> 00:23:29,230 under her own name let alone making an object ironically and paradoxically that 219 00:23:29,230 --> 00:23:36,000 is the emblem of elite male masculinity. 220 00:23:37,980 --> 00:23:45,160 As we have seen right in our own palm and inkstone is a palm-sized slab of 221 00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:51,790 stone which writers and painters used to grind ink. To those of us who upgrade our 222 00:23:51,790 --> 00:24:01,210 iPhones every year how many of you? (laughter) It is really difficult to convey the 223 00:24:01,210 --> 00:24:07,150 emotional and psychological attachment that Chinese male scholars developed 224 00:24:07,150 --> 00:24:14,050 with a piece of stone and a great lengths they would go to procure the best one. It 225 00:24:14,050 --> 00:24:19,170 is as though that believed that the brilliance of their essays and the books 226 00:24:19,170 --> 00:24:25,630 depend on the secret knowledge about how their own laptop was made and which one 227 00:24:25,630 --> 00:24:31,810 is made from the highest grade aluminum from a particular bauxite quarry in 228 00:24:31,810 --> 00:24:37,200 say China because as we know China is today's 229 00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:43,260 largest bauxite producer in the world. So there is this kind of entanglement 230 00:24:43,260 --> 00:24:49,889 that the male scholars found with the kind of material object of the practice 231 00:24:49,889 --> 00:24:59,010 that we simply don't share male or female. Why is that? The good inkstone is 232 00:24:59,010 --> 00:25:05,370 not only writing instrument on every scholar's desk it is also a token of male 233 00:25:05,370 --> 00:25:12,120 friendship a gift from father to son - ah, when the son he first goes to school a 234 00:25:12,120 --> 00:25:20,880 father who will commission an inkstone for him - it's also a collector's item that could cost a small fortune. 235 00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:30,720 As a function of an aesthetic object the ink stone is entangled with the self identities as well as the intellectual 236 00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:38,539 and social lives of the male scholar and most scholars alone. Although 237 00:25:38,539 --> 00:25:45,299 naturally women writers and painters had to use the inkstone to grind ink and 238 00:25:45,299 --> 00:25:52,230 write the essays and poems and execute their paintings, but it just does not have 239 00:25:52,230 --> 00:25:57,809 the same emotional relevance to women artists as it is for men. 240 00:25:57,809 --> 00:26:07,620 Why is that? It comes as no wonder then all known inkstone makers are men. To 241 00:26:07,620 --> 00:26:14,220 appreciate how unusual Gu Erniang's career we have to first revisit the 242 00:26:14,220 --> 00:26:21,480 normative social and gender order in Chinese society in the 18th century in 243 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:28,260 Gu Erniang's time. Women were expected to stay at home even though in fact they seldom 244 00:26:28,260 --> 00:26:34,250 did and take charge of a wide range of tasks from rearing children, preparing 245 00:26:34,250 --> 00:26:40,710 providing for the food and wine, to doing textile work to supplement household 246 00:26:40,710 --> 00:26:46,740 income while men managed the so-called affairs on the outside or 247 00:26:46,740 --> 00:26:55,140 in the outer realm. Gu Erniang's achievements and fame are all the more 248 00:26:55,140 --> 00:27:04,649 curious when we consider that it was rare even for a male artisan to leave 249 00:27:04,649 --> 00:27:13,070 his name in history. Chinese scholars like some of our male politicians today 250 00:27:13,070 --> 00:27:20,870 speak very loudly, take up more than the share of airtime, and the result enjoy a 251 00:27:20,870 --> 00:27:26,130 disproportionately large dose of discursive power over other groups in 252 00:27:26,130 --> 00:27:34,200 society. Since scholars, who according to Mencius, labor with their minds did 253 00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:40,200 not hold those who labor with their bodies in high regard, they seldom 254 00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:47,640 mentioned artisans in their scholarly writings let alone promoting the 255 00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:53,669 artisans' worldviews and knowledge cultures which were so different from 256 00:27:53,669 --> 00:27:58,409 their own. The artisans like farmers are thus 257 00:27:58,409 --> 00:28:05,640 hidden in plain sight in Chinese history and society. We know that for sure they 258 00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:12,419 they that they exist or the scholars would not have had food on the tables 259 00:28:12,419 --> 00:28:19,590 bowls to eat the rice from in or chairs to sit on, inkstones to grind ink with but 260 00:28:19,590 --> 00:28:26,850 these individuals who made the necessities of everyday life possible 261 00:28:26,850 --> 00:28:34,409 are erased from history. Since history is written by the scholars it reflects the 262 00:28:34,409 --> 00:28:43,140 scholars' values and priorities. This is the trouble with our female artisan 263 00:28:43,140 --> 00:28:51,210 Gu Erniang. Although famous, there is still so much we do not know about her. We do 264 00:28:51,210 --> 00:28:56,539 know that for 20 years she operated an inkstone making 265 00:28:56,539 --> 00:29:01,850 workshop under her name on Zhuanzhu Lane just inside the bustling Changmeng, Chang Gate 266 00:29:01,850 --> 00:29:06,440 in Suzhou. The Zhuanzhu Lane is 267 00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:12,289 the neighborhood where the best carvers of jade and stone gathered in the 268 00:29:12,289 --> 00:29:19,309 Empire. But there's no record of her years of birth and death. We do not even 269 00:29:19,309 --> 00:29:25,970 know whose name at birth nor when did the name, 'Gu Erniang' which is kind of her 270 00:29:25,970 --> 00:29:32,629 professional workshop name became associated with her. 'Gu' is the name of 271 00:29:32,629 --> 00:29:38,509 her husband's family which had been inkstone carvers for two generations but we 272 00:29:38,509 --> 00:29:46,899 know absolutely nothing about her parents' occupation or their background. 273 00:29:46,899 --> 00:29:56,750 The material archive offers little help there are many instruments that bear her 274 00:29:56,750 --> 00:30:04,340 signature mark in museums and private collections today and new ones seem to 275 00:30:04,340 --> 00:30:12,980 be popping up in auctions in China every day. But none - not a single one can 276 00:30:12,980 --> 00:30:21,350 be authenticated to be truly from her hands. So our usual method of researching 277 00:30:21,350 --> 00:30:27,740 the life of a scholar which is by considering or by compiling a 278 00:30:27,740 --> 00:30:37,179 year-by-year biography of the person Erniang Gu, or the usual way that we 279 00:30:37,179 --> 00:30:44,389 construct a career of a painter which is by constructing a catalogue resonate or 280 00:30:44,389 --> 00:30:49,210 an annotated catalog of his reliable works 281 00:30:49,210 --> 00:30:57,110 seem to fail us when it comes to a female artisan. Nor can we adopt the 282 00:30:57,110 --> 00:31:01,670 productive method that recently developed by material 283 00:31:01,670 --> 00:31:07,170 culture scholars which is to analyze that whatever textural sources we can 284 00:31:07,170 --> 00:31:15,050 find against the material evidence simply because we do not know any 285 00:31:15,050 --> 00:31:24,390 ink-stone that can be safely attributed to her. So this is the challenge for me 286 00:31:24,390 --> 00:31:30,180 I'm going to pass it on to you. Instead of being deterred, I want to 287 00:31:30,180 --> 00:31:35,610 confront this difficulty as an opportunity to rethink the gender and 288 00:31:35,610 --> 00:31:45,110 class biases in our own research methods as historians. But first I want to 289 00:31:45,110 --> 00:31:51,690 present what little information we do have about her so that we can all 290 00:31:51,690 --> 00:32:00,120 brainstorm about how best we can solve her puzzle together and there would be a 291 00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:09,870 quiz for the students. (laughter) We do have scattered references on Gu Erniang made by her male 292 00:32:09,870 --> 00:32:16,290 male patrons or clients who had direct contact with her. So these are the 293 00:32:16,290 --> 00:32:21,900 reliable textual materials and from these writings we can put together a 294 00:32:21,900 --> 00:32:26,420 rough picture of Gu Erniang's early career and her training. 295 00:32:26,420 --> 00:32:33,720 The earliest textual mention of Gu Erniang was made by a Suzhou scholar 296 00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:45,100 Huang Zhongjian and a patron of Gu Erniang's father-in-law, Delin and Erniang herself. 297 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:54,380 It's kind of a long text. Let me just briefly read some of the pertinent 298 00:32:54,380 --> 00:33:01,500 parts. So Huang Zhongjian was very proud of the fact that Suzhou 299 00:33:01,500 --> 00:33:03,950 was so famous for inkstone making. So in my 300 00:33:03,950 --> 00:33:11,840 native town, Gu Delin was skilled in making inkstones. Although 301 00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:17,389 others tried to imitate him in the end they could not. so we see that Gu Erniang's 302 00:33:17,389 --> 00:33:21,730 father-in-law was beginning to become famous. 303 00:33:21,730 --> 00:33:27,649 Once Gu Delin made an inkstone with a knotted design for my friend which I 304 00:33:27,649 --> 00:33:32,630 loved the great deal so I therefore handed him two pieces of Duan 305 00:33:32,630 --> 00:33:39,220 stones and you might remember what the points to look like but uh when Delin in 306 00:33:39,220 --> 00:33:44,929 executed the stones the patron was unhappy because it was not as good as 307 00:33:44,929 --> 00:33:49,880 the one he made for his friend. So greed is always the first motive for 308 00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:59,450 collecting. So Huang was about to locate a better stone and order Delin to 309 00:33:59,450 --> 00:34:03,549 remake it but the craftsman unfortunately, 310 00:34:03,549 --> 00:34:11,659 inconveniently died on him. So the two verbs that I highlighted in 311 00:34:11,659 --> 00:34:20,690 red to 'hand it' and to 'order' leave no doubt in our minds that the patron-client 312 00:34:20,690 --> 00:34:25,909 was in the commanding position in this transaction. 313 00:34:25,909 --> 00:34:31,540 So it showcases how the class hegemony on the part of the scholar 314 00:34:31,540 --> 00:34:39,230 ordering the crafts-person around even though the inkstone maker was already quite 315 00:34:39,230 --> 00:34:46,839 famous. So the story goes on and intriguingly over ten years later 316 00:34:46,839 --> 00:34:54,379 Huang Zhongjian never gave up on his dream of one-up-manning his friend. So he finally 317 00:34:54,379 --> 00:35:04,369 found a good piece of stone and but by then not only had Gu Delin died, even 318 00:35:04,369 --> 00:35:13,190 Delin's son, Qiming, who was Gu Erniang's husband had also passed away. But he 319 00:35:13,190 --> 00:35:20,050 heard that Qiming's wife has inherited the family mantel before I 320 00:35:20,050 --> 00:35:23,980 realized it her name has grown by the day. So this 321 00:35:23,980 --> 00:35:29,230 intriguing that he waited and waited and then he regretted oh my gosh she's 322 00:35:29,230 --> 00:35:35,350 getting more famous she's getting more expensive! (laughter) So in the autumn of the year renchen 323 00:35:35,350 --> 00:35:42,700 which is 1712, I 'order' her again that famous verb to make the stone 324 00:35:42,700 --> 00:35:51,970 into whatever design she chose. So we know that Huang Zhongjian has no respect 325 00:35:51,970 --> 00:35:59,860 for craftsman but through this text that document this whole transaction, we learn a 326 00:35:59,860 --> 00:36:06,940 very interesting fact about the commissioning process whereby it's a 327 00:36:06,940 --> 00:36:12,160 face-to-face negotiation the give-and-take a collaboration between 328 00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:18,840 the craftsmen, the crafts woman, and the client no matter how important and 329 00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:26,830 self-important the patron or the client happened to be. So this is very different 330 00:36:26,830 --> 00:36:33,580 from us walking into a department store and just find something off the rack 331 00:36:33,580 --> 00:36:43,560 and this is an important point that I'll come back to. So from this text and other 332 00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:50,380 textural references we can deduce the Gu Delin, Erniang's father-in-law died 333 00:36:50,380 --> 00:36:57,550 right around 1692 and that his son who was Erniang's husband, Gu Qiming, died 334 00:36:57,550 --> 00:37:03,880 unfortunately not too long after. So Gu Erniang was mostly responsible as a widow 335 00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:11,470 as a filial daughter-in-law for training their adopted son, Gu Gongwang who was later 336 00:37:11,470 --> 00:37:18,210 recruited into the Imperial workshop in the capital and unfortunately 337 00:37:18,210 --> 00:37:25,470 disappeared from history as well. But the latest by 338 00:37:25,869 --> 00:37:34,730 1700 Gu Erniang had taken over the Gu workshop in Zhuanzhu Lane in Suzhou 339 00:37:34,730 --> 00:37:42,349 and operated as master mistress however we might call it for over 20 years until 340 00:37:42,349 --> 00:37:49,140 her death sometime after 1725. In terms of the transmissions of skills she 341 00:37:49,240 --> 00:37:59,700 became the third and most important and most famous generation of the Gu inkstone making family. 342 00:37:59,700 --> 00:38:04,000 I am sorry to be boring you with this minutiae because 343 00:38:04,010 --> 00:38:10,780 it took me ten precious years to figure this out. (laughter) And there is a trick in this 344 00:38:10,780 --> 00:38:19,430 genealogy so who has a good memory please take a snapshot of this in your 345 00:38:19,430 --> 00:38:26,720 head. So thus far the most interesting aspect of Gu Erniang's early career is the 346 00:38:26,720 --> 00:38:32,510 lack of uniformity of her name. Her patron Huang Zhongjian called her, 'Qiming's wife' 347 00:38:32,510 --> 00:38:41,280 in the passage we read about. He also referred to her as wife of the Gu Delin Gu- jia fu. 348 00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:47,660 Another Suzhou writer and contemporary of Huang Zhongjian by the 349 00:38:47,660 --> 00:38:55,099 name of Zhu Xiangxian diverged that Erniang's native family name is the Zhou and that 350 00:38:55,099 --> 00:39:02,060 locals call her Gu Qinniang. Later another writer addressed her in a similar 351 00:39:02,060 --> 00:39:10,520 vernacular format Gu Qing niang preferred name Gu Erniang which is her common professional 352 00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:16,790 name that we used today had yet to appear in the early stage. So the lack of 353 00:39:16,790 --> 00:39:22,130 uniformity of Gu Erniang's name revealed two intriguing aspects of her early 354 00:39:22,130 --> 00:39:30,230 career on the early career of a famous female artisan and her public reception 355 00:39:30,230 --> 00:39:37,999 in her native city. The first is that personal and face-to-face encounter is 356 00:39:37,999 --> 00:39:44,719 paramount to her fame. A potential client might have come into 357 00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:50,779 contact with her work in a friend's studio, or on a friend's desk or might have heard 358 00:39:50,779 --> 00:39:57,949 about how good she is by word of mouth and decided to commission her to make an 359 00:39:57,949 --> 00:40:06,949 inkstone for him. So this explains why her name which later became codified in 360 00:40:06,949 --> 00:40:13,609 writing as slight oral variations. It is interesting to note that by all 361 00:40:13,609 --> 00:40:18,949 accounts in terms of gender relationships, by all accounts, Gu Erniang 362 00:40:18,949 --> 00:40:25,639 received her male patrons in her own workshop which is after the front of her 363 00:40:25,639 --> 00:40:34,399 house and interacted directly with them. So the taboo of avoiding 364 00:40:34,399 --> 00:40:39,379 contact with the opposite sex that governed a Gentry woman's daily 365 00:40:39,379 --> 00:40:46,159 life evidently did not apply to an artisan. The second intriguing aspect of 366 00:40:46,159 --> 00:40:50,359 Gu's early career is the range of attitudes 367 00:40:50,359 --> 00:40:58,269 that people exhibited throughout the unusual specter of a female head of an 368 00:40:58,269 --> 00:41:08,569 artisanal workshop. So here for those who have that memory from the perspective of 369 00:41:08,569 --> 00:41:14,239 family survival for those of us who know a little bit about Chinese family 370 00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:20,859 structure and genealogies we know that Gu's rise is in fact the most 371 00:41:20,859 --> 00:41:26,719 uncontroversial thing and her behavior falls entirely within the 372 00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:33,139 ethical demands of Confucian patriarchy. In other words, as a widow of course you 373 00:41:33,139 --> 00:41:38,089 learn the skills and rules of the trade from your father-in-law before 374 00:41:38,089 --> 00:41:44,479 inheriting the family business which is a rather typical way for women to gain 375 00:41:44,479 --> 00:41:51,960 power or control without violating any of the patriarchal norms. Indeed I 376 00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:56,940 suspect that there are plenty of other artisans or businesswomen in whose time 377 00:41:56,940 --> 00:42:03,360 who stepped in to do a man's job where the man could no longer do it in the 378 00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:08,610 absence of a son just that none became as famous as Gu Erniang so that we could 379 00:42:08,610 --> 00:42:16,320 research her. Yet, yet, yet, yet the presence of a man in a nominally 380 00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:22,500 male-to-male transmission did post enormous problems for some of Gu's 381 00:42:22,500 --> 00:42:29,220 patrons and some of the local historians at the time. The entries of an early 382 00:42:29,220 --> 00:42:35,070 eighteenth-century imperially commissioned encyclopedia invented 383 00:42:35,070 --> 00:42:41,490 a fictive father of Erniang's father-in-law Delin so that the term three 384 00:42:41,490 --> 00:42:50,160 generations of Gu artisans can refer to three generations of men and Erniang 385 00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:56,180 the daughter-in-law was reduced to being an unnamed place holder in this 386 00:42:56,180 --> 00:43:03,630 patriarchal transmission a male-to-male transmission and subsequently erased 387 00:43:03,630 --> 00:43:10,560 from history. The reason why we took ten years of my precious life to figure this 388 00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:16,530 out is because the official local histories of Suzhou followed this invented 389 00:43:16,530 --> 00:43:23,100 genealogies and everybody was wrong ever since. I actually did not figure out - I'm 390 00:43:23,100 --> 00:43:26,460 actually not the first one to figure out to have figured out - this one one of my 391 00:43:26,460 --> 00:43:32,880 friends in Beijing was the first one and then all of a sudden I realized why I 392 00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:42,750 couldn't round the numbers. As Gu Erniang's fame spread she gained her 393 00:43:42,750 --> 00:43:48,900 most loyal and important patrons in Fuzhou in Fujian province on the south 394 00:43:48,900 --> 00:43:56,970 eastern coast of the Empire. In an old lovely neighborhood in Fuzhou today 395 00:43:56,970 --> 00:44:04,189 called 'Sanfang Qixiang' 'Three Lanes and Seven Alleys' a group of men whose family 396 00:44:04,189 --> 00:44:09,140 had intermarried for generations and who grew up studying the same books 397 00:44:09,140 --> 00:44:16,150 together developed a shared passion for ink-stones as part of their intellectual 398 00:44:16,150 --> 00:44:23,209 scholarship, they're serious interest in epigraphy, or the study of ancient scripts 399 00:44:23,209 --> 00:44:33,410 and at least seven of them became life long patrons of Gu Erniang. They include the 400 00:44:33,410 --> 00:44:40,789 calligrapher and court scribe, Lin Ji. Lin's Ji's friend, Yu Dian 401 00:44:40,789 --> 00:44:45,540 Lin Ji's son, Lin Fuyun, and the poet Huang Ren. 402 00:44:45,540 --> 00:44:49,329 Although largely forgotten today, these 403 00:44:49,329 --> 00:44:56,329 Fuzhou scholars form the most innovative ink-stone collecting and connoisseurship 404 00:44:56,329 --> 00:45:03,529 circle in the Empire in the early Qing. Earlier, I mentioned that Chinese 405 00:45:03,529 --> 00:45:09,410 scholars disdain bodily labor hence they did not hold the craftsmen in high 406 00:45:09,410 --> 00:45:17,299 esteem. The Fuzhou circle of scholars is most unusual in that they actually took 407 00:45:17,300 --> 00:45:23,660 up a carving knife to carve inkstones as part of their research in ancient 408 00:45:23,660 --> 00:45:32,040 scripts. They also they showed a surprising degree of respect for Gu Erniang 409 00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:40,240 by commissioning her to make only the most valuable inkstones and calling her 410 00:45:40,249 --> 00:45:46,739 by the most honorific names. So a professional named Erniang appeared first 411 00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:58,820 in writing in this book, inkstone chronicle or Yanshi - 412 00:45:59,820 --> 00:46:00,320 a collection of inkstone stone enconiums called ming compiled by Lin Fuyun. 413 00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:06,440 Huang Ren was particularly fond of using Erniang of this name to refer to Gu. 414 00:46:06,740 --> 00:46:11,400 The older generation in the circle Lin Ji 415 00:46:11,500 --> 00:46:19,040 and Yu Dian in turn preferred the high honorific of Gu Dagu or Lady scholar - Nu Shi 416 00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:28,060 or Madam Gu of Suzhou - Wumen Gushi. So comparing her to Ban Zhao, the 417 00:46:28,060 --> 00:46:38,160 only female historian in Chinese history. So this respect on the parts of the Fuzhou 418 00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:44,340 patrons cuts a striking contrast with the disdain held by the Suzhou 419 00:46:44,340 --> 00:46:53,880 patron Huang Zhongjian. We can then see that even among those male patrons there is a 420 00:46:53,880 --> 00:47:00,990 wide degree or spectrum of attitudes towards the artisan and this divergence 421 00:47:00,990 --> 00:47:06,060 in itself suggests that the old attitudes who was the artisan was 422 00:47:06,060 --> 00:47:14,040 breaking down slowly in the 18th century. Inkstone Chronicle, is a gem is a 423 00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:19,050 gold-mine. It contains fascinating details about 424 00:47:19,050 --> 00:47:24,990 all our narrows practice as a master inkstone carver although there's absolutely 425 00:47:24,990 --> 00:47:32,580 no information on financial arrangements. We learned of for example a division of 426 00:47:32,580 --> 00:47:38,880 labor and the hierarchy of skills within a high-end trade of inkstone 427 00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:44,460 making. The commissioning process is rather consistent as the one we've seen 428 00:47:44,460 --> 00:47:51,450 in Suzhou. The patron or the client would bring the stone to the artisan and 429 00:47:51,450 --> 00:47:58,590 together they decide on the best design treatment that is the most appropriate 430 00:47:58,590 --> 00:48:04,940 for the stone in accordance with that one of a kind 431 00:48:04,940 --> 00:48:11,660 stone and all of the mineral features on the face. That's why I had asked you to 432 00:48:11,660 --> 00:48:21,460 take a note of especially that precious feature. And as I mentioned about this 433 00:48:21,460 --> 00:48:29,260 negotiation back and forth is always conducted face to face. Yu Dian for example 434 00:48:29,260 --> 00:48:36,880 procured an exquisite Duan stone in 1709 when he was sojourning in Suzhou and 435 00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:44,960 commissioned Gu Erniang to crafted the stone called, 'Supreme Simplicity' was left 436 00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:51,380 almost in its natural state. 437 00:48:51,380 --> 00:48:54,170 This is not 'Supreme Simplicity' unfortunately but it 438 00:48:54,170 --> 00:49:05,210 does give Yu Dian's encomium on the back. So after the reason why I want to 439 00:49:05,210 --> 00:49:13,460 talk about this example is because a who touch which part of the ink-stone 440 00:49:13,460 --> 00:49:20,150 is really important to our game here. So after Yu Dian composed this encomium 441 00:49:20,150 --> 00:49:26,810 for that specific inkstone, he asked a calligrapher a friend of his by the name 442 00:49:26,810 --> 00:49:32,869 of He Zhao who was arguably the most famous calligrapher in Suzhou at the 443 00:49:32,869 --> 00:49:38,800 time to write it out on paper with his brush and then he gave that piece of 444 00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:45,589 marble to an expert carver of words whom He Zhao recommended 445 00:49:45,589 --> 00:49:53,660 himself another stone carver in Suzhou. We, from this example, learn that the 446 00:49:53,660 --> 00:50:00,950 carving of words or inscriptions was a specialized skill that was entered by 447 00:50:00,950 --> 00:50:06,800 separate hands from the one who made the inkstone itself. At least in the high-end 448 00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:12,920 market. So another commission this time made by Lin Ji 449 00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:18,500 suggests that there is a hierarchy of skills involved in the making in the 450 00:50:18,500 --> 00:50:21,020 different steps of the making of the inkstone. 451 00:50:21,020 --> 00:50:30,200 So in 1700 Lin Ji bought in a curio shop in Taohuo wu in Suzhou, an antique inkstone 452 00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:36,610 with inscriptions by the Yuan painter, Zhang Mengguu, the Ming painter, Wen Zhengming, 453 00:50:36,610 --> 00:50:43,360 the seal and the ming of the main collector, Xiangyuan bian. 454 00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:50,270 How likely do you think this is a genuine stone? It's kind of like finding in an 455 00:50:50,270 --> 00:50:58,640 estate sale a Picasso that has passed through the hands of Warhol and Jack Kuntz. 456 00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:06,340 But Lin Ji evidently believed that it was genuine. 457 00:51:06,340 --> 00:51:13,480 And even more shockingly, he decided to run to Gu Er's workshop which 458 00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:21,440 is about ten minute from Taohua wu and ask her to remake it because he found the 459 00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:29,290 water pool and ink pool or basically the surface you used to grind ink and also 460 00:51:29,290 --> 00:51:39,070 the hollow you used to store temporary ink was too small for his calligraphic brush. 461 00:51:39,070 --> 00:51:47,260 So the verb used for this procedure opening the inkpool or 'kaichi' 462 00:51:47,260 --> 00:51:54,290 connoted a creative adept initiation one that endowed inkstone with authentic 463 00:51:54,290 --> 00:52:01,250 life force just like the Buddhist ceremony of opening the eyes of the Buddha 464 00:52:01,250 --> 00:52:08,510 statue or 'kaiyen'. To a calligrapher the inkpool which is a smooth and ever so 465 00:52:08,510 --> 00:52:14,890 slightly concave surface is the crux of an inkstone. Its degree of smoothness 466 00:52:14,890 --> 00:52:20,540 depends on the density and the porosity of the 467 00:52:20,540 --> 00:52:26,720 stone as well as the degree the slight degree of concavity, the overall 468 00:52:26,720 --> 00:52:31,609 size of the inkstone, and the size of the brush from which the inkstone is 469 00:52:31,609 --> 00:52:38,869 intended. So far from being a remedial task, enlarging the inkpool of an antique 470 00:52:38,869 --> 00:52:45,170 inkstone was such a delicate operation that it ranked at the top of the 471 00:52:45,170 --> 00:52:52,930 hierarchies of skills from inkstone makers. So these two examples of commissioning 472 00:52:52,930 --> 00:53:00,470 suggests that Gu Erniang's Fuzhou patrons appreciated - what 473 00:53:00,470 --> 00:53:07,040 Gu Erniang's Fuzhou patrons appreciated the most was the expert skill especially in 474 00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:14,240 opening inkpool. They reserved the most precious and expensive raw stones for 475 00:53:14,240 --> 00:53:21,650 her and did not ask her to carve the inscriptions. What they expected was a 476 00:53:21,650 --> 00:53:27,320 perfectly polished surface that could produce the smoothest and the most 477 00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:34,250 consistent ink. They valued her skillful hands, eyes, and 478 00:53:34,250 --> 00:53:42,109 mind. Neither her fame, nor her female gender is of consequence in their 479 00:53:42,109 --> 00:53:51,050 decisions to entrust to her the most valuable stones. I would end this section 480 00:53:51,050 --> 00:53:57,440 on Gu Erniang's career as a master crafts women with her own verbal description of 481 00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:03,790 her artistry as recorded by the Suzhou writer, Zhu Xiangxian, "An ink-stone is 482 00:54:03,790 --> 00:54:12,950 carved from a piece of rock; it would have to become round and lively as well 483 00:54:12,950 --> 00:54:21,220 as fat and opulent (yuanhua feiren) before the wonders of carving is made 484 00:54:21,220 --> 00:54:27,310 apparent. If the inkstone appears dull, 485 00:54:27,310 --> 00:54:35,530 dry, emaciated and stiff, (ai fa shou ying), it is in fact original face of the 486 00:54:35,530 --> 00:54:42,520 rock. Then what good did the carving do? These words highlight the transformative 487 00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:48,940 power of the artisan at work - her artistry is the generative work 488 00:54:48,940 --> 00:54:57,420 of heaven's creation that bestows life force on to the stone. In this sense 489 00:54:57,420 --> 00:55:06,040 carving an inkstone, carving stone is the ultimate act of culture improving upon 490 00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:16,150 nature. Everything I have said about Gu up to this point was gleaned from 491 00:55:16,150 --> 00:55:22,420 textural sources actually. I now tackle the tricky problem of the material 492 00:55:22,420 --> 00:55:29,080 archive or the lack thereof a profusion of inkstones in museums and private 493 00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:34,050 collections that bear Gu Erniang's signature marks. 494 00:55:34,050 --> 00:55:41,380 These marks come in a rather standard format verbally. The wording varied only 495 00:55:41,380 --> 00:55:49,860 very slightly made by Gu Erniang of Suzhou Wumen Gu Erniang zhi or Gu Erniang zhao. 496 00:55:49,860 --> 00:55:56,140 You're looking at one example of any rubbing on the back of a pair of 497 00:55:56,140 --> 00:56:02,290 swallows and apricot inkstone in the Tianjin museum in regular script. But 498 00:56:02,290 --> 00:56:09,100 these marks appear in a variety of scripts. Some are in relief like this one 499 00:56:09,100 --> 00:56:18,340 whereas others are in intaglio. This is really curious. If the very purpose of 500 00:56:18,340 --> 00:56:26,350 attaching a signature mark to a stone by an artisan or her studio is to allow 501 00:56:26,350 --> 00:56:34,540 buyers to identify the origins of her work, what good do signature marks do if 502 00:56:34,540 --> 00:56:40,360 there's no standard for it? Even more curiously buyers in the 503 00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:47,470 18th century market as in today do not seem to care. Any inkstone with a 'made by Gu Erniang 504 00:56:47,470 --> 00:56:54,790 in Suzhou' mark would command attention or fetch a much higher price. 505 00:56:54,790 --> 00:57:01,140 I wonder what do we make of this phenomenon? So I can't give this part of 506 00:57:01,140 --> 00:57:09,040 the talk in China - they would probably kill me. (laughter) Seriously. 507 00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:17,940 The collectors who have just paid RMB 100 thousand for a Gu Erniang inkstone 508 00:57:17,940 --> 00:57:23,160 may not like to hear this, but I do not think that any inkstone bearing the Gu mark can be 509 00:57:23,170 --> 00:57:29,320 authenticated given our present state of knowledge. This is because none of the 510 00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:34,180 stones can be corroborated with the available textual sources which I 511 00:57:34,180 --> 00:57:40,900 have just introduced to you. There is no incontrovertible benchmark against which 512 00:57:40,900 --> 00:57:47,500 others can be compared and judged. This looks like it - that doesn't. But the 513 00:57:47,500 --> 00:57:53,490 proliferation of the Gu Er mark can in fact tell us something even more 514 00:57:53,490 --> 00:57:59,820 important than attribution which is the highest business in connoisseurship and 515 00:57:59,820 --> 00:58:08,350 that is it documents the history, the social and cultural history of Gu Erniang's 516 00:58:08,350 --> 00:58:17,350 transformation from a real full-bodied artisan into an abstract notion and imagined 517 00:58:17,350 --> 00:58:27,250 in an increasingly impersonal and heated competitive marketplace. I want to borrow 518 00:58:27,250 --> 00:58:35,740 my colleague, Lydia Lu's notion of a super sign to call this aspect of her 519 00:58:35,740 --> 00:58:46,620 new becoming a legend and super grand - in other words Gu Erniang is not - is kind 520 00:58:46,620 --> 00:58:58,510 like an LV logo. It is not just an LV - the words or the brand branded in gigantic 521 00:58:58,510 --> 00:59:06,490 form on on a five thousand dollar or is it more today bag which can be 522 00:59:06,490 --> 00:59:12,310 easily copied but a cluster of other visual clues such as the brown leather 523 00:59:12,310 --> 00:59:21,160 trim or the printed plastic with various patterns which is most ugly to 524 00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:32,890 me. (laughter) So a Super-brand works by clustering or the repetition of a bunch of visual 525 00:59:32,890 --> 00:59:39,940 tropes, you know hallmarks with or without a signature mark. The collector would 526 00:59:39,940 --> 00:59:47,200 recognize an inkstone would be Gu Erniang's if it features one of these familiar tropes. 527 00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:54,690 So one of the ones that you're looking at is the pear swallow in apricot trope. 528 00:59:54,690 --> 01:00:01,090 Some - and the world's full of these - some of these stones might have Gu Erniang's 529 01:00:01,090 --> 01:00:07,510 signature mark like this one - the gigantic words to the left - there's no 530 01:00:07,510 --> 01:00:14,110 question as the collectors find. Other's do not actually but 531 01:00:14,110 --> 01:00:21,100 no matter their marked ones are are now her authorship by association. I call it the 532 01:00:21,100 --> 01:00:26,710 'artisan function' instead of the 'author function'. The collector can thank his 533 01:00:26,710 --> 01:00:32,770 good luck and a good eye: I spot a genuine but unsigned Gu Erniang! 534 01:00:32,770 --> 01:00:37,510 Only I'm smart enough to recognize this ten thousand one 535 01:00:37,510 --> 01:00:46,150 worth two hundred thousand. So when I'm going to run through two of these familiar or visual 536 01:00:46,150 --> 01:00:51,270 tropes: a pear swallow as I said is one. A favorite - 537 01:00:51,270 --> 01:01:02,310 it is a favorite subject in textile and needle work. The 11th century painter Cui Bo 538 01:01:02,310 --> 01:01:10,140 was among the first to have painted the motif in a composition 539 01:01:10,140 --> 01:01:16,950 that is now preserved as a Yuaen Dynasty tapestry to your left. The inkstone 540 01:01:16,950 --> 01:01:25,950 design followed this composition of a swallow swooping down from the sky and 541 01:01:25,950 --> 01:01:35,670 another one flying up from below and the beak or mouth meet romantically 542 01:01:35,670 --> 01:01:45,000 somewhere. (laughter) And there's usually some branch or apricot flower in between. The 543 01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:51,510 most refined example of the pear swallow inkstone with the Gu Erniang signature 544 01:01:51,510 --> 01:01:57,869 mark is in the Tian Jin Museum. It's a beautiful stone. An ink rubbing is on 545 01:01:57,869 --> 01:02:04,830 the right of the screen. The knife marks on the stone surface especially on the 546 01:02:04,830 --> 01:02:12,290 left wing of the lower bird you're looking at - the left wing - left to us - 547 01:02:12,290 --> 01:02:20,660 you will see that these knife marks take the form of light and dainty slashes 548 01:02:20,660 --> 01:02:27,600 made by tapping the tip of a carving knife on the surface with 549 01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:32,430 measured force and the porous stone is much softer than the other two stones so 550 01:02:32,430 --> 01:02:37,260 this is doable. It dawned on me that the slashes even in 551 01:02:37,260 --> 01:02:45,800 lined up in rows resembled embroidery stitches. So you see the famous Gu style 552 01:02:45,800 --> 01:02:51,820 embroidery to the left and an artist rendition from the Shanghai 553 01:02:51,820 --> 01:02:58,630 Museum underneath. Could it be that the artisan who caught the swallows and 554 01:02:58,630 --> 01:03:04,150 apricot flowers was actually familiar with the refined stitching techniques of 555 01:03:04,150 --> 01:03:11,170 Suzhou embroidery? I would love to think so but again I have no proof. Another 556 01:03:11,170 --> 01:03:17,680 trope associated with the super brand of Gu Erniang is the dramatic 557 01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:24,460 Phoenix. The color of these stones as you can see differ but the composition of 558 01:03:24,460 --> 01:03:30,970 concept is remarkably consistent. The Phoenix head is placed near the 559 01:03:30,970 --> 01:03:41,980 upper left corner of the stone. Its neck twisted as the head turns to face the 560 01:03:41,980 --> 01:03:52,540 right. Ouch. (laughter) To its left and right the bird spreads its two wings 561 01:03:52,540 --> 01:04:03,850 like literally draping it on the edges inside of the narrow edge of the ink-stone 562 01:04:03,850 --> 01:04:25,570 which in this case is only 2.6 cm wide. So the birds of the feather are carried over from the front side and all the 563 01:04:25,570 --> 01:04:33,330 way to the back so that the feathers are kind of cascading down to the edge 564 01:04:33,330 --> 01:04:44,890 of the ink-stone. So in physical shape and format the Phoenix trope is a radical 565 01:04:44,890 --> 01:04:50,050 departure from the pear swallows you have just seen which essentially is an 566 01:04:50,050 --> 01:04:56,380 image that looks like a painting that is being executed on the back of the stone 567 01:04:56,380 --> 01:05:03,380 the flat back surface. So the image is basically 568 01:05:03,380 --> 01:05:07,700 independent from the front making a decorated motif 569 01:05:08,780 --> 01:05:14,580 interchangeable with any other. But the Phoenix in contrast is integral to the 570 01:05:14,580 --> 01:05:23,040 shape, design, and structure of the stone itself. Modern scholars of ceramics 571 01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:29,600 have called this treatment of an animal or a plant crossing from the outside 572 01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:37,580 service of a vessel like a bowl to the inside, 'guoqiang' or climbing over the wall 573 01:05:37,580 --> 01:05:45,300 literally what we want to do we are frustrated. Jade carvers appear to be the 574 01:05:45,300 --> 01:05:51,600 instigators of climbed-over dragons which allow references to antique jades 575 01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:58,830 while displaying the daring openwork techniques. In the early Qing only in 576 01:05:58,830 --> 01:06:05,010 the 17th century this technique started to cross over from jade to other stone 577 01:06:05,010 --> 01:06:16,520 mediums including inkstones but also porcelain and ink case. It's a uniquely 578 01:06:16,520 --> 01:06:25,640 17th to 18th century phenomenon - roughly- if you're a trained historian- roughly around Yongzhen's reign. 579 01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:30,980 And then in 20 years it stopped. They stop doing it so it's 580 01:06:30,990 --> 01:06:38,560 really intriguing that this inter-medial experiment somehow was not being carried over. 581 01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:42,450 So the normal presentation of the kind 582 01:06:42,450 --> 01:06:49,560 of a Phoenix on inkstones essentially puts a premium on the artisan's ability 583 01:06:49,560 --> 01:06:56,160 to visualize the alignment of the feathers on the key transitional zone of 584 01:06:56,160 --> 01:07:02,620 the inkstones upper edge or side so that the feathers 585 01:07:02,620 --> 01:07:07,340 wrap around of the three surfaces of the front, back, 586 01:07:07,340 --> 01:07:09,740 and side naturally. In other words 587 01:07:09,740 --> 01:07:20,030 the challenge is to conceptualize these sides simultaneously as connected or 588 01:07:20,030 --> 01:07:28,400 depthless surfaces and as constituting a three-dimensional object with material 589 01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:37,910 heftiness. So the conceptual craft is a fundamental breakthrough. No one before 590 01:07:37,910 --> 01:07:43,730 that time had made an inkstone that is this three-dimensional. There is no Ming 591 01:07:43,730 --> 01:07:51,770 or Song inkstone that has this carryover concept. By pushing towards three- 592 01:07:51,770 --> 01:07:58,820 dimensionality, this super brand of Gu Erniang was associated with one of the most 593 01:07:58,820 --> 01:08:03,860 original conceptual experiments in inkstone making. 594 01:08:03,860 --> 01:08:06,440 Her native city of Suzhou 595 01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:13,400 and home of her patrons of Fuzhou were connected by networks of formal and 596 01:08:13,400 --> 01:08:19,430 informal patronage with back and forth interactions and travelling among 597 01:08:19,430 --> 01:08:27,140 collectors, calligraphers, and artisans in in different workshops and trade. So 598 01:08:27,140 --> 01:08:31,850 together Fuzhou and Suzhou emerge as the 599 01:08:31,850 --> 01:08:38,120 creative hubs of ink-stone making in early modern China. But even that 600 01:08:38,120 --> 01:08:45,850 quickly ended by the Quianlong reign. No one was doing these experiments. 601 01:08:48,530 --> 01:09:03,530 So I have presented very contradictory messages about Gu Erniang's gender. 602 01:09:04,370 --> 01:09:14,250 To her Fuzhou patrons, that she was a woman hardly mattered. What they valued 603 01:09:14,250 --> 01:09:23,190 was her superior skills and artistry. But to some other scholars both her 604 01:09:23,190 --> 01:09:31,440 female gender and occupation marked her as their social inferior. So the 605 01:09:31,440 --> 01:09:37,770 coexistence of these opposite views I would argue is that exactly what makes 606 01:09:37,770 --> 01:09:44,330 18 century China so interesting. Gu Erniang's singular career not only 607 01:09:44,330 --> 01:09:51,000 demonstrates that attitudes towards the capacities of women were changing but 608 01:09:51,000 --> 01:09:58,620 also that the scholars' traditional dominance over the craftsmen has begun 609 01:09:58,620 --> 01:10:08,220 to loosen. There are many factors that led to this loosening including as we 610 01:10:08,220 --> 01:10:15,390 know dwindling employment opportunities for scholars and the professionalized 611 01:10:15,390 --> 01:10:26,040 station of the craft itself. To Ruan Kuisheng who was a writer who completed a 612 01:10:26,040 --> 01:10:32,730 notation book of about 40 years after Gu Erniang's death the remarkable success of 613 01:10:32,730 --> 01:10:38,690 Gu Erniang and other artisans who rose to the top of their respective trades 614 01:10:38,690 --> 01:10:47,430 signal a reversal of fortune - a reversal of fortune between the scholar and the 615 01:10:47,430 --> 01:10:55,740 artisan. He wrote, "Recently people who managed to trade and specialize 616 01:10:55,740 --> 01:11:00,760 in one vessel have gone very far in becoming 617 01:11:00,760 --> 01:11:08,699 known to the world, even attaining immortality." The verb choice of, 'zhi' 618 01:11:08,699 --> 01:11:14,320 connotes expert knowledge in a dedicated field so if we can think of 'Zhi xue' 619 01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:20,409 to dedicate oneself to scholarship or 'Zhi guo' knowledge to manage the country or 620 01:11:20,409 --> 01:11:29,199 the reign. The word, the verb, 'zhi' has seldom been used to refer to an artisan, to a 621 01:11:29,199 --> 01:11:34,678 craft. This verb choice signals Ruan Kuisheng's respect 622 01:11:34,678 --> 01:11:36,670 himself a scholar his 623 01:11:36,670 --> 01:11:43,150 respect for a new kind of artisan who distinguished themselves and left their 624 01:11:43,150 --> 01:11:52,739 mark in the world by honing their skills in a specialty craft. And most 625 01:11:52,739 --> 01:11:59,679 intriguing is the hint of contempt that Ruan Kuisheng himself a scholar and a 626 01:11:59,679 --> 01:12:07,750 famous jurist showed for his own kind for scholars and his regard for the 627 01:12:07,750 --> 01:12:14,860 professional artisan who he deemed to be far superior to those scholars who hold 628 01:12:14,860 --> 01:12:20,170 fast to the ignorance, sit bored on their thumbs without innovating or died 629 01:12:20,170 --> 01:12:28,599 without ever winning a degree or post, or perish in oblivion - how pathetic. (laughter) 630 01:12:28,599 --> 01:12:34,510 Ruan Kuisheng said: look you people study for the exam and fail to capture even a 631 01:12:34,510 --> 01:12:43,269 shengyuan degree. Stop going there. Look how cool an artisan is. So his 632 01:12:43,269 --> 01:12:48,489 elevation of an artist - an artisan gets immortality and money before he 633 01:12:48,489 --> 01:12:54,909 dies unlike you. And so his elevation of the artisan like that of the Fuzhou 634 01:12:54,909 --> 01:12:59,740 patron of Gu Erniang signals new intellectual 635 01:12:59,740 --> 01:13:07,590 priorities in judging the validity of knowledge and basically new social 636 01:13:07,590 --> 01:13:15,040 realities of the elevation of highly literate and skilled artisans who could 637 01:13:15,040 --> 01:13:23,050 have become scholars such as Chen Hongshou but didn't, couldn't 638 01:13:23,050 --> 01:13:33,460 because of the Manchus' favoritism towards Manchu and Mongol officials. So we see a 639 01:13:33,460 --> 01:13:42,700 large number of highly educated men becoming carvers, seal makers or doctors 640 01:13:42,700 --> 01:13:50,470 in the early Qing because of the changing political climate. But to have a woman is 641 01:13:50,470 --> 01:14:00,460 still rather unusual. So that's it so far I've given my historical analysis Gu Ernian 642 01:14:00,460 --> 01:14:06,520 as a professional historian basically assumed - omitting that I 643 01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:13,840 actually don't know anything because the method actually I was trained in even 644 01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:20,410 material cultural studies does not really allow me to get at some even 645 01:14:20,410 --> 01:14:32,110 very basic fundamentals about Gu Erniang's life and death, and her career. But I have a 646 01:14:32,110 --> 01:14:38,140 confession to make before I let you go. This painting of a woman washing an inkstone 647 01:14:38,140 --> 01:14:41,830 which is an extremely rare example - that's why I put it in my book three 648 01:14:41,830 --> 01:14:47,110 times because it's extremely rare - it's the only one I can find - depicting a woman 649 01:14:47,110 --> 01:14:55,440 not a man holding a inkstone. But it represents a puzzle to me I cannot solve 650 01:14:55,440 --> 01:15:03,640 and the person is - is she a scholar or an artisan? Or maybe a more accurate way of 651 01:15:03,640 --> 01:15:09,460 asking the question is did the artist, the painter Xui Hai, Nanying who are 652 01:15:09,460 --> 01:15:18,340 a pair of really famous Suzhou workshop artists. Did the painters depict her 653 01:15:18,340 --> 01:15:23,530 as a scholar or an artisan? How are we supposed to know? What are the visual 654 01:15:23,530 --> 01:15:32,830 clues for the artisan? For the longest time I saw this painting included in Tianjian and I 655 01:15:32,830 --> 01:15:40,420 just fell in love with it because it's so telling and rare. For the longest time 656 01:15:40,420 --> 01:15:46,570 I had instinctively assumed her to be a scholar and that habit of mine bothered 657 01:15:46,570 --> 01:15:49,780 me. What bothers me is the fact that as 658 01:15:49,780 --> 01:15:56,560 scholars or as a scholar - let's not put words in your mouth - as a scholar I tend to 659 01:15:56,560 --> 01:16:04,590 identify with historic scholars in my research. So even as I was researching 660 01:16:04,590 --> 01:16:12,460 women's history - my first book was on poets and female scholars - I try to 661 01:16:12,460 --> 01:16:19,270 reconstruct the nianpu, the linear biographies, the friendship networks, the 662 01:16:19,270 --> 01:16:24,130 jiayou quan, which is all of the old philological 663 01:16:24,130 --> 01:16:32,650 tricks used to study male scholars. I celebrated the intellectual achievements 664 01:16:32,650 --> 01:16:42,070 of my female poets as if they were male scholars and rah-rah-rah 665 01:16:42,070 --> 01:16:49,410 How cool is that? They finally got to be men! But an artisan's career is 666 01:16:49,410 --> 01:16:56,860 fundamentally different from a scholar's. An artisan's life is more recursive than 667 01:16:56,860 --> 01:17:02,290 linear and her skills are honed by repetition just like a religious 668 01:17:02,290 --> 01:17:08,980 practice. She does not need to write books to attract notice and just like 669 01:17:08,980 --> 01:17:14,510 Gu Erniang was literate but she did not need to write. Why do we assume that 670 01:17:14,510 --> 01:17:23,540 writing is superior to making? Her CV consist of the sum total or the singular 671 01:17:23,540 --> 01:17:33,620 objects she has made for each individual patron. Instead of publish and perish, her 672 01:17:33,620 --> 01:17:41,380 anxiety is practice and perish. The knowledge useful to an artisan is 673 01:17:41,380 --> 01:17:50,090 specific and concrete. If your patron, your buyer likes your work you wanted to 674 01:17:50,090 --> 01:17:55,100 come back 10 years later and commission another inkstone. You want him to tell his 675 01:17:55,100 --> 01:18:01,670 friends otherwise you and your family would starve to death. The knowledge 676 01:18:01,670 --> 01:18:09,200 useful to the scholar is abstract and generalizable but the knowledge useful 677 01:18:09,200 --> 01:18:13,550 to as an artisan as I said is specific and concrete. 678 01:18:13,550 --> 01:18:22,910 I can go on and on but let me end by suggesting there unless we begin to 679 01:18:22,910 --> 01:18:30,070 recognize the intrinsic bias of our scholarly apparatus and assumptions, 680 01:18:30,070 --> 01:18:38,200 values, we can never come to know Gu Erniang or any male artisan for that matter 681 01:18:38,200 --> 01:18:43,750 without translating her into cherished images of ourselves. 682 01:18:43,750 --> 01:18:53,740 In other words, gender in the final analysis is less important than class 683 01:18:53,740 --> 01:19:01,880 when we try to understand how gender and material culture interact. It is 684 01:19:01,880 --> 01:19:08,810 far easier for us to be gender aware and to give women scholars their due 685 01:19:08,810 --> 01:19:18,020 in history, than to give the artisan her due when we study material culture as 686 01:19:18,020 --> 01:19:20,560 scholars. Thank you. (applause)