Classical Historiography for Chinese History

Ed./Corp.: Center for the Art of East Asia. See also The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Description: "The Center for the Art of East Asia initiated the Digital Scrolling Paintings Project to support the teaching of classes on East Asian painting. The temporal and spatial qualities of handscroll paintings are lost in photographs of selected sections that are reproduced in books and projected in the classroom. Although used widely in current art education and the study of these works of art, such reproductions seriously distort the nature of handscrolls by erasing their sequential anad participatory viewing process. The display of these paintings in long cases in museums also is not the way in which these paintings were made to be experienced. With the assistance of the Humanities Computer Research Department, the Center developed a prototype for digital scrolling technology as an exciting tool to simulate the viewing experience and to improve understanding of handscroll paintings. The scrolling paintings website has been designed with interactive elements to allow unprecedented accessibility to the complete works of art for educators, students and researchers."

Currently (Aug 2012) more than 20 Chinese and Japanese scrolls are available.. Note: Macromedia's Flash Player (version 6+) is required.

"Recording the Grandeur of the Qing -- The Southern Inspection Tour Scrolls of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors," created in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Visual Media Center of Colmbia University's Art History and Archaeology Department. The website explores Qing art, government, and commerce through the presentation of four artworks of the period, which is supplemented by topical essays on the Qing.

Administered by Sarah E. Fraser

As Sinica Sinoweb’s (中研院漢學網) twin product, also the sole full-text searchable database of its kind from Taiwan, “Taiwan Journals Search”(臺灣人社百刊) collects more than 200 journals on humanities & social sciences and keeps adding new journals. More than Top 100 journals in which were ever selected in the most credible journal-appraisal list in Taiwan, TSSCI (Taiwan Social Sciences Citation Index), THCI Core (Taiwan Humanities Citation Index), and THCI (Humanities Citation Index). Differing from other alternatives from Taiwan, TJS excludes common/ popular periodicals unconcerned with academia. It is purely scholar-oriented and able to hit the researchers’ demand precisely. Meanwhile, TJS can be called as “the greatest collection of China studies/Sinology based on Taiwanese viewpoint”.

Cumulating very plentiful Chinese modern historical data of the past 55 years, Zhuanji Wenxue Magazine (傳記文學1962-present) wins the globally impressive fame──The Great Wall of Chinese Republic History. Being ranked at the same academic position with heavyweight, national research institutions of modern history, it is rated as the paragon of unofficial library of historical data, and an excellent, unique supplement of authoritative history in China/Taiwan during the past 2000 years. Scholars say the top 3 research institutions in Taiwan that own dominant academic achievement on studying Dr. Sun Yat Sen (Father of R.O.C.) and Chinese revolution history are Kuomintang Party History Commission, Modern History Institute of Academia Sinica and Zhuanji Wenxue Magazine. On content quality, Zhuanji Wenxue is regarded equal to the former two that are most important academic institutions in Taiwan. It helps historians to find clues of difficult historical problems, and replenish flesh into the skeleton of official history. It treats various people’s narrations as historical data. What it biographies are not only the political and military leaders, prominent officials and eminent personages, but also famous scholars, social celebrities, chiefs of secret societies, information spies, renowned actors or actresses and common people. So Zhuanji Wenxue helps to fill the breach of official history. As an essential historic-material database of more than 130 million characters and also the core reference of dissertations on Chinese Republic history in the past 40 years, it includes autobiography, critical biography, memoir, exclusive historical data, diary, handwriting, oral history, etc.. Readers will praise and sigh on its extensive data, living, popular legends, genuine people and true events.

Founded by Chinese Kuomintang, “Modern China Magazine” is always renowned for plenty of Republic history, Revolutionary Martyrs archives and Revolutionary documents of China. While other historic academic journals of its kind regard discourse and comment as important, Modern China peerlessly exposes first-hand historic materials of Kuomintang authority, reveals the “oral history” in Republic period, and combines exclusive archives and historic research. Which are really its precious and unique features. Including 4600 articles, 157 issues, 48200 figures, 38000 institutions/historical events in these 29 years, Modern China usually sponsors and hosts international academic seminars, members of which and magazine’s articles contributors come from Mainland China, Koreas, Japan, Hong Kong as well as Taiwan. Ever holding the reins of Taiwan’s government for 69 years, Kuomintang always takes great efforts to close to Taiwanese mainland, and designs many special Taiwanese and Chinese reports and cover stories in Modern China magazine. And historians regard most of them as classical masterpieces.

It was awarded “the Innovation Prize of Digital publication” in 2006 by Government Information Office, Taiwan. It integrates digital search engine with traditional calligraphic dictionary and celebrated calligraphic works. It collects plenty of renowned calligraphists’ handwritings, stone rubbings and inscriptions from Chinese successive Dynasties for 4700 years, including ancient Yin-Shang, Qin, Han, Wei-Jin Nan-Bei Zhao, Tang, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing Dynasties, and the handwritten scripture of Dun-Huang Caves. Which come to 700 calligraphers,4014 calligraphic models, and 1.7 million characters in various forms. It owns 5 kinds of functions accordingly----studying, teaching, appreciating, textual researching and applying. It contains 2 sub-databases----“Single-Character Databank”, in which every photo was scanned from single character reserves its original look, charm and feeling. “Work-Fulltext Databank”, in which users can promptly find different calligraphers’ works from different Dynasties and enjoy or compare their styles via search engine.

Recording 1971-1996 history of Taiwan's art, Lionart Monthly was ever the most powerful magazine and hot platform that many artistic workers rushed to contribute works to. It has fostered many outstanding characters of artistic circles in Chinese areas for 1/4 centuries. Lionart Databank is honored to get the visual-art subsidy from Taiwan's Ministry of Culture and nominated "Digital Content Product Awards" of Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs separately in 2011. The Databank collects 44 million characters, 30000 articles/commentaries/albums, 68000 pictures, 10000 pages of rare, nostalgic advertisement, and 12220 vocabulary entries. Most of which are exclusive historical data on Taiwan art. It contains 307 issues of Lionart Monthly Magazine, 3 classical bestsellers "Chinese Art Dictionary", "the Western Art Dictionary" and "Taiwanese Art Yearbook". Including vocabulary, artists'/ artistic workers' brief biographies and chronicles, these 12220 entries come from these 3 reference books above and are integrated into the databank for additional annotation and supplementary information for users' deeper understanding. Briefly, the databank features plentiful content of culture, classical articles of art, and convenient value-added functions.

Based on the Taiwan Literatures Series (Taiwan Wenxian Congkan, edited by Chou, Hsien-Wen周憲文, former Dean of Law School, National Taiwan University, and published by Taiwan Bank), the database of the same title above is the sole full-text/full-image version among similar databases of same content. Containing the most frequently used content by scholars of Taiwan studies, the database can be called as “the Encyclopedia of Taiwan”. It collects 309 books, 48 million of characters, and incorporates local histories, official documents of Ming, Qing Dynasties as well as Nan-Ming . Also included are poems and private collections, many of which are sole copies and out-of-print books. Spanning from Tang Dynasty to the Japanese occupation period, its data/literatures are gathered from not only local libraries, but also overseas libraries, such as Japan, the USA, Hong Kong, the Great Britain and Netherlands. At the Taiwanese viewpoint, the database records a whole variety of dimensions of Taiwan, including, development history of individual district, cities evolvement, personage deeds, local customs and culture. It is indeed the largest collections of Taiwan's history in the Chinese language.

“Taiwan Wen Xian Cong Kan” (台灣文獻叢刊) edited by Taiwan Bank is always regarded as the most important classics on Taiwan studies. But dozens of years have passed since its publication during 1958－1972, and many new historical data have been discovered continually during this period, there is no new representative collection to cover and agglomerate all the new data. Accordingly, UDP compiled “Taiwan Wen Xian Cong Kan Continuation” database. All the books, archives and literatures gathered in the “Continuation” were published by 1956. Half of which are rare books, the only copies extant, manuscripts and handwritings coming from various universities of China. The other half of data came from several “heavyweight” research institutions and publishers in Taiwan. Digitized and digitizing data in other publication plans were excluded in the “Continuation”. Those books of the same title/content in “Taiwan Wen Xian Cong Kan” are also not included in the “Continuation” except the new versions are indeed different from the old ones. Database “Continuation of Taiwan literature Series” is full-text and full-image, plus, textual criticism, original sources and authors’ introductions are attached to every title. It contains 204 books, 20 million characters, and covers chorography, geographic accounts, folkways, poems, literature, political archives, official documents, civil commotions, war records, coast defenses, Japanese pirates’ actions, 228 Incident, face-off between Zheng, Cheng-Gong and Manchu court, and historical data of Nan-Ming Dynasty.