Homage to Tradition? The Political Use of 'Jinshi' in Modern China

With an growing interest in new materials for metal and stone study, the scholar artist further incorporated the aesthetic beauty found in newly executed materials into their artistic creations, and developed a new trend of antiquarian art, a jinshi inspired painting and calligraphy school金石書畫家. However, the appreciation of antiques also carried a strong implication to their identity. The jinshi associations formed during this early twentieth-century often posed significant political gestures.

Considering why Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613-1682) and many late Ming left-over subjects were so keen on antiquity and textual evidence study, Bai Qianshen suggested that the visits to steles and ancient sites reflects the sentiment of yimin 遺民 of the Ming, the people of conquered nation/the left-over subjects of the Ming. For the Ming loyalists, the stele represents the glory of the past. Therefore, reading an inscription from a stele became a ritual to commemorate the bygone days and to release the dissatisfactory with their situation of being conquered people. If we project such attitude toward the left-over relics of the Qing and the elites who mostly indulged in antique collecting and appreciation activities during the time when China went through a period of turmoil at the term of twentieth-century, it might make these people’s motivation more apparent.

Was the archaic movement paying solely homage to tradition? This paper will investigate the dealing of antiquity among intellectuals, the changing functions of elegant scholarly gathering, and ultimately, the political use of jinshi in modern China.