The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Chapter 5

[forestofglory]

Welcome to our read a long of The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China by Dorothy Ko! For this post we are reading "Chapter 4: Fuzhou: The Collectors"

Previous posts:
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

You are welcome to join in at any time!

This chapter was about inkstone collectors and the culture of collecting

What where the main arguments in this chapter? Did you find them convincing?

Did any historical figures introduced in the chapter stand out to you? In what way?

Did any of the inkstones or other objects in the chapter stand out to you? In what way?

What did this chapter make you want to learn more about?

Did anything in this chapter remind you of fiction you enjoy? Or inspire creative writing thoughts fic or otherwise?

Comments

[forestofglory]

I thought the main argument of the chapter was about the role inkstone collecting played in social networks, and what this meant for the "ownership" of inkstones. Some men where able to use inkstone collection to move up the social ladder. I had a bit of trouble following exactly what she was trying to say about the "alienability" of inkstones.

Chen Zhaolun seems like an adorable fan boy!

There are some pretty inkstones in this chapter but the thing I spent the most time starting at was fig 5.11, the printed page. Partly because I was trying read it, but also because handwriting is fascinating.

I'm very curious what Huang Xiulang thinks of all of this.

[blueshiftofdeath]

I think the "alienability" of the inkstones was mostly about the ironic way that defined their status as collectable items. Inkstones got much of their value from being items that other people might strongly covet, as well as being items that could be easily transferred or gifted. And of course, inkstones being valuable made their "owners" desire to hold onto them in their collections all the more greatly. So the alienability of inkstones simultaneously is the force driving inkstones both away and towards a given collection. And I think this double-force serves to connect people (inkstones as a piece of social networks) and heighten individual feelings regarding artistry and scholarship (inkstones as a piece of personal collections).

That's my read anyway -- it took me a very long time to get through this chapter, so I might be missing something...

[blueshiftofdeath]

Now that Erniang's part of the story is over, I was markedly less excited going into this chapter, but by the end I was pretty interested! I liked hearing about academia surrounding historical gift economy and collection, plus the inkstone geekery, and the general shared humanity we can glimpse at between ourselves and these Qing dynasty scholars, even if only through their participation in inkstone collecting.

I was happy we got a peek into women's lives during this time period and their own participation in the world of inkstones, although as usual, it's quite sad to think and hear about how silenced they were in public life. The anecdote about Madame Zhang's poem later being attributed to Wan is really just sad. Ko had an eloquent comment on women's involvement in histories regarding inkstones: "when women do appear in the interstices, their voices are presented in quotations, accessible only through the retelling of the male ventriloquists."

The anecdotes about Huang Ren and Madame Zhuang (his wife) were very sweet. I loved her clever little poem to comfort him after failing his exam. Although it's again quite sad that her words are only preserved at the whim of her husband, his loving preservation of them is still touching. I really appreciated getting to hear about how a woman interacted with her inkstone -- unsurprisingly, with the same adoration and fondness as the male scholars. (So upsetting to hear that people think that "Madame Zhuang adored the inkstone" implies that she couldn't be a "proper" woman, or that it must have been her husband's inkstone.. sexism manifests in ways you'd never even think of!)

Other thoughts:

• Loved hearing about Xu Cai's dream to be "interred in a tomb whose wall was wrought of his inkstones instead of bricks."
• The anecdotes about everyone reminiscing on their old times studying inkstones together were so bittersweet...
• Huge respect to Lin Ji and his dedication to book reproduction!
• The note on Huang and Lin being on opposite sides of a spectrum of attitudes towards inkstones was interesting.
• "Collector seals and encomiums signaled more a one-time custodianship than ownership, with the fear, almost the expectation, that the stone would soon slip out of one's hands." I never thought about it this way; made me think about how a similar mindset applies to long-lived objects in my own life.
• This chapter made me want to read the referenced books by Susan Stewart, Natalie Davis, and Martha Howell!