Living in dangerous times: Huang Zongxi and his Friends

Late in his life, the influential late-Ming/early-Qing historian Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695) turned his mind to the experiences of his own difficult life and the network of men that had sustained him. His brief biographies of these men, entitled Recollecting Friends of Old: A Record (Sijiu lu 思舊錄), proved to be his last sustained piece of writing. A remarkable text, it weaves a collective portrait of the scholarly world of the late imperial period at a time of cataclysmic dynastic collapse. I discuss Huang's practice as a biographer and the nature of his friendships.

Duncan Campbell is a New Zealander who has taught Chinese at the University of Auckland, Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington, and the Australian National University. In 2015, he was the curator of the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Library, San Marino, USA. His The Dumbarton Oaks Anthology of Chinese Garden Literature, co-edited with Alison Hardie, was published in 2021, and Encountering China: New Zealanders and the People's Republic, co-edited with Brian Moloughney, has just appeared.