A visitor to Beijing in 1900, Chinese or foreign, would have been struck by the great number of native-place lodges serving the needs of scholars and officials from the provinces. What were these native-place lodges? How did they develop over time? How did they fit into and shape Beijing's urban ecology? How did they further native-place ties?

In answering these questions, the author considers how native-place ties functioned as channels of communication between China's provinces and the political center; how sojourners to the capital used native-place ties to create solidarity within their communities of fellow provincials and within the class of scholar-officials as a whole; how the state co-opted these ties as a means of maintaining order within the city and controlling the imperial bureaucracy; how native-place ties transformed the urban landscape and social structure of the city; and how these functions were refashioned in the decades of political innovation that closed the Qing period. Native-place lodges are often cited as an example of the particularistic ties that characterized traditional China and worked against the emergence of a modern state based on loyalty to the nation. The author argues that by fostering awareness of membership in an elite group, the native-place lodges generated a sense of belonging to a nation that furthered the reforms undertaken in the early twentieth century.

 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Figures and Tables 000
 Introduction 1
1 Placing This Work 5
2 Native-Place Lodges Beyond
Beijing 18
3 The Particular
Characteristics of
 Beijing
 Scholar-Official Native-
Place Lodges41 4 Huiguan in
Space 74
5 Huiguan as Space 98
6 Native-Place Rituals 119
7 The Corporate Character of
Lodge
 Property 139
8 State-Lodge Cooperation in
the
 Maintenance of Order 167
9 The Articulation of
Regional Interests
 in Beijing 193
10 Native Place and the Reform
 Movement of the 1890s 217
11 Beijing Huiguan in the
 Twentieth Century 236
 Conclusion 259
 Postscript: Huiguan Sites
Today 263
 Appendix
 Ming Period Native-Place
 Lodges of Beijing 277
 
 Reference Matter
 Bibliography 289
 Index 311