This panel on textual transmission and early modern Chinese book culture brings in four studies of dramatic, fictional and religious texts (1400-1639). The presenters investigate the role of printing technology, the social networks underlying market environments, and early modern publication conventions in the alternations and circulations of texts. Panelists examine printed and manuscript editions of a play, the rhetoric of filial piety in printing of fiction anthologies, editorial designs of canonical plays in dual-color printing editions, and literati reworkings of Christian texts to address a local printing culture. What textual differences and aesthetic variations in audiences’ reception could be traced between a drama for performance, and its printed edition for reading? How did literary anthologies express social trends? What role did printing technology play in reproduction and dissemination of canonical texts? How did the compilation of Christian texts address editors’ agency and religious values?

Wenbo Chang explores the relationship between text and performance by comparing the printed and manuscript editions of a play Black Whirlwind: Riches Spurned out of Righteousness. Its writer Zhu Youdun (1379–1439), the Exemplary Prince of Zhou, is a grandson of the founder of the Ming and a prominent playwright. The printed edition by Zhu (self-preface dated 1433) is the basis of a later printed edition produced by dramatist and critic Meng Chengshun (1599-1684). Another manuscript edition of this play was collated by bibliophile Zhao Qimei (1563-1624), which can be traced back to text adapted for imperial palace performance. The manuscript edition demonstrated significant alterations to the original play in its plot, characters, arias and spoken lines, including a list of each character’s costume. Chang analyzes how drama texts were negotiated in textual production and transmission, and the dynamic interplay of authorship, audience/readership, literati values, and court entertainment.

Jing Zhang discusses filial piety as rhetoric and strategy in the printing of anthologies of fictional texts in the Jiajing Era (1522-1566). Modern critic Lu Xun compared a mid-16^th-century compendium of tales to “a patriarch of naughtiness,” satirizing its chaotic editing. Blending the image of an authoritative ancestor and that of an unruly child, Lu’s phrase vividly depicts the playful authority of a late Ming editor. Zhang studies several anthologies including Lu’s target Ocean of Tales Old and New, by private publishers from Southern elite circles. Biographical materials on these publishers and the paratexts of their anthologies stress their filial virtue in their effort to preserve their family libraries and continue their ancestors’ enterprise through printing. Yet a scrutiny of their editorial preferences reveals space for innovation and rebellion against orthodox values. Printing was a powerful tool for literati publishers to negotiate between socially-defined expectations and individual tastes.

Rachel Zhang assesses Zang Maoxun’s (1550-1620) edition of The Four New Musical Plays from the Jade Tea Hall in the late Ming print culture. Shortly after its publication in 1618, Zang's edition became a major reference for the reproduction of four plays by Tang Xianzu, the famous Ming playwright. The reception of Zang’s edition was mediated by friendship, family ties, and the sense of community in his hometown, Wuxing. This presentation investigates three red-and-black dual-color publications by members of Zang's community, namely Mao Ying’s edition of The Peony Pavilion (1620), Min Guangyu’s edition of The Handan Dream (1621), and the red-and-black edition of The Dream Under the Southern Bough. The paper shows how the editors, critics, printers, and local men of culture engaged in a dialogue with Zang’s edition, and how the interplay between editorial designs and textual criticism formulated a method to convey peer evaluations in print culture.

Yunjing Xu discusses A Mirror to Encourage Self-cultivation (1639), a Chinese Christian text compiled by Fujian Christian Li Jiugong. Li selects anecdotes from fifteen Chinese Christian publications, and compiles them into six categories in his collection of Christian short stories. Besides drawing source materials from Jesuit missionaries’ Chinese publications, Li included several locally written texts. While the published first scroll focuses on exemplary behaviors, the unpublished second scroll shifts its focus to miraculous encounters, divine rewards and punishments, illustrating local Church members’ visions of God, saints, deceased priests and fellow church goers. Li’s reworking of Christian publications demonstrates Chinese literati’s active involvement in this niche printing culture and market. The inclusion or exclusion of Western saints’ stories, the pairing and recategorization of Western sourced stories and Chinese Christians’ stories display literati Christians’ concerns and agency in the making of their own religious experiences and narratives.

The panel includes four presentations (twelve minutes each), a respondent's comment (three minutes), and a fifteen-minute discussion.