[KS] Koreans carving snuff bottles in Beijing, ca. 1810

[Dr. Stuart H. Sargent]

Dear Colleagues,

I have already thanked a couple of you off-list for your suggestions. Let me give a little more information to the broader audience.

The reason I am asking about the two individuals who might be Son Kyun-su and Yahoe/Yak Hoe is because I am trying to update the information I have already published (online) about a snuff bottle carrying inscriptions by both of them. Many respondents have found it on the web in connection with a 2010 auction by Bonham's Hong Kong: you can find it here, also: http://www.e-yaji.com/auction/photo.php?photo=84&exhibition=1&ee_lang=eng

I should have warned everyone that I am the one who updated an earlier English description of that snuff bottle for the auction; I also translated the English caption into Chinese (http://www.e-yaji.com/auction/photo.php?photo=84&exhibition=1&ee_lang=chi). Now, I am on the cusp of publishing an article on all known snuff bottles made from coconut shell, which is why I am probing the mystery of these names again and improving the description of the bottle in other ways, as well. 

So that bottle is my starting point, not the answer to my question!

Why do I think the names might belong to Koreans? Because that bottle features an ancient bronze inscription copied very accurately from a 1797 book edited by Ruan Yuan, because Ruan Yuan is known to have interacted with Koreans in Beijing (he received a mathematical treatise from them that had been lost in China but preserved in Korea), and because the _only_ Google result for Sun Yunshou was a website devoted to all possible Korean names (and the name is found nowhere in the many Chinese databases I consult regularly), I thought that Sun, at least, could be Korean. 

Yes, it is a wild theory, and ultimately unprovable (unless one of you comes across a diary by Son that says, 'Today I carved a snuff bottle for my friend Ruohuai, the Chinese scholar', or some variation of that). On the other hand, it this were a clue to the existence of a Korean community in Beijing that interacted with Chinese officials and scholars in a culturally sophisticated way, it could open up a fascinating area of research, if documentation exists.

Another possibility is that these 'Koreans' travelled as far as Yangzhou, which was Ruan Yuan's native place; the calligraphy on the bottle (except for the bronze inscription) is very like that of Zheng Banqiao (Zheng Xie), a famous Yangzhou eccentric. I've asked a couple of colleagues in the Chinese field how easy it would have been for Koreans to travel in China--in the Tang or Song dynasties (with which I am more familiar), lots of internal passports and permissions were required. But in the early nineteenth century? Not something talked about very much, to my limited knowledge. 

As I am sure I have said before, there is no reason I can see why these names could not be Chinese. But generally, with Chinese names, I can find that someone, sometime, used the name in question, even if they are clearly irrelevant to my immediate query. Since that is not the case here (so far), I thought it would be worth trying the Koreans-hobnobbing-in-Beijing-with-Ruan-Yuan angle.

Any suggestions you have will be very welcome.

Thank you,

Stuart