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

[gkl1 at columbia.edu]

Hi Dr. Sargent--

In a list of 230 Korean surnames (the longest I have seen) published  
in Seoul in 1987,“Yak” 흼does not appear. Whether it had much life as a  
Chinese surname remains to be determined. The Dai Kanwa Jiten does  
list it as a surname in both readings Ruo and Ya. Under Ruo it cites  
only a Han dynasty official; under Ya, no example is given at all.

The surname Son ?Ois definitely a common Korean surname. It is the  
24th most common surname in South Korea, with 368,717 bearers in  
87,995 households counted in the 1985 census. Very few of the last  
hundred surnames in the list will be commonly seen. Kyunsu (娼?)is a  
perfectly respectable Korean or Chinese given name.  I like Frank’s  
thought that Ruohuai /Yakhoe could be a given name. But it could also  
be seen as a cha/zi (俚) or pen name.

I looked through the lists of ambassadors and secretaries who visited  
China anywhere from two to four times a year for the period that you  
defined before and after the beginning of the 19th century, but could  
find no mention of a Son Kyunsu. In the late 18th and early 19th  
centuries, such officials were  usually restricted to a single mission  
to China; it was considered as a privilege or reward. On formal  
missions, the ambassador was always a member of the Korean royal  
family; his responsibilities were on the level of tributary ritual.  
The deputy ambassador, who really did the business of the mission, was  
a highly qualified and politically connected official who was seen to  
deserve the responsibility of handling the kingdom's business. The  
Secretary, often called the third ambassador, was chosen for literary  
skills and cultural achievement. All three of these officers needed to  
have high literary and especially poetic and calligraphic skills,  
along with wide knowledge of Neo-Confucianism, so that the honor of  
the Chosŏn kingdom would not be compromised. Well trained  
Confucians were seen as good candidates for the second and third  
levels. Believe me, such people were not the kind who would go gaga  
over a decorative snuff bottle, let alone make one. If they were  
looking for souvenirs for family and friends back home, they would be  
likely to send their slaves to the market place to buy them. The  
market itself was seen to be degrading to most Korean aristocrats.

  Another level of Koreans, those who served for the Korean side and  
were trained as interpreters in Chinese and/or Manchu and who went  
back and forth between Shenyang and/or Beijing more frequently, were  
much more closely familiar with China than the diplomats. They were  
fond of the brush arts―painting and calligraphy―and were more likely  
to be interested in tiny snuff bottles. They were of a lower class  
(called in Korea the Chung’in (櫓훙), but often very well educated, and  
there were a sizeable number of painters, calligraphers, poets, and  
musicians among them. Tracking them down by name, however, is not as  
easy as it is for diplomats.

As for Korean communities in Qing China on the eve of the 19th century  
and up to around the 1880s, they were concentrated in the Beijing  
capital area or in the Northeast provinces, especially in and around  
Shenyang. Most of them were  descended from prisoners of war taken  
taken by the Manchus during the wars of the 17th century. They were  
ordinary commoners not very likely to be literate or have high  
cultural skills. The luckier & sharper ones were chosen for training  
in Chinese and Manchu and became interpreters. Their descendants were  
given the same training in their household educations and served as  
interpreters  from the mid-17th century down to the 1880s, when  
diplomatic institutions changed. Those Korean descendants who were  
deemed unfit for language study made their living as petty merchants  
down to the end of the 19th century. Korean travelers, mostly  
diplomats, often mention such people in their memoirs.

Koreans as visitors in the Yangzhou area (inland Jiangsu Prov.) are  
highly unlikely, due to both Chosŏn Korean and Qing dynasty  
restrictions.

Frank, don't you  consider Vietnam to be a historical “East Asian”  
country? Perhaps you see it as a “Southeast” Asian country? But apart  
from compass points, the real point is that all three of these  
countries―-Korea, Japan, and Vietnam―-absorbed not only the written  
classical Chinese language and script but significant levels of  
Chinese high culture as well.  And they are the only countries in the  
world that have that cultural profile.

(And Frank, in both the original and following postings of this  
thread, either yours or Dr. Sargent's, the character for Huai/Hoe  
never came through on my screen in either the original or later  
postings on this thread. What could be the reason for that? And is  
there any way to get rid of that crazy right-angle symbol every time  
one types a capital letter? Or does the fault lie in my own computer?)

Gari Ledyard

Quoting "Dr. Stuart H. Sargent" <ssargent at stanford.edu>:

> 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
>
>
>