6 - Kongzhai in 19th- and 20th-Century Local Gazetteers and Poetry Collections

Summary

After the 1660s, the gazetteers of Qingpu county and Songjiang prefecture were not revised again for well over a century. Perhaps the long interval between editions is partly due to the Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors’ stricter control over local activism, which may have discouraged attention to local history. During this period, the 1724 Gazetteer of Kongzhai was suppressed to some extent, but it survived as a source for later official gazetteers and other compilations. The 1788 Gazetteer of Qingpu County reproduced its aspirational pictorial plan of Kongzhai and used some of its documentation, while prudently omitting pseudohistorical lore about Kongzhai and underplaying the Kangxi emperor’s interaction with its local advocates. By contrast, 19th-century gazetteers restored all the details to the account of Kongzhai’s history and highlighted the emperor’s attention to the area, suggesting a resurgence of local agency. Around 1840, new rounds of local poetry composition and commemorative texts affirmed Kongzhai as a focus of literati patronage and gentry identity, and Sun Hong’s Gazetteer of Kongzhai was reprinted. After the widespread devastation and social dislocation of the Taiping Rebellion in mid-century, the restoration of Kongzhai became a local priority.