by Guangchen Chen
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Cloth: 978-0-226-84856-3
Paper: 978-0-226-84858-7
eISBN: 978-0-226-84857-0 (all)
In this book, Guangchen Chen argues that discerning collectors used antiquities to upend dominant discourses on history and cultural memory in twentieth-century China. Examining four categories of ancient artifacts—“carving” (oracle bones), “rubbing” (imprints of inscriptions and books), “brushing” (calligraphy), and “weaving” (textiles and costumes)—Chen explains how their modern (re)emergences changed our understanding of the relationship between tradition and modernity, textuality and materiality, and the very meaning of “Chineseness.”
Chen considers intellectuals such as Wang Yirong, Liu E, Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei, and Chen Mengjia, who played a pivotal role in the oracle bones’ modern reception. He also looks to major literary figures including Lu Xun, whose engagements with textual remnants of the past inspired his critique of Chinese culture; Guo Moruo, whose work on the calligraphic masterpiece Lantingxu contributed to the cultural-political climate that sparked the Cultural Revolution; Shi Zhecun, whose interest in inscriptions on ancient stelae helped him to hold fast to intellectual integrity in the face of political pressure; and Shen Congwen, whose obsession with ancient textiles saved him from committing suicide after his writing fell out of favor. These antiquarians used their collections as a strategy to synchronize historical time and to challenge two dominant yet contrasting ideologies in modern China: a regressive idealization of antiquity and an unquestioning trust in linear progress. During this turbulent period, long-lost artifacts came to function as omens, warnings, and revelations from another time, generating new meanings that were uniquely relevant to the present.
“This is a most erudite book written with great theoretical sophistication. It deals with a rare and rather obscure subject, modern Chinese antiquarianism, by putting it in an entirely new light and turning it into a radical agent of cultural intervention at a moment of danger. The works of some of the most famous modern Chinese intellectuals receive entirely new treatments. A groundbreaking book that poses a great intellectual challenge to all scholars.”
— Leo Ou-fan Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong“Collecting Antiquity in Modern China is itself a learned and beautifully made instance of salvage craft. Chen has curated, narrated, and hence saved from oblivion the stories of nine twentieth-century Chinese collectors who took great risks and gradually found in ancient objects and practices the means of resistance to war, revolution, and despair. Cultural catastrophes go on and know no territorial boundaries, but Chen’s book gives evidence that care, memory, and contemplation can continue, too, as infinite resources for our inner lives.”
— Susan Stewart, Princeton University“In 1965, when Guo Moruo, China’s foremost Marxist intellectual, presented his controversial but ultimately misguided view that the most famous work in the calligraphic tradition, the 4th century Orchid Pavilion Preface, was a later fabrication, he caused an uproar not only in the art world, but in the political sphere as well. Even Mao Zedong joined the discussion. It was one of the many tangled interactions between politics and art in contemporary China.
Chen demonstrates how China, faced with a life-threatening economic and intellectual onslaught from the West, harked back to its collections of visual and material culture and turned them into powerful tools to come to terms with itself and with the world. This meticulously researched study opens a new perspective on China in the 20th century.”
— Lothar Ledderose, Heidelberg University"Collecting Antiquity in Modern China follows antiquarians whose empirical finds led to questions without pre-established answers—a risky enterprise, as they soon discovered. A work of retrieval, salvage, and reparation, it breaks through the shell of consensus and post-facto inevitability, and yet remains unsentimental about its protagonists—a bold and delicate accomplishment.”
— Haun Saussy, University of ChicagoLicense: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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