PRINTED BY THE KIUKIANG METHODISTS
[GO Keitai 吳啓太 and TEI Eihō 鄭永邦.]
官話指南 [Guanhua zhinan; ‘A Guide to Mandarin’].
Kiukiang [Jiujiang], Central China Press, 1893.
8vo, pp. [2], 190; two stab-holes to gutter; a crisp, fresh copy in contemporary half cloth and marbled sides; a little rubbed; ownership inscriptions ‘Walter J. Clennell 1901’ to both free endpapers (see below), occasional pencil annotations and corrections in Chinese and English, quotation on the Chinese language from the Life of Johnson in pencil to rear free endpaper.
Very rare edition of this guide to Mandarin printed by a Methodist missionary press in Kiukiang (Jiujiang).
First published in 1881, the work was written by two Japanese interpreters of Chinese descent working for the legation in Peking. Aimed principally at fellow members of the foreign service, it taught the vernacular used at court as opposed to the classical, written language. ‘Guanhua zhinan contains an introduction (a “statement of editorial principles” [fanli 凡例]), dealing largely with pronunciation, and four chapters (juan 卷). The chapters all contain dialogues, with the first containing generic expressions used in common encounters (asking for someone’s name, the number of brothers in someone’s family, etc.), and the other chapters describing scenes – sometimes in the form of little stories – that would play themselves out in Beijing, especially at the Japanese legation. As its title indicates, the register of the book’s language is the “language of officials” rather than the colloquial register of the Beijing dialect. Go and Tei’s primer was a great success. It underwent many editions in China and Japan during the first two decades after its appearance’ (Saarela, p. 5).
The present edition is one of the few surviving productions of the press established by the Central China Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Kiukiang, a British concession since 1861. The Rev. E. S. Little of the Mission recounted the press’s early history: ‘No funds were in hand, but the writer [i.e. Little] was assured if the work were of God and for the advancement of His Kingdom it would succeed. A small second-hand press was purchased for $60 from the Mercury office, and arrangements kindly entered into by Mr. Drummond Hay, of the North-China Daily News, whereby another and larger press was secured. The small press was taken to Kiukiang and erected in the writer’s private study, where the first printing was done’ (Mission Press in China, pp. 54–5). Interestingly the editors made a number of adjustments to the text of the Guanhua zhinan, bringing it into line with southern (as against Peking) usage, and is thus a valuable witness to this regional variety in the nineteenth century (see Xu).
Provenance: Walter James Clennell (1867–1928), British diplomat, Consul at Kiukiang, and Sinologist, with his ownership inscriptions at front and rear. Clennell came to China as a student interpreter in the consular service in 1888, rising quickly to become Acting Consul at Shanghai, and was appointed Consul at Kiukiang c. 1900, in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion. He was fascinated by China and its culture, publishing a Report … on a Journey in the Interior of Kiangsi (1905) and The Historical Development of Religion in China (1917). On his return to Britain he was invited to Cambridge to discuss taking up the Chair of Chinese Studies but was tragically killed by a milk cart on his way from the station.
OCLC finds only three copies worldwide (Berkeley, NYPL, National Library of China), to which Library Hub adds CUL.
See Saarela, ‘A Guide to Mandarin, in Manchu: on a partial Translation of Guanhua zhinan (1882) and its historical Context’, East Asian Publishing and Society 9/1 (2019); Xu Li 徐麗, 「《官話指南》副詞研究」, 《中國語研究》 (2013).
