Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros107Comptes Rendus(Qing 清) Li Jun zhuan 力鈞撰, Binlan...

Comptes Rendus

(Qing ) Li Jun zhuan 力鈞撰, Binlangyu zhilüe jiaozhu 槟榔屿志略校注 (Annotated Records of Pulau Pinang), Nie Dening 聂德宁, Yon Weng Woe 阮湧俰 jiaozhu 校注, Xiamen 厦门, Xiamen daxue chubanshe 厦门大学出版社, Dang’an ziliao xilie zhi ba 档案资料系列之八, 2022

Claudine Salmon
p. 205-206
Référence(s) :

(Qing ) Li Jun zhuan 力鈞撰, Binlangyu zhilüe jiaozhu 槟榔屿志略校注 (Annotated Records of Pulau Pinang), Nie Dening 聂德宁, Yon Weng Woe 阮湧俰 jiaozhu 校注, Xiamen 厦门, Xiamen daxue chubanshe 厦门大学出版社, Dang’an ziliao xilie zhi ba 档案资料系列之八, 2022, 174 +308 p. 10 plates, ISBN: 978-7-5615-8184-1.

Texte intégral

1This book is a reprint (in traditional Chinese characters) of Li Jun's monograph on Penang Island, punctuated and annotated by Nie Dening and Yon Weng Woe, and followed by a facsimile of the edition held by the Nanyang yanjiu suo Library, Xiamen University.

2Li Jun (1852-1925) came from a family of literati in Yongtai 永泰district, Fuzhou 福州 prefecture, Fujian. He studied Chinese medicine, and since 1877 practised on his own. He also passed the examination of the second degree or juren in 1889. In 1891, he was called to Singapore to treat the father of a local Chinese merchant. He took the opportunity to travel to the Malay Peninsula, and wrote several articles and travelogues about the region. They all remained in manuscript and are now lost.

3Only the monograph on Penang has survived. The author, who tells us that he spent three months on the island, had plenty of time to carry out in-depth research. He met Chinese personalities, visited monuments, collected local texts, and investigated numerous Chinese works ̶̶ some of which still in extent, others apparently lost ̶̶ which shows his great curiosity. In the style of Chinese monographs, he divided his material into 10 chapters covering subjects such as astronomy, climate, calendar, geography, emissaries and local officials, exiles, monuments and famous places, buildings, customs, finance and economics, and a particularly rich bibliographical chapter. Li Jun, who fully understood the importance of Malay as a language of communication within Nusantara (he says: “If you don't learn Malay to travel in the South Seas, you are like a deaf and dumb man”), took the trouble “to edit” two texts written by a certain Wu Zengying 吴曾英, which he entitled Wulaiyou fangyan 巫来由方言 (Malay Dialects, in two volumes). Only Li's preface reproduced in the monograph has survived.

4The first edition, which contains a preface by Li Jun dated 1891, is kept at Fuzhou Normal School Library. The second, undated, is in the Nanyang yanjiu suo. A meticulous study of the two editions has enabled Nie Dening to date this edition to 1892. An incomplete manuscript version (chap.7, 8 and 10 are missing) in a single volume, with the preface by Li Jun from 1891 and annotations by a certain Wang Yuanzhi (王元穉改批注本), has been acquired online more recently. The present editors relied on these three versions to create their own. They also used the account by the mandarin-capitalist Zhang Yunan (Chong Yit Nam) 煜南 (1851-1911), who was at one time vice-consul in Penang, entitled Haiguo gongyu yilu 海国公余辑录 (The Leisure Compilation of Overseas Officials, First ed. 1898).

5The edited text has been standardized, variants and popular characters eliminated, and explanatory notes added where appropriate. For ease of reading, proper nouns are underlined in the body of the text, while toponyms and foreign names are transcribed and commented in notes. The editors have added various supplements: extracts from 19th century English sources, lists of place names, persons and works arranged by number of strokes, and a bibliography.

6In short, all the work done by the editors on this now-rare text has given it a new lease of life. In particular, it highlights the extraordinary cultural richness of this Chinese community in Penang.

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Claudine Salmon, « (Qing ) Li Jun zhuan 力鈞撰, Binlangyu zhilüe jiaozhu 槟榔屿志略校注 (Annotated Records of Pulau Pinang), Nie Dening 聂德宁, Yon Weng Woe 阮湧俰 jiaozhu 校注, Xiamen 厦门, Xiamen daxue chubanshe 厦门大学出版社, Dang’an ziliao xilie zhi ba 档案资料系列之八, 2022 »Archipel, 107 | 2024, 205-206.

Référence électronique

Claudine Salmon, « (Qing ) Li Jun zhuan 力鈞撰, Binlangyu zhilüe jiaozhu 槟榔屿志略校注 (Annotated Records of Pulau Pinang), Nie Dening 聂德宁, Yon Weng Woe 阮湧俰 jiaozhu 校注, Xiamen 厦门, Xiamen daxue chubanshe 厦门大学出版社, Dang’an ziliao xilie zhi ba 档案资料系列之八, 2022 »Archipel [En ligne], 107 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 octobre 2024, consulté le 15 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/archipel/3997 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12fvp

Haut de page

Auteur

Claudine Salmon

CNRS, CASE

Articles du même auteur

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search