Disaster Narratives, Disaster Prevention Strategies and Folk Beliefs in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
About This Novel
This book uses the field history notes and novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties as basic materials, combined with recent domestic and foreign documents and theories on famine history and folk belief research, and examines the disaster discourse and disaster prevention stories in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the context of the Chinese national spiritual history. Based on written records of disasters such as floods, droughts, locusts, plagues, winds, hail, earthquakes, ice and snow, and disaster prevention, the performance, ritual functions, and communication mechanisms of many folk beliefs such as praying for rain, driving away drought demons, controlling flood dragons, driving away locusts, warding off epidemics, and imagining lizards sowing hail are described. The author pays attention to collecting a series of vivid folklore stories and imaginations from the Ming and Qing Dynasty's disaster prevention officials who selflessly provided disaster relief, provided relief and protection for the people, and helped each other among the people, and saved food and water. He supplemented the history with texts and elucidated the humanistic spirit of the disaster prevention writing in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. At the same time, we also criticize and analyze the shortcomings of hiding disasters, invading relief, risking relief, asking for relief, and making trouble for relief, as well as the disaster-stricken people's incorrect passive response to relief, and taking advantage of disasters to make profits. Attached are more than 20 news pictures of disaster reports in the late Qing Dynasty. The book has interdisciplinary characteristics such as literature, disaster studies, and folklore. It is rich in information, highly readable, and thought-provoking.
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