Panel 3 : Animal Husbandry and Administration 

The Frontier is Here: Horses and Horse Culture in the Early Ming Court

Noa Grass

Independent Scholar

As animals of the grassland, horses thrive where intensive agriculture doesn't. The 15-inch isohyet line in China marks the boundary between sufficient rainfall for intensive agriculture and that of vegetation suitable for grazing. Historically, this line demarcated the permeable boundary on which horses were acquired and raised. There were always horses in China but they never became an animal of everyday life as the mule or water buffalo. And though Chinese dynasties invested vast resources in the creation and maintenance of large cavalries they never a culture of horsemen never emerged from them. 

As H.G. Creel remarked, even following a century of Mongol rule the horse did not become part of Chinese culture (Creel, 1965). Nevertheless, horses were central to early Ming court culture. The Yongle emperor and his grandson were trained horsemen who expanded horse rearing along the northern frontier and encouraged the absorption of a multi-ethnic group of horsemen at court. They raised and trained horses under the command of a eunuch agency in charge of the emperor's prized mounts. Throughout the fifteenth century this agency became a powerful institution, controlling herding operations around Beijing and providing horses for the military. Eventually, its access to public funds with little outside scrutiny caught the attention of revenue officials. By the turn of the sixteenth century, general acceptance of horseman skills as part of Han culture turned into criticism and contempt. The horse was once again placed outside the boundaries of "Han" culture. This paper argues that underneath the language of cultural differences lay a battle for power and resources between rival groups in court.

Food, Medicine and Law: Eating Donkey in Chinese Society from Medieval China to the Qing Dynasty

Liu, Shih-hsun

National Palace Museum, Taibei

Human and Donkey have a close interactive relationship throughout history, yet they are two completely different species. What’s the view of Chinese society on the Donkey in history? What’s the usage of Donkey? And what kind of boundary they put on the Donkey? This article will study the consumption of donkey in Chinese history from medical, cultural and legal aspect. In Chinese history, Donkey have two identity as delicious food and medicine. It can be considered the best footnote for the concept of “medical food” which cross the boundary of medicine and food. “Crispy”, “delicate” and “sweet” is how literature and medicine books describe donkey meat. The donkey is also a symbol of ostentation and the cultural taste. The donkey is delicious, but the way to eat it alive is so cruel that it crossed the line of moral which caused officials to act accordingly. They have considered it as a kind of murder in the criminal code of Qing dynasty, which has one of the most severe punishment to punish such cruel act. In the context of juridical matter, the way we devour donkey seems became the boundary to define it is legal or not.

The Voyages of Eels: The Characteristics, Breeding Evolution, and Consumption of Eels in Modern Taiwan

Kuo, Chunghao

Taipei Medical University 

This paper explores the characteristics, breeding evolution, and consumption of eels in modern Taiwan. Consumable eels（Anguilla Japonica）rely on a specific migratory pattern. After spawning near the west side of the Mariana Trench in the West Pacific Ocean, eels migrate with both the Kuroshio current and its branches, all of which lead toward the East Asia ocean. Both traditional China and Japan had their respective dietary customs for eels. While Chinese dietary customs focused on the principles of food supplements, Japanese dietary customs focused on the cooking of kabayaki. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan launched a project for the breeding of eels, and after Taiwan became Japan’s colony in 1895, Japanese also developed a system for breeding eels in Taiwan, hoping to provide a sufficient supply of this fish for both Japan and Taiwan. After the end of the Second World War, the Japanese colonizers of Taiwan fled the island the eel industry almost came to a standstill in the 1950s. Starting in the 1960s, aquatic experts started engaging in research pertaining to the breeding of eels. Fortunately, by 1964, Japan had opened its imports of eel products from Taiwan, a decision that encouraged Taiwan to fully engage in the breeding of eels. Indeed, Taiwan even won a reputation for the Kingdom of Eels. By the 1990s, while China competed with other countries for a top place in the export of live eels to Japan, Taiwan competitively changed its policies regarding the breeding of eels. Rather than try to undersell all of its Chinese competitors with the cheapest Japan-friendly product, Taiwanese producers have offered good-quality, healthy, and nutritious kabayaki eel to domestic (Taiwanese) markets. The historical and cultural examination of eels in modern Taiwan can give us multiple perspectives of the eel business, extending from breeding to consumption. 

Panel 4 : Treating Animals

Livestock – Part of More Than One World: Veterinary approaches to livestock in Republican China

Renée Krusche

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

The Chinese world changed dramatically at the end of the Qing empire. The Chinese nation had to grapple with incoming threats from abroad, a rebellious population and contesting reformers, this led to a fundamental change in thinking. The admiration of Western sciences is particularly prominent in this era and leads to the degradation of native medical practices. Part of this switch to a more scientific worldview and government approach were the veterinary practices and thus the animal population of China. 

This paper examines the realm of veterinary medicine in the Republican era by shedding light on the public discussion of livestock diseases in the media. The introduction of the sciences brought about large changes to the keeping, breeding, treatment and administration of livestock and reformed the animals’ world profoundly. It also altered the way farmers and the government handled livestock-related diseases and perceived problems in animal husbandry. By engaging with medical and popular media this paper attempts to shed light on the human understanding of animals suffering in a profoundly human world and to point out the immense efforts undertaken by the young republican government to overcome traditional medical practices. 

Military Medicine and the Causational Feedback Loop Between Animal and Human Institutional Medicine in Imperial China

Forrest McSweeney

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

In Imperial China, military medical practice demonstrates the extent to which the border between animal and human is less of a categorical demarcation and more of a catalyst and inflection point for the development of inherently social practices. In this case, such practices are discursive, institutional, and practical. Discursively, the medical care of animals often rested upon theoretical foundations appropriated for human medical care. Animals, particularly horses, were a fundamental feature of warmaking in China up until the twentieth century, and were thus potentially so valuable that any practical approach to their medical care began with theoretical systems of correspondence designed to care for human health beginning at least by the taag Dynasty, well before the influence of 19^th century European medicine stressing universalist biological foundations to life and health processes. Institutionally, equine care among Mongolian and Manchu medical specialists in the Yuan and Qing Dynasties rapidly crept in scope from animals to humans. Riding injuries among Mongolian and Manchu warriors and officials spurred a sophisticated methodological system of bone-setting, especially among the “Mongolian doctors” (Chinese mengguyisheng 蒙古醫生 Manchu: coban/mongo daifu) who were eventually formally institutionalized in government. Practically, the expanding scope of such institutional equine doctors required them by the Qing Dynasty to liberally adopt and apply practices from the largest and most widespread therapeutic system in East Asia—Chinese pharmaceutics—to both horses and humans while also blending such systems with antecedent practices. Thus, as it is in many fields of human knowledge and social change, war and the military, through a pathway lain by animal medicine, played a key role in the development of human medical institutions and practices.