Journal 1

Most of my time, so far, has been spent on researching and the ordering, through interlibrary loan, all of the books that I will need. I have already received Qiu Xigui. Chinese Writing. New Haven, CT: Birdtrack Press, 2000. Which has many sources scanned in the bibliography. I have also been able to get De Bary, Theodore and Bloom, Irene. Sources of Chinese tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. which, I hope, will supply most of the sources required to write the Qin-Han sections of the paper. I have also considered broadening my scope in order to make sure that I have the right amount ancient sources by expanding my analysis to include the Shang and Zhou Dynasty materials. This would include oracle bones and Zhou bronzes.

I looked through the Sources of Chinese Tradition book, and it has no relevant information. So as of right now I have two media that I can turn to for my ancient sources, Chinese Writing, and the Harvard University Chinese Rubbings Collection. I also just submitted an ILL for Jia Gu Wen He Ji, the standard collection of oracle bones, and a book on the Ma Wang Tui manuscripts which was a "missing link" in the evolutionary process of the Chinese script.

I was able to look through the Harvard University Chinese Rubbings Collection. The collection is  not organized very well so I had to just arrange the rubbings by title and then just look at each one to see if it falls in the date range that I am looking for. I spent hours clicking on each one and only worked from ?-C and was able to find and save 16 sources from the early Han until the Song Dynasty. This shows a fairly good range of the evolution of the script, but I have yet to locate any Qin Dynasty Sources. At least one of the sources that I was able to find was written by Wang Xi Zhi, who as instrumental in the formation of the script that was used from the Tang to the Qing Dynasty.

Also as a preparation I organized all of the reading that I have done into an annotated bibliography blog, www.mychineseresearch.blogspot.com. On the blog I have compiled an all encompassing list of the resources that I plan on using (Books, articles, Blogs, etc), as well as the works that I have read as a background for understanding the material up to this point. I have read through the relevant sections of books and articles that pertain to this first part of my research, the Qin-Han writing reforms. 

I have also decided that taking a look at the separate cultural development of Hong Kong under the British rule will give me a better idea of how the mindset of the people played a role in the script development. Also how the western influenced caused them to feel apart from the rest of China.

For next week I plan to start looking at the Cantonese sources. I plan to first look at blogs, then try to find some government sources for use of the Cantonese characters.