Lingnan Culture and the World: Construction and Change in the Cultural Landscape of Cantonese Literati from the Late Qing to the Republican era in China (1821-1949)

The proposed project examines the construction and evolution of the Lingnan culture as seen in the lives and experiences of 150 key personalities among the Cantonese literati and merchant-gentry of the late Qing and Republican era (1821-1949) - an age of great change in the history of modern China.

A major characteristic of this project is its macro-mapping of the Lingnan cultural landscape, which breaks through the confines of individual disciplines, and the simplistic dichotomies between local and global, East and West. It challenges the prevailing discourse of a linear development of the Lingnan from the traditional to the modern, giving full play to the complexity, multiplicity, and inter-dynamics in the Lingnan culture in the focus period. The notion of Lingnan literati here moves beyond the traditional scholar-gentry within the geographical boundaries of Guangdong to encompass the diverse personalities involved in art, literature, language, music, religion, education, material culture, science, and more in Guangdong, adjacent Cantonese-speaking areas, including Hong Kong and Macau, as well as overseas Cantonese-migrant communities. This project will underline Lingnan's unique role in the local and global history of culture and knowledge, situating it in the intersections of the Chinese heritage and the incoming cultures from the West and other culturally active parts of the world.

The remarkable breadth of this project is facilitated by its time-tested team of interdisciplinary investigators, collaborative mechanism, and research design. Cross-disciplinary dialogues will take place in collaborative publications, seminars, conferences, open-access digital database, public lecture series, and exhibitions, which both integrate and triangulate findings. The digital database will also serve as a long-term resource portal for future researchers and the public at large. With these diverse outputs, the project will meet its goals in a historiographical sense, connect scholars across disciplines, and present its findings to the public of the digital age.

Finally, this project aligns with the call for attention on Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao connections in the new Greater Bay Area development initiatives. It will put Lingnan culture on the global stage, exhibit a collaborative model for Lingnan studies, and contribute to raising awareness and valorizing the value of the Lingnan people and their culture.