literacy, writing and education

i. Women

Burridge, Kate and Ng Bee-chin, "Writing the Female Radical: The Encoding of Women in the writings System", in: Finnane, Antonia and MacLaren, Anne E. eds., Dress, Sex and text in Chinese Culture(Clayton, Australia : Monash Asia Institute, 1999), 109-142. The title says it all.
Hodge, Bob and Kam Louie, "Gender and the Classification of Chinese Caracters", in: Finnane, Antonia and MacLaren, Anne E. eds., Dress, Sex and text in Chinese Culture(Clayton, Australia : Monash Asia Institute, 1999), 143-163.
Jen-der Lee, "Éducation des femmes jalouses au début de la Chine médiévale", in: Tri & Despeux, II: 67-97
Joan Judge, "L'éducation de la femme et les manuels fémins du début du XXe siècle. De la mère de Mengzi aux femmes modernes", in: Tri & Despeux, II: 171-214.

Female literacy, reading and writing

Handlin, Joanna F, "Lu K'un's new audience: the influence of women's literacy on sixteenth-century thought," in: Wolf, Margery and Roxanne Witke, eds. Women in Chinese society ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975) 13-38
Joan Judge, "Reforming the Femine: Female Literacy and the Legacy of 1898", in: Rebecca E. Karl & Peter Zarrow eds., Rethinking the 1898 reform period : political and cultural change in late Qing China (Cambridge : Harvard University Asia Center, 2002) 158-179 . Deals mainly with ideological views on the need for femine literacy for reforming the nation, rather than empirical aspects of this issue.
Ko, Dorothy,Teachers of the inner chambers : women and culture in seventeenth-century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)
Ellen Widmer, "Considering a Coincidence: The 'Female Reading Public' Circa 1828", in: Liu, Lydia H., Judith T. Zeitlin, and Widmer, Ellen eds., Writing and materiality in China : essays in honor of Patrick Hanan (Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Asia Center, 2003) 273-314
Widmer, Ellen, The beauty and the book : women and fiction in nineteenth-century China (Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Press, 2006), includes many remarks on women and the publishing of their work.
Wong Yin Lee,"Women's education in traditional and modern China", Women's History Review, 4:3 (1995=, 345-367

women's script

On a now largely lost form of writing by women for women in southern Hunan, uncovered in the 1980s.

Online Nushu Dictionary.
William Wei Chiang, We Two Know the Script ; We Have Become Good Friends' : Linguistic and Social Aspects of the Women's Script Literacy in Southern Hunan, China (Lanham/London; University Press of America, 1995). Largely unrevised doctoral dissertation, including a detailed ethnographical context based on the author's fieldwork in 1988 and 1990.
Dorer, Benedikta "Frauenschrift und Schwesterschaften in Jiangyong: Rezeption, Konstruktion und Neuzugang," in: Newsletter Frauen und China 6 (1994) 12-18.Includes bibliography.
Endō, Orie, Chûgoku no Onnamoji [Chinese Women's Script] (Tokyo: Sanichi-shobo, 1997) (not seen) (see the review by Anne McLaren and Shibuya Iwane in Intersections, 2 (1999), which points out amongst other things that she has found evidence of the use of the script in a larger region than supposed before).
Endō, Orie. Inscribing intimacy : the fading writing tradition of Nüshu (Ann Arbor, MI: Deep Blue, 2019).
Idema, Wilt Vrouwenschrift [Women's Script] (Amsterdam, Meulenhoff 1996). Extensive translations of the literary materials in Woman's Script (much of which is also significant as alternative versions of vernacular literary traditions) by a specialist on traditional Chinese vernacular literature.
Wilt L. Idema translation and Introduction, Heroines of Jiangyong : Chinese narrative ballads in womens script (Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2009)
Liu, Fei-wen. 1997. "Nuzi (Female Script), Nushu (Female Literature), Nuge (Female Songs) and Peasant Women's De-Silencing of Themselves, Jiangyong County, Hunan Province," China. Ph.D. Dissertation, Syracuse University.
Liu, Fei-wen, 2001a. "The Confrontation between Fidelity and Fertility: Nushu (Female Literature)" Journal of Asian Studies 60(4).
Anne McLaren, "Women's Voices and Textuality: Chastity and Abduction in Chinese Nüshu Writing," Modern China 22: 4 (1996) 382-416. Includes the importance of oral traditions and the place of nüshu as a instrument for transmission and recording. Also mentions Yao link. Good bibliography. See also her roughly contemporary (!) and very informative electronic article "Crossing Gender Boundaries in China: Nüshu Narratives " in Intersections 1 (1998) (see Back Issues) 1 (1998).
Anne McLaren, "On Researching Invisible Women: Abduction and Violation in Chinese women's Script writing", in: Finnane, Antonia and MacLaren, Anne E. eds., Dress, Sex and text in Chinese Culture(Clayton, Australia : Monash Asia Institute, 1999), 164-179.
Illaria Maria Sala, "Nüshu, the Women's Script of Southern Hunan," in: Newsletter Frauen und China 6 (1994) 5-1. Includes her own fieldwork. Interesting link to Yao culture.
Cathy Silber (1994) "From daughter to daughter -in-law in the women's script of southern Hunan" in: Christina K. Gilmartin et al, (eds), Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 47-68.

j. Writing and Chinese religious culture

General

Bumbacher, Stephan Peter, Empowered writing : exorcistic and apotropaic rituals in medieval China (St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2012).
Robert F. Campany, "Notes on the Devotional Uses and Symbolic Functions of Sûtra Texts as depicted in Early Chinese Buddhist Miracle Tales and Hagiographies," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14: 1 (1991) 28-72 and "The Real Presence," History of Religions 32:3 (1993): pp. 233-272. Important studies that make clear that texts are not just for communication in the traditional sense.
----------------, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). On the zhiguai genre, but full of insights relevant to the meaning of writing and texts in the early period (esp. 14-17 and 122-124 for general remarks)
Chaves, Jonathan, "The legacy of Ts'ang Chieh: The Written Word as Magic", Oriental Art 23 (1977) 200-215.
Copp, Paul. The body incantatory : spells and the ritual imagination in medieval Chinese Buddhism (New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 2014) on talismans/amulets, oral and writing, etc.
Elisabeth Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine (Cambridge [etc.] : Cambridge University Press, 1999). Important chapter about "secret transmission" in modern medical traditions. Also relevant remarks about text culture and text transmission in modern medical context. Based on fieldwork in several medical contexts in late 1980s.
John Lagerwey, "The Oral and the Written in Chines and Western Religion," in: Gert Naudorf, Karl-Heinz Pohl, and Hans-Hermann Schmidt eds., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien (place?: Königshausen und Neumann, 1985) 301-321. Comparative, stresses importance Daoism and writing.
Robson, James. 2012. Brushes with some ‘dirty truths’: Handwritten manuscripts and religion in China. History of Religions 51, no. 4: 317-343. Including good bibliographical comments on printing and manuscript in China more generally.
Robson, James. “The Archive Inside: Manuscripts Found within Chinese Religious Statues,” in Jörg Quenzer, Michael Friedrich, Matthew Driscoll, and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch eds., Manuscript Culture in Asia (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 359-374
Robson, James. “The Buddhist Image Inside-Out: On the Placing of Objects Inside Statues in East Asia.” In: Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange, Vol. 1 (Nalanda-Sriwijaya Research Series) (ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 2014), 291-308.
Anna Seidel, "Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha," in: Michel Strickmann ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R.A.Stein, II (Bruxelles: Institut Belge des hautes études chinoises, 1983) 291-371. Excellent introduction to the origins of Daoist ritual, including divine writing, writing as an object/treasure (instead of transmission knowledge), power names (over demons/deities), etc.
Patrick Sigwalt, "Le rite funéraire Lingbao à travers le Wuliang shengshi jing (Ve siècle)", T'oung Pao XCII:4-5 (2006) 33-79 provides extensive discussion of the use of sacred texts (amulets) in Daoist ritual practice of the fifth century AD. Interestingly, amulets written on stones and are conceived as activating the stone (in other Daoist sources the reverse might be true),rather than 'read" in a traditional way. Another important discussion is on the priority of writing in this particular Daoist tradition, over Buddhist sounds/orality.
Michel Strickmann, "The Seal of the Law: A Ritual Implement and the Origins of Printing," Asia Major (Third Series) VI:2 (1993) 1-84.
Lothar Wagner, "Art as an instrument for political legitimation during the Tang: The small seal script and the legitimation seal", Oriens Extremus 40 (1997) 159-196. Deals with the politico-religious dimension of the seal and its script, as well as their use in general religious contexts beyond the Tang period.

Spiritwriting:

This section lists only the most important works, with a focus on writing and religious practice. More literature is found in my bibliography on Chinese shamanism, 3. Spirit writing (fieldwork and history) . The crucial reference on divine writing is Seidel (1983) and the literature given therein.

Chao Wei-pang, "The Origin and Growth of the Fu-chi," Folklore Studies 1 (1942), pp. 9-27:
Clart, Philip Arthur, "The ritual context of morality books: a case study of a Taiwanese spirit-writing cult (china, phoenix hall)" (The University of British Columbia, PhD dissertation, 1997)
J.J.M. de Groot, The Religious System of China vol. VI (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1910), pp. 1295-1322.
Goossaert, Vincent. Making the gods speak : the ritual production of revelation in Chinese religious history (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2022). The new point of departure on spirit writing (next to numerous older articles by the same author)
David K. Jordan and Daniel L. Overmyer, The Flying Phoenix: Aspects of Sectarianism in Taiwan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)
Xu Dishan, Fuji mixin de yanjiu (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1947; Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1988). This is largely a collection of topically arranged anecdotal materials and has served as the basis for the discussion by Jordan and Overmyer.

Buddhism:

Steven Collins, "Notes on Some Oral Aspects of Pâli Literature," Indo-Iranian Journal 35 (1992) 121-135. Points out that, even after the introduction of writing, monastic Buddhist tradition was largely an oral and aural one.
John Kieschnick, The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). Very readable book that includes a discussion of attitudes towards Buddhist texts apart from reading and understanding, pp. 82-96.
--------------, "Blood Writing in Chinese Buddhism", Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23: 2 (2000) 177-194
David McMahan, "Orality, Writing, and Authority in South Asian Buddhism: Visionary Literature and the Struggle for Supremacy in the Mahâyâna," History of Religions 37 (1997) 249-274. Links the rise of the Mahâyâna to their use of writing, which provided them with the possibility to obtain independence of the established monastic communities and other traditional cult centers. Hence also their stress on autonomous lay approaches.
David L. McMahan, Empty vision : metaphor and visionary imagery in Mahayana Buddhism (London : RoutledgeCurzon, 2001), Chapter Three (also check out the book review by Natalie Gummer at http://www.globalbuddhism.org/6/gummer05.htm for brief summary).
Jiang WU and Lucille Chia eds., Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon (New York: Columbia UP, 2016) with numerous articles on Buddhist canonical projects through the centuries, including an essay by Jiang WU on the "cult of the canon".
Alexander Wynne, "The Oral Transmisison of Early Buddhist Literature", Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 27: 1 (2004) 97-127 argues for a fairly literal oral transmission from early on. Disappointing for not explicitly engaging the secondary literature, including such a strong study as McMahan's, referred to above.

Precious Scrolls and their precursors

Kerr, Janet Macgregor Lynn, "Precious Scrolls In Chinese Popular Religious Culture," (PhD dissertation, The University Of Chicago, 1994) (not seen)
Mair, Victor H. "The Buddhist Tradition of Prosimetric Oral Narrative in Chinese Literature", Oral Literature 3 1-2) (1988) (not seen)
Nadeau, Randall Laird, "Popular Sectarianism in The Ming: Lo Ch'ing And His 'Religion Of Non-Action' (China)," (PhD dissertation, The University Of British Columbia, 1990) (not seen)
Daniel Overmyer, Precious Volumes: An Introduction to Chinese Sectarian Scriptures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).Provides much introductory information on the genre, its contents, language and socio-religious context. He provides (pp. 185-188 and material translated in Appendix H) an extensive discussion of the self-perception of Precious Scrolls as revealed scriptures and on the prescriptions provided by these texts on how to use them.

k. Vernacular language

Andrew Chittick, "Vernacular Languages in the Medieval Jiankang Empire", Sino-Platonic Papers, 250 (July, 2014) 1-25.
Liangyan Ge, "The Writer Learns to Babble: The Textualisation of the Shui-hui-chuan," Tamkang Review XXV: 2 (1994) 95-123. Including the issue of literati learning to use vernacular to represent actual speech in writing, with the Shuihuzhuan as the first literary example of this use of vernacular in writing.
Robert Hegel, "Distinguishing Levels of Audiences for Ming-Ch'ing Vernacular Literature," David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, Evelyn S. Rawski eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 112-142. Analysis of stories on the Sui-Tang transition, but the author assumes without reflection that one can deduce the audience from values which are associated with certain groups largely on an a priori basis, rather than establishing the audience on the basis of actual evidence (to wit quotations or references in other written/oral narrative genres, such as Triad manuals!) or studying these values and their possible links to specific groups on the basis of explicit evidence.
Robert E. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). Includes extensive discussion of vernacular literature and its elite (both merchants and literati) public.
Robert Hymes, "Getting the Words Right: Speech, Vernacular Language, and Classical Language in Song Neo-Confucian 'Records of Words'", Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, No. 36 (2006), 25-55.
Chinfa Lien, "Language Adaptation in Taoist Liturgical Texts," in: David Johnson ed., Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 219-246. Studies the vernacular languages of Daoist ritual and corrects some of the suggestions by Schipper (1985).
Victor Mair, "Language and Ideology in the Written Popularisations of the Sacred Edict," David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, Evelyn S. Rawski eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 325-359. Makes the important point that written real vernacular was intended for reading aloud and listening to. See Paola Paderini (1988) .
Victor H. Mair, "The Synesthesia of Sinitic Esthetics and Its Indic Resonances", Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 30 (Dec., 2008), pp. 103-116
Victor H. Mair and Tsu-Lin Mei, "The Sanskrit Origins of Recent Style Prosody", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Dec., 1991), pp. 375-470
Victor Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages," The Journal of Asian Studies 53: 3 (1994) 707-751.
Anne E. McLaren, Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998). Includes discussion of the different way in which the chantefables and later vernacular fiction use the storyteller's mode of narration. She points out that in the earlier chantefables, the storyteller and his audience are only implied in the text, whereas later vernacular fiction makes the storytelling and the litsternig, the tellers and the audience present in the text itself. The chantefables were composed to be read aloud for an audience of fellow listeners, and did not require such information. In later vernacular fiction, which was meant to be read, this information became crucial to keep up the fiction of storytelling.
Paola Paderni, "The Problem of kuan-hua in Eighteenth Century China: The Yung-cheng Degree for Fukien and Kwantung [sic]", Annali (of the Instituto Universitario Orientale) 48 (1988) 257-265. Useful article on a little-known phenomenon, namely the institution of guanhua schools to help southern Chinese learn proper mandarin and enhance inter-bureaucratic communication and communication between officials and their population (local elites). See Victor Mair (1985)
Kristofer Schipper, "Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Taoism," Journal of Asian Studies XLV (1985) 21-55. Standard article on the existence of two ritual styles, which can be organized around the use of the vernacular and classical languages.
Thomas Zimmer, Baihua. Zum Problem der Verschriftung gesprochener Sprache im Chinesischen. Dargestellt anhand morpologischer Merkmale in den bianwen aus Dunhuang http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789047422655 (Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, 1999) (review W. Idema, TP LXXXVI [2000] 202-203) Good point in defining baihua as a written medium of expression that, unlike Classical Chinese, is more open to influences of the spoken language. Second good point is that transformation texts on Buddhist topics are more open than those on native Chinese topics.

l. Calligraphy

Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese art of writing (New York: Skira / Rizzoli 1990) For me the best introduction to the cultural meaning of the way that writing should look like in Chinese culture, of calligraphy etc.
Jonathan Hay, "The Kangxi Emperor's Brush-Traces: Calligraphy, Writing, and the Art of Imperial Authority" in: Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang ed., Body and face in Chinese visual culture (Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Asia Center, 2005) 311-334.
Richard Curt Kraus, Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Shows the ongoing significance of calligraphy/writing as a symbol(ic act) expressing power (and legitimacy), rather than as a medium for messages in post-1949 China and its political culture. Note the title! To be read in conjunction with Link.
Saussy, Haun, "The Prestige of Writing: Wen, Letter, Picture, Image, Ideography", Sino-Platonic Papers 75 (1997)
Yen, Yuehping, Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society (Routledge: London, 2005). Approaches calligraphy from an archeological perspective.

m. numeracy

Andrea Bréard, "On the Transmission of Mathematical Knowledge in Versified Form in China." In A. Bernard und C. Proust, Hgg., Scientific Sources and Teaching Contexts Throughout History: Problems and Perspectives (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science; vol. 301), Springer, 2014, 155-185
Andrea Bréard and Annick Horiuchi, "Mathematics Education in East Asia in the Pre-Modern Period." In A. Karp und G. Schubring, Hgg., Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education, Springer, 2014, chapter 8

n. Non-Han manuscript and print culture

Lung, Rachel, Interpreters in early imperial China (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co, 2011)
Erling von Mende, "In Defence of Nian Gengyao,or: What to Do about Sources on Manchu Language Incompetence?", Central Asiatic Journal 58:1/2 (2015) 59-88.
Evelyn Rawski, "Qing Publishing in Non-Han Languages," in: Brokaw, Cynthia J. and Chow, Kai-wing eds., Printing and book culture in late imperial China (Berkeley, CA [etc.]: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 304-331.

o. Illustrations and pictures

Bray, Francesca ; Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Vera ; Métailié, Georges eds., Graphics and text in the production of technical knowledge in China : the warp and the weft (Leiden: Brill, 2007) with a rich collection of relevant essays on image/tu versus text. The publisher's website has a TOC (go to the headling Chapters).
Anne Burkus-Chasson, "Visual hermeneutics and the Act of Turning the Leaf: A Genealogy of Liu Yuan's Turning the Leaf", in: Brokaw, Cynthia J. and Chow, Kai-wing eds., Printing and book culture in late imperial China (Berkeley, CA [etc.]: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 371-416.
Craig Clunas, Pictures and visuality in early modern China (London : Reaktion Books, 1997)
Julia K. Murray, "Didactic Illustrations in Printed Books," in: Brokaw, Cynthia J. and Chow, Kai-wing eds., Printing and book culture in late imperial China (Berkeley, CA [etc.]: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 417-450.

2. LATE QING-PRESENT DAY

Even more than in the first part ection of this bibliography, the following part concentrates on direct discussions of literacy, education etc. When I come across a good discussion of relevant themes in non-related works, these will be included, but no attempt is made at any form of completeness in this respect. Book length descriptions of local life in nineteenth and twentieth century China often contain relevant discussions, however.

a. General (includes conference volumes, Festschrifte, general surveys, bibliographies)

MCLC Resource Centre on Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, maintained at Ohio State University by Kirk Denton and Thomas Chan. Relevant section of their bibliography: Print Culture/Journalism
Mair, Victor H., ed, Schriftfestschrift: essays on writing and language in honor of John DeFrancis on his eightieth birthday (special issue of Sino-Platonic Papers, no.27 [Aug 1991]), 1-244 (not seen)
Alexander Woodside, "Real and imagined continuities in the Chinese struggle for literacy," in: Hayhoe, Ruth, ed. Education and modernization: the Chinese experience (Oxford, Eng.; Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon, 1992) 23-45 (not seen)

b. education
(with the assistance of Andrea Janku)

pre-1949

Paul J. Bailey, Reform the People: Changing Attitudes towards Popular Education in Early Twentieth-Century China (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1990)
Bastid, Marianne, trsl. by Paul J. Bailey. Educational Reform in Early Twentieth Century China ( Aspects de la réforme de l'enseignement en Chine au début du 20e siècle d'après des écrits de Zhang Jian. 1971). (Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988) [LA1131.B3313 1987 c.1/2]
Sally Borthwick, Education and Social Change in China: The Beginnings of the Modern Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983). Bothwick is very informative, including exemplary usage of available sources.(but critical review in China Quarterly 99 [1984], 643)
Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, with Kay Ann Johnson, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). This book contains a wealth of good anecdotal information on education and literacy, but only part of this can be found by relying on the rather incomplete index.
Ruth Hayhoe ed., Education and Modernisation: the Chinese Experience (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992). Many interesting contributions on education and literacy campaigns, by A. Woodside and others.
Keenan, Barry. The Dewey Experiment in China. Educational Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic. ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). [LB875.D5 K4]
Levine, M. "The Diligent-Work Frugal-Study Movement and the New Culture Movement." Republican China 12.1 (1986).
Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1996). Detailed study, based on fieldwork and written sources. Also good for general introduction to various aspects of education, although the thrust of the book is the post-1949 situation. The author has been publishing on this topic since the late 1970s.
Jon L. Saari, Legacies of Childhood: Growing up Chinese in a Time of Crisis, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). My favourite book on children's education at home and in schools around 1900. Uses autobiographical materials.
Thøgersen, Stig, County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002). This book is largely based on fieldwork during the first half of the 1990s. It contains extensive discussion not only of primary education in one region throughout the twentieth century, but also of issues such as literacy and political campaigns. It is probably the first Western study to take on the issues of village education both before 1949 and after, on the basis of the same fieldwork and within the same analytical approach.
Wang, Meimei; Bas van Leeuwen; and Jieli Li. Education in China, ca. 1840-present(Leiden: Brill, 2021). including a very strong quantitative component.
Yeh, Wen-hsin. The Alienated Academy. Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919-1937 . (Cambridge; Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

post-1949

Much relevant information on education on a high school and university level can be found in studies on the Red Huards during the Cultural Revolution, since these were mainly of that particular age and since their activities were to a substantial extent inspired by their educational expectations and frustrations. There is a huge literature on education in the PRC and the following survey only scratches the surface. Useful are the bibiographical essays by Suzanne Pepper, in: Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank eds. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14, pp.599-561 and Vol. 15, pp. 916-922.

Bastid, Marianne. "Chinese Educational Policies in the 1980s and Economic Development." China Quarterly 98 (June 1984), 189-219.
Broaded, C. Montgomery. "The Lost and Found Generation: Cohort Succession in Chinese Higher Education." Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 23 (Jan 1990), 77-95.

Chan, Betty Po-King. "People's Republic of China and its early childhood education and teacher training." In: Chan, Betty Po-King, ed. Early childhood toward the 21st century: a worldwide perspective ( Hong Kong; Gaithersburg, Md.: Yew Chung Education Pub. Co., 1990) 441-455.
John Cleverley, The Schooling of China: Tradition and Modernity in Chinese Education (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985, 1991). Mainly based on PRC Chinese sources, ignores much Western secondary literature.
Davin, Delia. "The Early Childhood Education of the Only Child Generation in Urban Areas of Mainland China." Issues and Studies (Taipei) 26, no.4 (Apr 1990), 83-104.
Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, with Kay Ann Johnson, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). This book contains a wealth of good anecdotal information on education and literacy, but only part of this can be found by relying on the rather incomplete index.
Hayhoe, Ruth. China's Universities and the Open Door ( Armonk: Sharpe, 1989).
Hayhoe, Ruth. "China's Universities Since Tiananmen: A Critical Assessment." China Quarterly 134 (Jun 1993), 291-309.
Hayhoe, Ruth; Pan, Julia, eds. East-West Dialogue in Knowledge and Higher Education ( Armonk: Sharpe, 1996). Hayhoe is one of the most productive writers and editors of collective volumes on Chinese (higher) education, these more recent publications should allow the diligent bibliographer to find his or her way to her other writings.
Henze, Jürgen. "Statistical Documentation in Chinese Education. Where Reality Ends and Myth Begins." Canadian and International Education 16.1 (1987), 198-210.
Lin, Bih-Jaw; Fan, Li-min, eds. Education in mainland China: review and evaluation .(Taipei: Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University 1990) (English monograph series / Institute of International Relations, no.37.) not yet seen
Pepper, Suzanne. "Education for the New Order." In: MacFarquhar, Roderick; Fairbank, John K., eds. The Cambridge History of China: volume 14: The People's Republic, part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949-1965 . Cambridge, Eng.; New York: Cambridge UP, 1987, 185-217.
Pepper, Suzanne. "New Directions in Education." In: MacFarquhar, Roderick; Fairbank, John K., eds. The Cambridge History of China: volume 14: The People's Republic, part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949-1965 ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), pp. 398-431 (bibliographical essay, pp.599-561).
Pepper, Suzanne. "Education." In: MacFarquhar, Roderick; Fairbank, John K., eds. The Cambridge History of China: volume 15: The People's Republic, part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese revolution 1966-1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991) pp. 540-593 (bibliographical essay, pp. 916-922).
Pepper, Suzanne. "Post-Mao Reforms in Chinese Education: Can the Ghosts of the Past be Laid to Rest." In: Epstein, Irving, ed. Chinese Education: Problems, Policies, and Prospects. (New York: Garland, 1991) pp. 1-41.
Pepper, Suzanne. "Educational Reform in the 1980s: A Retrospective on the Maoist Era." In: Kau, Michael Ying-Mao; Marsh, Susan H., eds. China in the Era of Deng Xiaoping: A Decade of Reform . (Armonk: Sharpe, 1993) pp. 224-284.
Pepper, Suzanne, China's Education Reform in the 1980s: Policies, Issues, and Historical Perspectives. (China Research Monograph; 36) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1996). Detailed study, based on fieldwork and written sources. Also good for general introduction to various aspects of education, although the thrust of the book is the post-1949 situation. The author has been publishing on this topic since the late 1970s.
R.F. Price, Education in Communist China (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970). General survey by someone without command of Chinese, but with two years in China from 1965-1967 as an English language teacher.
Schoenhals, Martin. The Paradox of Power in a People's Republic of China Middle School ( Armonk: Sharpe, 1993) (Studies on contemporary China).
Shirk, Susan L. Competitive Comrades. Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) [LA1133.7.S553 1982] review in China Quarterly 97 (1984), 135-7.
Stig ThØgersen, "China's Senior Middle Schools in A Social Perspective: a Survey of Yantai District, Shandong Province," China Quarterly 109 (1987) 72-100. Interesting article based on fieldwork in a fairly well-to-do and "open" region.
Stig Thøgersen, Secondary Education in China after Mao: Reform and Social Conflict (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990)
Stig Thøgersen, "Through the Sheeps Intestines - Selection and Elitism in Chinese Schools." The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 21 (Jan. 1989), 29-56.
Thøgersen, Stig, County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong. Details above.
Tsui, Kai-yuen. "Economic Reform and Attainment in Basic Education in China." China Quarterly 149 (Mar 1997), 104-127.
Unger, Jonathan. Education Under Mao. Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960-1980 . (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
The World Bank, ed. China: Long-Term Issues and Options. Annex A: Issues and Prospects in Education. A World Bank Country Study. (Washington D.C. The World Bank, 1985).
The World Bank, ed. China. Higher Education Reform. A World Bank Country Study (Washington D.C. The World Bank, 1997)
Zarrow, Peter Gue, Educating China: knowledge, society and textbooks in a modernizing world, 1902-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2015). Excellent study of teaching and textbooks in the Republican period, covering a variety of topics including the introduction of vernacular Chinese.
Zhao, Simon X.B.; Tong, Christopher S.P. "Spatial Disparity in China's Educational Development: An Assessment from the Perspective of Economic Growth." China Information (Leiden) 11, no.4 (Spr 1997), 14-40.

c. Reading and writing (technical aspects)
Here the bibliography by W. Behr is very strong.

Alleton, Viviane, "L'écriture chinoise se lit-elle différement des écritures alphabétiques?", Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie XIII(1995)
Hsuan-Chih Chen and Ovid J.L. Tzeng eds., Language Processing in Chinese (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992). Articles by Flores d'Arcais, Chao-min Cheng, Rumjahn Hoosain, Hsuan-chih Chen a.o. based on extensive experimental research suggests that phonological mediation generally takes place before reading. Reading on the basis of visual cues alone apparently does not take place under normal circumstances.
John DeFrancis, Nationalism and Language Reform in China ( ) On the post 1949 writing reforms in the PRC.
John DeFrancis, The Chinese language: fact and fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984)
John DeFrancis, Visible Speech: The Diverse Oness of Writing Systems (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Pres, 1989). On the nature of Chinese and other writing systems, one of the few authors who is really critical about Rawski's conclusions and who mentions the crucial fact that people forget characters when they do not use them.( reviews : B. King, Lg. 67 [1991]: 377-379; K. Krippes, General Linguistics 30 [1990]: 126-129; O. Tzeng, Contemporary Psychology, 36 [1992]: 982; T.G. Palaima, Minos 25-26 [1990-91]: 441-46; O. Varný, ArOr 61: 210-; A. Kaye, Word 44 [1993] 2: 318-323)
Wm. C. Hannas, Asia's Orthographic Dilemma (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). Deals with a whole range of issues deriving from the sinitic script in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam: their histories, the nature of representation (what do the symbols stand for), the issue of learning the script(s) and literacy, reading, and recent changes involving this script/these scripts. Very readable, summarizes much relevant research, detailed bibliography, polemical, essentially continues the line of work of John DeFrancis.
Chen-Chin Hsu, Yeng-Kwang Yang, Tzung-Lieh Yeh, Shin-Jaw Chen, Jung-Ming Luo, "Reading Success and Failure in Logographic Writing Systems: Children Learning to Read Chinese Do Evidence Reading Disabilities", in: Tsung-yi Lin, Wen-shing Tseng and Eng-kung Yeh eds., Chinese Societies and Mental Health (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995) 93-105. Further analysis of the part on Taiwan from an international study led by H.W. Stevenson and others, on reading disabilities in America, Taiwan and Japan. Relevant for understanding the ultimately verbal (non-visual) nature of the Chinese writing system.
Chad Hansen "Chinese ideographs and Western ideas", Journal of Asian Studies 52: 2 (1993) 373-399 . He is in favour of the theory of reading Chinese characters without pronouncing. This article was followed by some fierce and even vituperous debate. The issue is dealt with well in the book by Hannas (1997)
Taylor, Insup & Martin J. Taylor eds., Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese ( Studies in Written Language and Literacy ; 3) (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1995) (not seen)
Tzeng, Ovid & Daisy Hung, "Reading in a nonalphabetical writing system", in J.F. Kavanagh et al. Eds., Orthography, reading, and dyslexia (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1980), pp. 211-226. Tzeng is one of the main students of reading processes from a physical point of view.
Tzeng, O.D., D. Hung, B. Cotton & W. Yang, "Visual lateralisation effects in reading Chinese characters", Nature 202 (1979) 499-501.
Wang Jian, Albrecht Inhoff & Hsuan-Chih Chen, Reading Chinese Script : A Cognitive Analysis (New York: L. Erlbaum Assoc., 1999) (not yet seen)

d. Communication

Zhu Chuanyu, Xianqin tang song ming qing chuanbo shiye lunji (Taibei: Taiwanshangwu yishuguan, 1988). State communication (such things as Capital Gazettes, memorials etc.)

Propaganda

Deng, Gang Development versus stagnation: technological continuity and agricultural progress in pre-modern China (Westport, Conn. [etc.] : Greenwood Press, 1993). Despite its title first and foremost a detailed study of the agircultural handbook (nongshu) in traditional CHina. As such it deals with an important and welld-documented instance of traditional propaganda by literati and managers.
David Holm, Art and Ideology in revolutionary China (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). The book version of Holm's dissertation only deals with Yangge theatre and its change from a form of local ritual theatre into a propaganda form for communicating political and moral messages. The dissertation version "Art and Ideology of the Yenan Period, 1937-1945," (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 1979) is still relevant, because it deals extensively with New Year Prints, its traditions and its manipulation for political purposes in the Yan'an period. Full of hard to find information on people's perceptions of New Year Prints and their propaganda versions. Shows the need to be sceptical about the spread and importance of literacy. Also testifies to the richness of pre-1949 investigations on popular perceptions of (attempts at) party propaganda.
Stefan Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Modernization (Amsterdam and Singpaore: The Pepin Pres, 1995). On the propaganda poster from the Four Modernizations era. With index, but no bibliography, but extremely richly illustrated. The doctoral dissertation "Visualizing the Future" (Leiden, 1994) is analytically more detailed, richly annotated, with extensive bibliography. Also check out the author's rich website on the Chinese propaganda poster, http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger
E. Perry Link, The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System (Princeton UP: Princeton, 2000). To be read in conjunction with Kraus .

censorship

Maghiel van Crevel, "Butsen en scheuren in de officiële werkelijkheid", Armada 7:25 (February 2002) 37-49. Dutch article on censorship in the PRC.
Hillenbrand, Margaret (2020). Negative exposures. Knowing what not to know in contemporary China. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hockx, Michel. "In Defense of the Censor: Literary Autonomy and State Authority in Shanghai, 1930-1936." Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 2, 1 (July 1998): 1-30.
Various studies touching on the result of censorship in pre-modern and (mostly) modern China in: Bernhard Führer ed., Zensur - Text und Autorität in China in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Wiesbaden : Otto Harrassowitz, 2003).
Anne Sytske Keijser, "Onzichtbare films: Gedogen en verbieden in de Volksrepubliek China" ("Invisible films: Tolerating and prohibiting in the People's Republic of China"), in: Sjef Houppermans, Remke Kruk & Henk Maier (eds), Rapsoden en rebellen: Literatuur en politiek in verschillende culturen, Amsterdam: Rozenberg, 2003: 167-181. Excellent article on censuring and censorship of Chinese films, as well as more generally on political interference with films in the PRC.
Perry Link, "The Anaconda in the Chandelier", China Rights Forum, 2002-1: pp 26-31, previously published (?April 2002) in The New York Review of Books (not seen, on censorship and self-censorship)
Bonnie McDougall, "Censorship & Self-Censorship in Contemporary Chinese Literature," in: Susan Whitfield ed., After the Event: Human Rights and their Future in China (London: Wellsweep, 1993) (not yet seen).
Margaret Roberts, Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018)
Schneider, F. (2023). Communication and Censorship (C. Shei, & Q. Cao, Eds.). Routledge
Michael Schoenhals, "Media Censorship in the People's Republic of China", in: Susan Whitfield ed. After the Event: Human Rights and their Future in China (London: Wellsweep, 1993) (not yet seen).
Vivian Wagner, Erinneringsverwaltung in China: Staatsarchive und Politik in der Volksrepublik (Böhlau: Köln, 2006). In a detailed investigation of archives until and especially after 1949, the author also frequently touches upon issues of censorship and secrecy/secretiveness. A huge and fascinating work of scholarship.
Michael Zimmer, "Zensierte 'Kleinigkeiten': Eine Bewertung der Erfolge und Misserfolge staatlicher Verbote gegenüber der Erzäliteratur der xiaoshuo in den Dynastien Ming und Qing", in: Bernhard Führer ed., Zensur - Text und Autorität in China in Geschichte und Gegenwart : (Wiesbaden : Otto Harrassowitz, 2003), pp. 46-57

newspapers

Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1998). Also on late Ming "newspapers".
Harris, Lane J., The Peking gazette : a reader in nineteenth-century Chinese history (Brill: Leiden, 2018). Uses the translations from the gazette to illustrates aspects of Qing history.
Joan Judge, Print and Politics: 'Shibao' and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). On late Qing journalism and its place in the changing political culture of the late Qing, such as its contribution to a new kind of public citizinship beyond and besides the state. Includes a list of late Qing journalists
Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and China in China's News Media (accepted by Harvard University Press). Based on an analysis of the Shenbao, it attempts to show how the foreign medium newspaper was transformed to fit the taste of its Chinese readerships, by incorporating the Chinese court gazette on its pages, by using authoritative quotations from the Chinese Classics, or by adapting Chinese literary forms, such as that of the early classical short story or the examination essay. Analyzes the role of women and of the inhabitants of Shanghai. Finally, it asks whether or not this particular Shanghai newspaper, and many of the newspapers that followed in its wake, were indeed responsible for the development of a Chinese nationalism in Shanghai. The book critically questions the fundamental assumption reiterated since the publication of Benjamin Anderson's Imagined Communities that newspapers were indeed powerful agents in the formation of (Chinese) nationalism and the (Chinese) public sphere. This is one of a series of studies that originate in the "Public Sphere" project carried out by R.Wagner in the 1990s at Heidelberg University.
Emily Mokros, The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China: State News and Political Authority. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. Based on an extensive viewing of original Peking Gazettes. See also the book by Standaert below.
Nicolas Standaert, The Chinese Gazette in European Sources (Brill: Leiden, 2022). An earlier version appeared as an article in T'oung Pao.Also see the book by Mokros above.
Natascha Vittinghoff, Die Anfänge des Journalismus in China (1860 - 1911) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002). This is the commercial edition of a 1998 dissertation. It focuses on the beginnings of journalism, using both the newspapers themselves, and external evidence such as biographical sources, archives, and so forth. She approaches journalism as a social phenomenon, rather than singling out great individuals who were responsible for all innovation. She looks both at the journalists and the readers. This is one of a series of studies that originate in the "Public Sphere" project carried out by R.Wagner in the 1990s at Heidelberg University. Her bibliography provides extensive further references; the state of the field is analyzed at the outset of this book.

Underground

Lena Henningsen,Cultural Revolution Manuscripts: Unofficial Entertainment Fiction from 1970s China, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Ian Johnson, Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future (Oxford: OXford UP, 2023).
Website of underground literature

e. Modern printing

Brokaw, Cynthia Joanne and Christopher A. Reed eds., From woodblocks to the Internet : Chinese publishing and print culture in transition, circa 1800 to 2008 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Contains wealth of relevan articles, esp. on the modern period.
Jean Pierre Drège, La Commercial Press de Shanghai, 1897-1949 (Paris: Collége de France, 1978).
Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitlism, 1876-1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004). On the introduction of mechanized printing (lettertype, lythography, etc.) in Shanghai. Excellent book, but frustratingly unaware of the extensive research on Shanghai done in Heidelberg since the 1990s, including that on "public sphere" (newspapers etc.). The same unawareness extends to other developments in Europe, of an older date. Thus, the Leiden publisher referred to on p. 306 n. 68 which bought a specific Chinese font in 1845 is obviously Brill (then still E.J. Brill). Part of their printing reputation was based on their ability to use non-Western fonts and long more or less had the European monopoly on a Chinese font (when I was a student in the late 1970s, it was said that their printer traditionally knew no Chinese, but was able to find the required characters nonetheless).
Xu Xiaoman, "'Preserving the Bonds of Kin': Genealogy Masters and Genealogy Production in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Areain the Qing and Republican Periods," in: Brokaw, Cynthia J. and Chow, Kai-wing eds., Printing and book culture in late imperial China (Berkeley, CA [etc.]: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 332-367.

f. Literacy

literacy movements
(works that seem more narrowly focused on literacy movements; the following section also contains further relevant studies with a slightly broader focus)

Klaus Belde, Saomang: Kommunistische Alphabetisierungsarbeit (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1982). Remains superficial, focuses on the campaigns and the internal Chinese evaluations of their success or failure.
Charles Hayford, "Literacy Movements in Modern China," in Harvey Graff & Robert Arnove (ed.), Literacy movements in historical perspective (Plenum Press 1987): 147-171, The volume has been reprinted as Robert F. Arnove, and Harvey J. Graff, eds., National Literacy Campaigns and Movements: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Charles W. Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). On JAmes Yen (Yan Yangchu 晏阳初 1893 - 1990), including his Mass Education/ Literacy work and itrs larger contemproary context.
Kate Merkel-Hess, "Reading the Rural Modern: Literacy and Morality in Republican China," History Compass 7.1 (2009): 44-54.
Kate Merkel-Hess, The Rural Modern: Reconstructing the Self and State in Republican China (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016). Includes a discussion of schools in creating a "rural modern."
Glen Peterson (different studies in the next section)
Paul Serruys, Survey of the Chinese Language Reform and the Anti-Illiteracy Movement in Communist China (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, Univ. of California, 1962)
ThØgersen, Stig, County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong.
Youru Zhong, "“Sacred, the Laborers”: Writing Chinese in the First World War," Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 22 (2017): 296-324. This article focuses on the Chinese laborers in World War I France and their writing activities there.

the issue of literacy

???, "Chûgoku ni okeru shikuji mondai," Waseda daigaku kyôiku gakubu gaku? kenkyû 42 (1994) 1-16.Not read
Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, with Kay Ann Johnson, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). This book contains a wealth of good anecdotal information on literacy, but this can not be found by relying on the rather incomplete index.
William Lavely, Xiao Zhenyu, Li Bohua and Ronal Freedman, "The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns," China Quarterly 121 (1990) 61-93. Nice and differentiated analysis of female education figures from the 1982 census, arranged in age cohorts to allow for historical analysis. Differentiates between urban and rural, regions, core and periphery. Much more optimistic than Peterson and Seeberg, who approach the matter in a combined qualitative and quantitive way.
Nancy Pine, "A comparison of two cultures' complex graphical knowledge prerequisite to literacy (china, united states, semiotics)" (The Claremont Graduate School, PhD dissertation, 1993) (not yet seen)
Glen Peterson, "State Literacy Ideologies and the Transformation of Rural China," The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32 (1994) 95-120. One of the few articles that asks more than merely how many people could read and write, or how many were educated until what level. Instead it asks after the actual implications of literacy after 1949, i.e. did it bring power for literate people or further (or different kinds of) subjugation. Takes Seeberg into account.
------------, "The Struggle for Literacy in Post-Revolutionary Rural Guangdong," China Quarterly (1994) 926-943.
------------, The Power of Words: Literacy and Revolution in South China, 1949-1995 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1997). Discusses the development of literacy policies in the province of Guangdong. Strong also on institutional aspects. (not seen).
Brenda Prouser, "Official and popular literacies in the people's republic of china: a search for shared perspectives," (The University of Michigan, PhD 1990( (Not yet seen)
Vilma Seeberg, Literacy in China: the Effect of the National Development Context and Policy on Literacy Levels, 1949-1979 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1990). Actually a PhD from 1989 (the date of 1979 in the author's preface must be a mistake) by a German scholar, partly trained in the USA! Utterly unreadable, but very useful piece of research, in which the results of the 1982 population census on literacy in China are highly critically reevaluated. Distinguishes between levels of literacy and raises the issue of literacy maintenance. The author concludes that after 1949 literacy has even decreased in the period from 1958 until 1976. Actual literacy (of a usable variety) may still not exceed 30 % by very much.
Vilma Seeberg, The Rhetoric and Reality of Mass Education in Mao's China (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000). Essentially the same as the 1990 book (but not properly acknowledged), with a new introduction, but without taking into account subsquent research.
Swetz, Frank J., ed, "Popular science readers: an aid for achieving scientific literacy in the PRC," Chinese Education (White Plains) 11, no.1 (1978) 3-106 (not seen)
ThØgersen, Stig, County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong. Strangely ignores the work by Vilma Seeberg. For more on this work, see above.
Walberg, Herbert J., "Scientific literacy and economic productivity in international perspective," Daedalus 112, no.2 (1983) 1-28 (not seen)

Reading practice

Li, Wenling, Janet S. Gaffney and Jerome L. Packard, Chinese Children's Reading Acquisition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Issues (Kluwer: Boston etc., 2002). Continues the material collected by Behr in his bibliography below.
Christina Neder, Lesen in der Volksrepublik China: eine empirisch-qualitative Studie zu Leseverhalten und Lektürepräferenzen der Pekinger Stadtbevölkerung vor dem Hintergrund der Transformation des chinesischen Buch-und Verlagswesen 1978-1995 (Hamburg : Institut für Asienkunde, 1999). Rare study on actual reading habits in the city of Beijing in the period 1975-1995.
Agnes, S. Schick-Chen, "'Erlesenes' Recht: Der Faktor Lesen im Prozess der Herausbildung eines chinesischen Rechtsbewusstseins nach 1979", Führer (2005) 251-268.

g. The formation of modern Chinese

Elisabeth Kaske, The politics of language in Chinese education, 1895-1919 (Brill: Leiden, 2008). Fabulous book on the political dimensions of the transformation of using the tradiitonal "Classical" writing language to the use of a new writing language (so-called spoken CHinese).
Federico Masini, The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and its Evolution Toward a National Language: the Period from 1840-1898 , in: Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Monograph Series 6 (1993)
Jing Tsu, Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora (Harvard UP: Cmabridge Mass., 2010). I am not sure where to put this book, but it deals with the notion l;of literary governance in the Chinese diaspora, i.e. the creation of a national language (let's call it modern Chinese) and the concommittant urge to find new methods of writing down the language such as by |Lin Yutang and others. I have not yet been able to read the book, which looks at first sight a bit daunting to me in terms of its theoretical approach. For one review see the one on MCLC.

h. Numeracy (desideratum)

Some material is contained in discussion of literacy and education, especially under the keywords arithmetic and mathematics, but never very substantial.

i. Minorities

Nicholas Tapp, Sovereignty and Rebellion: The White Hmong of Northern Thailand (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1989, 1990). Discusses the Miao/Hmong loss of literacy myth (shared by other ethnic groups as well).

j. Gender aspects

Also check the section 1. Traditional China, i. Women

Bauer, John, et al. "Gender Inequality in Urban China: Education and Employment. " Modern China 18.3 (Jul 1992), 333-370.
William Lavely, Xiao Zhenyu, Li Bohua and Ronal Freedman, "The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns," China Quarterly 121 (1990) 61-93.

3. ORALITY

The distinction between primary and secondary orality is intended as a heuristic distinction, between orality as the earliest stage of communication, i.e. before the pervasive use of writing in certain social layers, and the oral transmission of all kinds of information in a society/social layers in which literacy can be accessed relatively freely.

a. General

David Ze, "Walter Ong's Paradigm and Chinese Literacy," Canadian Journal of Communication 20.4 (1995) (PRECISE INFO) Discusses Walter Ong's notions of orality in connection with imperial Chinese evidence.
http://pascalfroissart.online.fr/1-annuaire/01-reference.html: website with extensive bibliography on all aspects of rumor.

b.Primary orality
(see also preceding sections of this bibliography, esp. 1.d. The Classical Period)

Alexander Beecroft, "Oral Formula and Intertextuality in the Chinese "Folk" Tradition (Yuefu), Early Medieval China 15 (2009) 23-47. On anonymous yuefu as poetry with strong oral characteristics.
Behr, Wolfgang (2006). "Spiegelreflex: Reste einer Wu-Überlieferung der Lieder im Licht einer spät-Han-zeitlichen Bronze-inschrift" [Mirror reflex: Remnants of a Wu tradition of the Odes in the light of a Late Han bronze inscription]. In: Stumpfeldt, Hans; Friedrich, Michael; Emmerich, Reinhard; van Ess, Hans. Han-Zeit: Festschrift für Hans Stumpfeldt aus Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages (Lun Wen, Studien zur Geistesgeschichte und Literatur in China). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 333-358. Continues an approach by Martin Kern with reference to rich phonological evidence from a mirror inscription on the importance of oral transmission and aural reception of the so-called Book of Song/Odes as late as the Eastern Han.
Richard A. Kunst, "The Original Yijing : A Text, Phonetic Transcription, Translation and Indexes with Sample Glosses" (Ph.D. diss., University of California,Berkeley, 1985) . Including important remarks on the formulaic dimension of Yijing
Michael Puett, "Sages, Ministers, and Rebels: Narratives from Early China Concerning the Initial Creation of the State," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58: 2(1998) 425-479. He stresses that early "mythological" accounts functioned as rethorical arguments and do not necessarily reflect one "original" or "true" oral mythical tradition. His analysis supports my notion of the pre-Han (minimally) existence of an oral culture with floating narrative structures (on which also Sarah Allan's first book). The free use of the material in the Luxing chapter (dated to circa fourth century B.C.) from Shu recalls the way in which Shu and Shi "quotations" (I would call these diffferently, given the absence of written mother-books from which is quoted) are used for varying rethorical purposes.
Saussy, Haun, "Repetition, Rhyme, and Exchange in the Book of Odes", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57 (2): (1997) 519-542 (not seen)
Schaberg's Zuozhuan dissertation - book has come out!

Schaberg, David "Song and the Historical Imagination in Early China", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59:2 (1999) 305-361.

C.H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). Analyzes the Shijing as a book derived from a once oral tradition, showing itself in its extensive use of the kind of fixed formulae first pointed out by Milton Parry and Albert Lord for Homer and Yugoslavian epics. I would disagree, since I see the present work as the late end-product of a courtly song culture (like the Book of Changes ).

Steven van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality : Readings, Exegesis,and Hermeneutics (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Pr., 1991)

From oral to written

Ad Dudink
Charles H. Egan, "Reconsidering the Role of Folk Songs in Pre-T'ang Yüeh-fu development", T'oung Pao LXXXVI: 1-3 (2000) 47-99. Excellent discussions on "folk songs", Yüeh-fu and orality. Points out amonst many other things that being composed for oral/aural usage does not mean folk origin.
Fraser, Sarah, Performing the visual: the practice of Buddhist wall painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004) is full of relevant comments on the relationship between oral culture, narrative culture (the Transformation texts) visual culture and writing.

c. Secondary orality

Børdahl, Vibeke The Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996) [GR336.Y36 B67] (reviews: Asian Folklore Studies vol. 56-1 [1997] 177-178). Excellent book on storytelling in Yangzhou, but note that this is story telling in a written context and taking its cue in part from written traditions. This is not the direct continuation from pre-theatrical ,pre-scriptural storytelling.
Mair, Victor H., T'ang transformation texts : a study of the Buddhist contribution to the rise of vernacular fiction and drama in China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989) contains mnay valuable remarks on orality (e.g. Chapter Five, pp. 110-151) He uses Patrick Hanan's term of "simulated context" to point to the use of techniques used to create an atmosphere or semblance of orality. He calls this secondary orality.
Keulemans, Paize. Sound rising from the paper : nineteenth-century martial arts fiction and the Chinese acoustic imagination (Cambridge Massachusetts; London: Published by Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)
Anne E. McLaren, Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998). Includes discussion of the different way in which the chantefables and later vernacular fiction use the storyteller's mode of narration. She points out that in the earlier chantefables, the storyteller and his audience are only implied in the text, whereas later vernacular fiction makes the storytelling and the listening, the tellers and the audience present in the text itself. The chantefables were composed to be read aloud for an audience of fellow listeners, and did not require such information. In later vernacular fiction, which was meant to be read, this information became crucial to keep up the fiction of storytelling.

d. Others
For the time being I will put stuff here that does not fit in the present system of headings for orality. More is also contained in various sections above.

Yasuhiko Karasawa, "Between oral and written cultures : Buddhist monks in Qing legal plaints", Hegel, Robert E. and Katherine Carlitz eds., Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).
Zelin, Madeleine, Ocko, Jonathan K., Gardella, Robert eds., Contract and Property in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004) contains various useful studies (check the index, for instance under 'enforcement', 'oral testimony').

"Writing, literacy & orality in ancient China"

(this bibiography from 2000 can be downloaded as bib-project.PDF).

( W. Behr , formerly Universität Bochum, F.R.G.; now at Zürich University, Switzerland)

Literacy, writing and education in Chinese culture: bibliography by Barend ter Haar

Practical information:

1. TRADITIONAL CHINA

0. General (includes conference volumes, Festschrifte, general surveys) (especially relevant articles have been separately listed below)

a. General

b. Acquiring literacy

c. education of children

d. The classical period (Han and pre-Han)

Origins of writing

Bronze and stone inscriptions:

Source books

Regular secondary literature

Early writing as practice/ritual (Han and pre-Han)

Manuscript finds (Han and pre-Han)

The earliest books/the classics

The Qin and writing/the written

f. Printing and reading

Song onwards (the rise of a book culture)

vernacular literature

h. Contracts and letters

Contracts (oral and written)

Epistolary culture