I’m still not accustomed to the University of Washington’s quarter system, which crams three semesters into the normal academic year. While quarters are short, meaning a class can only torment you so long, it also brings faster deadlines and more assignments. Another downside is that, while most of my peers around the country have already commenced their summer breaks—I imagine them binging Netflix, feet kicked up sipping Oberon, probably having a hearty chuckle at my expense—I will be trudging on until mid June. Luckily for me, this spring quarter has been the most fun I’ve ever had as a student.
Rather than a typical quarter of seminar classes in which you solely read what other scholars have written about your field, this quarter has been all about direct engagement with Chinese primary sources. I’m taking a course on imperial documents from the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), a research class where I’m writing a paper based on a special collection of personal documents from a Chinese newspaperman of the Republican period (1912–49), and classical Chinese.
The bulk of my work, then, has me knee-deep in historical sources and fine obscurities that only someone who has willingly signed their life away to a five-to-seven-year graduate program would appreciate. In no imaginable real-world setting will the ability to read a Qing court memorial ever come in handy, yet learning the ins and outs of imperial bureaucratic writing is beyond fascinating to me, like the fact that ministers had to begin a new line of text any time they invoked the emperor’s name.
Because we are most comfortable in dusty pages of old books, doing grunt work deep in the nitty-gritty bowels of the archive, I’ve heard it said that historians are the “mules of academia.” Perhaps this rationalizes the tens of hours I’ve spent this quarter at bright screens in the library’s microfilm room, whittling away the life expectancy of my still-20/20 vision, to examine hundred-year old Chinese newspapers, or the slow, painful labor of love I’m undertaking to learn how to decipher cursive Chinese so as to be able to read handwritten diaries.
Even so, ninety-five percent of my research content will never be shared with the outside world, will never make it into anything I publish or teach, which has challenged me to ponder the stakes of my work. Why study and write about history? I like how Moon-ho Jung, one of my professors, has articulated it: “History is transformative for how we see and act in the world, a creative process through which we begin to see what might have been and what could be.”
The more I delve into archives of the period I study, early twentieth century China, the more I discover parallels between the human experience across time and space. China at that time faced unprecedented change and challenges: the collapse of a dynastic system thousands of years old, a sham democratic government dominated by warlords, and foreign imperialism. Eventually, two parties rose up, the Communists and the Nationalists, who hated each other so much that they could never work together, even to resist the existential threat of the Japanese in the 1930s.
In response to crises, every kind of organizational and political theory was explored, from democracy, to science and technology, to anarchism, to socialism, to communism, to utopian visions where nation states melted away altogether into global citizenship. Many intellectuals blamed Chinese traditional culture as the root of the country’s weakness—even advocating to abolish the Chinese writing system—while others longed for Confucian morality to be a salve to cure the excesses of capitalism, industrialism, and exploitation. There were people who dared to hope, people who forsook everything for a cause, people who stubbornly promoted the status quo and protected their own interests, and people who became victims in the crossfire.
The period was awash with possibilities, bold thinking, rash plans, and foolish dreams. I cannot predict where we are headed as humanity in the twenty-first century—the prognosis is not positive—but I know that good history, by uncovering moments when new possibilities emerged and when unjust power structures were challenged, inspires me to take on the seemingly insurmountable problems in this world. The paradox is that history also proves we will never fully solve these problems either. But it’s worth caring, it’s worth trying, and for me, it’s worth all those seemingly useless hours in the archive.
Chad Westra (’15) is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington where he studies modern Chinese history. He enjoys chess, following Detroit sports, and caring for the overgrowth of plants in his condo.
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I long for the salve of Confucian morality. Do you know where I can buy some? Love your writing Chad.