Fuzhou Boating Catholics in Late Imperial China

Chinese University of Hong Kong

The current project of CHAI Xiuli is regarding one group of Chinese boating people living at the edge of “Fuzhou”(Foochow) city – one of provincial capitals in Southeast China. Those people’s conversion might date back to the 18^th Century, and the missionaries who took care of them were Spanish come from Manila, Philippine. Because of peculiar living way and production mode, boatmen had been considered as one of “people not being governed”, who kept distance from common agrarian citizens, and even the state power found it difficult to penetrate in their mysterious communities. As a case study aimed at the boating population with a foreign religious marker, “Fuzhou Boating Catholics” could also help reviewing the impact of Europeans and maritime trade in East Asia on coastal areas of China during the early modern era.

CHAI Xiuli studies History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong(CUHK) under supervision of Professor HSIUNG Ping-chen. CHAI has hold a Master degree in Anthropology at CUHK and a Bachelor degree in Journalism at Fudan University. Before back to campus, she had worked as an editor in the Sino-maps Press - the most authoritative map-making publishing house in mainland China for 4 years. To some extends, a variety of maps which she accessed to in the career developed her academic interests in regional culture, the colonial history after 1600s and the formation of Chinese nationalism in modern times, etc.