科研成果详情

In imperial China, the Yijing was a Confucian classic tested in the civil service examinations. After the 1911 Revolution, it lost its august status and became a relic of the past. It was condemned as a source of superstition and a tool of political control. But throughout the twentieth century, many Chinese scholars attempted to reinvent the Yijing as an allegory of China's modernization. This chapter examines this transformation of the Yijing by focusing on three momentous events. First, the chapter compares the writings of two revolutionary leaders, Zhang Taiyan (1868–1936) and Hang Xinzhai (1869–1942), who, in the 1910s, used the Yijing to predict China's political change. Second, it examines the historicization of the Yijing in mid-twentieth century that turned the text into a record of China's progression. Third, it assesses the impact of commercialization on the Yijing since the 1990s. This study will demonstrate that the Yijing is indeed the Book of Changes that changes—both its image and its function—in response to the times.