This database of prices, wages, and transport costs in public construction of Zhili province in the Qianlong reign has been set up in cooperation of the Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, and the Institute for History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. The participants of our project group were Juliane Kiefner, Christine Moll-Murata, and Hans Ulrich Vogel from Tübingen, and Chen Chaoyong and Su Rongyu from Beijing. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V., Germany.

The Zhili edition of "Regulations and precedents on prices of materials" is the most voluminous of all comparable provincial statistics. The database contains more than 10,000 single entries. Data input and web presentation were done by Juliane Kiefner. Chen Chaoyong and Christine Moll-Murata helped with translations, and Su Rongyu and Christine Moll-Murata proof-read all data. In case English terms for building materials remain to be clarified, Hanyu pinyin is given as a preliminary rendering. An English-Chinese glossary for all occurring terms is under construction.

The prices and wages in these statistics were used for settling the accounts for the building projects of the provincial government with the Ministry for Public Works. They give the rates which the Zhili provincial government could request to be reimbursed by the central government. According to the prefatory edicts, they reflect market prices at medium market activity, but some are also indicated as being extrapolated from earlier prices.

The Zhili edition of "Regulations and precedents on prices of materials" we have used is in the holdings of Qinghua University Library, Beijing. It is an official printing in 24 juan, and it covers 15 prefectures fu, 5 of these are zhili zhou, split up in 139 districts/subprefectures xian or zhou. It has the same introductory memorial, dated 1769, and other prefatory material, as the provincial editions of Henan, Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Yunnan. A punctuated version of the prefatory material was set up for the Gansu database by Chen Chaoyong. Please refer to the Gansu database for other editorial materials.

Comments and ideas are always welcome. Please contact Juliane Kiefner or sinologie@uni-tuebingen.de.

Related URL: Union List of Handicraft Regulations in Chinese and International Collections

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Juliane Kiefner sinologie@uni-tuebingen.de.

Database of prices, wages, and transport costs in public construction of Zhili province in the Qianlong reign

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