What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China

by Tobie Meyer-Fong

The Taiping Rebellion was one of the costliest civil wars in human history. Many millions of people lost their lives. Yet while the Rebellion has been intensely studied by scholars in China and elsewhere, we still know little of how individuals coped with these cataclysmic events.

Drawing upon a rich array of primary sources, What Remains explores the issues that preoccupied Chinese and Western survivors. Individuals, families, and communities grappled with fundamental questions of loyalty and loss as they struggled to rebuild shattered cities, bury the dead, and make sense of the horrors that they had witnessed.

Driven by compelling accounts of raw emotion and deep injury, What Remains opens a window to a world described by survivors themselves. This book transforms our understanding of China's 19th century and recontextualizes suffering and loss in China during the 20th century.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Cultural

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2013

Reviews

[Song · Rating 5 out of 5]

太平天国曾经是中国大陆史学界的显学，毕竟农民起义，打败满清统治者，反抗压迫，给地主阶级造成重大冲击，推动了时代发展等等等等，很容易就嫁接到中华民国的排满民族革命，以及中华人民共和国的共产主义革命。因此这场造成2000多万人丧生的内战，就被各路政治家出于各种目的，赋予各种各样所谓的“历史意义”。这些所谓历史意义，核心意思无非就是“这段历史对我有什么用”而已。意义=用途，有意义=有用，无意义=无用。但是，仔细想想，甚至不需要任何高深知识，就能发现这种历史实用主义的荒谬：历史是过去时代的总和，是过去人们经验的总和，如何能够站在后人的立场上来评判有无意义？这个意义的主体是谁？这种历史实用主义的立场，才是最大的历史虚无主义：历史已经不存在了，剩下的只是对我当前的现实有没有意义。活人抹杀了死人，一笔勾销，这就是虚无。

近些年虽然共产主义阶级斗争政治意识形态渲染力度有所减弱，太平天国不再纯粹作为“革命”，“正义”的运动而被鼓吹，大家开始逐渐关注太平天国里各种真实细节，比如唐浩明以太平天国为背景创作的系列小说等等，但这些重点仍然是曾国藩，曾国荃，洪秀全，杨秀清，石达开，洪仁玕这些历史著名人物，围绕的还是太平天国的大事件，安庆之败，攻破天京，江南大营等等，这场波及大半个中国，富庶的江南毁于战火的大动乱，讲下来仍然是帝王将相的军事史和政治史，那些受难的普通人，在历史中仍然缺失不语。

梅教授这本《躁动的亡魂》，补全了历史的缺憾，从社会思潮，悼亡制度，丧葬礼仪，身体服饰，回忆记录等各个方面，全面阐述了江南地区的平民，在太平天国战争中经历的一切。在那个社会结构完全崩解，秩序荡然无存的大混乱之中，普通人经历了什么？他们是如何理解现实的？又是如何事后追忆，以及试图重建秩序的？太平军固然掳掠奸淫，但朝廷的官兵也是不遑多让，这让政府治下的良民百姓们如何理解、消化这些事实？这本书就试图回答这些问题。一个大动乱时代的社会面貌，尽在描画之中。

全书最后一段结尾，点出了本书的主旨：

戰爭結束後，留下了什麼？

當然，留下了情緒，包括對清廷及其地方代理人失信的憤怒，特別是對它們沒能實現保護承諾而產生的憤怒，以及中央未能協助物資而延緩重建所產生的挫折。

留下了紀念景物，包括集體墳塚和紀念湘軍死者、地方死者和盡忠殉節者的祠廟；這些景物帶著利益衝突的烙印，以不同方式建成，由相互競爭的不同群體打理著。

留下了哀痛，對所愛之人死於戰時饑饉、暴力和疾病的哀痛。

留下了家的畫面，那是許多人再也無法返回的安全港灣。即使有人得以返回，也只會突然意識到，屬於那兒的一切都已不復存在。

留下了夢魘般的記憶，關於道路和運河滿是難民和俘虜、水道為屍體擁塞的記憶；市場上售賣人肉的記憶。

留下了擾人的回憶，關於流浪、乞討和被俘者頭髮如何被綁在一起的回憶。

留下了刺青的臉、長出頭髮的前顱、砲火的聲響、鄉音的熟悉腔調、飄蕩不去的腐敗氣味。

留下了受挫感，那種尋覓不到生還者的受挫感，以及既找不到人，又找不到遺骸的打擊。

留下了失去感，過往一度真實且確知的事物都失去了，一切都變得不再真確、不再穩定、不再完整。

留下了尋覓，對答案的尋覓，對蘊含在果報或後來的革命中、新的可靠性的尋覓。

留下了一股揮之不去的不安，對那些被刻意遺忘之事的不安。

这才是真正人的历史，而不是仅仅有历史意义的历史。类似这样的追问，也不仅局限于太平天国。

[Eressea · Rating 4 out of 5]

今年讀完的第六本電子書
閱讀器裡又少一本啦

這本書寫的太平天國
提出了對兩岸而言都很新穎的視角
雖然對沒啥包袱的我來看
似乎就只是現在流行庶民史的一種切入方式
但搭配硬塞進腦中的革命史觀概念
還是可以理解這種"太平天國"的顛覆性
難怪對岸無法出版


對不喜歡近代史的我來說
那些戰爭進程實在沒啥感覺
反而小民紀錄的殘酷戰爭給人深刻的印象
尤其是第六章張光烈的辛酉紀
看了好難過啊
除去沉重的題材
倒是一本好書
就算時代不同
戰爭造成的苦痛卻沒什麼改變

這本書的作者中文造詣似乎不錯
翻譯也挺順暢
書中引用不少成大和中正的碩論
本來期待看到台灣的博論
不過最後沒發現

[Josh Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Troubling memories of roads and canals crowded with refugees and captives; waterways clogged with corpses; human flesh for sale in the markets. Tattooed faces; stubbled foreheads; the sound of cannon fire; the familiar cadence of a hometown accent; the pervasive smell of rot. A sense that what was once true and known was lost, uncertain, unstable, and incomplete." -pg. 207

Not for the faint of heart, but an extremely engrossing look at the aftermath of the Taiping war in 19th century China. Meyer-Fong is largely uninterested in the highly politicized debates over the theology and social organization of the Taiping, she instead investigate how the unimaginably horrific catastrophe of the war was experienced and commemorated, officially and privately. While the general issues of the post-Taiping "Tongzhi restoration" devolution of power to local elites and (final?) revival of Confucian orthodoxy have been explored before, Meyer-Fong probes beyond the cliche platitudes of loyalty, chastity and filial piety, to paint a picture of a society struggling to find transcendent meaning out of fifteen years of chaotic violence. This official account of heroic sacrifice in the service of the dynasty ultimately proved lacking, and Meyer-Fong provides several extremely moving accounts of more personal commemorations. Several sections can get extremely gruesome, (mass graves, cannibalism, I learned there is a four-character idiom meaning trading your children with your neighbors to eat!) but it serves to reinforce the image of total social upheaval and rupture. Highly recommend it to any student of modern China or historical memories of war, could even consider it to be a sort of Chinese counterpart to This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War.

[Jackson P · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's easy to lose sight of what the Taiping war was. When you first learn about it, it's easy to think of the Taiping Rebellion as a wacky event. Even experts sometimes struggle to see the Taiping war as anything other than a preface to 20th century events. Meyer-Fong's book aims to correct that, focusing on the terrible suffering the war inflicted on ordinary people.

This book does exactly what it sets out to do. Meyer-Fong's introduction does a good job of explaining where this book fits into historiography on the Taiping Rebellion. So if the introduction sounds appealing, you'll like the book.

This book assumes you're familiar with the overall course of the war. If you aren't, you might want to start with Spence's book God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan instead.

[obs20 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment to me. It does present some interesting and disturbing accounts of the Taiping Rebellion but almost all of the accounts are from the perspective of Qing sympathizers and propagandists. The Taiping did inspire many to eventually oust the dynasty but very little of that legacy is presented here.

[Resh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th-Century China reimagines the Taiping Rebellion not as an ideological or revolutionary movement but as a human catastrophe. Earlier English-language scholarship on the Taiping focused on the authenticity of Christianity among the rebels or the theology of their leader (p. 2). In China, the rebellion has long been celebrated as a precursor to the Chinese Cultural Revolution; therefore, considerable effort has been made to preserve the uprising in a positive light (p. 13). Such interpretations elevated the Taiping as heroic figures in the story of progress and revolution, rarely acknowledging the immense human suffering the conflict produced. By contrast, Meyer-Fong turns attention from ideology to experience, from collective glory to individual grief. Her work reframes the Taiping not as inspiration but as devastation, bringing human consequence back into a story long claimed by political triumphalism.
The book investigates how people in the Jiangnan region, particularly around Nanjing and Yangzhou, experienced and remembered the devastation of civil war. Meyer-Fong argues that the Taiping Rebellion should be understood through the traces it left behind. Drawing on local gazetteers, diaries, morality books, and poetry, she reconstructs a world struggling to make sense of loss (p. 15). The title itself poses the book’s central question: what remains after violence—physically, emotionally, and ethically—and how remembrance can transform suffering into meaning. Meyer-Fong began this project while finishing her first book, and her memories of September 11 profoundly shaped its emotional framework. She recalled the contrast between official tributes that celebrated patriotism and quiet gestures of mourning, such as flowers placed beside a pair of firefighters’ boots. This experience led her to ask what gets lost in state narratives of sacrifice and how ordinary acts of grief can reveal alternative ways of remembering (personal conversation). The book finds its emotional power in this contrast between public and private memory.
The book unfolds thematically rather than chronologically, each chapter exploring a different dimension of the aftermath. The opening chapter, “War,” evokes the destruction of Jiangnan and challenges older histories that treated the rebellion as a purely political story. “Words” examines the moral tracts of loyalist writer Yu Zhi, who sought to rebuild order through the rectification of language (p. 24). “Marked Bodies” turns to the physical and emotional traces of war, showing how wounds, hair, and scars became visible signs of loyalty, identity, and humiliation (p. 66). “Bones and Flesh” moves from the living to the dead, describing how corpses and remains were handled in efforts to restore dignity (p. 99). “Wood and Ink” turns to memorial shrines and gazetteers that cataloged the dead (p. 135). “Loss” centers on Zhang Guanglie’s Record of 1861, contrasting Qing-sanctioned honors with the personal grief of a son who rebuilds memory through fragments, ritual, and place, showing how emotion could challenge the limits of formal commemoration (p. 186). The final chapter, “Endings,” shows how survivors and later writers confronted the impossibility of closure, recording grief, haunting, and ambiguous loyalties that resisted both state commemoration and revolutionary triumphalism (p. 204). The structure reflects the disordered nature of remembrance itself, allowing readers to experience the aftermath as a moral landscape shaped by grief, endurance, and the search for meaning.
Meyer-Fong’s methodology reflects the influence of the New Cultural History, yet her approach is grounded in close reading rather than abstract theory. Trained during the cultural turn, she inherited its attention to language and representation but resists imposing modern frameworks on her subjects. Instead of treating her sources as transparent evidence or symbolic codes, she reads them as layered acts of expression—texts written by people struggling to interpret suffering, justify survival, or reconstruct moral order. Her method depends on what might be called ethical attentiveness: she reads between the lines, attentive not only to what is said but to what can be inferred from tone, omission, and form. This approach is clearest in her treatment of Yu Zhi, a loyalist moralist who believed that the written and spoken word could “change the course of human events,” restoring order through language rather than ideology (p. 62). Meyer-Fong’s analysis succeeds because it is both disciplined and humane, translating moral intention without flattening belief into modern categories.
Her interpretive balance is evident in her analysis of Yu Zhi’s Book of Images of Suffering, whose illustrations were designed “to elicit sympathy and generosity even in our own time and place” (p. 52). While she draws this comparison to modern humanitarian imagery, she does not translate Qing morality into contemporary feeling. The echo to modern charity ads helps readers grasp the emotional power of persuasion without erasing historical difference. In her preface, she acknowledges that writing “a book about death and violence” was painful and that she aimed to respect her subjects by not making it “a book about us and our times” (p. xiii). Her tone fulfills that goal. The prose conveys grief and devastation but never lingers on horror. She succeeds in writing about mass suffering without aestheticizing it, producing a tone of quiet endurance rather than despair. In this balance between empathy and restraint, Meyer-Fong demonstrates how history can confront atrocity without exhausting its readers.
Her use of material culture and textual fragments further demonstrates how moral meaning can emerge from detail. Rather than taking gazetteers, diaries, or artifacts at face value, she interprets them as emotional and ethical performances—evidence of how people felt, remembered, and tried to make sense of loss. This interpretive depth is visible in her reading of the captive whose “anxiety about his own hair, appearance, and accent signaled discomfort about passing, allegiance, and identity” (p. 66). Such moments reveal how Meyer-Fong transforms physical description into moral inquiry. Her sensitivity to what remains unspoken allows her to find significance not only in words but in absences, gestures, and traces. Through this, she turns fragments of ordinary life—letters, scars, shrines, graves—into the moral vocabulary of endurance.
Meyer-Fong’s method succeeds because it is self-aware. She acknowledges that her sources—diaries, moral tracts, and gazetteers—represent primarily literati voices, leaving many perspectives unrecorded. Yet this limitation becomes part of her argument. Her observation that “the sources are silent on what became of tattooed men like Yan” (p. 75) is not simply an admission of absence but an ethical recognition of how violence erases people from history. The silence of the archive, in her reading, is itself a record of loss. Although she works largely within elite material, her range of sources—spanning gazetteers, memoirs, and morality books—allows her to reveal both the official and the intimate. This transparency strengthens her method, demonstrating how historical awareness of limitation can coexist with moral depth.
This balance between empathy and restraint allows Meyer-Fong to achieve what she described in conversation as her goal: to write about death and violence without leaving the reader desolate. Her restraint gives weight to small acts of survival, transforming archival fragments into traces of endurance. Through close readings of diaries, gazetteers, and memorial records, she brings emotion to the surface without dramatizing it, allowing loss to emerge from ordinary acts of care and remembrance. By sustaining emotional clarity rather than despair, she demonstrates how history can honor suffering without exploiting it. The result is a narrative that feels both precise and ethical, its distance a form of respect rather than detachment. In reframing the Taiping Rebellion through the moral and emotional work of remembrance, Meyer-Fong expands the boundaries of late imperial historiography. Beyond writing an exemplary work of cultural history, she demonstrates the possibility of approaching a well-studied topic with renewed moral and methodological sensitivity. Her narrative defamiliarizes the Taiping Rebellion, shifting attention from ideology to human endurance, and reminds readers that history can confront devastation without abstraction or sentimentality.











Bibliography
Meyer-Fong, Tobie. What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th-Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.

[Jeremy Salkeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

My sixth book on the Taiping, this approached the conflict from a very different angle than those I had come across before. Here, the focus was not the politics, be they internal or international, but the people who were the victims of the conflict, as can be gleaned through anti-war pamphlets, local gazettes, diaries, memoirs and the occasional writings of an outside observer. Where problems of cannibalism became matter-of-fact with Platt and Spence, Meyer-Fong actually made me have visceral reactions to much of what was going on, and her writing style is both straightforward and deeply moving. My one criticism stems from an impression that the book was heavily focussed on the experience in Jiangsu, and that there wasn't much comparison with other contested provinces like Zhejiang and Hunan. Otherwise a very solid work from a very good historian.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm interested in studies of memory and experience, particularly those trying to dig deeper into the ordinary lives that have been obscured by numerous processes and have been neglected in favour of examining the elites who produced more visible histories. This book is very close to being a wonderful such study with a perceptively chosen subject matter, though sadly seemed too brief. Additionally, rather than penetrating deeper into how we can understand popular experience and read between the lines of materials available, it leans on elite material - although the petty-elite sources it chooses are at least ones previously neglected and fascinating in themselves.

The final paragraph sums up the strengths and breadth of the book pretty well, and I'll quote it in full and recommend the book to anyone interested:

"When the war was over, what remained? Emotions, certainly - among them, anger at the perfidy of the Qing state and its local representatives, especially for their failure to live up to implied promises of protection, and frustration at the slow pace of reconstruction in the absence of material support from the centre. A commemorative landscape marked by competing interests: mass graves and shrines honoring the Hunan Army dead, the local dead, the righteous dead variously constituted and competitively tended. Grief for countless loved ones lost in war, to starvation, violence, and disease. An image of home, a place of safety, to which many were unable to return - or on return, the sudden realization that what was longed for was no longer there. Troubling memories of roads and canals crowded with refugees and captives; waterways clogged with corpses; human flesh for sale in the markets. Disturbing recollections of wandering, of begging, and of being trussed by the hair. Tattooed faces; stubbled foreheads; the sound of cannon fire; the familiar cadence of a hometown accent; the pervasive smell of rot. Frustrated searches for the living, and failing that, for the remains of the dead. A sense that what was once true and known was lost, uncertain, unstable, and incomplete. A search for answers, for new certainties encoded in reward and retribution, or later, revolution, and a lingering sense of unease over what had been, strategically forgotten."

[he chow · Rating 5 out of 5]

摘錄：
https://manjuorg.wordpress.com/?p=5372
https://manjuorg.wordpress.com/2023/0...
https://manjuorg.wordpress.com/2023/0...
————————————————

這本書很好看，太平天國本身太過「有趣」。

這種死亡2000萬人的歷史事件不是一般意義上的戰爭絞肉機，因為順民降虜根本不會做反抗。
中國人可以在基督教的旗幟下墮落到什麼地步，上帝已經明示。

作者最後一章節表達了中國人戀母的巨嬰心理，起初我還蠻反感要給張光烈貼上「媽寶男」這種現代社會立場的標籤的。但中國男人真的是，通過紀念太平天國中的母親作為苦難的受害者、王朝的殉難者、留下後代與希望的先祖，以此給自己留下身後名，是個孝順的多愁善感的好男人。

太令人作噁了。

是個男人就保護自己的女人，出去殺敵戰鬥這種思想是一點也不會有的吧。

某種意義上，張光烈與現代白左男的思想還是很靠近的：女人需要我來保護嗎？她說不定比我更強吧！我們先觀察一下敵情，讓她自己保護自己的貞操再說！

不，更簡單一點說，中國降虜面對太平天國與清軍善後軍隊的方式是：讓女人自殺，我先不自殺試試看苟活，兩角山羊投機主義兩面人兩頭裝自己人。失敗了啊，被吃，死了。

恥辱？

作者已經作為一個優秀的基督徒，委婉地指出喪失人性到了被剝奪人格的地步，也就是阿姨說的自甘墮落到「地表資源」的那種存在了。

作者的仁慈是對上帝世界能夠自動恢復秩序的那種承平世界的「希望」，還是、太好了，讓基督徒們清楚地知道不要染指中國人比較好，這個珍貴的教訓？

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful scholarship marshalling a wide array of sources to reveal human experiences of horrifying wartime losses

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Close examination of primary sources on the most destructive civil war in history.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[B & A & F · Rating 3 out of 5]

完全不是我想象的内容，通过普通人视角的切入很有意思，但只有忠于清朝的那方观点，而且传统中国文人记录往往带着很多道德说教内容、遵循一定框架比如余治，当然能反应当时“社会主流”的想法，但这些说教内容对我来说没什么好新鲜的。倒是张光烈偏个人的记述提供了更多私人情感上的共鸣。作者的视角选择很有创造性，但我决定材料选择不太好

[Dust007 · Rating 3 out of 5]

这本书的目录编排很好，战争，战争下的人，战争中的死人，后人的纪念与书写，层层递进，逻辑清晰。

深入到每一章，则围绕一些具体的历史人物或事件来展开，“文字”中的余治及其作品《江南铁泪图》，“被标记的身体”中的李圭及其《思痛记》，”失去”中的张光烈与《辛酉记》。然而，组织这些史料来叙事的部分很不好，太多的分析和诠释掩埋了本就羸弱的叙事逻辑，导致阅读体验极差。

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, figures that the ones honored for falling to the Taiping would be erased st the end of the 19th century due to anti-Qing sentiment. This book was interesting to read, if maybe a bit too focused on certain characters.
The first one was a man called Yu Zhi, who sounds like a typical apocalyptic preacher. And with a purpose as he would use whatever he could find, even use the stories of actual people, for all his apocalyptic/warning stories to get people towards moral renewal. And he was so much pro-Qing government that he forbid the novel The Water Margin. Today he would probably make a fitting televengalist.
According to this book, both tattoos as punishment for crime and gang tattoos mark someone as being outside of humane society. Is there a link despite both meaning different things (debasement vs. empowerment)? If tattooing of criminals by the Qing and Taiping was so common (and known since the Tang times), can they really exist side by side for long without any connection? What I also learned was that the Qing mandated hairstyles for men was much more serious than I thought, refusing it was equivalent to a charge of treason. And apparently the long queues had also a very practical use: binding the captives together by the queues either directly or via hem and all.
That one depiction of a Taiping man here looks really interesting, the quueue wrapped around his head, the mustache, the cloth woven within the hair. Speakimg of depictions: When the book was at the topic of cannibalism, it had that one illustration from Tears for Jiangnan titled "Netting Sparrows and Trapping Mice: Competing to Sell Human Flesh" which was harrowingly reminiscent of what would come a century later on the way to Mao's famine.
However, among all the talk of corpses and what they meant back then to occur in such huge numbers, I noticed that we didn't get much perspective from the Taiping site. It was either Qing or Europeans so far. And it looks like the belief of disease transmitted by vapors existed back then in the Qing empire as well, just as it did in Europe. Not to stop here, we get a chapter on the dead and graves, then a chapter on shrines, monuments and registers. Sadly, the Qianlong emperor was brought up and this time it was all about honoring the dead and all. Oh boy. But to be serious, this sounds like honor inflation. It is meeted out so often, it spirals towards worthlessness. Speaking of honor: I wondered why the author would reference a man that commented about the lack of honoring the death during the 1st Sino-Japanese War, but then it was clear: He referenced the Taiping Civil War in highlighting how those dead are still honored while the "Kids these days" don't care about those or their current war dead. And apparently honoring the Taipimg dead continued almost as long as the Qing dynasty. And today barely anyone outside of China knows about it.
Sadly the last chapter, on "Loss," was really boring. I don't think it was a good idea by the author to focus on just one son trying to get honors for his murdered mother. Sure, it can work, but I don't think the author could do it, she doesn't have the necessary literary skills.