Wet and Dry: Seasonality in a Southern Chinese City, 1820s-1880s

For attendees that cannot join in-person, please register for Zoom webinar link.

This presentation is part of a larger project on the rhythms of urban life in the southern Chinese port city of Guangzhou (Canton) during the nineteenth century. Analyzing wet-season disasters (flooding and storms) and dry-season disasters (fires), I hope to convey a sense of the lived experience of city residents and to understand both how life was changing over the course of this transformative century and how observers perceived these changes.

A sociocultural historian of early modern China, Steven B. Miles is head of the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the editor-in-chief of the journal, Late Imperial China. His most recent books are Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2021). His chapter, “Urbanization and Emigration in Coastal South China,” was recently published in volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations.

There will also be a casual breakfast with graduate students from 10:30am -12:00pm on Thursday, October 26.

Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies