Bathing through Time and Landscape: A Longue Durée History of Hot Springs in China (1000–1945)

Speaker: Fei Huang 黃菲 is Professor of Chinese History and Society at the University of Tübingen. Her recent research interests focus on the interdisciplinary combination of landscape and environmental history, history of knowledge, medical history, urban history in China, and the dynamics of globalisation between the 16th and 20th centuries.

Moderator: Victor Seow, Harvard University  

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Abstract: In contrast with the abundant research on the history of hot or mineral springs in Japan, Europe, America, and their colonial regions, research on Chinese hot springs has remained largely neglected. Within the context of global knowledge and practices related to hot spring resorts and sanatoria, the study of Chinese hot springs and public bathing opens up an impressive opportunity to explore the complex interrelations between environment and urban life, natural therapy and public health, physical and spiritual sensibilities, as well as popular knowledge and highbrow literary representation. This lecture introduces a book project centered on the history of hot spring landscapes of Qinling mountain range in Shaanxi, with particular emphasis on the renowned Huaqing Hot Springs 華清池 near Xi’an between eleventh and the early twentieth century. It explores how diverse perceptions and activities from various social actors are involved in the acknowledgement, control, management, and consumption of the natural resources of the hot springs in a long-term development from premodern to modern China. A longue durée history of Chinese hot springs unfolds a series of transformations within a continuity that encompasses the everyday interaction between humans and their natural, social, and constructed environments.