Dr Weipin Tsai - Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History

Historian of modern China, focusing on the Qing to Republican period. Principal interests are in Chinese modernisation and engagement in globalisation from the 19th century onwards, in particular the role of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, the creation of the Chinese Postal Service, communication networks, and Chinese print culture. Currently working on a Leverhulme Trust-funded project on the history of Chinese private letter hongs (minxinju) from the 18th century to the early 20th century.

Coming from a background in the scholarship surrounding Chinese print culture and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, I am particularly interested in communication networks in China and beyond from the 18^th century onwards. I engage with Chinese history from both local and global perspectives, and my key objective has been to seek to gain empathy and understanding of historical situations and events by seeing them through the lens of the subjects studied, whether Chinese or non-Chinese.

My main research topics include exchange between China and the West in the modern period, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, postal communication networks, and Chinese print culture.

My current project is the history of Chinese private letter hongs (minxinju 民信局). While scholars have explored many aspects of China’s modernisation, one topic of fundamental importance only now receiving proper attention is that of the various communication networks that knitted the Qing empire together. Family-owned courier firms, or hongs, made up the largest of these networks, creating vital supply lines for information, money and goods and with a reach more fluid, adaptable and far wider than the government’s own information relay service. They provide tantalising evidence of bottom-up, locally-driven modernisation – yet little is known of their history and methods.

I am happy to supervise PhD students on topics related to modern Chinese history from the 18^th century onwards, as well as exchange between China and West.

More information about my research is available via PURE

Email - Weipin.tsai@rhul.ac.uk

Website - Chinese Letter Hongs: https://letterhongs.com