A Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges to Promote Asian Studies
Luce Foundation Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum Grant
Example of Art Image & Annotation
"Hong punch bowl"
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gerry Lenfest
The Reeves Collection, Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA
This piece of porcelain is an example of Chinese export ware, a category of Chinese ceramics made specifically for export to the West during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). The subject depicted on the bowl is the port area of the Chinese city of Canton, where various Western powers had set up trading posts, or "hongs," along the banks of the Pearl River.
These hongs were used by foreign merchants as warehouses, offices, and residences, and the flags flying outside each hong are evidence for the presence there of the U.S., Great Britain, France, Sweden, and nine other Western trading powers. The area depicted between the hongs and the river's edge, called the Respondentia Walk, was the only one in the city where foreigners were permitted to move about freely.
This piece can be fairly precisely dated, as the flag flying at the hong operated by France bears the fleur de lis of the French monarchy, and therefore predates the downfall of that monarchy during the French Revolution.
The bowl is pedagogically interesting in its own right, as an example of ceramics produced not for domestic use in China, but for foreign trade with the West. It would be pedagogically useful in a lecture for a course in later Chinese history, on the impact of the West in the Qing Dynasty. It could also play a role in a lecture on Chinese economics then, or provide historical background for a lecture on Chinese economics today, for the Pearl River Delta is still a place for the manufacture and sale of goods, now by both Chinese and Western entrepreneurs.