Intercultural morality books (善書): A new lens on Chinese-Christian encounters in late Ming and early Qing China

This talk examines Sino-European cultural exchanges through the lens of seventeenth-century morality books (shanshu 善書) produced by Chinese Christian converts. As a widespread genre promoting virtuous behaviour, morality books offer valuable insight into the everyday literary, moral, and religious spheres of early modern Chinese society. Focusing on Lixiu yijian 勵修一鑑, a morality book compiled by the Fujian convert Li Jiugong 李九功 (?–1681), the talk first explores how Chinese and European Christian individuals, texts, and moral and ritual practices entered into dialogue through this genre, generating a dynamic “intercultural” space that the morality book both embodied and offered glimpses of.

Drawing on the rich corpus of Chinese Christian stories preserved in the text, the second part turns to concrete questions of ritual practice, examining what this corpus reveals about ritual life in contexts of cultural interaction. In doing so, it shows how Christian liturgies were negotiated alongside established ritual practices and belief systems, and became fully embedded within the everyday religious experiences of local Christian converts and communities. The talk ultimately aims to offer fresh perspectives on the local ritual landscape shaped through early modern cultural contacts, while further enriching our understanding of both.

Short bio

Valentina Yang is a research associate at the Department of Chinese Studies, KU Leuven (Belgium). She is currently preparing her book manuscript, Creating Intercultural Morality Books: Textual, Moral, Religious, and Community Practices in 17th-Century Chinese Christian Interactions, for publication. By exploring “intercultural” morality books (shanshu 善書) compiled by lesser-known Chinese Christian converts, the book brings to light the voices and experiences of these often-marginal actors, showing how they actively contributed to shape new intercultural practices and hybrid identities. She received her Ph.D. from KU Leuven (Feb. 2025) and her MPhil from the University of Oxford. Currently, she is collaborating with Nicolas Standaert on the production of the MOOC “The Art of In-betweenness” on intercultural history writing, scheduled to launch on the EdX platform in 2026.

Image: First page of Lixiu yijian 勵修一鑑, ca.1630-40s. Copy preserved at the Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati di Siena, Italy.