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geographically proximal location, the capital of the Qing dynasty. A native of Jiangpu,

located at the northwestern corner of present-day Nanjing in southwest Jiangsu province,

Chen himself was an avid porcelain collector and a self-professed lover of alcohol.

Indeed, his entire collection of porcelain was comprised of wine cups. When he began

his preface to a collection of poems extolling his porcelain collection in 1904, he declared

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in his first sentence, “Ji Yuansou loves to drink” (Ji Yuansou shi yin). The porcelain

pieces in his collection numbered over 300. He also made his own wine, the primary

reason for beginning his vast collection of porcelain cups.

As a minor official working in the Qing bureaucracy in the last decade of the

dynasty writing in the literary language commonly referred to as classical Chinese, Chen

belonged to a generation of literate, learned men who experienced a perceived “crisis in

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order and meaning.” He lived in a context comprised of changing social institutions that
affected men whose education centered upon an empire-wide imperial examination

system. That system’s foundation originated around the fourteenth century and had

remained intact since then. The most significant institutional change for the lives of

educated men was the 1905 termination of the civil service exam system. The abolition

occurred in tandem with a push for constitutional reform. The breakdown of the old

system of advancement rendered those educated under late-imperial methods wondering

about their next steps -- socially, professionally, and intellectually. As has been pointed

out, the first ten years of the twentieth century and the collapse of the Qing dynasty

witnessed an intellectual sea tide of change. Not the least of these changes involved a

shift from universal concepts of culture to a particularistic understanding of self and

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nation. The large numbers of Qing students on Boxer scholarships reflect the extent to