One of the most worthwhile things that A. does is hold a weekly classical Chinese reading group in the evenings. This week we read from texts from one of my classmates, Hu Xiangyu, who studies Chinese legal history. One paragraph of Chinese translations of Manchu customary law was actually not all that difficult, if a bit fragmented ("barbarian," says Xiangyu).
Rule of Law
A few terms I learned that I thought were interesting:
牛綠額真: Niru captain. Niru is a basic unit of the Manchu bannermen, aristocratic warrior dudes. Barbarian samurai of the north. You wouldn't want to mess with these guys, especially in the mid-17th century, when they honed their fighting skills to such a level that taking down the Ming dynasty was no problem for them.
私分: an "illicit" share in ill-begotten goods. Not a terribly significant legal term, but a reminder of the frought history of the word 私, private, "self." More to come on that one.
身價: Body price. Among the Manchus, at least, every life has a price.
慎重獄情之意: to deal with a legal case with all due solemnity, lit. "deal cautiously and properly, knowing the feeling of prison."
明允: justice. It's compelling to see that early on there was a legal term that seems to correspond with the modern sense of justice.
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