Chinese Hospitality (Plan of a book).

 

Introduction.

 

Chapter I. Theories of Hospitality.

 

1.     Hospitality as a device of self-identification and of construction of the Other.

2.     Hospitality as a means of communication with the Other.

3.     Levels of hospitality: private, institutional, governmental.

4.     Dimensions of hospitality: religious, social, political, cultural.

5.     Models of hospitality: equally or unequally reciprocal, momentary or durable.

6.     Western Hospitality: virtue, moral imperative and reality.

7.     Chinese Hospitality: Preliminary assumptions.

 

Chapter II. The Deity as a Guest.

 

1.     Ancestral cult.

2.     Shang rituals of hosting spirits of the ancestors and of natural forces.

3.     Transformation of ancestral rituals during the Zhou period.

4.     Institutionalization of ancestral worship: formation of ritual canons under the early Han Empire.

5.     Inviting the deity and expelling the devil: exorcist practices.

 

Chapter III. Private and Institutional Hospitality.

 

1.     Private hospitality in ancient China.

2.     Obligations of hosts and guests.

3.     Migration and hospitality.

4.     Creation of the guesthouse: governmental managing of human traffic in the multi-state system and under the early Empire.

 

Chapter IV. Hospitality of the State.

 

1.     Hospitality as a means of constructing sovereignty.

2.     Royal audiences and assemblies. Meetings of rulers of states.

3.     Diplomatic envoys in the multi-state system (Springs and Autumns and Warring States periods).

4.     “Guest” officials in the state service.

5.     Four “hospital lords” of the Warring States: hospitality and political opposition.

6.     Hospitality towards the chased and the asylum right.

7.     Hospitality versus hostility: non-Huaxia peoples as “guests” of the Chinese.

 

Chapter V. Hospitality and Civilization.

 

1.     Ancient Chinese model of hospitality and its implications for the development of the Chinese society and state.

2.     Chinese ethics of hospitality.

3.     Hospitality as a mirror: the guest as the “third one” in the self-reflection of the ancient Chinese.

4.     On the way to the modernity: directions for further investigation.

     

Appendix: Dictionary of Chinese concepts of hospitality.

 

Index

 

Bibliography