East Asia Program presents: Yamin Xu

Identifying Wicked People in Beijing and the Qing State Perception of Social Order The talk, “Identifying ‘Wicked People’ in Beijing and the Qing State Perception of Social Order” is part of a larger research project that will study how the Qing government and its police and security forces were obsessed with identifying and haunting down the so-called “wicked people”—a term that was broadly defined to include from rubbers, thieves, heretical sects, and other criminals to corrupt officials, clerks, guards, “evil merchants,” gamblers, vagabonds, and unruly residents. In his talk, Xu will also analyze the Qing state’s perception of social order and discuss its deep anxieties about potential social unrests. Yamin Xu, a former editor of Wenyi bao (literary gazetteer), earned his PhD in history from University of California at Berkeley in 2002. He is currently an associate professor at Le Moyne College, teaching world and East Asia history.