EA presents: Lei Zhang

City Well or Private Well: Drinking Water in Beijing, 1644-1900

The city of Beijing was notorious for its salty water, which was mainly procured from wells. In this paper, I will unearth how the Manchu State employed drinking water as an apparatus to maintain racial boundary and social hierarchy between Manchus and Han Chinese within Beijing. I will argue that water carrier system was an institutional arrangement of Manchu State based on the residential pattern of Banner people. 

Lei Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of Syracuse University. He is specializing in history and geography of modern China. He completed a M.A. in History at Syracuse University (2012), M.A. in Geography at Peking University (2008) and B.S. in Geography at Nanjing University (2005). 

Sponsored by the East Asia Program at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs