| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Hanchao Lu. Street Criers: A Cultural History of Chinese Beggars. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 269. $45.00.
Hanchao Lu has scoured a wide range of Chinese and English sources for materials concerning beggars. His focus is on the period from 1600 through 1950, and he argues that during this long period a fixed cultural identity for beggars prevailed throughout China. Lu's eight chapters discuss various facets of beggary in China in a topical manner. In the book's conclusion, however, he returns to a subtheme, stressing how ever-increasing millions descended into poverty and beggary accompanying the decline of the Qing dynasty. Consequently, from around 1820 through 1950 the culture of beggars grew more common and elaborate.	1
By the late eighteenth century, the state network of granaries originally intended to succor the needy could no longer meet the demands of China's growing population. Thus, a culture of beggary expanded and grew to become a major presence, especially in Chinese towns and cities. Lu does not play down the threatening and harassing qualities of beggars who would disrupt a shop's business or a family wedding unless they received their proper due. Still, he provides numerous examples of how Chinese beggars served socially useful functions such as night watchmen, mourners at funerals, and corvee laborers, and are said to have invented famous dishes such as "beggar's chicken," in which a stuffed bird is baked in a mud shell.	. . .

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