Encountering the Chinese Collections at Cambridge University Library

Emma Laube travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to spend a month researching at Cambridge University Library. From tackling the Library's immense Chinese Collections to tripping over her feet looking up at historic buildings, Emma reflects on her time as WongAvery Visiting Scholar.

Emma is a doctoral student from UC San Diego and gained the opportunity to come to Cambridge as part of the new WongAvery Visiting Scholar Exchange Programme generously supported by the Avery-Tsui Foundation.

“The time given to engage in research in Cambridge is beautiful. It’s like stepping into a magical fairyland divorced from day-to-day PhD life.”

Emma Laube, 2025 WongAvery Visiting Scholar

Watch this short film on Emma's experience in Cambridge:

Research

Emma found herself attracted by art history early on in her University studies due to its interdisciplinary nature. Whether it’s literature, politics, religion, she describes how there are so many areas you have to engage with to understand an image.

Three years into her History of Art PhD at UC San Diego, Emma is exploring the relationship between visual culture and religion in late 19th century-early 20th century Shanghai.

This period of Chinese history is one recovering from the aftermath of two Opium wars, a weakened central government and a devastating civil war. For Shanghai in particular, it is a period of rapid growth, where parts of the city have opened to foreign control and refugees from the civil war have come to settle, creating a melting pot of habits and customs. This is happening amidst the advent of Western-style banks and new products of industrial print culture such as newspapers and illustrated periodicals.

One dimension of Emma's research is how the religiously devout are represented in visual culture during this period. This is partly through the lens of Christian missionaries and how they depict Buddhist, Daoist, and local or popular practices, but also through the lens of the people of Shanghai, often the elite and educated, who are adapting to this period of commercial growth and increasingly represent religious traditional practices as ‘backward’.

When the opportunity to study in Cambridge came up, Emma described it as a “great catalyst” to expand her project by exploring the immense collections in Cambridge.

Cambridge collections

The first word that comes to Emma’s mind when describing Cambridge University Libraries’ collections of Chinese material is “vast”, ranging from thousands of periodicals in the open stacks, through to the rich collection of rare books in the Wade Collection, to ancient Oracle bones.

Emma explains:

“Studying the material in person is an amazing opportunity to encounter texts as they were published and designed to be handled.”

Emma describes how, when consulting a report by missionary Henri Doré, Researches in Chinese superstitions (1914-22.1), the illustrations were not in fact black and white as the digitised edition she had previously accessed suggested, but full of colour.

The discovery of colours may seem trivial to some, but Emma explains it could give new insight as to what the missionaries sought to portray to their fellow missionaries.

Another source Emma has been consulting is reproductions of the periodical magazine Dianshizhai Pictorial (FB 41:99.1-2). Founded by a British businessman, who employed Chinese artists and writers to attract a popular audience, the magazine was included free with a national newspaper. The purpose was journalistic, but the content ranges from global happenings, commentary on westerners moving to Shanghai, to other stories which appear fantastical or engaging in gossip or hearsay.

The works may have attracted readers of various degrees of literacy. The contents represent what they were interested in reading about, and included lithographed illustrations depicting images that would have been deemed ‘popular’.

“It’s sometimes the works that seem mundane which give vital insight into the voices prominently less present in historical works.”

Through material such as this periodical, Emma is collecting images of religiously devout people, often women, categorised as “foolish people”, yu min 愚民 , or xiang yu 郷愚, which translates to “ignorant villagers”.

Emma found the collections complementary to those from her home institution, UC San Diego, whose Library has an extensive underground film archive and collection of modern contemporary resources.

Illustration of the goddess Guanyin in Henri Doré, Researches in Chinese superstitions (1914-22.1).

Illustration of goddess in Henri Doré, Researches in Chinese superstitions (1914-22.1).

Illustration accompanying news story on the sale of horses in Dianshizhai Pictorial (FB 41:99.1-2).

Experience as visiting scholar

Emma’s time as visiting scholar has gone quickly, with a plethora of material at her fingertips, Emma recounts fondly the ease of having support from staff in the Special Collections Reading Room and the Chinese Section in the Department of World Collections to navigate the collections.

She has been able to connect with academics working in similar areas, and even encounter other visiting scholars from San Diego. The connections made during her time here have “broadened the world of researchers exploring academic interests that parallel [hers]”.

‘‘The opportunity to devote four weeks solely to research is not common at this early stage in one’s doctoral studies.

I have benefited from an unusual chance to conduct research for my dissertation topic immediately before preparing for my qualifying examinations, which will allow me to incorporate my findings at Cambridge more holistically into my dissertation proposal in the coming months.”

The programme is in collaboration with Trinity Hall, Cambridge, which Emma credits as creating a sense of belonging to Cambridge when so far from home.

Soaking up the atmosphere of student life, she recounts making the most of the spring sunshine in the green spaces surrounding her College accommodation. Emma’s favourite study space? “Despite the University Library’s Aoi Reading Room coming in a close second, it is hard to beat the desks overlooking the River Cam in [Trinity Hall's] Jerwood Library.”

Finally, Emma describes tripping over her feet taking in the buildings of Cambridge, an experience not dissimilar to many people’s first time experiencing the historic city.

We are deeply grateful to the Avery-Tsui Foundation for their continued support, which will enable other young scholars to experience the riches both of the Chinese Collections and Cambridge itself.

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^{Headline image: Emma Laube in the Rare Books Reading Room, Cambridge University Library. Picture by Lizzie Woodman.
Video by Blazej Mikula.}

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