ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Weather Knowledge between Science and Superstition in Pre-World War II China

• In Event: On the Fringe? Constructing and Contesting Boundaries of “Science” in Modern China

English Abstract

Where does “weather knowledge” end, and where does “superstition” begin? This paper interrogates the boundary between science and superstition by examining the production and dissemination of weather knowledge in Republican China in the years leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese meteorologists sought to build a national forecasting infrastructure that could serve both civilian needs and emerging military demands– an urgency that intensified as the threat of all-out war grew after the Manchurian Incident of 1931. At the same time, knowledge of weather and climate circulated beyond elite scientific circles and reached the hands of the reading public. Popular science journals, newspapers, and translated textbooks introduced non-expert readers to the scientific principles behind environmental phenomena, from typhoons and eclipses to earthquakes. These publications often incorporated, evaluated, and, in some cases, refuted local folk weather wisdom, ranging from weather proverbs and ritual practices to the use of animal behavior for weather forecasting. Drawing on newspapers, popular science magazines, scientific journals, and meteorology textbooks, this paper positions the pre-war years as a pivotal moment when the tension between scientific meteorology and vernacular weather knowledge became visible and politically significant. It offers reflections on the uneasy place of meteorology in early 20th-century China, a field that relied on local, everyday knowledge even as it was increasingly drawn toward standardized scientific methods and mobilized for military and political purposes.

Author

• Xinyue Zhang, Yale University