Library Research in Action: An Interview with Mengliu Cheng

Over the past few years, Mengliu Cheng, GR’29, has become very familiar with the resources of the Penn Libraries’ Zilberman Family Center for Global Collections. “Sometimes when I don’t know what to write or want to take a break, I wander the stacks and get some great inspiration just from looking at the books,” she said in a conversation with me last fall. A doctoral student in Penn’s Department of History, Cheng has been working on a dissertation about agricultural science in modern China, and these physical materials, along with historical journals and databases of Chinese newspapers, have been central to her work.  

In 2024, Cheng was awarded a prestigious Graduate Student Paper Prize from the Association of Asian Studies for a work based on a chapter in her dissertation, “Disenchanting Foreign Knowledge: Revealing Agricultural ‘Pseudoscience’ in China, 1930s-1940s.” Given to three graduate students each year, the prize “recognizes emerging scholarship in the field and fosters intellectual exchange among junior and senior scholars.” Shortly after, she came to my office to talk more about her research. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.

Tell me a little about yourself.  

I moved here in 2019 for the doctoral program in the History Department, focusing on the Modern China. I completed a master’s degree at Duke University, whose Divinity School hosts very interesting collections because of the school’s connection to missionaries. I used to live in Durham, North Carolina. I enjoyed the community and natural scenery there. Philadelphia is very different from that—it is more like the city that I grew up in. There are benefits to doing archival research here in the Philly area—for example, the Presbyterian Historical Society is here. I also went to the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York on their research grant.  

I am in my sixth year writing my dissertation. So far, I closely work with the Asianists in the Department.

Tell me about your research.  

I work on history of modern China, history of science and technology, environmental history, and am also interested in digital humanities. My dissertation discusses how people invented and made machines in everyday life, especially machines related to farming. I am particularly interested in how individual inventors and rural workshops adopted vernacular technologies, or sometimes controversial, even “pseudoscientific” methods, to achieve agricultural and industrial modernity.

Can you talk a little more about how you do your research and which resources you found the most useful for your project?

The resources at the Penn Libraries have been helpful to my research. One example is the Quan guo bao kan suo yin (全国报刊索引) or the National Index to Chinese Newspapers and Periodicals, published by the Shanghai National Library. [The database] Duxiu 读秀 is also very helpful, as it contains a very comprehensive collection of Chinese books and journals, with detailed information about each publication. In addition to online databases, the Penn Libraries also hold a good number of gazetteers, which are another good resource for me. I also use digital humanities tools such as GIS and Tableau to help me map out historical trends and better organize the timeline of my narratives.

What is the award you won from the  Association of Asian Studies? Can you tell me more about it?  

Yes, it was awarded to me for part of my dissertation, a case study of an alternative science of farming in the early 20th century that claimed to use electricity to stimulate plant growth. I discuss how people all around the world were obsessed with this method, and how it made its way into China, inspired local practitioners, attracted public attention, and was discredited as a “pseudoscience.” By telling this story, I want to challenge our ideas of agricultural modernization. Does it have to be the adaptation and consumption of centralized, industrial products, or could it include easy, open-source methods that you can use it in your backyard?

How have the Penn Libraries and the Zilberman Center helped you in your research?  

Tremendously! Before [the COVID-19 pandemic], I went to the library to get physical copies of materials—Penn has a cool collection of Chinese books, and sometimes when I don’t know what to write or I need to take a break, I wander the stacks and get some great inspiration just from looking at physical books. I can’t live well without having the materials around me. The library organizes the books by subject, so seeing the Korean and Japanese materials related to a topic are also really important and can help a student develop and expand research ideas and sources. I find the organization very helpful.

I requested a lot of books from Interlibrary Loan and the ILL staff were so helpful getting me whatever I wanted from Ivy League institutions, such as very rare books. I can get them easily! Even during the pandemic, that was my work pattern.  

Brian Vivier [Director of the Zilberman Center] ordered a whole collection from China for me and that was so helpful. I am very grateful. The large 44-volume set is called Zhongguo jin dai nong ye tuan ti zi liao hui bian (中國近代農業團體資料彙編). It really helped my research a lot because it’s a collection of journals and publications of books related to agriculture during the republican period from 1912 to 1949. Some have been digitized, but some issues were not found in the databases—you can only find them in hard copies. The Shanghai collection mentioned above is very helpful, but it does not hold every issue of a journal. I recommend these texts to my own students when I teach as a TA.

During COVID, I had to explore more online sources. Thankfully, the Penn Libraries has the most important databases that I needed, particularly the Shanghai Library Republican Periodicals, Duxiu, China Academic Journals, and Wanfang Dissertations of China.