A Zooarchaeological Study of the Haimenkou Site, Yunnan Province, China

Author:
Juan Wang

Publication Year:
2018

Publisher:
British Archaeological Reports Oxford Ltd

Abstract:

Haimenkou was an important location, with trade and cultural links connecting parts of modern Southeast Asia and northwestern China in ancient times. This book is based on an analysis of the faunal assemblage recovered from the Haimenkou site during the 2008 field season in Yunnan Province, China. It investigates the human-animal relationships at Haimenkou through a time span running from the late Neolithic Period to the middle Bronze Age (ca. 5000-2400 BP). The animal exploitation patterns, local animal domestication processes, human subsistence strategies and communication networks linking Haimenkou and other regions in prehistoric China are studied. Domesticated pig, dog and sheep bones were identified. Over sixteen wild mammal species as well as bird and fish bones and mollusc shells were also recovered. The results suggest that the Haimenkou people developed a mixed subsistence economy, consisting of crop farming, plant food gathering, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Environmental setting and archaeological background of the Haimenkou Site
3. Procedure of faunal analysis
4. Range and relative importance of identified taxa
5. Skeletal part representation and bone modification
6. Kill-off patterns for domestic animals
7. Discussion and conclusion

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context: Poetic Culture from Antiquity Through the Tang

Editor: 
Zong-qi Cai

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Publication Date: 
February 2018

Abstract:

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context is an introduction to the golden age of Chinese poetry, spanning the earliest times through the Tang dynasty (618–907). It aims to break down barriers—between language and culture, poetry and history—that have stood in the way of teaching and learning Chinese poetry. Not only a primer in early Chinese poetry, the volume demonstrates the unique and central role of poetry in the making of Chinese culture.

Each chapter focuses on a specific theme to show the interplay between poetry and the world. Readers discover the key role that poetry played in Chinese diplomacy, court politics, empire building, and institutionalized learning; as well as how poems shed light on gender and women’s status, war and knight-errantry, Daoist and Buddhist traditions, and more. The chapters also show how people of different social classes used poetry as a means of gaining entry into officialdom, creating self-identity, fostering friendship, and airing grievances. The volume includes historical vignettes and anecdotes that contextualize individual poems, investigating how some featured texts subvert and challenge the grand narratives of Chinese history. Presenting poems in Chinese along with English translations and commentary, How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context unites teaching poetry with the social circumstances surrounding its creation, making it a pioneering and versatile text for the study of Chinese language, literature, history, and culture.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Cultural Role of Chinese Poetry, by Zong-qi Cai

Part I: Pre-Han Times

1. Poetry and Diplomacy in The Zuo Commentary(Zuozhuan), by Wai-yee Li

2. Poetry and Authorship: The Songs of Chu (Chuci), by Stephen Owen

Part II: The Han Dynasty

3. Empire in Text: Sima Xiangru’s “Sir Vacuous/Imperial Park Rhapsody”(“Zixu/Shanglin fu”), by Yu-yu Cheng and Gregory Patterson

4. Poetry and Ideology: The Canonization of the Book of Poetry (Shijing) During the Han, by Zong-qi Cai

5. Love Beyond the Grave: A Tragic Tale of Love and Marriage in Han China, by Olga Lomová

Part III: The Six Dynasties

6. Heroes from Chaotic Times: The Three Caos, by Xinda Lian

7. The Worthies of the Bamboo Grove, by Nanxiu Qian

8. The Poetry of Reclusion: Tao Qian, by Alan Berkowitz

9. The Struggling Buddhist Mind: Shen Yue, by Meow Hui Goh

Konfucjusz. Analekta: Tłumaczenie i opracowanie (Confucius: The Analects)

Author:
Pejda, Katarzyna

Publisher:
KraNόw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

Publication date:
January 2019

Abstract:
A translation of the Analects of Confucius from classical Chinese, including the Chinese text, supplemented with an extensive scholarly analysis presenting the Confucian concept of morality. The publication contains a description of the ancient Chinese world, its society, and the relations ruling within in.

Workshop on Migration and Border-crossing in Early Medieval China

Co-organizers: 

Wen-Yi Huang & Xiaofei Tian

Date:

May 23, 2019

Location: 

The Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Harvard University

Program

9:30-9:40         Opening Remarks

Panel I. Going South

9:40-10:40

Evan Nicoll-Johnson (University of Alberta), “Guo Pu (276-324) the Wanderer: Magic and Migration in the Jin Dynasty”

Lu Kou (Williams College), “Detainees and Letters to Request Release in Early Medieval China”

Panel II. The Mobility of Texts and Images

10:40-11:40

Keith N. Knapp (The Citadel), “Cultural Baggage: The Transmission and Spread of Accounts of Filial Offspring during the Northern and Southern Dynasties”

Fan Zhang (NYU-Shanghai), “Between Hexi and Pingcheng: Migration of Image, Style, and People”

11:40-1:00        Lunch [Workshop Participants Only]

Panel III. Looking Back and Around

1:00-2:00

Jack W. Chen (University of Virginia), “Looking Back across the River: Nostalgia as Migrancy in the Shishuo xinyu”

Xiaofei Tian (Harvard University), “The Worlds on the Edge between Darkness and Light: Fifth-century ‘Supernatural’ Stories of a Migrant Community”

Panel IV. Rootedness, Relocation, and Identity

2:00-3:00

Andrew Chittick (Eckerd College), “Borderlands and Migration to North and South: A Study of the Qing-Qi Region in the Fifth Century CE”

Wen-Yi Huang (Harvard University), “How to Name People on the Move: A Case Study of the Northern Wei”

3:00-3:15         Coffee Break

Panel V. Moving Monks and Merchants

3:15-4:15

James Robson (Harvard University), “Monks, Movement, and Migration: A Preliminary Assessment of the Large-Scale Movement of Buddhist Monks in Early Medieval China”

Jin Xu (Vassar College), “Following in the Footsteps of Siddhartha: Shi Jun Sarcophagus and the Picturing of an Allegorical Biography”

4:15-4:45         General Discussion and Concluding Remarks

6:30                 Dinner for Workshop Participants

＊For more details, please visit our website:

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/2019emcmigration/home-0

The Ecological Era and Classical Chinese Naturalism: A Case Study of Tao Yuanming

Author:
Shuyuan Lu

Publication date:
2017

Publisher: 
Springer

Abstract:

Reflecting the currently growing eco-movement, this book presents to western readers Tao Yuanming, an ancient Chinese poet, as a representative of classical oriental natural philosophy who offered lived experience of “dwelling poetically on earth.” Drawing on Derrida’s specter theory, it interprets Tao Yuanming in a postmodern and eco-critical context, while also exploring his naturalist “kindred spirits” in other countries, so as to urge the people of today to contemplate their own existence and pursuits. The book’s “panoramic” table of contents offers readers a wonderful reading experience.

Table of Contents:
Tao Yuanming and the Meta-question of Humanity
Tao Yuanming’s Natural Philosophy
Tao Yuanming and Naturalistic Romanticism
The Evolving Perception of Nature and the Death of Tao Yuanming
The Specter of Tao and the Plights of Contemporary Human Existence
Conclusion: The Last Sacrifice and the Evocation

Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology

Author:
Wilt L. Idema

Publication date:
2018

Publisher:
Cambria Press

Abstract:
Despite the “nonhuman” turn in the humanities, studies of animals in Chinese culture are still quite limited in number, while studies of insects in literature are even rarer and tend to focus on only a few aspects, such as cricket fights. The available studies on insects in Chinese literature are almost exclusively limited to insects in Chinese classical poetry, and so provide only a very limited view of the many ways in which insects have been viewed in Chinese culture at large.

This book helps to fill this gap. The first part of this volume begins with the fascination of modern author Lu Xun with entomological literature and satiric animal tales from the West. The book then traces the characterization of individual insects in three thousand years of classical Chinese poetry, from the ancient Book of Odes to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as emblems of virtues and vices. Separate chapters are dedicated to the selfless and diligent silkworm, the pure and outspoken cicada, the social organization of the ants and the bees (as well as the philandering tendencies of bees and butterflies), fighting crickets and disastrous locusts, slanderous flies, and sly mosquitoes, as well as body parasites as lice, fleas, and bedbugs. Each chapter includes extensive translations, highlighting lesser-known aspects of well-known poets and introducing original works by lesser-known authors.

Preceding the second part of the book is a short intermezzo devoted to insects in classical and vernacular narrative literature, which shows a preference for tales in which insects appear in human shape. The second part of the book delves into the popular literature of late imperial China, in which insects spoke their minds in the formal settings of weddings, funerals, wars, and court cases. A representative selection of such ballads and plays is discussed and translated and is followed by an epilogue, which contrasts the treatments of insects in Chinese and Western literature.

By contrasting the ways in which traditional Chinese belles lettres, traditional classical and vernacular literature, and popular songs and ballads treat insects, it becomes clear that each of these written traditions portrays insects in particular in its own way: as examples of virtues and vices, as fairies and demons in human guise, and as contentious characters speaking in their own voice. While some insects basically remain the same in all three traditions, other insects show unique characteristics in each tradition. Spiders, for instance, transform from wily hunters in classical poetry, to exhibitionists maidens in vernacular narrative, and to champions of justice in popular songs and ballads. Last but not least, the search for texts on insects reveals many works of considerable literary value which are presented in highly readable renditions.

Insects in Chinese Literature will be of interest to all persons who are interested in Chinese literature and comparative literature, all those who are interested in insects in Chinese culture at large, and all those who are interested in cultural entomology and animal studies.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Portrayal of Insects

Part I: Insects in Belles Lettres
Chapter 1: The Silkworm
Chapter 2: The Cicada
Chapter 3: Lessons Learned from Insects
Chapter 4: Fables on the Praying Mantis and the Spider
Chapter 5: The Ant, the Bee, and the Butterfly
Chapter 6: The Cricket, the Grasshopper, and the Locust
Chapter 7: The Fly and the Mosquito
Chapter 8: The Scorpion, the Louse, the Flea, and the Bedbug
Chapter 9: Group Portraits
Intermezzo
Chapter 10: Insects in Narrative Literature

Part II: Insects in Popular Literature
The Names of the Thirty-Six Kinds of Insects

Chapter 11: Weddings
The Precious Scroll of the Marriage of the Mantis
The Dragonfly’s Abduction of the Bride
The Mantis Abducts His Bride
The Dung Beetle Abducts His Bride

Chapter 12: Funerals
The Hundred-Day Insect
The War of the Insects

Chapter 13: Battles and Wars
The Battle of the Insects
The Song of the War of the Fly against the Mosquito

Chapter 14: Disputes and Court Cases
Southern Window Dream
The Louse Cries out his Grievances [followed by The Court Case of the Bedbug against the Mosquito]
The White Louse Voices his Grievances

Epilogue: Some Comparative Perspectives

Conference: Contact Zones and Colonialism in Southeast Asia and China’s South (~221 BCE – 1700 CE)

Venue:
Pennsylvania State University

Date:
May 10-12, 2019

Programme:

Friday, May 10

9:00 -9:30

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS

Kenneth Pomeranz

University Professor of Modern Chinese History and in the College, The University of Chicago   “Why is China so Big”?

9:30-9:45

WELCOME

Erica Brindley

Professor of Asian Studies, History, and Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University

“Why are We Here? Issues and Goals”

9:45-11:15 PANEL 1 EARLY PERIOD

Nam Kim

Archaeology, University of Wisconsin

“Dynamics of Interaction in Protohistoric Vietnam: Pre-Conquest Relations with the Near and Far North”

Mark Alves

Linguistics, Montgomery College

“Data from Multiple Disciplines Connecting Vietic with the Dong Son Culture”

Martha Ratliff

Linguistics, Wayne State University

“Loanword Evidence for Power Inequities between Hmong-Mien Speakers and their Neighbors”

11:15-11:30 BREAK

11:30 – 12:15 ROUNDTABLE 1

THE CONCEPT OF SEAMZ (SOUTHEAST ASIAN MARITIME ZONE) AS AN INTERACTIVE REGION? 

Kathlene Baldanza 

History, Penn State University

Hilario de Sousa 

Linguistics, Max Planck Institute, Netherlands

John Phan

Linguistics,  Columbia University

12:30-2:00 LUNCH

2:00-4:00 PANEL 2 HAN IMPERIAL PERIOD

Michele Demandt

Archaeology, Jinan University, China

“Imperial Practices or Local Agency? Motives behind the Production of ‘Entangled Crafts’ in Han-period Lingnan”

Joe Pittayaporn

Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

“Chinese Loanwords and Sinicization of Kra-Dai Speakers during the Han Period”

Erica Brindley

History, Penn State University

“An Overview of the Textual Record on Hua-xia/Yue Interactions”

Francis Allard

Archaeology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

“The South China Sea from Prehistory to Early Han Imperial Expansion: What Archaeology tells us about the Movement of People, Goods, and Ideas”

4:00-4:30 BREAK

4:30-5:30 ROUNDTABLE 2

ADMINISTRATIVE, IMPERIAL REACH IN THE PREMODERN PERIOD

Hilde De Weerdt

History, Leiden University

Bob Hymes

History, Columbia University

Paul Jakov Smith 

History, Havorford College

Saturday, May 11

9:00-11:00 PANEL 3 MEDIEVAL PERIOD, I  

Megan Bryson 

Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

“The Power of Transmission: Buddhism and Colonialism in the Dali Kingdom”

Andrew Chittick

History, Eckerd College

“Jiankang and the Buddhist Diplomatic World of the South Seas”

Alice Yao

Archaeology, University of Chicago

“Food and Kitchens: Imperial Control and the Colonization of Taste”

John Phan

Linguistics, Columbia University 

“Language and Han Colonization in the Red River Plain”

11:00 – 11:30 BREAK

11:30 – 12:30 ROUNDTABLE 3

MEDITATIONS ON INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND COLLABORATION

Francis Allard

Archaeology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Mark Alves

Linguistics, Montgomery College

Tamara Chin

Comparative Literature, Brown University

Michael Puett

History, Harvard University

12:30-2:00 LUNCH available for conference guests in 102 Weaver Building

       

2:00-3:45 PANEL 4 MEDIEVAL PERIOD, II

Derek Thiam Soon Heng

History, Northern Arizona University

“Cultural and economic influences from China on the Malay Peninsula, 10-14th CE”

James Anderson

History, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

“Trade Relations between the Đại Việt Kingdom and the Song Empire in the long 12th Century” 

Victor Mair

Asian Literature and Culture, University of Pennsylvania

“Belitung Shipwreck and the Early Development of Tea Cultivation”

3:45-4:15 BREAK

4:15-5:30 KEYNOTE ADDRESS 

Pamela Crossley

Charles and Elfriede Collis Professor of History and Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Dartmouth College

“Was there a Chinese World Order?”

Sunday, May 12

9:00-11:00 PANEL 5 EARLY MODERN PERIOD

John Whitmore

History, University of Michigan

“The Chinese Diaspora into Dai Viet and the Settling of the Lower Delta of the Red River”

Gregory Smits

History, Penn State University

“Pirates of the Ryukyu Islands and their Network Interactions with the Ming”

Hilario De Sousa

Linguistics, Max Planck Institute, Netherlands

“On Pinghua and Yue”

Miranda Brown

History, University of Michigan

“After the Mongols, Dairy Products in Southern China, 1500-1700”

11:00-11:30 BREAK

11:30-1:00 WRAP-UP SESSION AND LUNCH

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?

Francis Allard

Erica Brindley

John Phan

(Thanks Erica for sharing this information!)

Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times

Author:
Charles Sanft

Publisher:
SUNY Press

Publication date:
May 2019

Abstract:
Through an examination of archaeologically recovered texts from China’s northwestern border regions, argues for widespread interaction with texts in the Han period. This book examines ancient written materials from China’s northwestern border regions to offer fresh insights into the role of text in shaping society and culture during the Han period (206/2 BCE–220 CE). Left behind by military installations, these documents—wooden strips and other nontraditional textual materials such as silk—recorded the lives and activities of military personnel and the people around them. Charles Sanft explores their functions and uses by looking at a fascinating array of material, including posted texts on signaling across distances, practical texts on brewing beer and evaluating swords, and letters exchanged by officials working in low rungs of the bureaucracy. By focusing on all members of the community, he argues that a much broader section of early society had meaningful interactions with text than previously believed. This major shift in interpretation challenges long-standing assumptions about the limited range of influence that text and literacy had on culture and society and makes important contributions to early China studies, the study of literacy, and to the global history of non-elites.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Interacting with Text in Early Imperial China and Beyond

2. Contexts and Sources

3. Posted Texts

4. Statements of Individuals and Groups

5. Composite Texts

6. Practical Texts

7. Cultural Texts

8. Letters

Conclusion