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Challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. In Crossing the Gate, Man Xu examines the lives of women in the Chinese province of Fujian during the Song dynasty. Tracking womens life experience across class lines, outside as well as inside the domestic realm, Xu challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. She contextualizes women in a much broader physical space and social network, investigating the gaps between ideals and reality and examining womens own agency in gender construction. She argues that womens autonomy and mobility, conventionally attributed to Ming-Qing women of late imperial China, can be traced to the Song era. This thorough study of Song womens life experience connects women to the great political, economic, and social transitions of the time, and sheds light on the so-called Song-Yuan-Ming transition from the perspective of gender studies. By putting women at the center of analysis and by focusing on the local and the quotidian, Crossing the Gate offers a new and nuanced picture of the Song Confucian revival.
Defining Chu begins with an overview of the historical geography, an outline of archaeological evidence for Chu history, and an appreciation of Chu art. Following chapters examine issues of state and society: the ideology of the ruling class, legal procedures, popular culture, and daily life. The final section surveys Chu religion and literature and includes an analysis of the Chuci, the great anthology of Chu poetry, and its impact on mainstream Chinese literature. A translation of the Chu Silk Manuscript¿ is appended. This document has intrigued scholars since its discovery in Changsha some sixty years ago. The inclusion of this rare and difficult text, available for the first time in an effective and accessible translation, will make this volume indispensable to students and scholars of early Chinese history and thought.
The Six Dynasties, also known as the "Dark Age” of Chinese history, was a period of political disunity and conflict but also one of important developments in the arts, religion, and culture. This comprehensive and extensively illustrated book covers the material culture of the Six Dynasties, A.D. 220 to 589. Albert E. Dien, a foremost expert on the period, draws on the archaeological findings of mainland China journals as well as historical and literary sources to clarify and interpret the database of over 1,800 tombs developed for this volume. During the Six Dynasties, the influences of non-Chinese nomads, the flourishing of Buddhism, and increasing numbers of foreign merchants in the capitals brought about widespread change. The book explores what the archaeological artifacts reveal about this era of innovation and experimentation between the Han and Tang dynasties.
This book analyzes Han dynasty Chinese archaeology based on a comparison of the forms of vessels found in positively dated tombs.
Nicolas Tackett explores the emergence of a new worldview and sense of Chinese identity during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).
An enormous number of burial objects have been unearthed from ancient tombs in archaeological excavations in China. These mingqi were made in all kinds of materials and in a broad range of forms, techniques and craftsmanship. In this book Quinghua Guo examines a particular type of mingqi -- pottery building. The striking realism of the pottery buildings suggests that they were modelled after actual buildings. They bring to life courtyard houses, manors, towers, granaries and pigsty-privies, as well as cooking ranges and well pavilions. These pottery buildings, previously little known, preserve knowledge of antiquity and demonstrate the architectural quality and structural variety of the peri...
Between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE and the year 600, more than thirty dynasties, kingdoms, and states rose and fell on the eastern side of the Asian continent. The founders and rulers of those polities represented the spectrum of peoples in North, East, and Central Asia. Nearly all of them built palaces, altars, temples, tombs, and cities, and almost without exception, the architecture was grounded in the building tradition of China. Illustrated with more than 475 color and black-and-white photographs, maps, and drawings, Chinese Architecture in an Age of Turmoil uses all available evidence—Chinese texts, secondary literature in six languages, excavation reports, and most import...
Monographienreihe zur Geschichte, Kultur und Sprache der Völker Ost- und Zentralasiens.
Shows how recent archaeological discoveries have enriched our perception of the cultural history of China in the Classical era.