The Making of Song Dynasty History

The Making of Song Dynasty History
Author: Charles Hartman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108834833

A revisionist analysis of the major sources for Song history, explaining their master narrative as the product of political tension.

Information, Territory, and Networks

Information, Territory, and Networks
Author: Hilde De Weerdt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684175631

"The occupation of the northern half of the Chinese territories in the 1120s brought about a transformation in political communication in the south that had lasting implications for imperial Chinese history. By the late eleventh century, the Song court no longer dominated the production of information about itself and its territories. Song literati gradually consolidated their position as producers, users, and discussants of court gazettes, official records, archival compilations, dynastic histories, military geographies, and maps. This development altered the relationship between court and literati in political communication for the remainder of the imperial period. Based on a close reading of reader responses to official records and derivatives and on a mapping of literati networks, the author further proposes that the twelfth-century geopolitical crisis resulted in a lasting literati preference for imperial restoration and unified rule.Hilde De Weerdt makes an important intervention in cultural and intellectual history by examining censorship and publicity together. In addition, she reorients the debate about the social transformation and local turn of imperial Chinese elites by treating the formation of localist strategies and empire-focused political identities as parallel rather than opposite trends."

Society and the Supernatural in Song China

Society and the Supernatural in Song China
Author: Edward L. Davis
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2001-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824864360

Society and the Supernatural in Song China is at once a meticulous examination of spirit possession and exorcism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a social history of the full panoply of China's religious practices and practitioners at the moment when she was poised to dominate the world economy. Although the Song dynasty (960-1276) is often identified with the establishment of Confucian orthodoxy, Edward Davis demonstrates the renewed vitality of the dynasty's Taoist, Buddhist, and local religious traditions. He charts the rise of hundreds of new temple-cults and the lineages of clerical exorcists and vernacular priests; the increasingly competitive interaction among all practitioners of therapeutic ritual; and the wide social range of their patrons and clients.

The Evolution of Chinese Medicine

The Evolution of Chinese Medicine
Author: Asaf Goldschmidt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2008-10-08
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1134091818

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the crucial second stage in the evolution of Chinese medicine by examining the changes during the pivotal era of the Song dynasty.

The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History

The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History
Author: Paul Jakov Smith
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684173817

This volume seeks to study the connections between two well-studied epochs in Chinese history: the mid-imperial era of the Tang and Song (ca. 800-1270) and the late imperial era of the late Ming and Qing (1550-1900). Both eras are seen as periods of explosive change, particularly in economic activity, characterized by the emergence of new forms of social organization and a dramatic expansion in knowledge and culture. The task of establishing links between these two periods has been impeded by a lack of knowledge of the intervening Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). This historiographical "black hole" has artificially interrupted the narrative of Chinese history and bifurcated it into two distinct epochs. This book aims to restore continuity to that historical narrative by filling the gap between mid-imperial and late imperial China. The contributors argue that the Song-Yuan-Ming transition (early twelfth through the late fifteenth century) constitutes a distinct historical period of transition and not one of interruption and devolution. They trace this transition by investigating such subjects as contemporary impressions of the period, the role of the Mongols in intellectual life, the economy of Jiangnan, urban growth, neo-Confucianism and local society, commercial publishing, comic drama, and medical learning.

The Age of Confucian Rule

The Age of Confucian Rule
Author: Dieter Kuhn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2011-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674244346

Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favorably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed. With the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalized the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means. Their rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist’s eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China’s understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese. The Age of Confucian Rule is an essential introduction to this transformative era. “A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time” (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).

Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China

Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China
Author: Cong Ellen Zhang
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 082488440X

Educated men in Song-dynasty China (960–1279) traveled frequently in search of scholarly and bureaucratic success. These extensive periods of physical mobility took them away from their families, homes, and native places for long periods of time, preventing them from fulfilling their most sacred domestic duty: filial piety to their parents. In this deeply grounded work, Cong Ellen Zhang locates the tension between worldly ambition and family duty at the heart of elite social and cultural life. Drawing on more than two thousand funerary biographies and other official and private writing, Zhang argues that the predicament in which Song literati found themselves diminished neither the importance of filial piety nor the appeal of participating in examinations and government service. On the contrary, the Northern Song witnessed unprecedented literati activity and state involvement in the bolstering of ancient forms of filial performances and the promotion of new ones. The result was the triumph of a new filial ideal: luyang. By labeling highly coveted honors and privileges attainable solely through scholarly and official accomplishments as the most celebrated filial acts, the luyang rhetoric elevated office-holding men to be the most filial of sons. Consequently, the proper performance of filiality became essential to scholar-official identity and self-representation. Zhang convincingly demonstrates that this reconfiguration of elite male filiality transformed filial piety into a status- and gender-based virtue, a change that had wide implications for elite family life and relationships in the Northern Song. The separation of elite men from their parents and homes also made the idea of “native place” increasingly fluid. This development in turn generated an interest in family preservation as filial performance. Individually initiated, kinship- and native place-based projects flourished and coalesced with the moral and cultural visions of leading scholar-intellectuals, providing the social and familial foundations for the ascendancy of Neo-Confucianism as well as new cultural norms that transformed Chinese society in the Song and beyond.

Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China

Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: China
ISBN: 9780674021273

Huizong was an exceptional emperor who lived through momentous times. A man of many talents, he wrote poetry and created his own distinctive calligraphy style; collected paintings, calligraphies, and antiquities on a large scale; promoted Daoism; and involved himself in the training of court artists, the layout of gardens, and reforms of music and medicine. The quarter century when Huizong ruled is just as fascinating. The greatly enlarged scholar-official class had come into its own but was deeply divided by factional strife. The long struggle between the Chinese state and its northern neighbors entered a new phase when Song proved unable to defend itself against the newly emergent Jurchen state of Jin. Huizong and thousands of members of his family and court were taken captive, and the Song dynasty had to recreate itself in the South.

Here in 'China' I Dwell

Here in 'China' I Dwell
Author: Zhaoguang Ge
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2017-08-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004279997

Here in ‘China’ I Dwell is a historiographical account of the formation of Chinese historical narratives in light of outside pressures on China — the view from China’s borders. There is a special discussion of the inf luence of Japanese historians on the concept of China and its borders, including the nature of their sources, cultural and religious and more. In Ge’s comparative account, a new portrait of Chinese historical narratives, along with the views and assumptions implicit in these narrat ives, emerges in the context of East Asia, a similarly constructed concept with its own multitudes of frontiers and peoples.