Tang China

Author : Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067403306X
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China’s Cosmopolitan Empire written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.

Author : Charles D. Benn
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195176650
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China's Golden Age written by Charles D. Benn and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating and detailed profile, Benn paints a vivid picture of life in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), traditionally regarded as the golden age of China. 40 line illustrations.

Author : BuYun Chen
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295745312
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empire of Style written by BuYun Chen and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. In Empire of Style, BuYun Chen reveals a vibrant fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing. Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production. This first book on fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources—paintings, figurines, and silk artifacts—and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws. Tang fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/empire-of-style

Author : Marc S. Abramson
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812201019
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ethnic Identity in Tang China written by Marc S. Abramson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnic Identity in Tang China is the first work in any language to explore comprehensively the construction of ethnicity during the dynasty that reigned over China for roughly three centuries, from 618 to 907. Often viewed as one of the most cosmopolitan regimes in China's past, the Tang had roots in Inner Asia, and its rulers continued to have complex relationships with a population that included Turks, Tibetans, Japanese, Koreans, Southeast Asians, Persians, and Arabs. Marc S. Abramson's rich portrait of this complex, multiethnic empire draws on political writings, religious texts, and other cultural artifacts, as well as comparative examples from other empires and frontiers. Abramson argues that various constituencies, ranging from Confucian elites to Buddhist monks to "barbarian" generals, sought to define ethnic boundaries for various reasons but often in part out of discomfort with the ambiguity of their own ethnic and cultural identity. The Tang court, meanwhile, alternately sought to absorb some alien populations to preserve the empire's integrity while seeking to preserve the ethnic distinctiveness of other groups whose particular skills it valued. Abramson demonstrates how the Tang era marked a key shift in definitions of China and the Chinese people, a shift that ultimately laid the foundation for the emergence of the modern Chinese nation. Ethnic Identity in Tang China sheds new light on one of the most important periods in Chinese history. It also offers broader insights on East Asian and Inner Asian history, the history of ethnicity, and the comparative history of frontiers and empires.

Author : Yihong Pan
Publisher : Center for East Asian Studies Western Washington
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan written by Yihong Pan and published by Center for East Asian Studies Western Washington. This book was released on 1997 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jessey J. C. Choo
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824893220
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inscribing Death written by Jessey J. C. Choo and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-07-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This nuanced study traces how Chinese came to view death as an opportunity to fashion and convey social identities and memories during the medieval period (200–1000) and the Tang dynasty (618–907), specifically. As Chinese society became increasingly multicultural and multireligious, to achieve these aims people selectively adopted, portrayed, and interpreted various acts of remembrance. Included in these were new and evolving burial, mourning, and commemorative practices: joint-burials of spouses, extended family members, and coreligionists; relocation and reburial of bodies; posthumous marriage and divorce; interment of a summoned soul in the absence of a body; and many changes to the classical mourning and commemorative rites that became the norm during the period. Individuals independently constructed the socio-religious meanings of a particular death and the handling of corpses by engaging in and reviewing acts of remembrance. Drawing on a variety of sources, including hundreds of newly excavated entombed epitaph inscriptions, Inscribing Death illuminates the process through which the living—and the dead—negotiated this multiplicity of meanings and how they shaped their memories and identities both as individuals and as part of collectives. In particular, it details the growing emphasis on remembrance as an expression of filial piety and the grave as a focal point of ancestral sacrifice. The work also identifies different modes of construction and representation of the self in life and death, deepening our understanding of ancestral worship and its changing modus operandi and continuous shaping influence on the most intimate human relationships—thus challenging the current monolithic representation of ancestral worship as an extension of families rather than individuals in medieval China.

Author : Linda Rui Feng
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824856872
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book City of Marvel and Transformation written by Linda Rui Feng and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) was unrivaled in its monumental scale, with about one million inhabitants dwelling within its walls. It was there that one of the most enduring cultural and political institutions of the empire—the civil service examinations—took shape, bringing an unprecedented influx of literati men to the city seeking recognition and official status by demonstrating their literary talent. To these examination candidates, Chang’an was a megalopolis, career launch pad, and most importantly, cultural paradigm. As a multifaceted lived space, it captured the imaginations of Tang writers, shaped their future aspirations, and left discernible traces in the writings of this period. City of Marvel and Transformation brings this cityscape to life together with the mindscape of its sojourner-writers. By analyzing narratives of experience with a distinctive metropolitan consciousness, it retrieves lost connections between senses of the self and a sense of place. Each chapter takes up one of the powerful shaping forces of Chang’an: its siren call as a destination; the unforeseen nooks and crannies of its urban space; its potential as a “media machine” to broadcast images and reputations; its demimonde—a city within a city where both literary culture and commerce took center stage. Without being limited to any single genre, specific movement, or individual author, the texts examined in this book highlight aspects of Chang’an as a shared and contested space in the collective imagination. They bring to our attention a newly emerged interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility in the lives of educated men, who as aspirants and routine capital-bound travelers learned to negotiate urban space. Both literary study and cultural history, City of Marvel and Transformation goes beyond close readings of text; it also draws productively from research in urban history, anthropology, and studies of space and place, building upon the theoretical frameworks of scholars such as Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, and Victor Turner. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship in Chinese studies on the importance of cities and city life. Students and scholars of premodern China will find new ways to understand the collective concerns of the lettered class, as well as new ways to understand literary phenomena that would eventually influence vernacular tales and the Chinese novel. By asking larger questions about how urban sojourns shape subjectivity and perceptions, this book will also attract a wide range of readers interested in studies of personhood, spatial practice, and cities as living cultural systems in flux, both ancient and modern.

Author : Charles Benn
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313006873
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Daily Life in Traditional China written by Charles Benn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-12-30 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thorough exploration of the aspects of everyday life in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) provides fascinating insight into a culture and time that is often misunderstood, especially by those from western cultures. Here students will find the details of what life was really like for these people. How was their society structured? How did they entertain themselves? What sorts of food did they eat? The answers to these and other questions are provided in full detail to bring this golden age of Chinese culture alive for the modern reader. Based mainly on classical translations from the Chinese themselves, each chapter addresses a specific aspect of daily living in the voices of those who lived during the time. A myriad of interesting details are provided to help readers discover, among other things, what life was like in the city, what homes and gardens were like, how the role's of men and women differed, and the many rituals in which people participated. Detailed descriptions of the clothes and materials people wore, the games they played and the cooking methods they used for specific foods provide readers with the ability to experiment on their own to recreate the time and place, so they can have a better understanding of this intriguing culture.

Author : Zhenping Wang
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824837886
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia written by Zhenping Wang and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a synthetic narrative approach, this ambitious work uses the lens of multipolarity to analyze Tang China’s (618–907) relations with Turkestan; the Korean states of Koguryŏ, Silla, and Paekche; the state of Parhae in Manchuria; and the Nanzhao and Tibetan kingdoms. Without any one entity able to dominate Asia’s geopolitical landscape, the author argues that relations among these countries were quite fluid and dynamic—an interpretation that departs markedly from the prevalent view of China fixed at the center of a widespread “tribute system.” To cope with external affairs in a tumultuous world, Tang China employed a dual management system that allowed both central and local officials to conduct foreign affairs. The court authorized Tang local administrators to receive foreign visitors, forward their diplomatic letters to the capital, and manage contact with outsiders whose territories bordered on China. Not limited to handling routine matters, local officials used their knowledge of border situations to influence the court’s foreign policy. Some even took the liberty of acting without the court’s authorization when an emergency occurred, thus adding another layer to multipolarity in the region’s geopolitics. The book also sheds new light on the ideological foundation of Tang China’s foreign policy. Appropriateness, efficacy, expedience, and mutual self-interest guided the court’s actions abroad. Although officials often used “virtue” and “righteousness” in policy discussions and announcements, these terms were not abstract universal principles but justifications for the pursuit of self-interest by those involved. Detailed philological studies reveal that in the realm of international politics, “virtue” and “righteousness” were in fact viewed as pragmatic and utilitarian in nature. Comprehensive and authoritative, Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia is a major work on Tang foreign relations that will reconceptualize our understanding of the complexities of diplomacy and war in imperial China.

Author : Julian Romane
Publisher : Pen and Sword
ISBN 13 : 1473887798
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rise of the Tang Dynasty written by Julian Romane and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julian Romane examines the military events behind the emergence of the Sui and Tang dynasties in the period 581-626 AD. Narrating the campaigns and battles, he analyses in detail the strategy and tactics employed, a central theme being the collision of the steppe cavalry with Chinese infantry armies.By the fourth century AD, horse nomads had seized northern China. Conflict with these Turkic interlopers continued throughout the 5th and most of the 6th century. The emergence of the Sui dynasty (581-618) brought some progress but internal weakness led to their rapid collapse. The succeeding House of Tang, however, provided the necessary stability and leadership to underpin military success. This was largely the achievement of Li Shimin, who later became the second Tang Emperor. By the start of Li Shimins reign as Emperor Tang Taizong, effective military organizations had been developed and China reunified. His military campaigns are examples of tactical and strategic virtuosity that demonstrate the application of the distinctive Chinese way of war expounded in Chinese military manuals, including Li Shimins own writings.