Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages PDF
Preview Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages
Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages ENCOUNTERS WITH ASIA Victor H. Mair, Series Editor Encounters with Asia is an interdisciplinary series dedicated to the exploration of all the major regions and cultures of this vast continent. Its timeframe extends from the prehistoric to the contemporary; its geographic scope ranges from the Urals and the Caucasus to the Pacific. A particular focus of the series is the Silk Road in all of its ramifications: religion, art, music, medicine, science, trade, and so forth. Among the disciplines represented in this series are history, archeology, anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics. The series aims particularly to clarify the complex interrelationships among various peoples within Asia, and also with societies beyond Asia. A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages Sanping Chen university of pennsylvania press philadelphia Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chen, Sanping. Multicultural China in the early Middle Ages / Sanping Chen. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Encounters with Asia) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4370-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. China—History—221 B.C.–960 A.D. 2. China—Ethnic relations— History. 3. Ethnicity—China—History. I. Title. II. Series: Encounters with Asia. DS747.38.C43 2012 951'.01—dc23 2011035815 To the memory of my mother Contents Foreword: Old Wine in New Bottles ix Introduction 1 1. The Legacy of the Tuoba Xianbei: The Tang Dynasty 4 2. From Mulan to Unicorn 39 3. Brotherly Matters and the Canine Image: The Invasion of “Barbarian” Tongues 60 4. The Huns and the Bulgars: The Chinese Chapter 83 5. The Mystery of the “White-Drake” Oracle: The Iranian Shadows 99 6. Son of Heaven and Son of God 119 7. Bai Juyi and Central Asia 157 Appendix. Turkic or Proto-Mongolian? A Note on the Tuoba Language 183 Notes 193 Bibliography 237 Index 267 Acknowledgments 277 Foreword Old Wine in New Bottles Victor H. Mair After nearly half a century of isolation, China has recently reemerged as an in- tegral member of the global economy and the international political structure. Since its rise has been so explosive, however, knowledge of Chinese culture and society in other countries is still sketchy and often highly distorted. Indeed, so long and so extraordinarily complicated is the Chinese historical record, and so richly complex is Chinese literature, that modern Chinese citizens themselves are often confused about many details of their nation’s past. Virtually everyone has heard of the brave heroine Mulan, who rides off to war (as in the Disney movie), and most of us are familiar with the mythical unicorn that heralds the coming of a sage who will rule justly, yet we see them through a glass darkly. The wonder of this book, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, is that it offers a completely new look at many aspects of Chinese history and culture that heretofore may have seemed bewildering or even absurd. The author of the present volume, Sanping Chen, has the great virtue of being able to examine the past with a fresh eye. He does not take any received text or tradition at face value. Instead, he closely reexamines all the available evidence and subjects secondary interpretations to intense, critical scrutiny. The results of this type of inquiry are frequently surprising and in many cases revelatory. Yet Dr. Chen is not an iconoclast purely for the sake of iconoclasm. Instead, his goal is simply to penetrate the countless layers of obscurity and misrepresentation to get at the truth of what really happened in the past. More than any other Chinese historian that I know of, Sanping Chen is determined to confront historical data directly and without any presuppositions or agenda whatsoever.
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