Week 12 (Nov. 15 – Nov. 21)

Table of contents

To do and Schedule of the Week

Reminder

  • The 5-15 report is due on Sunday every week; did you remember to send it in? Just a Google Doc shared with me will do!
  • Find all the Project and Time management info in the tab “Course Resources“.

Good to know

Next week Tuesday (Nov. 23) the course material will be in asynchronous format: that means you don’t have to be in a specific place at a specific time, but you can work at your own pace. It also means, I am not the last thing standing between you and the Thanksgiving break. You still have to engage with course materials, but it will be the Mongols, and who doesn’t want to learn about them??

By Tuesday, 3.30PM

Seating plan: Small groups

Let’s have a closer look at the Song state’s northern neighbors: the Liao, founded by the Khitan people (916-1125), and the Jin, founded by Jurchen people (1115-1234).

Prepare for class/read:

All read:

  • Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire : A History of China to 1800. Seconded. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
    • PDF
    • Chapter 8: “The Northern Dynasties: Non-Chinese Rule in the North” (Selections marked with red brackets)

Then pick ONE of the following two options

OPTION A: Meeting the Khitan/Liao

  • Dudbridge, Glen. “Chapter 7: The Khitan”. In A Portrait of Five Dynasties China : From the Memoirs of Wang Renyu (880-956), 144-160. Oxford Oriental Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
    • PDF: Two sections marked in red brackets, pp. 9-10 and 11-13 of PDF (the rest is for background). . Selection of two short memoirs, pp. 152-53 and pp. 155-56.
    • Guiding questions: Wang Renyu was a Han Chinese man who lived through the devastation of the Tang-Song wars and political turmoil. How does he explain this turmoil and the breakdown of society? What are his views on the Khitan?
  • Franke, Herbert. “The “treatise On Punishments in the Liao History“. Central Asiatic Journal 27, no. 1/2 (1983): 9-38.
    • PDF: Two excerpts, marked in red brackets, pp. 13-14 and pp. 28-29 ( the rest is for background).
    • A brief excerpt of the official history of the Liao, on the punishments. It may be useful to compare with the Qin and Tang legal codes. Do you find similarities? Differences? What might be the reasons?

OPTION B: A visit to the Jurchen Jin state

  • Franke Herbert. “A Sung embassy diary of 1211-1212. The Shih-Chin Lu of Ch’eng Cho.” In: Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient. Tome 69, 1981. pp. 171-207.
    • PDF
    • The diary pp. 176-204 is marked between red brackets; the intro and concluding remarks are for your information.
    • This is a longer piece, but a lot of the information is repetitive: pick a few passages you find interesting, remarkable or strange to focus on. Guiding question: How does Cheng see his northern neighbors?
    • Useful to know: The notes provide some useful information, in particular on historical or mythical references contained in the text.
    • The war between the Mongols and the Jin has just started in 1211, and will end with the destruction of the Jin dynasty in 1234. This influences Cheng’s journey.

Thursday, 3.30PM

In-class project time and space!

By Sunday, 11:59PM

Fill out and send in/share your “5-15 progress report“

All the details are in the form. This will be a weekly returning assignment that helps us both to ensure you keep working on the course project(s). I often can identify a potential problem area before you’ve even hit it, and steer you on a more successful course, using these weekly reports.

Until further notice (or a full scale rebellion), consider these a weekly returning task. Please be careful when using pitchforks while staging a rebellion.

Slides

Tuesday: Liao and Jin (and a bit of Xi Xia/Tangut)

Where to get help