Week 8: Tang dynasty

• • * If you need a mid-term grade (First year students): what grade should I enter into the gradebook and why?
  • * Look back at your Start of Semester reflection and goals, and your First Reflection to help you ponder these questions; think about goals (new, or adjusted goals) for the second half. Do not come to this conversation without preparation!

• • Mr. Yan was a Chinese official who served under northern and southern states in the sixth century. He wrote these “instructions” for his sons, and they provide interesting insights in how the two parts of the country grew apart culturally, after centuries of political division. What are those differences? How do such differences affect our use of the word “Chinese”/”China”?
• “Ballad of Mulan”. In An Anthology of Chinese Literature : Beginnings to 1911, translated and edited by Stephen Owen, 241-43. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.(PDF)
  • This is the oldest known version of the “Ballad of Mulan”, set in the Northern Wei. (The Disney movie was only the last in a long series of different interpretations of how the story was molded and retold over the centuries to suit the particular needs of a time period.) What can you learn about life during the Northern Wei from this ballad? What appears to you to be representative of the northern nomadic traditions (of the Xianbei), and are there indications that this culture has absorbed elements of its Chinese surroundings?

• PDF

• Warning: we went into some detail about how eunuchs become eunuchs 

• PDF Chapter 31/32 (selected sections)
• Also available as Ebook via Trexler Library
• This text is a collection of anecdotes about emperor Tang Taizong and the many (often idealized) interactions with his ministers, to be used as instruction for rulers.

• This is an extract from the opening section of the Tang legal code. The author of the preface was one of the trusted advisors of Tang Taizong.
• Reading questions: How do the texts deal with the two different traditions which influenced Chinese ideas about crime, punishment and order in society: the fajia (legalists) and the ru (Confucianists) (see Week 3, Friday, and Week 4, Wednesday). Do you see other influences?

• • What parallels or contradictions do you see between the Essentials (source 1) and the principles underlying the Tang Code (source 2)?

OPTION 2: Romance and disaster at the court – Emperor Xuanzong and The Precious Consort Yang

• “Interlude: Xuan-zong and Yang the Prized Consort”. In An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. Edited and translated by Stephen Owen, 441ff. New York: Norton, 1996. (PDF)
  • This is a selection of literary works that romanticized the relationship between the emperor and his consort. This started shortly after the rebellion of An Lushan, but continued for many centuries after.
• Reading questions: Can you put together a timeline of events? [the optional extra may be useful here]; What makes this story speak to the imagination?
• optional extra for this source: Kroll, Paul. “The Flight from the Capital and the Death of the Precious Consort Yang.” In T’ang Studies 3 (1985). (PDF)
  • • This is a translation from the elventh-century chronicle of the events. It’s a bit stilted but gives you an impression of the material professional historians work with, even if it is in translation. At times the historian moves close to a story-teller, almost providing “stage directions” for hist characters.

OPTION 3: Scholar-officials after the rebellion

• Han Yu. “Memorial Discussing the Buddha’s Bone”. In An Anthology of Chinese Literature, Beginnings to 1911. Edited and translated by Stephen Owen, 597-601. New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1996.(PDF)
  • A polemic against the veneration of a Buddhist relic. (This nearly cost Han Yu his life- his death sentence was commuted to exile after intervention from his friends)
• Liu Zongyuan. “Essay on Enfeoffment” (Fengjian lun). In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1. 2nd edition. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1990.(PDF)
  • An analysis of the evolution of China’s political system, and its problems, according to an eighth/ninth century scholar-official.
• Reading questions: Compare both texts with what we learned so far about Chinese history.
  • What do we learn from Han Yu’s memorial about the Tang scholars’ views on Buddhism? And about the place of Buddhism in Tang state and society?
  • Do Liu’s ideas make sense to a modern historian? Why (not)? Where can we refine his ideas, or correct them? And above all: what does his essay reveal about the way people in medieval China thought about the state?