Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments First and foremost, I owe an intellectual debt to scholars of Sui studies. Especially worth mention are Yamazaki Hiroshi and Arthur Wright. Yamazaki’s work on Sui Buddhism and bureaucracy has laid a solid groundwork for the study of Sui religion and officialdom. Wright’s seminal article on Yangdi’s personality inspired me to explore the story of Yangdi and his reign. In the course of writing this book, I have received assistance from friends and colleagues. I am particularly thankful to Professor Gao Mingshi of National Taiwan University who sent me his recent books on traditional Chinese and Sui-Tang education; and to Professor Kominami Ichirō of Kyoto University who was kind enough to provide me with copies of Japanese articles that are hard to come by in the States but essential for my studies. I am indebted to George Demetrakopoulos of Western Michigan University and Robert Mory of the University of Michigan for their valuable suggestions on the earlier versions of the manuscript. I greatly appreciate the support I have received from Western Michigan University, its College of Arts and Sciences, and in particular, its History Department, which provided me with funding for research through its Burnham-Macmillan Fund. I am grateful to Ms. Nancy Ellegate, acquisition editor at SUNY Press, for the effective and professional way she handled my manuscript, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their insights and encouragement, which made its publication possible. Lastly, I wish to thank my wife, Li Xiaoqing, for her consistent support. xiii ...