Project MUSE®: Journal of Song-Yuan Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Song-Yuan Studies.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 39 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Song-Yuan StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Song-Yuan Studies2154-66651059-3152Latest articles in Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Wang Teh-yi 王德毅 (1934–2024): In Memoriam
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974971
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Professor Wang Teh-yi 王德毅, who died in Taipei at the age of ninety-one on April 29, 2024, was among the most influential historians of middle period China during the last half of the twentieth century. The extensive series of research tools he compiled and his many individual studies on Song history and historiography continue to influence scholars today, and that influence will continue for many years into the future. Professor Wang was born in 1934 in Feng 豐 County, Jiangsu province. He left his hometown during the turmoil of the late 1940s and arrived in Taiwan at the age of fourteen. In 1955 he was admitted to the Department of History at National Taiwan University, where Professor Yao Congwu 姚從吾 (1894–1970)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallWang Teh-yi 王德毅 (1934–2024): In Memoriam2025-11-21text/htmlen-USWang Teh-yi 王德毅 (1934–2024): In Memoriam2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®159052026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Remembering Dieter Kuhn (1946–2024)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974972
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Professor Emeritus Dr. Dieter Kuhn, renowned sinologist and long-term professor at the Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg, passed away in Munich on March 21st, 2024.Born in 1946 in Karlsruhe, Kuhn grew up in postwar (then West) Germany, where he experienced the travails of the emerging society of the Federal Republic. His keen powers of observation shaped his affinity for history in high school, and during his ensuing training to complete a diploma in business administration with a special focus on textile manufacturing. Keen to explore a different career track than business he went on to pursue a Master of Arts degree, majoring in Sinology with minors in Manchu Studies and East Asian and European Art
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallRemembering Dieter Kuhn (1946–2024)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USRemembering Dieter Kuhn (1946–2024)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®149132026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21From the Editors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974973
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In recognition of the increasing diversity of our field, in 2024 the Officers and Board of the Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies moved to expand the editorship of JSYS into a team of two equal co-editors. As the first incumbents of that model, we stand in awe of our intrepid predecessors who oversaw issue after splendid issue while occupying the editor's position on their own. Of course, every editor is supported by our Editorial Board, our numerous anonymous reviewers, and now (and we hope for a long time to come) both our Book Review editor, Brian Vivier of the University of Pennsylvania, and our printer and graphics guru David Goodrich of Birdtrack Press. While learning the ropes on Issue
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallFrom the Editors2025-11-21text/htmlen-USFrom the Editors2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®44302026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Article Abstracts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974974
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Zhang Meimei: "Autumn Sounds: The Poetics of Hearing from Early China to the Northern Song Period" (pp. 11–35)The motif of autumn, symbolizing decline and demise, has long permeated Chinese literature. This article explores the auditory dimension of autumn, namely, "autumn sounds," tracing its evolution from pre-Qin observations to the reflections of Tang and Song poets. During the Tang period, hearing emerged as a key sensory experience, but Song poets developed the theme of autumn sounds even further, employing the sense of hearing not only for emotional expression but also for philosophical introspection on human intellection, agency, and self-regulation. The contrast between the Tang and Song periods
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallArticle Abstracts2025-11-21text/htmlen-USArticle Abstracts2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®111192026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Introduction: Special Section on the Human Senses
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974975
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Sensory perception and experience became a thematic framework for scholars of the humanities and social sciences in the last two decades of the twentieth century, as a reaction to the excessive logocentricity of the linguistic turn.1 At the risk of oversimplifying the current state of the field of sensory history: each society has developed its own distinctive cultural system through which individuals and subgroups imagine themselves to be engaged in comprehending and interpreting the sensual world.2 The human senses are now conceptualized as fundamental modes of knowledge rather than passive conduits for transmitting sensory data from organs to the mind, and as pathways that encompass both thinking and feeling.3
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallIntroduction: Special Section on the Human Senses2025-11-21text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Special Section on the Human Senses2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®439162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Autumn Sounds: The Poetics of Hearing from Early China to the Northern Song Period
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974976
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The motif of autumn has permeated numerous works of Chinese literature. Often used as a metaphor, autumn conveys a range of melancholic emotions, encapsulating themes of change and transition and prompting contemplation of life's impermanence. This article delves into a specific aspect of this tradition: literary works that explore the auditory experience of autumn. From the keen observations of nature by pre-Qin authors to the introspective musings of Tang poets like Meng Jiao 孟郊 (751–814) and Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), the portrayal of autumn in literature has evolved, with a growing emphasis on the sounds that accompany this season of change. As the auditory dimension emerged as a vital component in capturing the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallAutumn Sounds: The Poetics of Hearing from Early China to the Northern Song Period2025-11-21text/htmlen-USAutumn Sounds: The Poetics of Hearing from Early China to the Northern Song Period2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1041012026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Sense Embodied: Cloves and Olfactory Transitions in Middle Period China
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974977
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The recent publication of two topical books signals how Chinese olfactory history has gained traction as an emerging field.1 This trend reflects an upsurge of interest in Asian sensual cultures, potentially heralding a sensory turn in Asian studies.2 However, as with other regions in Asia, while the modern transformation of Chinese smell culture is now receiving due attention, much remains uncharted about its early development before the colonial encounter with a deodorizing Western smell-scape in the nineteenth century.3 There remains a persistent misconception of a timeless Chinese sensorium, insulated from global influences until the colonial encounter. In reality, aromatics from the global tropics had long
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallSense Embodied: Cloves and Olfactory Transitions in Middle Period China2025-11-21text/htmlen-USSense Embodied: Cloves and Olfactory Transitions in Middle Period China2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1877432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Savoring Local Knowledge: Exploring Place-Specific Foods in Song China
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974978
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When Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101) was in Hainan from 1097–1100, he once talked about food with guests.1 He commented on what is delicious across the Song Empire:
Tenderly steamed Tongzhou lamb is to be savored with almond curd, using a spoon, not chopsticks. Twirled heart noodles from the southern capital (Shangqiu in Henan) can be made as warm noodles with sophora, garnished with a savory topping of pork from Sui County. The aromatic rice from Gongcheng can be paired with a succulent steamed goose. The cooks of Wuxing skillfully sliced perch from Songjiang (Jiangsu). After that, use water from Kangwang Valley in Lushan to brew the Competition-level Tea from Zengkeng. Shortly thereafter, untie your clothes and lay on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallSavoring Local Knowledge: Exploring Place-Specific Foods in Song China2025-11-21text/htmlen-USSavoring Local Knowledge: Exploring Place-Specific Foods in Song China2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1258952026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Colorful Cold Noodles in the Song Dynasty: The Taste of Pure Experience
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974979
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The poetic genre of "writings on things" (yongwu 詠物) in classical Chinese literature can be broadly divided into two categories based on the objects they describe. Some poems center on apparently naturally-occurring objects and their inherent properties, such as an uncarved rock or a piece of fruit. Others take objects mainly produced by humans, like a vase or a painting, where the primary focus is on the craftsmanship. However, certain quotidian objects, such as inkstones, complicate this dichotomy because in such cases, their naturally-endowed qualities and the human artistry in shaping them are equally important.1 However, in those cases, literati were more often aficionados than producers, and natural features
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallColorful Cold Noodles in the Song Dynasty: The Taste of Pure Experience2025-11-21text/htmlen-USColorful Cold Noodles in the Song Dynasty: The Taste of Pure Experience2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1086392026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Xingchang's West Lake Lotus Society and Literati Networks in Early Northern Song
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974980
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The West Lake Lotus Society, founded by Xingchang 省常 (959–1020, alternately called Shengchang), was a significant Buddhist community that emerged in the early Northern Song. This community, highly esteemed in Buddhist historiography, contributed to Xingchang's recognition as a Pure Land patriarch during the Southern Song Dynasty.1 However, due to a lack of sources, the nature and organization of this community remain unclear. A newly discovered source, the Anthology on Organizing the Lotus Society at Zhaoqing Temple at West Lake in Hangzhou (Hangzhou xihu zhaoqingsi jielianshe ji 杭州西湖昭慶寺結蓮社集), offers an opportunity to investigate the social dynamics of this community. In this article, I use this newly discovered
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallXingchang's West Lake Lotus Society and Literati Networks in Early Northern Song2025-11-21text/htmlen-USXingchang's West Lake Lotus Society and Literati Networks in Early Northern Song2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1435102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Romanticizing the Enforced Freedom in Qiao Ji's "Songs of the Fisherman"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974981
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Qiao Ji 喬吉 (c. 1280–1345), a renowned playwright and songwriter during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), composed a set of twenty sanqu 散曲 (colloquial song) verses entitled "Songs of the Fisherman" (Yufuci 漁父詞) to the melodic model (qupai 曲牌) of "Courtyard Full of Fragrance" (Manting fang 滿庭芳). Qiao's "Songs of the Fisherman" brings together the "fisherman" theme and the sanqu form and thus represents a literary creation molded by the distinct sociopolitical milieu of fourteenth-century Yuan China. Qiao's fisherman departs from the conventional archetypes of the fisherman described in the earlier Chinese literary tradition, such as the Daoist hermit, the political refugee, the temporarily reclusive aspirant to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallRomanticizing the Enforced Freedom in Qiao Ji's "Songs of the Fisherman"2025-11-21text/htmlen-USRomanticizing the Enforced Freedom in Qiao Ji's "Songs of the Fisherman"2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®973122026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Beyond the Tribute of Yu: Sinitic Poetry's First Encounters with the Heartland of the Mongols
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974982
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Following the Khitans and Jurchens, the rise of the Mongols fostered a new way of viewing the steppe world. While the area of modern-day Beijing eventually emerged as the nexus of political and cultural authority under Kublai Khan (1215–1294, r. 1260–1294) and continued to serve as the power hub in the second millennium, it was the Mongol heartland on the Eurasian Steppes that held central importance in the literary imagination during the decades preceding Beijing's rise. After the Mongols forcefully eliminated the borders between the steppe world and the Jin, Sinitic writers faced the task of writing about a completely unfamiliar geographical area.1 Initially, haunted by the constant threats of the Mongol armies
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallBeyond the Tribute of Yu: Sinitic Poetry's First Encounters with the Heartland of the Mongols2025-11-21text/htmlen-USBeyond the Tribute of Yu: Sinitic Poetry's First Encounters with the Heartland of the Mongols2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1331232026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21New Discussion on the Origins and Transmissions of the "Dark Ox and White Horse" Legend and Ritual: The 'Longue Durée' Survival of a Kitan Cultural Pattern
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974983
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The legend and the ritual of the Dark Ox and White Horse (qingniu baima 青牛白馬) are iconic elements of Kitan culture that provide important clues to the early history of these people. When looking at the history of the ancient Altaic peoples, we rarely see such a direct correlation between animals ridden by legendary ancestors and the animals sacrificed during rituals.1 For this reason, researchers in ethnic history and ethnology have paid close attention to the example of the Dark Ox and White Horse. However, their interpretations remain incomplete and mostly limited to the Liao period. The long-term history of this cultural phenomenon, which spanned nearly a thousand years from the Tang to the Qing, has yet to be
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallNew Discussion on the Origins and Transmissions of the "Dark Ox and White Horse" Legend and Ritual: The 'Longue Durée' Survival of a Kitan Cultural Pattern2025-11-21text/htmlen-USNew Discussion on the Origins and Transmissions of the "Dark Ox and White Horse" Legend and Ritual: The 'Longue Durée' Survival of a Kitan Cultural Pattern2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®1331182026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21The First Print Era: The Rise of Print Culture in China's Northern Song Dynasty by Daniel Fried (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974984
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Daniel Fried's new book begins by stating, "Print is an evolved technology, not an invented one" (1). If so, the first part of this work's title—"The First Print Era"—is a bit misleading, since blockprinting had been in use for some two hundred years prior to the Song dynasty, and some aspects of Chinese book culture that Fried examines for the Northern Song were already well-developed in the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. Nevertheless, his book "posits the importance of print in the Northern Song in ways that have not previously been fully understood. Most of this work is not through the rediscovery of unread texts, however, but from the simpler action of weaving together pieces of evidence that have been noted
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallThe First Print Era: The Rise of Print Culture in China's Northern Song Dynasty by Daniel Fried (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThe First Print Era: The Rise of Print Culture in China's Northern Song Dynasty by Daniel Fried (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®287152026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Zhu Xi: Basic Teachings by Daniel K. Gardner (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974985
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The importance of translating a key work by a significant historical figure is self-evident, especially when the translation is done by a scholar with extensive expertise in the field. Yet, translation itself is an arduous and often thankless task. Given the rapid development of artificial intelligence today, the effort, time, and results involved in human translation raise curiosity about the future of translating classical works.1 Daniel Gardner's Zhu Xi: Basic Teaching, a translation of the selections from Classified Conversations of Master Zhu (Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類, hereafter Classified Conversations), not only serves as a valuable reference for scholars of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism but also offers an opportunity
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallZhu Xi: Basic Teachings by Daniel K. Gardner (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USZhu Xi: Basic Teachings by Daniel K. Gardner (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®321582026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21The Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security and State Formation by James A. Anderson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974986
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James A. Anderson. The Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security and State Formation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2024. Pp. xv + 279. $110 (cloth); $35 (paper). ISBN 978-0295752778.In an essay published in the edited volume Critical Han Studies, Tamara T. Chin called attention to the limitations that beset the study of the Sinosphere's peripheries, where "worldviews circumscribed by the Confucian canon" frequently evade scholarly concern.1 One solution, Chin proposed, may lie in additional archaeological evidence, which might compensate for the marginalization, if not the absence, of these worldviews in the Chinese or East Asian textual tradition. Recent work on areas outside
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallThe Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security and State Formation by James A. Anderson (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThe Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security and State Formation by James A. Anderson (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®672982026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21All Mine! Happiness, Ownership, and Naming in Eleventh-Century China by Stephen Owen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974987
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In his End of the Chinese "Middle Ages": Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture, Stephen Owen included two insightful essays about new claims to singularity, ownership, and private space in Tang-dynasty literature.1 In "Singularity and Possession," he argued that "one of the most significant literary transformations of the mid-Tang" was "a notion of identity, especially 'authentic' (zhen 真) identity, as singularity" (15). This singularity, marked by an exclusion of others and by a refusal of convention, was also "closely related to a new interest in ownership and possession" (16). Material property and intellectual property converged in compositions about places that poets made their own by buying them as well as by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallAll Mine! Happiness, Ownership, and Naming in Eleventh-Century China by Stephen Owen (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USAll Mine! Happiness, Ownership, and Naming in Eleventh-Century China by Stephen Owen (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®191022026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Daoist Master Changchun's Journey to the West 長春真人西遊記: To the Court of Chinggis Qan and Back by Li Zhichang (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974988
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In the long history of travel writing (youji 游記) in China that predates the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), relatively few extant texts chronicle extended journeys far beyond China's borders, especially westward into Central Asia and beyond. Among such accounts that have survived, the best known are Faxian's 法顯 (ca. 337–ca. 422) Foguo ji 佛國記 (Accounts of Buddhist Kingdoms) and Xuanzang's 玄奘 (ca. 602–664) Da Tang Xiyu ji 大唐西域記 (Accounts of the Western Regions during the Great Tang). In histories and anthologies of Chinese travel writing, these texts are often mentioned in conjunction with a pair of later works: Li Zhichang's (1193–1255) Daoist Master Changchun's Journey to the West, a diary account of the three-year
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallDaoist Master Changchun's Journey to the West 長春真人西遊記: To the Court of Chinggis Qan and Back by Li Zhichang (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USDaoist Master Changchun's Journey to the West 長春真人西遊記: To the Court of Chinggis Qan and Back by Li Zhichang (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®165762026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Nominal Things: Bronzes in the Making of Medieval China by Jeffrey Moser (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974989
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Self-naming, or ziming 自名, refers to inscriptions that contain the name of the vessel type to which the object belongs. This intriguing practice, found on many Chinese ritual bronzes from the Shang and Zhou periods, gives readers the impression that the inscription directly addresses the object that bears it. Self-naming inscriptions facilitate the study of ancient bronzes, since objects bearing such inscriptions serve as standards for researchers to classify uninscribed or un-named objects. In traditional Chinese scholarship, the correspondence between the names in the Classics and the things they refer to constitutes a branch of classical studies known as mingwu xue 名物學. Although Nominal Things does not
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallNominal Things: Bronzes in the Making of Medieval China by Jeffrey Moser (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USNominal Things: Bronzes in the Making of Medieval China by Jeffrey Moser (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®292452026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Living Locally, Thinking Nationally: The Life and Ideals of Liu Zai, a Local Literatus of the Southern Song by Huang K'uan-Ch'ung (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974990
<p></p>
Facing the task of reviewing a book written by a scholar who has spent more than fifty years exploring Song history, whose seemingly infinite knowledge of the subject has been praised by fellow Song historians, I cannot help but find myself in the situation of "wielding my axes in front of Lu Ban, the carpenter master" (Banmen nongfu 班門弄斧). Below, I will introduce the book's contents and reflect upon how I understand its main arguments.Professor Huang K'uan-ch'ung first made his reputation in the field as a political historian. Teraji Jun 寺地遵, an eminent Japanese scholar of Song political history, evaluated Professor Huang's first monograph, published in 1978, Wansong chaochen dui guoshi de zhengyi: Lizong shidai
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallLiving Locally, Thinking Nationally: The Life and Ideals of Liu Zai, a Local Literatus of the Southern Song by Huang K'uan-Ch'ung (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USLiving Locally, Thinking Nationally: The Life and Ideals of Liu Zai, a Local Literatus of the Southern Song by Huang K'uan-Ch'ung (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®192232026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire ed. by Michal Biran and Hodong Kim (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974991
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The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire, edited by Michal Biran and Hodong Kim, is a timely and essential addition to the growing field of Mongol Studies. It features forty-three chapters in two volumes by some of the most prominent Mongol studies scholars working today, including foundational figures of the field. Beginning with the work of Thomas T. Allsen in the 1980s and 1990s, the field of Mongol Studies has increasingly been interested in a multi-disciplinary and holistic approaches to the empire. These approaches consider the parts of the empire comparatively and focus on exchange (of ideas, materials, and people) rather than isolating them within regional historical traditions. The legacy of Allsen and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallThe Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire ed. by Michal Biran and Hodong Kim (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThe Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire ed. by Michal Biran and Hodong Kim (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®338872026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 CE by Christian de Pee (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974992
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Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis is an intellectual and literary history of the city in Middle Period China. It describes the relation between writing and the city in China from the ninth through the eleventh century. The narrative of the book revolves around the emergence and disappearance of the city in literati writing, and this narrative can be separated into two parts. In the first two chapters of the book, de Pee demonstrates that the city emerged as a topic of intense literary interest in the eleventh century. According to de Pee's research, Tang dynasty literati in the ninth century wrote about Chang'an as the cosmic center of the empire, and paid little attention to the urban life on the street; their
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallUrban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 CE by Christian de Pee (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USUrban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 CE by Christian de Pee (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®231112026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21The Painting Master's Shame: Liang Shicheng and the "Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings" by Amy McNair (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974993
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Sometime in the 1060s in the Song Dynasty, a pregnant servant girl found herself cast out by her master's family. Not long after, she gave birth to a boy; but with no support to rely on, she was forced to sell the child to the court eunuch service in the capital Kaifeng. The child was given a new name, Liang Shicheng 梁師成, by his eunuch adoptive father. Surviving a brutal castration, Liang gradually built his life within the inner court, advancing through the ranks thanks to his talent for calligraphy and learning. The story about his origin was not uncommon for someone like him, except for a detail he reveals later: his biological father, the master whom his mother served, was Su Shi (1037–1101), the most
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974994">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallThe Painting Master's Shame: Liang Shicheng and the "Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings" by Amy McNair (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThe Painting Master's Shame: Liang Shicheng and the "Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings" by Amy McNair (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®199972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts by Ruth Yun-ju Chen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974994
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Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts is an investigation of medical knowledge in medieval China with a focus on its epistemological foundations. The author foregrounds the so-called "empirical strategy," which refers to experiential knowledge and the reasoning and narrative patterns that accompanied it (2). The book traces the practice as far back as the fifth century, notes its crescendo in the ninth century, and focuses on the eleventh and twelfth centuries to analyze its development to maturity.Good Formulas consists of four chapters. Chapter One traces the rise of the new criteria for reliable medical recipes in the eleventh century. Relying on Shen Gua 沈括 (1031–1095) as a
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974994">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/424/image/coversmallGood Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts by Ruth Yun-ju Chen (review)2025-11-21text/htmlen-USGood Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts by Ruth Yun-ju Chen (review)2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®87652026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21