Project MUSE®: Early Medieval China - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Early Medieval China.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 21 (2015) through current issueLatest Articles: Early Medieval ChinaTWOProject MUSE®Early Medieval China1946-78421529-9104Latest articles in Early Medieval China. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975478
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Editing a journal is a laborious task whose true reward lies in convening, curating, and bringing to light an excellent collection of writings. This issue, which marks the transition of this journal to our new publisher Johns Hopkins University Press, proudly showcases an assemblage of exciting pieces in the fields of early medieval Chinese literature, history, archaeology, and religion.The first of the research articles, contributed by Olivia Milburn, explores the attitude toward aging through its focus on the Western Jin writer Zuo Si's (ca. 250–305) unique poetic exposition, "Fu on White Hair," in which the narrator carries on a heated argument with a body part, namely his white hair. Besides calling attention
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallEditor's Note2025-12-02text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®62032026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02Aging in Early Medieval China: Zuo Si and the "Rhapsody on White Hair"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975479
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Pre- and early imperial literature contains a plethora of discussions of the experience of aging, including accounts of people with white hair (also known as canities). However, literary explorations of this theme appear to have been largely restricted to prose works until the early medieval period.1 Beginning at around the time of the fall of the Han, male poets began to write about white hair, using this as a vehicle for expressing a highly intimate experience, reporting complex emotions about so visibly becoming older and facing the prospect of physical decline. While some literati embraced venerability and rejoiced in their good luck at surviving to old age when so many died before their time, others bewailed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallAging in Early Medieval China: Zuo Si and the "Rhapsody on White Hair"2025-12-02text/htmlen-USAging in Early Medieval China: Zuo Si and the "Rhapsody on White Hair"2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®1305732026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02Anomaly Accounts, Allusion, and Textual Reuse in Jinlouzi
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975480
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Jinlouzi 金樓子 (The Master of the Golden Tower) was compiled by Xiao Yi 蕭繹 (508–555; Liang Emperor Yuan 梁元帝, r. 552–555), who ruled briefly as emperor of the Liang dynasty (502–557). Xiao Yi created the text over the course of a life of scholarship, reading, and book collecting.1 Its contents are divided into thirteen topic-based chapters and an autobiographical postface (zixu 自序). The topics of these chapters are eclectic, demonstrating a variety of literary, political, historical, and bibliographic interests. One of Jinlouzi's chapters is devoted to the collection and organization of anomaly accounts (zhiguai 志怪). This chapter resembles many other anomaly account collections of the early medieval period but for the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallAnomaly Accounts, Allusion, and Textual Reuse in Jinlouzi2025-12-02text/htmlen-USAnomaly Accounts, Allusion, and Textual Reuse in Jinlouzi2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®1796992026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02Lingbao Daoism, Messianic Figures, and Yu Xin's "Pacing the Void" Poems
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975481
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Yu Xin 庾信 (513–581) composed "Lyrics for Pacing the Void" ("Buxu ci" 步虛詞)—the first such by a member of the literati elite—in the mid-to late sixth century during the Northern Zhou 北周 (557–581). Drawing inspiration from a host of sources, among them the Lingbao 靈寶 (Numinous Treasure) Daoist corpus, Yu crafted a set of ten poems that meld together the varying strands of Daoism prevalent in the late sixth century. Although his poems may resemble some of the structures, sensibilities, and rhythms of the Lingbao ritual hymn known as the "Stanzas for Pacing the Void" ("Buxu zhang" 步虛章) found in the Scripture for Pacing the Void to Jade Capitoline Mountain from the Numinous Treasure Cavern Mystery (Dongxuan lingbao
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallLingbao Daoism, Messianic Figures, and Yu Xin's "Pacing the Void" Poems2025-12-02text/htmlen-USLingbao Daoism, Messianic Figures, and Yu Xin's "Pacing the Void" Poems2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®2894272026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02Northern Wei (386–534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia: A Review
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975482
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Northern Wei (386–534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia by Scott Pearce is the first monograph dedicated to the Northern Wei to appear in English, and it is a monumental scholarly achievement. The book offers a trove of knowledge gleaned predominantly from historiographical but also art historical sources, as well as from academic studies published in Chinese, Japanese, and English in the past several decades, and it truly forms a capstone of a lifetime researching the Northern Wei and its successors. Pearce has undoubtedly fulfilled his stated aim to "look on Northern Wei in and of itself, to locate its people in the particular places—on the hills, along the slopes—they themselves knew and loved, and to try at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallNorthern Wei (386–534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia: A Review2025-12-02text/htmlen-USNorthern Wei (386–534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia: A Review2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®209862026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02Northern Wei: A New Form for Women in East Asia?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975483
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Scott Pearce's eagerly-awaited Northern Wei (386–534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia is at its most impressive when it flips seamlessly back and forth through its dizzying breadth of primary texts and secondary scholarship, making such a task look easy. The seeming effortlessness that Pearce brings to this task is drawn from his longstanding interest in Northern Wei history and what has been, for us, the gift of his unquenchable thirst for understanding the empire on its own terms and from the sources closest in historical time to those who ruled it and lived within and adjacent to its borders. All scholars interested in early medieval China are familiar with Pearce's analytical studies of the period, which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallNorthern Wei: A New Form for Women in East Asia?2025-12-02text/htmlen-USNorthern Wei: A New Form for Women in East Asia?2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®345472026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02How Chinese Was the Northern Wei?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975484
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Scott Pearce is among the leading English-language authorities on the Northern Wei dynasty. With the publication of this new book, he has unveiled what will surely long remain his masterpiece—although he also promises more to come (Pearce, pp. 298, 304), with a planned follow-up study of the final Northern Dynasties and their links to the subsequent Tang (618–907). That achievement will bring Pearce back full circle to his original 1987 dissertation on the sixth-century Yuwen 宇文 regime, and I look forward to it with anticipation. The present volume, meanwhile, is especially welcome because it fills something of a void. For too long almost the only major full-length Western-language study of the Northern Wei was
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallHow Chinese Was the Northern Wei?2025-12-02text/htmlen-USHow Chinese Was the Northern Wei?2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®523232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02The "Dai People" (Dairen) and the Search for Their Material Legacy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975485
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In his new book Northern Wei (386–534), Scott Pearce has accentuated the importance of the "Dairen" 代人 ("Dai people") in the early state structure of the Tuoba Wei, and thus picked up an issue heretofore seldom addressed by western historians but receiving growing attention in East Asia.1 The concept of "Dairen" was in fact developed in the 1990s by Kang Le 康樂 and subsequently elaborated by Matsushita Ken'ichi 松下憲一.2 The term connotes, basically, a group of people consisting of the descendants of the kin lineages of the royal Tuoba clan and members from affiliated or allied confederations or submissive tribes from the steppe, or people from subjugated states. With personal loyalty, these people formed the khaghan's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallThe "Dai People" (Dairen) and the Search for Their Material Legacy2025-12-02text/htmlen-USThe "Dai People" (Dairen) and the Search for Their Material Legacy2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®590292026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century by Stephanie Balkwill (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975486
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Stephanie Balkwill's new book examines the emergence of Buddhist female rulership in medieval China. It focuses on the pioneering example of the Empress Dowager Ling 靈太后 (d. 528) and her influence on subsequent female rulers in medieval China, as well as in ancient Korea and Japan. The study shows how the dynamic cultural landscape of sixth-century Luoyang—shaped by a unique fusion of Buddhist institutions and ideas, the distinct gender culture of the Taghbach, and the established Han political-cultural system—created opportunities for women to assume influential roles as administrators, nuns, politicians, regents, rulers, and even monarchs.Balkwill engages with what she terms a "Buddhist Feminist Historiography,"
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallThe Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century by Stephanie Balkwill (review)2025-12-02text/htmlen-USThe Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century by Stephanie Balkwill (review)2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®344232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02A Report on the Early Medieval China Workshop
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975487
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The Early Medieval China Workshop was held on May 3–5, 2024 at the Institute of Sinology and East Asian Studies. It was sponsored by the University of Münster, Germany, and organized by Annette Kieser, Monique Nagel-Angermann, and Kerstin Storm.Since their first meeting in 2014, this group of scholars of early medieval China has met on a yearly basis at various locations all over Europe. The first workshop in 2014 was held with the aims of stimulating research on this historical period at a time when there was only a small number of isolated researchers with an interest in early medieval China and of consolidating links within a new generation of sinologists. The annual workshops have provided a forum for scholarly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/887/image/coversmallA Report on the Early Medieval China Workshop2025-12-02text/htmlen-USA Report on the Early Medieval China Workshop2025-12-022025TWOProject MUSE®159892026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-12-02