Victor H. Mair - Chinese Lives: The People Who Made a Civilization

About the Authors

Victor H. Mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His numerous publications include The True History of Tea, The Tarim Mummies, The Prehistory of the Silk Road and The Art of War: Sun Zis Military Methods.

Sanping Chen has published many articles on Chinese culture and history in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Journal of the American Oriental Society and the Journal of Asian History. He lives in Canada.

Frances Wood is head of the Chinese collections at the British Library. Her books include Did Marco Polo Go To China?, The Blue Guide to China, The Silk Road, The Lure of China: Writers from Marco Polo to J.G. Ballard and The First Emperor of China.

We are indebted to Paula Roberts for help with the preparation of the manuscript, and to the Thames & Hudson team: Alice Reid for constant help and support, Carolyn Jones for editing, Louise Thomas for picture research and documentation, Avni Patel for her design, Rachel Heley for production and Colin Ridler for suggesting the project to us in the first place and for sage advice from beginning to end.

Sanping Chen is grateful to his son Brian and wife Ruying for their patience and understanding during the prolonged gestation of this book. Victor Mair thanks the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in Uppsala, the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre of the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning in Beijing and the International Academy for Chinese Studies at Peking University for providing him the time and collegial atmosphere in which to work on these biographies.

CONTENTS

Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2013 as

Chinese Lives: The People Who Made a Civilization

ISBN 978-0-500-25192-8

by Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181a High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX
and in the United States of America by

Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110

Copyright 2013 Thames & Hudson Ltd, London

This electronic version first published in 2013 by
Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181a High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX

This electronic version first published in 2013 in the
United States of America by
Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110.

To find out about all our publications, please visit

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All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-500-77136-5

ISBN for USA only 978-0-500-77147-1

On the cover: Portrait of Den Xiaoping (Photo China/Sygma/Corbis)

Cover for USA edition only: front left: Emperor Huizong of Song, emperor of China AD 11001126 (Photo National Palace Museum, Taipei); front right: portrait of Mao Zedong, 1973 (Photo Swim Ink/Corbis)

Frontispiece: Painting of the favourite concubine of Emperor Xuanzong, Yang Guifei (Biography 41). (Seikado Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo)

Maps by ML Design

GENERAL

de Bary, W. Theodore, Irene Bloom, eds. 1999. Sources of Chinese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600. Vol. 1, 2nd edn. Introduction to Asian Civilizations. New York: Columbia University Press

de Bary, W. Theodore, Richard J. Lufrano, eds. 2001. Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 through the Twentieth Century. Vol. 2, 2nd edn. Introduction to Asian Civilizations. New York: Columbia University Press

Dillon, Michael. 1979. Dictionary of Chinese History. London: Frank Cass

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 2010. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. 2nd edn. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press

Fenby, Jonathan. 2009. The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power 18502009. London and New York: Allen Lane

Hook, Brian, Denis C. Twitchett, eds. 1991. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press

Hucker, Charles O. 1985. A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press

Mair, Victor H., Nancy Steinhardt, Paul Goldin, eds. 2005. The Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press

Theobald, Ulrich. Chinaknowledge a universal guide for China studies. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/index.html

Wilkinson, Endymion. 2012. Chinese History: A New Manual. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center

ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

Abramson, Marc S. 2008. Ethnic Identity in Tang China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Chen, Sanping. 2012. Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Wyatt, Don J. 2009. The Blacks of Premodern China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Barnhart, Richard, Xiaoneng Yang, eds. 1999. Chinese Art and Archaeology. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press

Barnhart, Richard et al., eds. 1997. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press

Clunas, Craig. 1997. Art in China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press

Fu Xinian et al. 2002. Chinese Architecture. Trans. Nancy S. Steinhardt. New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press

Sullivan, Michael. 2009. The Arts of China. 5th edn, rev. and enlarged. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press

Yang, Xiaoneng, ed. 2004. New Perspectives on Chinas Past: Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press

BIOGRAPHY

Boorman, Howard L., ed. 196779. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. 5 vols. New York and London: Columbia University Press

Franke, Herbert. 1976. Sung Biographies. 2 vols. Wiesbaden: Steiner

Giles, Herbert A. 1898. A Chinese Biographical Dictionary. London: Bernard Quaritch; Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh; numerous reprints; available online

Goodrich, L. Carrington, Chaoying Fang. 1976. Dictionary of Ming Biography, 13681644. 2 vols. New York and London: Columbia University Press

Hummel, Arthur W., ed. 194344. Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period (16441912). Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office; various reprints

Rothschild, N. Harry. 2007. Wu Zhao: Chinas Only Female Emperor. Harlow: Longman; New York: Pearson Longman

Wood, Frances. 2007. The First Emperor of China. New York: St Martins Press; London: Profile.

FOOD

Anderson, E[ugene] N. 1988. The Food of China. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press

Chang, K. C., ed. 1977. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press

HISTORY

Adshead, S. A. M. 2000. China in World History. New York: St Martins Press

Adshead, S. A. M. 2004. Tang China: The Rise of the East in World History. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Brook, Timothy, ed. 200912. History of Imperial China. 6 vols. Individual vols by Mark Edward Lewis (3), Dieter Kuhn, Timothy Brook and William T. Rowe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (Belknap)

Di Cosmo, Nicola. 2002. Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History