Books by Shao-yun Yang
Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages, 2023
For about half a century, the Tang dynasty has held a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan' perio... more For about half a century, the Tang dynasty has held a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan' period in Chinese history, marked by unsurpassed openness to foreign peoples and cultures and active promotion of international trade. Heavily influenced by Western liberal ideals and contemporary China's own self-fashioning efforts, this glamorous image of the Tang calls for some critical reexamination. This Element presents a broad and revisionist analysis of early Tang China's relations with the rest of the Eurasian world and argues that idealizing the Tang as exceptionally “cosmopolitan” limits our ability to think both critically and globally about its actions and policies as an empire.
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/early-tang-china-and-the-world-618750-ce/DEBE89CA29C0A144821535509E3E4BF6)
Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages, 2023
In recent decades, the Tang dynasty (618-907) has acquired a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan... more In recent decades, the Tang dynasty (618-907) has acquired a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan' period in Chinese history. The standard narrative also claims that this cosmopolitan openness faded after the An Lushan Rebellion of 755-763, to be replaced by xenophobic hostility toward all things foreign. This Element reassesses the cosmopolitanism-to-xenophobia narrative and presents a more empirically-grounded and nuanced interpretation of the Tang empire's foreign relations after 755.
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/late-tang-china-and-the-world-750907-ce/EFDCEB654B6F89500D2C72C0FBF6DA1F)
Introduction attached
Corrigenda:
p. 35, line 20: "ritual orthopraxy" should be "ritual heter... more Introduction attached
Corrigenda:
p. 35, line 20: "ritual orthopraxy" should be "ritual heteropraxy"
p. 77, line 16: "differed in" should be "differed from"
p. 93, line 1: "Eastern Zhou capital" should be "former Western Zhou capital" (the corresponding footnote should also be changed to indicate that the state of Qin gained control over the original Zhou capital region after 770 BCE)
Glossary is missing the characters for "duobing" on p. 121 (they are 多病)
Published papers by Shao-yun Yang
War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages: East, West, and Beyond, 2023
T'oung Pao, 2022
This essay reexamines late Tang and Northern Song laws that appear to prohibit private trade, com... more This essay reexamines late Tang and Northern Song laws that appear to prohibit private trade, communication, and intermarriage with foreigners, and concludes that they were rooted in early Tang policies rather than an increase in anti-foreign or proto-nationalist sentiment. It also argues that in the Northern Song, restrictions on foreign trade and intermarriage gave way to more liberal or targeted approaches, the main exceptions being strategic restrictions on trade along the northern borders and maritime trade with Đại Việt and Koryŏ. When the Song state implemented or contemplated restrictions on intermarriage in certain frontier locations, this was typically for strategic reasons of counterintelligence, not xenophobia or ethnic segregation.
(For digital access to the article, see https://brill.com/view/journals/tpao/108/5-6/article-p588_2.xml )
[Corrigendum: The citation in p. 634, n. 171 is incomplete. It should be "Tao Jinsheng 陶晉生, Song-Liao guanxi shi yanjiu 宋遼關係史研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), 41-56."]
Tang Studies, 2018
In 1943, Chen Yinke proposed the influential theory that the late Tang court’s inability to reest... more In 1943, Chen Yinke proposed the influential theory that the late Tang court’s inability to reestablish direct control over the provinces of Hebei was due to the latter’s transformation into an ethnoculturally “barbarized” or “Hu-acculturated” (Huhua) region. Drawing on recent critiques of the theory, this essay reexamines the spirit road stele inscription that Liu Yuxi composed for Shi Xiaozhang in 838, a key piece of evidence for Chen’s view that the late Tang elite perceived Hebei as barbaric. By analyzing this passage and various other late Tang and Northern Song texts that have previously been cited to support the Hebei barbarization theory, I demonstrate that most of the texts cannot, in fact, be interpreted as evidence of ethnocultural change in that region or even as evidence for a perception of ethnocultural change on the part of the Chang’an elite. Moreover, rhetoric is a more illuminating framework for understanding why some of these texts (including the spirit road stele inscription) do impose an image of barbarism on autonomous regions like Hebei. This “barbarizing” rhetoric can be traced to a growing interest in associating the classical Chinese-barbarian dichotomy with distinctions between moral and immoral political behavior among Chinese subjects.
[For supplementary maps, see History Maps below]
[Erratum: Footnote 89 omitted the name of the journal that published Su Hang's 2018 article. It is Minzu yanjiu 民族研究.]
Journal of Chinese Military History, Jun 2017
By analyzing examples ranging from the Sui-Tang transition to the An Lushan Rebellion, I argue th... more By analyzing examples ranging from the Sui-Tang transition to the An Lushan Rebellion, I argue that in a practice known as "letting the troops loose," Tang generals frequently rewarded their officers and soldiers (and themselves) for a victory with the freedom to seize the wives, children, and property of the defeated with impunity, and to kill any who resisted. Attempts to censure or prosecute the generals responsible were rare and usually overruled, because military morale was seen as a higher priority than discipline or humaneness. Tang generals were also authorized to massacre surrendered enemy soldiers and conquered civilians for a range of strategic purposes. Moreover, taking slaves from a defeated population was a common prerogative among generals and officers even when an army was not "let loose." When generals refrained from pillage, massacres, and enslavement, therefore, this was usually for reasons that were pragmatic and strategic, not moral or legal.
International Journal of Eurasian Studies, Dec 2016
Many modern narratives of the period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang (ca. 786–848) emphasize ethnic t... more Many modern narratives of the period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang (ca. 786–848) emphasize ethnic tensions between the Tibetans and Chinese, with clothing styles as their most visible manifestation. The Xin Tangshu claims that the Dunhuang Chinese were forced to wear Tibetan-style clothing except on New Year’s Day, when they were allowed to dress in the Tang style to perform ancestral rites, wailing bitterly as they did so. The Dunhuang manuscript P.3451 claims, however, that the Dunhuang Chinese persisted in wearing Tang-style clothes throughout the Tibetan occupation. A contradiction therefore exists in the sources regarding what kind of clothing the Dunhuang Chinese usually wore, even as these sources agree in interpreting Tang-style clothing as a symbol of ethnocultural identity and Tang loyalism. Yet murals from ninth-century Dunhuang suggest that Tang and Tibetan clothing styles coexisted and even blended together under Tibetan rule. By reassessing the textual and visual sources more critically, I argue that the most plausible interpretation is that there was no forced Tibetanization of clothing in Dunhuang at any time during the period of Tibetan rule. Instead, the people of Dunhuang were free to dress as they wished, but many members of the Chinese (and quite likely Sogdian) elite families adopted Tibetan dress or elements of Tibetan fashion voluntarily as symbols of prestige and loyalty to the Tibetan empire. The elite families of Dunhuang accommodated themselves to Tibetan rule and adopted bicultural identities until the breakdown of Tibetan administration put their interests in jeopardy, upon which they drove the Tibetans out and sought to cover up their past collaboration by inventing a new tradition of “stubbornly Chinese” Tang loyalism.
[For maps to go with this article, see the "History maps" section below]
Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis, "The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds", Jan 2016
This chapter traces the earliest evidence for Chinese ideas of environmental determinism and expl... more This chapter traces the earliest evidence for Chinese ideas of environmental determinism and explains how they later came to be linked to arguments about the purported moral inferiority of the ‘barbarians,’ first in the Han dynasty and again in the Tang. I build on Yuri Pines’s argument that “an idea of the barbarians’ inborn or strictly environmentally determined savagery” was a product of the unified Chinese empires and more specifically, of the second such empire, the Han. However, I also propose an alternative to Pines’s contention that the idea arose due to a new Chinese perception of the nomadic peoples of the northern steppe, particularly the Xiongnu, as unassimilable and therefore absolutely Other, unlike other ‘barbarian’ groups that the Chinese had previously absorbed successfully. Instead, I argue that Han and Tang discourses of barbarian moral inferiority, otherness, and unassimilability, of which notions of environmental determinism formed a part, were rooted in a tradition of anti-expansionist rhetoric deployed by officials who saw constant warfare against foreign polities as a threat to the stability of the Chinese state. The fact that the Han and Tang empires’ ‘barbarian’ enemies were often steppe nomads is incidental, not essential, to the existence of such rhetoric.
Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen eds., "Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China" (University of Washington Press), Jan 2015
Francesca Fiaschetti and Julia Schneider eds., "Political Strategies of Identity-building in Non-Han Empires in China", 2014
This paper makes a preliminary effort at tracing the complicated history of the relationship betw... more This paper makes a preliminary effort at tracing the complicated history of the relationship between the category Fan 蕃 (also written 番) and the category Han 漢 during the period ca. 500–1200. The late Northern Wei began using Fan as a generic term for foreign countries and peoples, possibly due to influences from the Zhouli 周禮. The Tang empire later adopted this usage of Fan but also used Fan as an abbreviation of Tufan 吐蕃, the Chinese name for the Tibetan empire. Under the Tang, both these usages of Fan commonly placed it in a dichotomous pair with the category Han, a pairing not seen in Northern Wei. Whereas the Northern Wei used Han as an ethnonym for the indigenous “Chinese” population, the Tang used it as an alternative name for the empire. In Tang (and also Song) usage, therefore, the Fan and Han dichotomy was geopolitical, not ethnic, in orientation. However, the dichotomy eventually became ethnic in the Kitan Liao and Western Xia, where Han reverted to being an ethnonym for the “Chinese.” Our understanding of the word Fan as used in the Kitan empire remains incomplete, but one of its uses was as a synonym for Kitan. Similarly, the primary use of Fan in the Xia was as a synonym for Mi, the ruling Tangut people’s most common self-appellation. Toward the end of the Northern Song, the use of Han as a geopolitical name for the Song state seems to have lost popularity among the Song elite. In the Southern Song, this usage survived only on the northwestern Sichuan-Gansu frontier, a geopolitical Fan and Tang dichotomy having become the norm on the south China coast. Meanwhile, the Jin revived the use of Han as an ethnonym for the Chinese in the North China Plain, but banned the use of Fan as an appellation for the ruling Jurchen and their language in 1191—possibly as a way of asserting the political legitimacy of Jurchen rule over north China.
[Chinese translation published in 2020 as 蕃与汉：帝制中国中期（约500—1200 年）一个概念二分法的起源和使用 (translated by Feng Lijun 冯立君), Ouya yicong 欧亚译丛 vol. 5]
Tang Studies 31, Dec 2013
This essay argues that, in Tang foreign policy discourse, the stereotype of a moral dichotomy bet... more This essay argues that, in Tang foreign policy discourse, the stereotype of a moral dichotomy between barbarian perfidy and Chinese trustworthiness was primarily a tool for rhetorical posturing, deployed to justify making war on foreign peoples with whom the Tang had a prior peace agreement. This is demonstrated through close analysis of the political rhetoric surrounding Tang relations with neighboring steppe or Central Asian powers during the periods 625–645 and 734–739, with particular attention to contextualizing the rhetoric of the emperors Taizong and Xuanzong. The essay also presents a new interpretation of the famous 630 debate over the resettlement of the Eastern Turks, arguing that the rhetoric of perfidy, loyalty, and moral or cultural transformation in which that debate was conducted obscures its origin in a pragmatic strategic dilemma that could not be openly expressed.
Research notes by Shao-yun Yang
Analyzes previously overlooked evidence that a ban on describing the Song dynasty and its subject... more Analyzes previously overlooked evidence that a ban on describing the Song dynasty and its subjects as 'Han' was introduced in 1113 on the suggestion of an official named Jia Weijie. This corroborates the account of the ban in Zhu Yu's "Pingzhou ketan" but also indicates that Zhu got the date wrong.
(Written in January 2021)
Originally written June 9, 2020; revised April 12, 2022.
Talks by Shao-yun Yang
Text for a presentation delivered at the plenary session of the American Oriental Society annual ... more Text for a presentation delivered at the plenary session of the American Oriental Society annual meeting, March 20, 2022. The session theme was "Ethnicity, race, and caste." Note that this builds on and slightly modifies my previous talks for UCSB and USC in 2021.
Slides for a talk delivered (via Zoom) in October 2020 for the Stanford CMEMS (Center for Medieva... more Slides for a talk delivered (via Zoom) in October 2020 for the Stanford CMEMS (Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies) symposium "Race in the Archives."
Translations of primary sources by Shao-yun Yang
A new translation of a classic Tang dynasty tale, with striking similarities to the "Magical Negr... more A new translation of a classic Tang dynasty tale, with striking similarities to the "Magical Negro" trope in modern American cinema. Illustrations generated using DALL-E 3, with some editing using Adobe Firefly.
The country of Puduan mentioned in Song Chinese records is generally identified as the Rajahnate ... more The country of Puduan mentioned in Song Chinese records is generally identified as the Rajahnate of Butuan on Mindanao. This annotated translation was prepared for a colleague working on the history of maritime trade in the Philippines. I am sharing it here as it may be useful to other colleagues in Southeast Asian history.
The source translated is the Song huiyao jigao, a reconstruction of the Song-dynasty administrative compendium Huiyao. The Huiyao was lost in the Ming dynasty but many quotes were preserved in the early Ming Yongle Encyclopedia. The Yongle Encyclopedia was itself mostly lost in 1860-1900; fortunately, the quotes from the Huiyao had been collated by the scholar Xu Song in 1809-1810. Xu's collation was eventually revised and published as the Song huiyao jigao.
The only published English translation of the Butuan section from the Song huiyao jigao was done in the early 1980s, for William Henry Scott's studies of pre-Hispanic Philippines history. I believe the translator was Filipino-Chinese scholar Go Bon Juan. Go's translation, while frequently cited in subsequent scholarship, contains some misreadings that I have tried to correct here.
Scott also claimed, citing the Song shi (the official dynastic history of the Song), that the first Butuan mission to the Song court arrived on March 17, 1001. This date is repeated in many other later texts on the history of the Philippines, but is in fact erroneous. The Song shi, like the Song huiyao jigao, dates the first mission from Butuan to the ninth lunar month of 1003.
Uploads
Books by Shao-yun Yang
For supplementary StoryMap, see https://arcg.is/1vC1Pv0
The file contains all 75 illustrations that I made for the StoryMap using DALL-E 3 and Adobe Photoshop.
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/early-tang-china-and-the-world-618750-ce/DEBE89CA29C0A144821535509E3E4BF6)
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/late-tang-china-and-the-world-750907-ce/EFDCEB654B6F89500D2C72C0FBF6DA1F)
Corrigenda:
p. 35, line 20: "ritual orthopraxy" should be "ritual heteropraxy"
p. 77, line 16: "differed in" should be "differed from"
p. 93, line 1: "Eastern Zhou capital" should be "former Western Zhou capital" (the corresponding footnote should also be changed to indicate that the state of Qin gained control over the original Zhou capital region after 770 BCE)
Glossary is missing the characters for "duobing" on p. 121 (they are 多病)
Published papers by Shao-yun Yang
(For digital access to the article, see https://brill.com/view/journals/tpao/108/5-6/article-p588_2.xml )
[Corrigendum: The citation in p. 634, n. 171 is incomplete. It should be "Tao Jinsheng 陶晉生, Song-Liao guanxi shi yanjiu 宋遼關係史研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), 41-56."]
[For supplementary maps, see History Maps below]
[Erratum: Footnote 89 omitted the name of the journal that published Su Hang's 2018 article. It is Minzu yanjiu 民族研究.]
[For maps to go with this article, see the "History maps" section below]
[Chinese translation published in 2020 as 蕃与汉：帝制中国中期（约500—1200 年）一个概念二分法的起源和使用 (translated by Feng Lijun 冯立君), Ouya yicong 欧亚译丛 vol. 5]
Research notes by Shao-yun Yang
(Written in January 2021)
Talks by Shao-yun Yang
Translations of primary sources by Shao-yun Yang
The source translated is the Song huiyao jigao, a reconstruction of the Song-dynasty administrative compendium Huiyao. The Huiyao was lost in the Ming dynasty but many quotes were preserved in the early Ming Yongle Encyclopedia. The Yongle Encyclopedia was itself mostly lost in 1860-1900; fortunately, the quotes from the Huiyao had been collated by the scholar Xu Song in 1809-1810. Xu's collation was eventually revised and published as the Song huiyao jigao.
The only published English translation of the Butuan section from the Song huiyao jigao was done in the early 1980s, for William Henry Scott's studies of pre-Hispanic Philippines history. I believe the translator was Filipino-Chinese scholar Go Bon Juan. Go's translation, while frequently cited in subsequent scholarship, contains some misreadings that I have tried to correct here.
Scott also claimed, citing the Song shi (the official dynastic history of the Song), that the first Butuan mission to the Song court arrived on March 17, 1001. This date is repeated in many other later texts on the history of the Philippines, but is in fact erroneous. The Song shi, like the Song huiyao jigao, dates the first mission from Butuan to the ninth lunar month of 1003.
For supplementary StoryMap, see https://arcg.is/1vC1Pv0
The file contains all 75 illustrations that I made for the StoryMap using DALL-E 3 and Adobe Photoshop.
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/early-tang-china-and-the-world-618750-ce/DEBE89CA29C0A144821535509E3E4BF6)
(Only front matter is attached. To read or download the full text, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/late-tang-china-and-the-world-750907-ce/EFDCEB654B6F89500D2C72C0FBF6DA1F)
Corrigenda:
p. 35, line 20: "ritual orthopraxy" should be "ritual heteropraxy"
p. 77, line 16: "differed in" should be "differed from"
p. 93, line 1: "Eastern Zhou capital" should be "former Western Zhou capital" (the corresponding footnote should also be changed to indicate that the state of Qin gained control over the original Zhou capital region after 770 BCE)
Glossary is missing the characters for "duobing" on p. 121 (they are 多病)
(For digital access to the article, see https://brill.com/view/journals/tpao/108/5-6/article-p588_2.xml )
[Corrigendum: The citation in p. 634, n. 171 is incomplete. It should be "Tao Jinsheng 陶晉生, Song-Liao guanxi shi yanjiu 宋遼關係史研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), 41-56."]
[For supplementary maps, see History Maps below]
[Erratum: Footnote 89 omitted the name of the journal that published Su Hang's 2018 article. It is Minzu yanjiu 民族研究.]
[For maps to go with this article, see the "History maps" section below]
[Chinese translation published in 2020 as 蕃与汉：帝制中国中期（约500—1200 年）一个概念二分法的起源和使用 (translated by Feng Lijun 冯立君), Ouya yicong 欧亚译丛 vol. 5]
(Written in January 2021)
The source translated is the Song huiyao jigao, a reconstruction of the Song-dynasty administrative compendium Huiyao. The Huiyao was lost in the Ming dynasty but many quotes were preserved in the early Ming Yongle Encyclopedia. The Yongle Encyclopedia was itself mostly lost in 1860-1900; fortunately, the quotes from the Huiyao had been collated by the scholar Xu Song in 1809-1810. Xu's collation was eventually revised and published as the Song huiyao jigao.
The only published English translation of the Butuan section from the Song huiyao jigao was done in the early 1980s, for William Henry Scott's studies of pre-Hispanic Philippines history. I believe the translator was Filipino-Chinese scholar Go Bon Juan. Go's translation, while frequently cited in subsequent scholarship, contains some misreadings that I have tried to correct here.
Scott also claimed, citing the Song shi (the official dynastic history of the Song), that the first Butuan mission to the Song court arrived on March 17, 1001. This date is repeated in many other later texts on the history of the Philippines, but is in fact erroneous. The Song shi, like the Song huiyao jigao, dates the first mission from Butuan to the ninth lunar month of 1003.
Please send questions, comments, suggestions for improvement, or corrections to errors in the translation to me via e-mail at yangs@denison.edu.
[Click on this link to access the Story Map:
https://denisongis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=e0fe47ae592c4cab8930bbb37ce41269
Suggestions or corrections are very welcome. Please send them via message or via e-mail to yangs@denison.edu.]
[new revision August 15, 2020: for new content, see pp. 8-9 and 14]
- New base map
- New annotation system
- Maps for the Three Kingdoms period
- More cities marked, including all state capitals
- More information on Inner Asian and Korean polities' relations with Chinese states
- No arrows
Please feel free to use these maps as a teaching aid or edit them for use in slide presentations.
[Revised on 8/25/2018]
[Revised 9/26/2018]
Map 1: The geopolitical situation ante bellum.
Map 2: The Jurchen conquest of the Liao and the unsuccessful Song attempts at capturing Yan (Beijing) from the Liao.
Map 3: The Jurchen conquest of the Song capital, following the breakdown of the Song-Jin alliance, and Li Qingzhao's flight to the south with her husband Zhao Mingcheng.
Map 4: Li Qingzhao's journey to Zhao's deathbed in Hangzhou (Lin'an).
Map 5: The Jurchen raiding expedition of 1129-1130, Song Gaozong's flight to sea, and the beginning of Yelu Dashi's western expedition to reestablish the Liao in Central Asia.
Map 6: Li Qingzhao's efforts to evade the Jurchen raiding expedition of 1129-1130, which culminate with her joining Gaozong's court at sea.
Map 7: The origins of the Jurchen-installed puppet state of Qi (1130-1137) and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao); Li Qingzhao's return to Hangzhou; Jin conquest of Shaanxi and Gansu.
Map 8: The state of Qi is expanded westward and southward; Yue Fei's campaigns in 1134-1135; Jin abolishes Qi in 1137 and begins negotiating peace with Southern Song.
Map 9: Borders established by the Song-Jin treaties of 1138 and 1141; 1140 Jin attempts at retaking territory ceded to the Song in 1138; Yue Fei's 1140 counter-attack on the Jin, eventually aborted on imperial orders.
[Revised 7/14/2018]
[Note that some arguments in this thesis have been superseded by scholarship published since 2007, including my more recent work.]
For a more up-to-date treatment of the subject, see April D. Hughes, "Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism" (University of Hawai'i Press, 2021).