Urbanization in Early and Medieval China: Gazetteers for the City of Suzhou

by Olivia Milburn (Translator)

Overview

The heart of Urbanization in Early and Medieval China consists of translations of three gazetteers written during the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), Tang (618–907), and Northern Song (960–1126) dynasties describing the city of Suzhou. The texts allow the reader to trace the dramatic changes that occurred as the city experienced enormous political and social upheavals over nine centuries. Each translation is accompanied by extensive annotation and a detailed discussion of the historical background of the text, authorship, and publication history.

The book also traces the development of the gazetteer genre, the history of urban planning in China, and what we know about the early development of Suzhou from other texts and archaeological research.

Urbanization in Early and Medieval China will be useful not only to scholars of Chinese history, but to scholars studying architecture and urban planning as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295994604
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Olivia Milburn is associate professor of Chinese literature at Seoul National University. She is the author of Cherishing Antiquity: The Cultural Construction of an Ancient Chinese Kingdom and translator of The Glory of Yue: An Annotated Translation of the Yuejue shu.

Table of Contents

Illustrations vii

A Note on Nomenclature ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xvii

Chronology of Chinese Dynasties xix

Introduction 3

Three Gazetteers of Suzhou 37

Tales of the Lands of Wu 39

Record of the Lands of Wu 59

Supplementary Records to the "Illustrated Guide to Wu Commander" 89

Commentary 207

Analysis and Comparisons 209

Conclusion 249

Notes 255

Glossary 315

Bibliography 329

Index 347

What People are Saying About This

James Hargett

"An extraordinary achievement. The scholarship is sound, and the author’s command of both primary and secondary sources is quite impressive. The translations from Chinese to English are superb. They are both faithful to the original text and read quite well in English. The topic is important. Virtually all scholars who deal with premodern China at some time or another turn to these local histories for information."

Editorial Reviews

"Urbanization in Early and Medieval China has done a significant service to the field by making available a much-needed new set of Suzhou-focused texts for historians, literary scholars, and cultural geographers of early and medieval China. For those of us who teach seminars on Chinese cities past of present, this book will provide ample productive reading material with which to provoke discussion, along with texts with which to launch research projects—at any level."

China Review International: A Journal of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in Chinese Studies - Linda Rui Feng

"The most important contribution of this book by far is the excellent translation of these three gaz-etteers. Far too much of Chinese history is written from the perspective of the imperial court, which presented a centralizing, homogenizing imperial narrative that exaggerated the cultural, ethnic, and political unity across the imperial realm. Gazetteers such as these provide an alternative vision of the empire, describing instead a patchwork of regional variation wherein locals took pan-imperial elite culture and blended it, each in their own way, with unique local customs, local cults, and multiethnic demographics."

Journal of the American Oriental Society