Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen

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      ENCOUNTERS WITH ASIA

      Victor H. Mair, Series Editor

      Encounters with Asia is an interdisciplinary series

      dedicated to the exploration of all the major regions and

      cultures of this vast continent. Its timeframe extends from

      the prehistoric to the contemporary; its geographic scope

      ranges from the Urals and the Caucasus to the Pacific. A

      particular focus of the series is the Silk Road in all of its

      ramifications: religion, art, music, medicine, science, trade,

      and so forth. Among the disciplines represented in this

      series are history, archeology, anthropology, ethnography,

      and linguistics. The series aims particularly to clarify the

      complex interrelationships among various peoples within

      Asia, and also with societies beyond Asia.

      A complete list of books in the series

      is available from the publisher.

      Multicultural China

      in the Early Middle Ages

      Sanping Chen

       PENN

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used

      for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this

      book may be reproduced in any form by any means

      without written permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

      www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Chen, Sanping.

      Multicultural China in the early Middle Ages / Sanping Chen. — 1st ed.

      p. cm. — (Encounters with Asia)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-8122-4370-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

      1. China—History—221 B.C.–960 A.D. 2. China—Ethnic relations— History. 3. Ethnicity—China—History. I. Title. II. Series: Encounters with Asia.

      DS747.38.C43 2012

      951'.01—dc23

      2011035815

       To the memory of my mother

       Contents

       Foreword: Old Wine in New Bottles

       Introduction

       1. The Legacy of the Tuoba Xianbei: The Tang Dynasty

       2. From Mulan to Unicorn

       3. Brotherly Matters and the Canine Image: The Invasion of “Barbarian” Tongues

       4. The Huns and the Bulgars: The Chinese Chapter

       5. The Mystery of the “White-Drake” Oracle: The Iranian Shadows

       6. Son of Heaven and Son of God

       7. Bai Juyi and Central Asia

       Appendix. Turkic or Proto-Mongolian? A Note on the Tuoba Language

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

       Foreword

      Old Wine in New Bottles

      Victor H. Mair

      After nearly half a century of isolation, China has recently reemerged as an integral member of the global economy and the international political structure. Since its rise has been so explosive, however, knowledge of Chinese culture and society in other countries is still sketchy and often highly distorted. Indeed, so long and so extraordinarily complicated is the Chinese historical record, and so richly complex is Chinese literature, that modern Chinese citizens themselves are often confused about many details of their nation's past.

      Virtually everyone has heard of the brave heroine Mulan, who rides off to war (as in the Disney movie), and most of us are familiar with the mythical unicorn that heralds the coming of a sage who will rule justly, yet we see them through a glass darkly. The wonder of this book, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, is that it offers a completely new look at many aspects of Chinese history and culture that heretofore may have seemed bewildering or even absurd.

      The author of the present volume, Sanping Chen, has the great virtue of being able to examine the past with a fresh eye. He does not take any received text or tradition at face value. Instead, he closely reexamines all the available evidence and subjects secondary interpretations to intense, critical scrutiny. The results of this type of inquiry are frequently surprising and in many cases revelatory. Yet Dr. Chen is not an iconoclast purely for the sake of iconoclasm. Instead, his goal is simply to penetrate the countless layers of obscurity and misrepresentation to get at the truth of what really happened in the past. More than any other Chinese historian that I know of, Sanping Chen is determined to confront historical data directly and without any presuppositions or agenda whatsoever.

      From lengthy, ongoing discussions with Dr. Chen over the years, I have come to realize that his unusual approach to Chinese history results from deeply held principles. Among these the most important is that the historian is duty bound to report his findings, regardless of their implications. A corollary of this principle is that the historian may not lie about or color what he discovers concerning the past. For Dr. Chen, this becomes a moral imperative, such that he cannot remain silent when confronted with the facts of history.

      Although Dr. Chen not infrequently mentions the prehistoric period (Neolithic, Bronze Age, and early Iron Age), the early period (the classical era or era of antiquity), and the late imperial period, his main focus is on the medieval period (roughly the first millennium AD). Many events that were profoundly formative for the future of East Asian civilization occurred during this period: the advent of Buddhism, the rise of Taoism as a religion, the first stirrings