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Medieval News- Medieval News Roundup: The Viking Facebook, drunken archaeologists, competitive jousting in Australia and ranting about Lancelot
- An interview with Deborah Harkness, author of The Book of Life
- Vikings: Lives Beyond the Legends - exhibition now underway at Royal BC Museum
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China Archive
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Marvels and Allies in the East. India as Heterotopia of Latin Europe in the 12th Century
Posted on January 18, 2014 | No CommentsIt has long been said that Latin Europe lost its connection to the East, specifically to Asia, in the early Middle Ages. But this is only part of the truth. From late Antiquity on, there were Christians in many places between the Mediterranean Sea and China. -
Tremors in the Web of Trade: Complexity, Connectivity and Criticality in the Mid-Eighth Century Eurasian World
Posted on December 7, 2013 | No CommentsEvents within a fifteen-year period in mid-eighth century Eurasia included the Abbasid revolution, An Lu-shan's Rebellion in Tang China, and the collapse or emergence of empires from Frankish Europe to Tibet to the kingdom of Srivajaya. -
The Forbidden City comes to Toronto
Posted on October 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe Royal Ontario Museum will be hosting the exhibition 'The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors' beginning on March 8, 2014. -
Islamic Astronomy in Medieval China
Posted on September 15, 2013 | No CommentsIn 1271, Kublai Khan founded the Bureau of Islamic Astronomy in Peking, which operated alongside the long-established Chinese Astronomical Bureau. -
Inter-religious Debate at the Court of the Early Tang: An Introduction to Daoxuan’s Ji gujin Fo Dao lunheng
Posted on August 22, 2013 | No CommentsDuring Six dynasties, Daoists as well as Buddhists gained access to the highest levels of society and to the imperial court in the south and in the north of China. -
Western Turks and Byzantine gold coins found in China
Posted on August 14, 2013 | No CommentsIn general, before the 1980's, most scholars treated these finds as evidences for the frequent connection between Byzantine and China, which could be further associated with the seven-times visits of Fulin (Rum) emissaries recorded in Tang literature. However, after the 1980's, more and more researchers tended to take these gold coins as a result of prosperous international trade along silk road. -
The Trebuchet
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time -
Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past
Posted on January 1, 2013 | No CommentsThe ‘darkness’ that envelopes the ages and areas of the forest of the past consists broadly of two elements. First, there are the problems intrinsic to forests as living ecosystems or entities. Many of these are still more or less uncertain and murky. Second, there are the difficulties of knowing what human activity took place. -
Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – or Didn’t It?
Posted on November 11, 2012 | No CommentsWhy, between the first century BC and the fifteenth century AD, Chinese civilization was much more efficient than occidental in applying human natural knowledge to practical human needs -
Earliest historical records of typhoons in China
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsThe typhoon as a weather phenomenon was frequently mentioned, described, and discussed in many works, including history books, poems and government documents, in the ninth century AD. -
How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsThe author's attempt to rewrite world history, however, is based on a hodgepodge of circular reasoning, bizarre speculation, distorted sources, and slapdash research. -
Lost Leviathans: The Technology of Zheng He’s Voyages
Posted on September 25, 2012 | No CommentsThe key vessels of the voyages, Zheng He’s ‘Treasure Junks’ or Bao Chuan, had the purpose of displaying the might and awe of China to encourage other nations to enter the tribute system. -
Singers, advisers, and servants: role of eunuchs from a historical context
Posted on September 24, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to the Book of Matthew, Jesus said that there were eunuchs made of men, who had made them- selves by their fathers to be that way for heaven’s sake, and if they have received such a procedure, then let them keep it. Jesus referred to castration as an infallible way to achieve celibacy. And records of Christian history indicate that many Christian religious figures were castrated. -
Prolegomena to the Ju-nan i-shih: A Memoir on the Last Chin Court Under the Mongol Siege of 1234
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsJu-nan i-shih is a reminiscence on the events at the refuge Chin capital of Emperor Ai-tsung (r. 1224-1234) at Ts'ai-chou, Honan, during the Mongol siege of July 1233 to February 1234, when it capitulated. -
Asian Origins of Cinderella: The Zhuang Storyteller of Guangxi
Posted on September 14, 2012 | No CommentsThe acceptance and understanding of the Asian origins of the “Cinderella” story should replace the widely held belief that the story is fundamentally Western or universal. The Zhuang, an ethnic group at the intersection of China and Vietnam, combined ideas from their own traditions and experiences with motifs from Hindu and Buddhist narratives circulating in their area during the Tang Dynasty, and should be credited with creating this subversive, virginal, talented, and compassionate heroine. -
Ending an Era: The Huang Chao Rebellion of the Late Tang, 874-884
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsHuang Chao was a rebel leader during the late Tang dynasty; he and his followers successfully marauded through China from 875 until his death in 884 C.E. During that time, he conquered and sacked many important cities of the empire, such as Guangzhou and the capital city, Chang'an. -
How did Persian and Other Western Medical Knowledge Move East, and Chinese West? A Look at the Role of Rashīd al-Dīn and Others
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper looks specifically in this larger context at one key aspect of the western knowledge arriving in China, Islamic medicine, which included major Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Syrian Christian as well as Persian and even Indian components, making it truly international, and speculates as to how it got there. -
Near-Death Folklore in Medieval China and Japan : A Comparative Analysis
Posted on June 17, 2012 | No CommentsMedieval Chinese and Japanese literature provides numerous examples of near-death experiences, episodes in which the narrator claims to have gained personal images of the after life. -
Ending an era : the Huang Chao Rebellion of the late Tang, 874-884
Posted on May 7, 2012 | No CommentsHuang Chao was a rebel leader during the late Tang dynasty; he and his followers successfully marauded through China from 875 until his death in 884 C.E. During that time, he conquered and sacked many important cities of the empire, such as Guangzhou and the capital city, Chang'an. -
Marco Polo really did go to China, new study finds
Posted on May 1, 2012 | No CommentsA thorough new study of Chinese sources by University of Tübingen Sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel dispels claims that Venice’s most famous traveler never truly went as far as China. -
A note on the origins of syphilis
Posted on March 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe name syphilis came into common usage. It came from a Latin epic poem Syphilis, sive Morbvs Gallicvs, written by Girolamo Fracastoro or Hieronymus Fracastorius(1483–1553). In his work De contagione et contagiosis morbis, he discussed the nature and the spread of infectious diseases, foretelling the germ theory of disease. -
Ancient Afro-Asia Links: New Evidence from a Maritime Perspective
Posted on February 13, 2012 | No CommentsHistorical records have shown that the East African coast was connected to ancient global trade networks. These early overseas contacts are evidenced by references to trading voyages in the early 1st millennium AD and in the 11th to 14th century AD. -
Sacred Kingship among the Peoples of the Steppes
Posted on February 8, 2012 | No CommentseurThe vast belt of the Steppes, located between the Hungarian plains and the Great Wall of China, runs along the southern edge of the Eurasian arboreal zone. Starting in the 1st millenium B.C. this region has been inhabited by Iranian, Hunnish, Turkish and Mongol mounted nomads who, at various times, unified a large portion of the Steppes into a single empire. -
Early Chinese Tattoo
Posted on February 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe aim of this paper is twofold. First, I hope to provide a brief introduction to the various modes of tattoo as represented in several types of early Chinese texts. -
The Social Status and Thought of Merchants in Ming China, 1368-1644: A Foray in Clarifying the Social Effects of the Commercialization of Ming China
Posted on January 23, 2012 | No CommentsThe application of some recent research by other scholars of Ming China and my readings of some sources dating from the period, I hope, will add nuances to our understanding of Ming commerce and society and furthermore contribute to a detailed approach to the non-Eurocentric writing of a comparative history of development in the early modern world.