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Good Formulas

Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts

By Ruth Yun-Ju Chen

Why and how did the strategy of documenting medical practices through personal experience rise to prominence in China? This question is at the heart of Good Formulas, the first book-length study of the use of...

Porcelain for the Emperor

Manufacture and Technocracy in Qing China

By Kai Jun Chen

The exquisite ceramic ware produced at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory at Jingdezhen in southern China functioned as a kind of visual propaganda for the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) court. Porcelain for the Emperor charts the career...

The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China

By Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

Ying Zheng, founder of the Qin empire, is recognized as a pivotal figure in world history, alongside other notable conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar. His accomplishments include conquest of...

A Ming Confucian’s World

Selections from <I>Miscellaneous Records from the Bean Garden</I>

By Lu Rong
Translated and introduced by Mark Halperin

A forgotten century marks the years between the Ming dynasty's (1368–1644) turbulent founding and its sixteenth-century age of exploration and economic transformation. In this period of social stability, retired scholar-official Lu Rong chronicled his observations...

Healing with Poisons

Potent Medicines in Medieval China

By Yan Liu

At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from chills to pains to...

The Empress in the Pepper Chamber

Zhao Feiyan in History and Fiction

By Olivia Milburn

Zhao Feiyan (45–1 BCE), the second empress appointed by Emperor Cheng of the Han dynasty (207 BCE–220 CE), was born in slavery and trained in the performing arts, a background that made her appointment as...

The Dong World and Imperial China’s Southwest Silk Road

Trade, Security, and State Formation

By James A. Anderson

From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands....