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By the end of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), olfactory culture in China had evolved significantly as coveted aromatics continued to be imported and in increasing quantities from Southeast Asia. Although there is no surviving treatise dedicated to aromatics from this period, anecdotes in prose literature describing the uses and curation of scents reveal a process in which imported aromatics were being actively incorporated into existing olfactory culture and accrued new social, aesthetic, and ritual significance. This process is discernible in two major respects. First, a discourse of connoisseurship for aromatics arose in contrast to the conspicuous consumption of imported aromatics that flaunted wealth and status. Secondly, aromatics that were once the privilege of the very few began to be circulated among a wider (admittedly still elite) population, as seen in the case of the dragon brain aromatic in late-Tang and Five Dynasties accounts. By delving into these and related prose narratives and by cross-examining these accounts against other types of records, this article examines how imported aromatic goods shaped the Tang elite's perception of how scent was—and could be—used as part of a socially rooted sensory experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between “original incidents” texts from the late Tang and the Liuyi Remarks on Poetry 六一詩言舌.The “original incidents" texts discussed here, which include Meng Qi's 孟啓 Benshi 本事詩, Fan Shu, s 范攄 hmx/FKv/雲溪友議, Lu Gui’s 盧瓌 Shuqing ji 抒情集, and Chu Changzi’s 處常 子 Xu bens hi shi, 續本事詩 are full of legends, whereas the Liuyi Remarks on Poetry eschews legendary content. The flourishing of “original incidents” texts reflects the popular attitude towards poetry in the late Tang. Although both the Liuyi Remarks on Poetry and “original incidents" texts comment on poetry and record stories about poets, the writing style of the former work, which expresses no interest in legends, is more appropriately traced back to the unofficial historical biji 筆言己 of the Tang dynasty. These biji present stories regarding poets and poetry as historical anecdotes, and they lack any hint of legendary subject matter. Through this analysis, this article seeks to provide a better understanding of Ouyang Xiu's 歐陽f彥 contribution to the creation of the ‘‘remarks on poetry" genre in the Song dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July through September 2012, the tomb of Mme Yi, the De Consort of the Later Tang Dynasty was excavated. It was a brick multi-chamber tomb consisting of the passage, the entrance, the corridor, the main chamber and the side chambers, the full length of which was 24.1m. 208 pieces (sets) of grave goods were unearthed from this tomb, including porcelains, silver and bronze wares, iron objects, bone implements, lacquer wares, architectural parts and the epitaph. This tomb show more styles of the Han Culture, which was special among the tombs of the Liao Dynasty of the same time. The content of the epitaph made up the insufficient records of the historical textual materials and provided important materials for the researches on the relationship between the Khitan and the Later Tang and Later Jin Dynasties in the Five-Dynasties Period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historiographical practice of Ouyang Xiu (1007-72) in the context of his scholarly and official career and of the development of traditional Chinese historiography. By focusing on where, when, and how Ouyang’s two “new histories” of the Tang and Five Dynasties were produced, I suggest that Ouyang displayed an ambivalent relationship to the Northern Song official historiographical operation both in terms of modus operandi and of the format of the final text. Acting deliberately inside and outside the Historiography Office, he wrote not only new histories but actually new “old” histories, in the sense that Sima Qian’s classical model was creatively restored. Historiographical novelty calls for contextualization, and in this case, Ouyang’s newness is embodied in the creative tension between his contemporary predicament and the applicability of various classical paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "protégés of Han Yu" first emerged in the mid-Tang. Its connotation as well as its influence have changed with the rise and fall of Han's status in the Late Tang and the Five Dynasties, and with the rise and decline of the Ancient Prose Movement in the Tang dynasty. The connotation of the term was basically confirmed by Ouyang Xiu in the Song and roughly become the general opinion to this day. It is observed from a historical point of view that the connotation of the term is a process of dynamic change; that is, the original meaning, closely related to imperial examinations, has gradually vanished, and the meaning of Confucian orthodoxy and literature been highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The polder was both a geographical unit and a political unit so they took the response to repair the river bank and other tasks related to the rivers during the Five Dynasties period. At the same time, the officials were responsible for the clean- up of Tangpu river and maintenance of the gates, so the state and the rural polder community were very integrated on water conservancy. During Song-Yuan period, the state was responsible for dredging silt on the main rivers. Many polders were relatively independent, and some natural polders were still grass - roots of unity. However, the officials began to limit the polders' rights because of the powerful landlords planting. During this period, the officials for flood control used a variety of measures to increase unity within the polders to complete the repairing bank affairs. On the Rivers, Polders and Flood Control System at Wusongjiang Area during 10 -- 14 Centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emperor Hailing founded the heir apparent palace system of the Jin dynasty. It was aimed at consolidating the paternal succession system in the political system of the dynasty. However, Hailing altered the structure and official titles of the heir apparent palace systems of the Tang and Song instead of following them intact. Thus, through this simplified heir apparent palace system, Emperor Hailing could fully control the crown prince and those heir apparent palace officials. In restructuring the heir apparent palace system, Hailing's original intention was to train his son Wanyan Guangying to be the future emperor of the dynasty, and keep the imperial power in his house. He streamlined the structure of the heir apparent palace system by taking the Tang model and absorbing Northern Song's reform in the system. It was vividly a reflection of Emperor Hailing's absolute imperial power. Jin's heir apparent palace system was inherited by the Mongol- Yuan dynasty, and it indirectly influenced the development in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. Both the Jin historical works Da Jin guozhi and Jinshi systematically recorded the heir apparent palace system; the former was published forty years earlier than the later, near the fall of the dynasty. However, although the heir apparent palace system founded by Emperor Hailing had not been modified by later Jin emperors, the historical sources of this system recorded by the Da Jin guozhi were unverified. It is doubtful whether this work truly revealed the original nature of Jin's heir apparent palace system. The historical sources of the system recorded by the Jinshi could also not be ascertained. This paper attempts to scrutinize Jin's heir apparent palace system as described in these two works by consulting historical documents of the Jin and Yuan, as well as works of the Tang and Song dynasties. It will also discuss the structure, features of Jin's heir apparent palace system, the criteria of choosing heir apparent palace officials in Emperor Hailing's reign, and the development of the heir apparent palace system during the middle period of the dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the state of manuscripts from the Late Tang and Five Dynasties as they survived in the Song, which is identified as the manuscripts on which all printed works of Tang literature are grounded. The author argued that Tang literary texts were chance survivals, and the texts in the present time are often composites of partial collections of an author's works. In clarifying his concern, the author offers the hypothesis that the thousand-scroll Wenyuan yinghua was not an anthology, but rather an image of roughly one third of each work found in the literary section of the Song imperial library.