Andrew Eisenberg, Ph.D. (1991) in History, University of Washington, Seattle, is Associate Professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He has published essays on Classical Chinese political history in the journals T'ang Studies, Theory and Society, and T'oung Pao. This is his first full length monograph.

Between the Han dynasty, founded in 206 B.C.E., and the Sui, which ended in 618 C.E., Chinese authors wrote many thousands of short textual items, each of which narrated or described some phenomenon deemed "strange."Most items told of encounters between humans and various denizens of the spirit-world, or of the miraculous feats of masters of esoteric arts; some described the wo...(展开全部)

Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted...(展开全部)

A study that makes use of an interdisciplinary approach to challenge traditional theories of state formation in China and promote debate on early Chinese history. Analyzing data from archaeology, geology, cultural geography, ethnohistory and ancient texts, the authors show how the procurement of key external resources - especially metal and salt - drove the dynamics of state fo...(展开全部)

For those to whom "Taoism" is the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu, nothing could seem more foreign to Taoism than bureaucracy. In these two classics, the Way (tao) is everything that bureaucracy is not: it is nonhierarchical, undifferentiated, ineffable, spontaneous. The bureaucratic spirit pertains rather to stuffy Confucians, who foolishly imagine that the way to fulfill human po...(展开全部)

This is the first English-language book on the philosophy of Ji Kang. Moreover, it offers the first systematic treatment of his philosophy, thus filling a significant gap in English-language scholarship on early medieval Chinese literature and philosophy. David Chai brings to light Ji Kang’s Neo-Daoist heritage and explores the themes in his writings that were derived from clas...(展开全部)

What happens when historiography—the way historical events are committed to writing—shapes historical events as they occur? How do we read biography when it is truly “life-writing,” its subjects fully engaged with the historiographical rhetoric that would record their words and deeds? The Threshold, a study of the culture of historiography in early medieval China, explores the...(展开全部)

By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)--deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status ...(展开全部)

Early China is best known for the dazzling material artifacts it has left behind. These terracotta figures, gilt-bronze lamps, and other material remnants of the Chinese past unearthed by archaeological excavations are often viewed without regard to the social context of their creation, yet they were made by individuals who contributed greatly to the foundations of early Chines...(展开全部)

Tian, or Heaven, had multiple meanings in early China. It had been used since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god, and later came to be regarded as a force driving the movement of the cosmos and as a home to deities and imaginary animals. By the Han dynasty, which saw an outpouring of visual materials depicting Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompassed...(展开全部)