The Eastern Depot, the Eunuch Dictatorship and the Donglin Martyrs
In the freezing midnight gloom of the twenty-fourth day of the seventh lunar month in the fifth year of the Tianqi era (August 26,…
28 min read
Tag
Chinese History
The Jingnan Campaign, the Usurpation of Zhu Di and the Move to Beijing
In the suffocating summer heat of the thirteenth day of the sixth lunar month in the fourth year of the Jianwen era (July 13,…
28 min read
The Four Castes of the Yuan and Ethnic Separation in China
In the ninth lunar month of the first year of the Huangqing era (1312 CE), an imperial edict promulgated by the fourth Mongol sovereign…
28 min read
Guan Hanqing and the Golden Age of Yuan Zaju
Under the blinding, scorching sun of the sixth lunar month—the dead of midsummer, when the humid plains of northern China baked under relentless heat—a…
28 min read
The Six-Year Siege of Xiangyang
In the first lunar month of the tenth year of the Zhiyuan era (February 1273 CE), an eerie, unnatural shriek echoed across the freezing…
28 min read
Zhu Xi, the White Deer Grotto and Imperial Orthodoxy
In the third lunar month of the sixth year of the Chunxi era (1179 CE), a fifty-year-old scholar-official arrived in Nankang Military Prefecture (modern…
28 min read
The Western Xia, the Tangut Empire and Its Sacred Script
In the spring of 1908, a Russian imperial expedition led by the explorer Pyotr Kozlov rode deep into the arid wasteland of the Badain…
28 min read
Yue Fei, Qin Hui and the Price of Dynastic Paranoia
On the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth lunar month in the eleventh year of the Shaoxing era (January 27, 1142 CE)—on the eve of…
28 min read
The Calamity of Jingkang and the Jurchen Sack of Kaifeng
In the biting cold of the eleventh lunar month in the first year of the Jingkang era (January 1127 CE), a thick, suffocating grey…
28 min read
Wang Anshi’s New Policies and the Great Song Political Schism
In the second lunar month of the second year of the Xining era (1069 CE), a young, fiercely ambitious monarch and an uncompromising intellectual…
33 min read
Li Yu, the Fall of Southern Tang and the Climax of Ci Poetry
On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month in the third year of the Taiping Xingguo era (August 13, 978 CE)—the traditional night…
32 min read
How Zhao Kuangyin Ended Two Centuries of Military Mutiny
On a warm midsummer evening in the second year of the Jianlong era (July 961 CE), inside an intimate private reception hall of the…
28 min read
The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun and Four Centuries of Exposure
In the eleventh lunar month of the first year of the Tianfu era (936 CE), inside a luxury yurt pitched amid the freezing winds…
28 min read
The Huang Chao Rebellion and the End of the Tang Aristocracy
In the twelfth lunar month of the first year of the Guangming era (January 881 CE), the cold winter wind howling through the Danfeng…
28 min read
The Huichang Persecution of 845
In the eighth lunar month of the fifth year of the Huichang era (August 845 CE), an imperial decree bearing the vermilion seal of…
28 min read
The Equal-Field System, the Fubing Militia and the Breakdown of Tang
When historians reflect upon the zenith of the Tang Dynasty (唐朝, 618–907 CE)—an epoch celebrated for the celestial poetry of Li Bai and Du…
31 min read
Tang Taizong, the Heavenly Khagan, and a Cosmopolitan Empire
In the fifth lunar month of the fourth year of the Zhenguan era (630 CE), a spectacle unfolded in the imperial capital of Chang’an…
30 min read
The Xuanwu Gate Incident and the Rise of Tang Taizong
At dawn on the fourth day of the sixth lunar month in the ninth year of the Wude era (July 2, 626 CE), the…
30 min read
Emperor Xiaowen and the Transformation of the Northern Wei Xianbei
In the late autumn of the seventeenth year of the Taihe era (493 CE), under a relentless, freezing downpour that transformed the roads of…
29 min read
The Battle of Fei River and the Preservation of the South
In the late autumn of the eighth year of the Taiyuan era (383 CE), along the muddy, reed-choked banks of the Fei River (淝水,…
31 min read
The Disaster of Yongjia and the Southward Exodus
In the fourth lunar month of the fifth year of the Yongjia era (311 CE), the imperial capital of the Western Jin Dynasty (西晋,…
35 min read
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Neo-Daoist Xuanxue
In the middle of the third century CE, in the shadow of the Taihang Mountains near modern Jiaozuo in Henan province, a grove of…
28 min read
Zhuge Liang, the Longzhong Plan, and the Logistics of the Northern Expeditions
In the spring of 228 CE, from the remote mountain valleys of Hanzhong in southwestern China, an army of fifty thousand soldiers in iron-scaled…
30 min read
The Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Daoist Apocalypse of 184 CE
In the spring of 184 CE—a fateful year of Jiazi marking the opening of a new sixty-year sexagenary cosmic cycle—a terrifying sixteen-character apocalyptic prophecy…
27 min read