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
Tag
Song, Liao, Jin, Western Xia
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