Introduction: A Century of Writing onObjects

Summary

THE SILK ROADS, arguably the first informationsuperhighway, connected many regions, from theMediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean and the EastChina Sea. During the Han Dynasty, approximatelyduring the late first century, the Silk Roads wasestablished as an ancient network for commercialtrade. By the third century, the entire network oftrading routes was already well-defined. With thehelp of the rich scholarship on this subject, wehave decent knowledge of the ancient trading routes,its scope, its timeline, its complex networks, itsdevelopment, and its values. In recent years, theSilk Roads have generated a rich amount of scholarlyworks on early medieval China: for example, ChenSanping's Multicultural Chinain the Early Middle Ages (2012); JohnKeischnick and Mier Shahar's India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion,and Thought (2014), but neither of thesefocus on literary writing.

Bringing the perspective of material culture to examinethe Silk Roads is also not a new idea, and can beseen in Edward Schafer's TheGolden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’angExotics (1985) and in Meir Shahar'sOedipal God: The ChineseNezha and His Indian Origins (2015).Again, literature does not play a key or focal rolein either of these two works.

Early medieval Chinese literary studies have receivedmore attention in recent years, as we see in AntjeRichter's Letters andEpistolary Culture in Early MedievalChina (2013); Howard Good's Xun Xu and the Politics of Precisionin Third Century AD (2010); TimothyDavid's Entombed Epigraphy andCommemorative Culture in Early MedievalChina (2016); Nicholas Morrow Williams’Imitations of the Self: JiangYan and Chinese Poetics (2015); andTimothy Chan's Considering theEnd: Morality in Early Medieval Chinese PoeticRepresentation (2012). Yet, theseimportant works do not consider outside influence onChinese literary writing.

Some books combine classical Chinese literature andcross-cultural studies, such as Tamara Chin'sSavage Exchange: HanImperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and theEconomic Imagination (2014) and TianXiaofei's Visionary Journeys:Travel Writings from Early Medieval andNineteenth-Century China (2012). One endsat the beginning of the third century, the otherbegins with the fourth century; together, they leavethe third century unexamined.