This article explores the manner in which the Eurasian metallurgical tradition was transformed into an indigenous tradition on the Chinese Central Plains. It argues that the association of luminosity with the divine has a cognitive foundation, which accounts for the use translucent stones and shiny metals, including copper, bronze, silver, and gold as mediums for religious artifacts throughout the world. In China, this association was the primary impetus for the development of an indigenous metallurgy based on a piece-mold and coring technology. Although the technology ultimately concentrated on the production of ritual vessels, it was first developed at Yanshi Erlitou 偃師二里頭 for the production of clapper-bells (ling 鈴), which had similar round hollow bodies.

We further explore the history of clapper-bells, arguing that they were a development of a Central Plains tradition dating back to the Yangshao 仰韶 period (5000–3000 b.c.e.). We argue that their religious significance at Erlitou lay in the previously unheard sound produced when the two luminous substances, jade and bronze, struck against one another. Thus, religious interlocutors at Erlitou used them to contact the ancestral spirits. Later, in the Yinxu 殷墟 period of the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1300–1050 b.c.e.), bronze clapper-bells were worn by dogs buried in tombs. We propose that their role there was a development of the earlier one; that is, they were used to contact the occupant's ancestral spirits as he was guided by the dog in the underworld.

This article presents fresh evidence and arguments regarding the historical study of sensory experience through a focus on the mechanical treatments of bronzes and jades in ancient China. The techniques employed to polish and engrave hard bronze surfaces before the invention of iron tools that are harder than bronze remain a mystery. The article provides new insights into engraved/chiseled bronze inscriptions, which can be too easily dismissed by connoisseurs as fake. Through a focus on post-processing techniques for cast bronze objects made before 1 b.c.e. in China and exchanges of techniques between bronze producers and jade workers, I argue that some of the traces found on bronze objects that may have been left by working with abrasives such as those used in lapidary industry demonstrate that lapidary techniques and post-processing of cast bronze objects were interrelated. Investigations as to how bronze and jade producers interacted show that they aimed to improve the visual and tactile experiences for their customers or patrons. Active and frequent exchanges of ideas and techniques took place between the bronze and jade production communities. Their emphasis on visual and tactile experiences demonstrates how such industrial powers developed in ancient China and how they were sustained throughout the last two millennia b.c.e.

Analysis of the oracular data newly discovered in the Shang era Huayuanzhuang site opens a fascinating window in the political and ritual activities of a prince previously unknown. He is identified as the prince Zai, the future king Zu Jia. These new data shed light of the pre-royal career of Zu Jia, and the nature and the mode of his relationship with the king Wu Ding, his father, and Lady Hao, his mother. This article also examines the difficult accession to royal power of Zu Jia in a context of political crisis. It studies and clarifies some of the steps leading to the selection of royal princes as heirs to royal power. Finally, this article examines the importance of the relationship between those princes and their mothers in the specific context of royal polygamy.

By systematically analyzing the relative relationship between complete bronze inscription dates, this study deduces the lunar phases described by the specialized terms jishengba 既生霸, jiwang 既望, and jisiba 既死霸, finding that the term chuji 初吉 is unrelated to the lunar phase. The study then reconstructs a complete chronology of Western Zhou that is highly consistent with archaeological and textual evidence. The results support the traditional notion that the Zhou calendar year began in the month containing the winter solstice, and show that the Western Zhou calendar month began with the first invisibility of the waning lunar crescent while the calendar day began at sunrise. The overall evidence indicates that King Wu 武王 led an initial campaign against the Shang in 1046 b.c.e. and defeated Zhòu 紂 in 1044 b.c.e., lending credence to the narrative of the military display at Mengjin (觀兵孟津). The derived chronology reveals a previously unknown seven-year gap between King You's 幽王 final year and King Ping's 平王 first year, thus explaining the discrepancies between Shi ji 史記 and the archaeological evidence. This study demonstrates that the Modern Text (jinben 今本) Bamboo Annals 竹書紀年 is unsuitable for use in chronological studies, and suggests that the dates of Western Zhou were already obscure in Eastern Zhou. These results provide testable hypotheses and raise new questions that can guide further research into Western Zhou archaeology, history, society, and culture.

The recently published Tsinghua University bamboo manuscript *Wu ji 五紀 presents a manuscript copy that is riddled with curious irregularities, omissions, and mistakes in its text, punctuation, and the preparation of the slips. Only some of these mistakes were corrected by a proofreader, others reveal errors of misunderstanding by the scribe and/or punctuator. Furthermore, paratext that was included in a previous instantiation of the text was only preserved in paratextual notes in the present copy. An analysis of these aspects of the manuscript helps shed light on its potential status as a source and raises questions about the relationship between unearthed and transmitted texts more generally.

The scribe has been granted a special role in the creation of ancient Chinese narrative prose. Many texts seem to imply the presence of his person or written records, and scholars have often treated this feature as an indication of authorship. In this paper, I argue that another way of relating the scribe to ancient Chinese narrative prose is to see in him not an author but a witness of the events told. I will use several examples to demonstrate that the figure of the scribe stands out by its function of authenticating the narratives in which scribes takes part. Moreover, occasionally scribes appear to have been added to pre-existing “scribe-less” narratives. I will conclude my discussion by detailing how these findings shed light on the composition of individual pieces of literature and the nature of ancient Chinese narrative writing in general.

This study identifies two textual strata in the “Zhao shijia” of the Shi ji: the “wo 我 stratum” and the “legendary stratum.” While the “wo stratum” points to the existence of Zhao local historical records, the “legendary stratum” reveals an interpretive framework that guides the chapter's presentation of the Zhao history toward the central concern and anxiety over the succession of lineage and power. The series of prophetic dreams and supernatural encounters that were emplotted in the narrative of Zhao history comprise this “legendary stratum” and point toward a key figure, King Wuling of Zhao, during whose time the Zhao state reached its pinnacle of power and prosperity. Accounts that are clearly fabrications, such as the story of the orphan of Zhao and later prophecies of the decline of the Zhao, show hidden connections to the personal experience of Sima Qian and to possible political dissent and discourses criticizing Emperor Wu of Han. In identifying such fabricated “empty writing” hidden in the chapter's framework of interpretive emplotment, this article aims to offer one way to read the Shi ji's account for the hereditary house of Zhao that follows a coherent pattern on the meta-level of historical narrative.

The Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project was a five-year state-sponsored project, carried out between 1995–2000, to determine an absolute chronology of the Western Zhou dynasty and approximate chronologies of the Xia and Shang dynasties. At the end of the five years, the Project issued a provisional report entitled Report on the 1996–2000 Provisional Results of the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project: Brief Edition detailing its results. A promised full report was finally published in 2022: Report on the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project. Although numerous discoveries in the more than twenty years between the publications of the Brief Edition and the Report have revealed that the Project's absolute chronology of the Western Zhou is fundamentally flawed, and some of the problems are acknowledged by the Report, still the Report maintains the Project's chronology without any correction. In the review, I present four of these discoveries, from four different periods of the Western Zhou, discussing their implications for the Project's chronology. I conclude with a call for some sort of authoritative statement acknowledging the errors in the report.

The present discussion aims to help corroborate recent claims that the link between nourishing life 養生 and the Butcher Ding 庖丁 vignette from chapter 3 of the Zhuangzi 莊子 (c. fourth to third century bce) might be taken seriously, while at the same time falsifying recent claims that it is nonetheless uncommon for the connection to be taken seriously. This is achieved by supplying several pieces of textual evidence from leading figures from throughout the history of Zhuangzi studies who all explicitly make the connection and take it seriously. Beyond corroborating one claim and falsifying the other, the present discussion provides renderings of much hitherto untranslated work so as to prevent future scholars from underestimating just how common it is to take the link between the Butcher Ding story and nourishing life seriously.