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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261026T160000
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SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Huan Jin — Modularity and Vernacular Knowledge: The Career of "Tao" 套\, 11th–17th Centuries
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Huan Jin\, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology \n\n\n\nEmerging at the turn of the eleventh century out of contact with non-Han people\, “tao” 套 (set/module) shows the productiveness of cross-cultural interactions. Rooted in empirical knowledge and everyday life that is not dominated by aristocrats and cultural elites\, it is a category that introduces a way of thinking and doing that achieves efficiency without sacrificing functionality. Instead of concreteness and stability\, “tao” is about malleability and adaptability. By the late Ming\, commercial publishers further extended the flexibility of “tao” to organize knowledge for everyday needs in law\, medicine\, and communication. At the same time\, “tao” began to carry negative connotations in criticism of literary and artistic creation\, reflecting a desire for sincerity and originality that went beyond mere practicality\, together with an underlying anxiety that convenience itself had gone too far. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-huan-jin-modularity-and-vernacular-knowledge-the-career-of-tao-%e5%a5%97-11th-17th-centuries/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Huan-Jin.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261109T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261109T180000
DTSTAMP:20260924T182412Z
CREATED:20260924T181801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260924T182412Z
UID:45843-1794240000-1794247200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Yunxiao Xiao — Writing on Bamboo and Wood: Text Technologies in Early China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Yunxiao Xiao\, University of Washington \n\n\n\nThis talk explores how written information was organized\, edited\, and transmitted through the ancient media of bamboo and wood. Drawing on excavated manuscripts from the Warring States through the Han\, I examine three practices of bookmaking and information management before the age of paper: 1) designing layouts\, 2) editing and updating legal compilations\, and 3) transmitting literary texts within local scribal communities. \n\n\n\nFirst\, I consider tables and tabular formats\, showing how scribes drew on a repertoire of spatial strategies to organize administrative\, calendrical\, and mathematical information on the two-dimensional writing surface. I then turn to normative legal manuscripts that were physically scraped and rewritten as regulations changed\, revealing statutory texts not as finished records but as objects continually maintained and updated in use. Finally\, I examine correspondences among scribal hands in manuscripts from different tombs and ask what they might reveal about relationships among otherwise anonymous scribes and the local transmission of literary knowledge. \n\n\n\nTogether\, these cases illuminate the interplay between knowledge and media in early China. What we know about the past depends not only on what was written and happened to survive\, but also on how knowledge was materially produced\, organized\, revised\, and transmitted. From legal practice to literary classics\, this talk approaches early Chinese manuscripts as evidence for a broader history of ancient media and information. \n\n\n\nYunxiao Xiao (Ch. 肖芸曉) is a scholar of Chinese literature and cultural history specializing in paleographic texts from the late Warring States and Qin–Han periods. With research interests in epistemological practices and information technologies before the age of paper\, she explores the interplay between knowledge\, people\, and historical media. Her first book project\, The Crafts of the Hidden Hands: Scribal Culture and the Making of Texts in Early China\, examines the ordinary producers and practices behind the formation of Chinese classical knowledge and traces how early written culture in East Asia emerged and evolved. Building on her interest in the history of media\, information\, and technology\, her other projects explore how administrative data and scholarly information were represented\, organized\, controlled\, and manipulated on bamboo and wood in the Qin and Han empires. Before joining the University of Washington\, she earned her PhD from Princeton University (2024) and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-yunxiao-xiao-writing-on-bamboo-and-wood-text-technologies-in-early-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/yxx.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261130T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261130T180000
DTSTAMP:20261019T143835Z
CREATED:20260924T183650Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261019T143835Z
UID:45855-1796054400-1796061600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Kerstin Storm — Old Age and Aging in Medieval Chinese Poetry
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Kerstin Storm\, University of Münster***Please note the different location for this talk in the series.***Perceptions of old age and aging in so-called traditional China are often reduced to two extremes: on the one hand\, respect for the elderly\, commonly associated with the Confucian cardinal virtue of filial piety\, and on the other the Daoist ideal of longevity. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the cultural and aesthetic conceptualization of the stages of life\, and of old age in particular\, in Chinese literary works. Poetry offers a remarkably diverse range of representations of the aging process. These include\, but are not limited to\, impassionate laments of both physical and mental decline as well as portrayals of perceived tranquility\, wisdom\, serenity\, or joy in later stages of life. This talk examines representations of old age in early medieval Chinese poetry. Moving beyond familiar stereotypes\, it explores the aesthetic variability of poetic responses to aging. By tracing literary traditions\, detecting intertextual connections\, and situating individual representations within their respective literary and historical contexts\, it seeks to illuminate a range of conceptions of\, and attitudes towards\, the later stages of life in early medieval and medieval China. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-kerstin-storm-old-age-and-aging-in-medieval-chinese-poetry/
LOCATION:CGIS South Room S354\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chs1130.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261207T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261207T180000
DTSTAMP:20260924T182125Z
CREATED:20260924T182123Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260924T182125Z
UID:45846-1796659200-1796666400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Wendy Swartz — Literary Creativity and “The Use of the Mind” in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Wendy Swartz\, Rutgers University \n\n\n\nThis lecture will examine accounts of wen (writing\, literary creation) by two of China’s earliest and most innovative literary theorists: “Rhapsody on Writing” by Lu Ji and The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons by Liu Xie. Writing on creativity and implicitly advocating for human creation was an act more audacious and ambitious than the modern reader might think. By the period of early medieval China\, there was already a long-established proscription against making claims of “creation” (zuo)\, considered to be the prerogative of ancient sages. This proscription can be traced to Confucius’ famous pronouncement recorded in the Analects\, in which he expressed his reverence for antiquity\, and perhaps also for a perceived mystery\, even sacredness\, inherent in creation: “I transmit and do not create.” Both Lu Ji and Liu Xie deftly circumvented the traditional aversion to claiming creation. Each also limned the writing process in varying degrees of detail\, while exposing its challenges and exalting the role of the mind (xin) in this process. This lecture will cast light on how investigating this process involved reflecting on matters of considerable importance not only in literary history\, but also in human history\, such as tradition\, culture\, invention\, originality\, conception\, expression\, identity\, work\, and ownership. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-wendy-swartz-literary-creativity-and-the-use-of-the-mind-in-early-medieval-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/wendy-swartz.jpg
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