Tang Dynasty info needed!

[oyceter]

PSA: telophase is looking for info on the An Lu Shan rebellion and the fall of the High Tang, probably with an emphasis on how the political events of the time affected daily life, clothing details, military details and etc.

I am now so sad that a) I do not have university library, b) I am not in my beloved EAS library from college, and c) people do not know about Yang Guifei. I shouldn't feel such, given that I also didn't know much about it before majoring in EAS, but it just reminds me how little of my history is common knowledge in the States and worldwide. And I'm not talking about details; I'm talking about one of the most famous stories in Chinese history (am I exaggerating? I think it's pretty famous, right?) that has been retold for centuries and reinvoked time and time again (and that is a lot of time, given that it took place in 755 CE).

Also... it's the Tang Dynasty! I am too starry-eyed about it because of the enthusiasm of one of my Chinese lit. professors (who, btw, was AWESOME), but I have the same passion for it that people do for the Renaissance. It was just this amazing period and there were many cultures (at least for the time) mixing in Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an and the capital prior to the An Lu Shan rebellion) and there was the poetry and the flourishing of art and... wah. I really need to find a good book or five on Tang Dynasty and finally get around to reading the one I have on female Tang poets.

It's not just Chinese history -- there are references to Yang Guifei and the fall of the High Tang scattered throughout Japanese literature, though I am much less knowledgeable about Korean influences, particularly since Japan took a ton of influences from the Tang Dynasty (Kyoto is basically Chang'an reproduced, the kimono is based off Tang clothing, etc.).

It's not telophase or her commenters' faults at all and I do not mean this as a way to passive-aggressively call them out -- this is just a symptom of a larger problem that is everywhere, and if you couldn't tell from my completely dorktastic spamming of Telophase, I am very excited someone is asking about it!

And again, it's not really a surprise, given how I know how history and literature is edited down in the Western world (am not exonerating the non-Western world, btw, but given the global dominance of Western culture, non-Western ones have to have a better baseline knowledge of Western history) and given how stupid I am about Black, Latino, and Native history and culture and literature just in the US alone, and that doesn't even begin to encompass how ignorant I am about African history, South American history, non-Chinese-or-Japanese Asian history, and all of the above cultures and literature and...

I wish I could download knowledge into my brain.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Sad to say, this is one area where even an Asian-majority state like Hawai'i doesn't seem to do a whole lot better than the rest of the country: maybe it's gotten better in recent decades, but when I was in school the elementary-through-high-school level coverage of Asian history was pretty paper-thin. Prior to college level stuff I think I picked up more little details just from random library exploration, or even the period dramas running on the Japanese TV station, then we got at my various schools.

(And oooh, don't get me started on the whole "history doesn't start until the white people show up" thing when it's Christopher Who? Day. Although if you're interested in more stuff on modern native culture, I've just posted a massive YouTube video spam of contemporary Native musicians in my journal to commemorate the holiday.)

[oyceter]

Ohh, that is sad to hear. Though on the plus side, I think the University of Hawaii Press puts out a good deal of EAS scholarship and I think their EAS dept. is pretty good as well. On the other hand, not sure how it is for non-East-Asian Asian history.

Although if you're interested in more stuff on modern native culture, I've just posted a massive YouTube video spam of contemporary Native musicians in my journal to commemorate the holiday.

Oooo, thanks for hte heads up! I'll check it out.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, stuff at the college level seems like it's decent, and UH and the Bishop Museum both put out all sorts of fabulous books...but at least in the 70s/80s, stuff at the elementary-through-high-school levels wasn't all that great, although I really do hope that things have improved since my day! There was at least, not surprisingly, a bit more attention paid to Hawaiiana and local history, as an outgrowth of the 1970s Hawaiian cultural renaissance, but again there wasn't really comparable depth given to other Pacific Islander history except where it overlapped with local issues -- immigration waves for the plantations, that sort of thing.

And enjoy the vids, if you have any questions about the artists please feel free to ask away! I actually had a bunch of extra videos when I first posted but LJ was being all buggy and kept eating them until I just gave up in frustration.