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

[the_rck]

I've posted the request here: http://therck.livejournal.com/169323.html

I'm quite sure that I've forgotten to specify some important criterion and will look stupid, but that's probably the anxiety talking. I'm not sure how it is that I can give a speech or act in a play without freaking out but do freak out about posting on LJ. Maybe it's the quasi-permanence of the publicly written word...

[oyceter]

I am sitting and trying to think of suggestions but my brain has futzed out on me! I hope you get some good ones though!