Animals through Chinese History
Earliest Times to 1911

This innovative collection opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. This title is also available as Open Access.

Roel Sterckx (Edited by), Martina Siebert (Edited by), Dagmar Schäfer (Edited by)

9781108428156, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 December 2018

290 pages, 21 b/w illus. 2 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.61 kg

'Drawing upon an impressive range of primary sources, this volume constitutes a collection of essays from various scholarly disciplines that seek to 'open the door to the rich field of animals and knowing in China'.' Joseph Chadwin, Religious Studies

This volume opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. As environmental historians turn their attention to expanded chronologies of natural change, something new can be said about human history through animals and about the globally diverse cultural and historical dynamics that have led to perceptions of animals as wild or cultures as civilized. This innovative collection of essays spanning Chinese history reveals how relations between past and present, lived and literary reality, have been central to how information about animals and the natural world has been processed and evaluated in China. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, ranging from ritual texts to poetry to veterinary science, this volume explores developments in the human-animal relationship through Chinese history and the ways in which the Chinese have thought about the world with and through animals. This title is also available as Open Access.

1. Shang sacrificial animals material documents and images Adam C. Schwartz
2. Animal to edible the ritualization of animals in early China Roel Sterckx
3. Noble creatures filial and righteous animals in early medieval Confucian thought Keith N. Knapp
4. Walking by itself the singular history of the Chinese cat Timothy H. Barrett and Mark Strange
5. Bees in China a brief cultural history David Pattinson
6. Where did the animals go? Presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises Francesca Bray
7. Animals as text producing and consuming 'text-animals' Martina Siebert
8. Great plans song dynastic (960–1279) institutions for human and veterinary healthcare Han Yi and Dagmar Schäfer
9. Animals in nineteenth-century eschatological discourse Vincent Goossaert
10. Reconsidering the boundaries multicultural and multilingual perspectives on the care and management of the emperors' horses in the Qing Sare Aricanli
11. Animals as wonders writing commentaries on monthly ordinances in Qing China Zheng Xinxian
12. Reforming the humble pig pigs, pork and contemporary China Mindi Schneider.

Subject Areas: Animals & society [JFFZ], Asian history [HBJF], General & world history [HBG]