The Double Life of the Scallop: Anthropomorphic Biography, 'Pulu,' and the Northern Song Discourse on Things

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-205
Author(s):  
Huijun Mai
Keyword(s):  
Northern Song

scholarly journals Rise and Fall of the Grand Canal in the Ancient Kaifeng City of China: Role of the Grand Canal and Water Supply in Urban and Regional Development

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 1932
Author(s):  
Wenji Huang ◽  
Mingwang Xi ◽  
Shibao Lu ◽  
Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Central Plains ◽  
Grand Canal ◽  
The North ◽  
Northern Song Dynasty ◽  
Political Center ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
The Grand Canal

In the long history of the feudal society of China, Kaifeng played a vital role. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng became a worldwide metropolis. The important reason was that the Grand Canal, which was excavated during the Sui Dynasty, became the main transportation artery for the political and military center of the north and the economic center of the south. Furthermore, Kaifeng was located at the center of the Grand Canal, which made it the capital of the later Northern Song Dynasty. The Northern Song Dynasty was called “the canal-centered era.” The development of the canal caused a series of major changes in the society of the Northern Song Dynasty that were different from the previous ones, which directly led to the transportation revolution, and in turn, promoted the commercial revolution and the urbanization of Kaifeng. The development of commerce contributed to the agricultural and money revolutions. After the Northern Song Dynasty, the political center moved to the south. During the Yuan Dynasty, the excavation of the Grand Canal made it so that water transport did not have to pass through the Central Plains. The relocation of the political center and the change in the canal route made Kaifeng lose the value of connecting the north and south, resulting in the long-time fall of the Bianhe River. Kaifeng, which had prospered for more than 100 years, declined gradually, and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, it became a common town in the Central Plains. In ancient China, the rise and fall of cities and regions were closely related to the canal, and the relationship between Kaifeng and the Grand Canal was typical. The history may provide some inspiration for the increasingly severe urban and regional sustainable development issues in contemporary times.

scholarly journals FRONTIER, FORTIFICATION, AND FORESTATION: DEFENSIVE WOODLAND ON THE SONG–LIAO BORDER IN THE LONG ELEVENTH CENTURY

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-334
Author(s):  
Yuan Julian Chen
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Physical Distance ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The North ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
The Creation

ABSTRACTThis article examines the creation, preservation, and destruction of the defensive forest that the Northern Song built in Hebei along the Song–Liao border. Created as a landscape barrier against the Kitan attacks, this forest established the necessary strategic depth between the capital city and the northern frontline of the Song empire to compensate for Kaifeng's geographical vulnerability. While the Song government painstakingly maintained this forest throughout most of the dynasty, Liao troops, Hebei borderland residents, and many Song officials had nonetheless posed incessant challenges to this military forestation project. In 1122/23, at the onset of the war on the Liao to retrieve the Sixteen Prefectures, the Song army removed this borderland forest that blocked their northern expedition. The destruction of this defensive forest, which could have had thwarted attacks from the north, dismantled the strategic depth between Kaifeng and the Hebei borderland and henceforth presaged the fall of Kaifeng to the Jin, the Liao's successor, in a few years. I argue that this strategic depth was not only a physical distance, but also a diplomatic, sociopolitical, and military link that connected the ecology of the Song's northernmost periphery and the fate of the entire empire.

Interpretation of Li Gonglin Ecological View of Landscape Painting Based on Chinese Soil Smoke Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 3344-3351
Author(s):  
Xinquan Ma ◽  
Xiaofang Yao ◽  
Kwon Hwan
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Northern Song Dynasty ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
The Aesthetic

Objectives: Cigarettes are not goods that have existed in China since ancient times, but consumer goods that were introduced into China by western countries and accepted and developed by Chinese people in modern times. The application of Chinese soil smoke culture in Li gonglin’s landscape painting is studied in this paper. Methods: From the perspective of art history, landscape painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, as a prosperous period of Chinese art history landscape painting, thought deeply about painting from the artistic form of nature, and integrated their own view of environment into their creation, forming many landscape aesthetic paradigms. Results: This paper focuses on the interactive dialogue between the literati and the environment with the involvement of how space planning and governance are allocated. It is aimed at the global perspective in the Anthropocene and a local position in the Northern Song Dynasty. Localization is not only the exploration of the ecological approaches of China and the West in space, but also the integration of the past and the present, observing its ecological image from the perception and practice of traditional environmental aesthetics to the harmonious coexistence of modern cities and nature. Conclusion: Local tobacco is not a traditional local consumer product. Under the public’s praise, it has gradually formed a unique thing in China - cigarette culture. People in the society are not only the observers of the environment, but also the participants of the environment. Through the aesthetic configuration of the classification of environmental belonging space and the transformation of the image and vision into such realistic or ideal landscapes as “Longmian Villa”, it goes towards ecological holism. Therefore, from the perspective of environmental aesthetics research, Li Gonglin’s paintings have research value.

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