East Asian Studies Speaker Series Talk, "Landscape and Power in Post-Imperial Chang'an"
East Asian Studies Speaker Series Talk
"Landscape and Power in Post-Imperial Chang'an"
Professor Xin Wen, Princeton University
Thursday, October 23, 4:35 PM
680 Sherbrooke Room 1041
Abstract:
Chang’an, the capital of the Tang (618–907) dynasty, had a walled area of 84 square kilometers and a population of one million, making it the largest city in the medieval world. After the fall of the Tang, a new Chang’an emerged within the old city. This smaller Chang’an, about 6 percent in landmass compared to the old city, continued to function as a regional center to this day. This lecture explores the landscape of this smaller city in the period from tenth through the fourteenth century. Although urban historians of China paid little attention to Chang’an after it lost the status of the imperial capital, I show that the rich material remains from Chang’an, perhaps the best documented of any Chinese city in this period, allow a detailed account of its urban morphology. By telling how new monasteries and residential quarters were built while old palaces were abandoned and old monuments repurposed, I show that the power that drove the landscape changes in post-imperial Chang’an was not primarily the commercial one. Instead, a negotiation between itinerant imperial representatives and local magnates determined the shape of the city. This case study of Chang’an helps us recognize a southern bias in the study of the city in Middle Period China, and compels us to rethink the role of the “medieval commercial revolution” in China’s urban history.