The Female Chieftain's Tribute

Tuesday, April 12, 2016
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Bunche Hall 6275
 

Talk by Hu Siao-chen, Academia Sinica

Taiwan Studies Lecture Series

During the long history of encounters between the Han and non-Han people, the Han writers produced many texts that represent the non-Han as the other. These texts are in the genres of local gazetteers, travelogues and miscellaneous notes, and they narrate about the geographical, institutional and social traits of the non-Han regions and people. Among the profuse information they provide, the description of local produce and food often goes beyond factual record and is loaded with feeling and imagination. This essay centers around texts about the negotiation between She Xiang, a female chieftain in Guizhou, and the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, and discusses how clothing and food are represented as symbolic tokens of political exchanges between the leaders of the court and the borderland. As buckwheat, the main food crop of the region, is used to make the “golden crispy cake” that bears the pattern of nine dragons and presented to the emperor himself as the female chieftain’s tribute, the story of She Xiang is transformed from strategic negotiation between the central authority and borderland power to a side dish of exotic flavor in the feast of "multi-ethnic unified empire."

 How to become a Daoist：Transmission and Ordination in Early Medieval Daoism

Thursday, April 14, 2016

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Bunche Hall 10383
 

Talk by Terry Kleeman, University of Colorado

Like most new religions, the Way of the Celestial Master, founded in the mid-second century of our era, was an evangelical faith that sought to save the world by converting its profane inhabitants to the true way. For this reason, there is a strong focus in early Daoist documents on conversion of individuals and their incorporation into the membership as citizens of the Dao（Daomin 道民）. In fact, the movement experienced explosive growth over the next two hundred fifty years, as it came to cover all of Sichuan, then all of North China, and finally, after 317, all of China. This talk will examine how individuals and families were recruited for membership in the Celestial Master church, how they were evaluated for promotion and progressed through the ranks, the rituals used to initiate and ordain them at various levels, and the codes of conduct that they accepted along with their ranks and statuses. In this way, we can get some sense of what it meant to turn away from popular religious practice and join into this new fellowship of the Heavenly People（tianren 天人）, to live under different rules worshipping strange new gods, and to share in the hope that they would be chosen as Seed People who would repopulate the world of Great Peace that was sure to arise from the ashes of the destruction, warfare, plague, and calamity that surrounded them.

Terry Kleeman received his M.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Oriental Languages from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. As a graduate student, he studied at National Taiwan University（1976-77）; Taishō University（Tokyo, 1979-81）; and the École Pratique des Hautes-études（Sorbonne, 1986-87）. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Minnesota, and the College of William and Mary before joining the University of Colorado in 1998. His research focuses on Chinese religion and thought, especially medieval religious Daoism and popular religion, as well as Chinese ethnic history, the local history of Southwest China, East Asian new religions, and Chinese archaeology. Major publications include A God’s Own Tale（SUNY Press, 1994）, Great Perfection：Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom（Hawaii, 1998）, and Celestial Masters：History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities（Harvard East Asia Center, 2016）.