Xiaofei Tian
Biographic Data
| ID | 3830544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Xiaofei Tian |
| GIVEN NAMES | Xiaofei |
| FAMILY NAME | Tian |
| SIGNATURE | TIAN X |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3867-7629 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Turning Point
Early Chinese autobiographical writings tend to paint a still portrait of who the author is: his temperament, personality, and achievements. They operate on a model of being and, at best, of a continuous, lifelong self-cultivation and a gradual process of self-actualization. In the fourth century, we see an emphasis on transformation in an author's life writing. A moment that sheds light on the past and points to the future is singled out as a tu…
Spacetime, connectivity, multipolarity, juxtaposition
The Penumbra of the Great Tang
The turn of the eighth century witnessed, for the first time in Chinese history, a concentration of poems written by exiled courtiers. In an era when mobility was limited by curfews, passes, and vehicular technologies, banishment to faraway places, accomplished by a decreed use of exclusionary post-station horses, ironically became a sanctioned and expedited means of traversing new territories. Through the poetic texts circulated via the highly d…
Restoring "History" to Historical Study
Reviewing a recent book about early medieval Chinese geographical writings, this essay asks what sort of historical contextualization is needed for historical study, and suggests looking at multiple factors, including the material conditions of textual production, that may be responsible for the proliferation of texts. It cautions against embracing a single story to account for a long historical period, especially if that story fits our modern co…
Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s)
Yan Zhitui (531–590s) was a courtier and cultural luminary who lived a colourful life during one of the most chaotic periods, known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in Chinese history. Beginning his career in the southern Liang court, he was taken captive to the north after the Liang capital fell, and served several northern dynasties. Today he remains one of the best-known medieval writers for his book-length “family instructions” ( jiaxu…
Remaking History
Of the three powers-Wei, Shu, and Wu-that divided China for the better part of the third century, Wei has received the most attention in the standard literary historical accounts. In a typical book of Chinese literary history in any language, little, if anything, is said about Wu and Shu. This article argues that the consideration of the literary production of Shu and Wu is crucial to a fuller picture of the cultural dynamics of the Three Kingdom…
Cultural Politics of Old Things in Mid-Tang China
A cross-generic examination of the discursive representations of a changing rela- tionship to a specific subcategory of things that are observable in writings from early to medieval China, this essay suggests that these representations denote the appearance of a culture of sentimentality about old, worn-out things at the turn of the ninth century. This culture of sentimentality indicates a deep-seated anxiety about the blurred boundary, on a conc…
Introduction to a Forum on Migration in Early Medieval China
How do we think about migration? This question was the topic of the first installment of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, given by the exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen, at Harvard University. Gessen, who had reported on immigrants, began with a story of a Montenegro man whose family fled to the United States when he was five. Then they told a second story, then a third, followed by fifty-four more stories of individuals' sorrows, d…
Migration, Identity, and Colonial Fantasies in a Fifth-Century Story Collection
At the turn of the fifth century, a story about a man contesting real estate with a ghost circulated in several different versions in South China. In one of the versions, a young man discovered three lacquer coffins when digging a tomb for his deceased father and had the coffins reburied elsewhere. That night, he dreamed of Lu Su 魯肅 (172-217), the powerful minister in the southern Kingdom of Wu, who angrily announced that he would exact revenge. …
Reading Du Fu
Reading Du Fu
This is the first collection of English essays on Du Fu, commonly regarded the greatest Chinese poet. Contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, these essays are engaged in historically nuanced close reading of Du Fu’s poems, both canonical and less known, from new angles and in various contexts. They discuss a series of critical issues, including the local and the imperial; the body polit…
Selective Susceptibility of Oligodendrocytes to Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Delayed neurologic sequelae (DNS) are recurrent-transient neuropsychiatric consequences of carbon monoxide (CO) intoxication. Pathologically DNS features damages to the brain white matter. Here we test a hypothesis that direct cytotoxicity of CO to oligodendrocytes plays a role in the development of DNS. In an in vitro model of CO poisoning with the carbon monoxide releasing molecule-2 (CORM-2) as a CO donor, we show that CORM-2 at concentrations…
The Halberd at Red Cliff
The Halberd at Red Cliff
Why Is It Still So Hard to Talk about the Cultural Revolution?
The Halberd at Red Cliff
"The writings of the Jian'an era lay the foundation of China's classical poetry and literary criticism and its personages and events have inspired works of historical fiction and drama throughout Chinese history. This book investigates how these associations were closely related in their origins and subsequent metamorphoses"
The Poetry of Ruan Ji and Xi Kang
The poetry of Ruan Ji has been previously translated several times, with one fully scholarly translation of both the poetry and the Fu (poetic expositions). The present translation not only provides a facing page critical Chinese text, it addresses two problems that have been ignored or not adequately treated in earlier works. First, it traces the history of the current text. The rather serious problems with this text will be, if not soluble, at …
The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature
This handbook of Classical Chinese literature from 1000 bce through 900 ce aims to provide a solid introduction to the field, inspire scholars in Chinese Studies to explore innovative conceptual frameworks and pedagogical approaches in the studying and teaching of classical Chinese literature, and facilitate a comparative dialogue with scholars of premodern East Asia and other classical and medieval literary traditions around the world. The handb…
The Oxford handbook of classical Chinese literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)
Hao Ran and the Cultural Revolution
This chapter offers a close reading of several works by Liang Jinguang, better known as Hao Ran, contextualizing his work within a tradition of Maoist “cultural revolution” that led up to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. Although Hao Ran’s works might appear to be replete with socialist ideology, this chapter argues that the socialist content in his works is actually complicated by the literary tropes and images he us…
Representing Kingship and Imagining Empire in Southern Dynasties Court Poetry
Before the fifth century, the imperial identity of a ruler seems to have disabled him as a writer rather than encouraged him to be more prolific. Literary production gradually became centered in the court by the mid-fifth century, and a distinct feature of Southern Dynasties literature is the phenomenon that emperors and princes joined with their courtiers in the act of writing poetry on social occasions. This paper focuses on a number of poems b…
The discovery of Artemisia annua L. in the Shengjindian cemetery, Xinjiang, China and its implications for early uses of traditional Chinese herbal medicine qinghao
The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature
Volume 1: Introduction 1. Early Chinese literature: beginnings through Western Han Martin Kern 2. From the Eastern Han through the Western Jin (AD 25-317) David Knechtges 3. From the Eastern Jin through the Early Tang (317-649) Xiaofei Tian 4. The Cultural Tang (650-1020) Stephen Owen 5. The Northern Song (1020-1126) Ronald Egan 6. North and South: the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Michael Fuller and Shuen-fu Lin 7. Literature from the Late Ji…
Woman in the Tower
This paper examines a group of anonymous poems thought to date from the second century AD. Ostensibly straightforward and transparent, the poems tantalize the reader with a protean quality, for it is often difficult to determine who is speaking what to whom. This impression is confirmed by the diverse and often conflicting interpretations made by late imperial Chinese commentators. How do the poems do this? What are the possible consequences for …
"A Preliminary Comparison of the Two Recensions of "Jinpingmei
Spacetime, connectivity, multipolarity, juxtaposition
Remaking History
Of the three powers-Wei, Shu, and Wu-that divided China for the better part of the third century, Wei has received the most attention in the standard literary historical accounts. In a typical book of Chinese literary history in any language, little, if anything, is said about Wu and Shu. This article argues that the consideration of the literary production of Shu and Wu is crucial to a fuller picture of the cultural dynamics of the Three Kingdom…
Cultural Politics of Old Things in Mid-Tang China
A cross-generic examination of the discursive representations of a changing rela- tionship to a specific subcategory of things that are observable in writings from early to medieval China, this essay suggests that these representations denote the appearance of a culture of sentimentality about old, worn-out things at the turn of the ninth century. This culture of sentimentality indicates a deep-seated anxiety about the blurred boundary, on a conc…
Introduction to a Forum on Migration in Early Medieval China
How do we think about migration? This question was the topic of the first installment of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, given by the exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen, at Harvard University. Gessen, who had reported on immigrants, began with a story of a Montenegro man whose family fled to the United States when he was five. Then they told a second story, then a third, followed by fifty-four more stories of individuals' sorrows, d…
"A Preliminary Comparison of the Two Recensions of "Jinpingmei
Woman in the Tower
This paper examines a group of anonymous poems thought to date from the second century AD. Ostensibly straightforward and transparent, the poems tantalize the reader with a protean quality, for it is often difficult to determine who is speaking what to whom. This impression is confirmed by the diverse and often conflicting interpretations made by late imperial Chinese commentators. How do the poems do this? What are the possible consequences for …
The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature
Volume 1: Introduction 1. Early Chinese literature: beginnings through Western Han Martin Kern 2. From the Eastern Han through the Western Jin (AD 25-317) David Knechtges 3. From the Eastern Jin through the Early Tang (317-649) Xiaofei Tian 4. The Cultural Tang (650-1020) Stephen Owen 5. The Northern Song (1020-1126) Ronald Egan 6. North and South: the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Michael Fuller and Shuen-fu Lin 7. Literature from the Late Ji…
The discovery of Artemisia annua L. in the Shengjindian cemetery, Xinjiang, China and its implications for early uses of traditional Chinese herbal medicine qinghao
Hao Ran and the Cultural Revolution
This chapter offers a close reading of several works by Liang Jinguang, better known as Hao Ran, contextualizing his work within a tradition of Maoist “cultural revolution” that led up to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. Although Hao Ran’s works might appear to be replete with socialist ideology, this chapter argues that the socialist content in his works is actually complicated by the literary tropes and images he us…
Representing Kingship and Imagining Empire in Southern Dynasties Court Poetry
Before the fifth century, the imperial identity of a ruler seems to have disabled him as a writer rather than encouraged him to be more prolific. Literary production gradually became centered in the court by the mid-fifth century, and a distinct feature of Southern Dynasties literature is the phenomenon that emperors and princes joined with their courtiers in the act of writing poetry on social occasions. This paper focuses on a number of poems b…
The Poetry of Ruan Ji and Xi Kang
The poetry of Ruan Ji has been previously translated several times, with one fully scholarly translation of both the poetry and the Fu (poetic expositions). The present translation not only provides a facing page critical Chinese text, it addresses two problems that have been ignored or not adequately treated in earlier works. First, it traces the history of the current text. The rather serious problems with this text will be, if not soluble, at …
The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature
This handbook of Classical Chinese literature from 1000 bce through 900 ce aims to provide a solid introduction to the field, inspire scholars in Chinese Studies to explore innovative conceptual frameworks and pedagogical approaches in the studying and teaching of classical Chinese literature, and facilitate a comparative dialogue with scholars of premodern East Asia and other classical and medieval literary traditions around the world. The handb…
The Oxford handbook of classical Chinese literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)
The Halberd at Red Cliff
The Halberd at Red Cliff
Why Is It Still So Hard to Talk about the Cultural Revolution?
The Halberd at Red Cliff
"The writings of the Jian'an era lay the foundation of China's classical poetry and literary criticism and its personages and events have inspired works of historical fiction and drama throughout Chinese history. This book investigates how these associations were closely related in their origins and subsequent metamorphoses"
Reading Du Fu
Reading Du Fu
This is the first collection of English essays on Du Fu, commonly regarded the greatest Chinese poet. Contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, these essays are engaged in historically nuanced close reading of Du Fu’s poems, both canonical and less known, from new angles and in various contexts. They discuss a series of critical issues, including the local and the imperial; the body polit…
Selective Susceptibility of Oligodendrocytes to Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Delayed neurologic sequelae (DNS) are recurrent-transient neuropsychiatric consequences of carbon monoxide (CO) intoxication. Pathologically DNS features damages to the brain white matter. Here we test a hypothesis that direct cytotoxicity of CO to oligodendrocytes plays a role in the development of DNS. In an in vitro model of CO poisoning with the carbon monoxide releasing molecule-2 (CORM-2) as a CO donor, we show that CORM-2 at concentrations…
Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s)
Yan Zhitui (531–590s) was a courtier and cultural luminary who lived a colourful life during one of the most chaotic periods, known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in Chinese history. Beginning his career in the southern Liang court, he was taken captive to the north after the Liang capital fell, and served several northern dynasties. Today he remains one of the best-known medieval writers for his book-length “family instructions” ( jiaxu…
Remaking History
Of the three powers-Wei, Shu, and Wu-that divided China for the better part of the third century, Wei has received the most attention in the standard literary historical accounts. In a typical book of Chinese literary history in any language, little, if anything, is said about Wu and Shu. This article argues that the consideration of the literary production of Shu and Wu is crucial to a fuller picture of the cultural dynamics of the Three Kingdom…
Cultural Politics of Old Things in Mid-Tang China
A cross-generic examination of the discursive representations of a changing rela- tionship to a specific subcategory of things that are observable in writings from early to medieval China, this essay suggests that these representations denote the appearance of a culture of sentimentality about old, worn-out things at the turn of the ninth century. This culture of sentimentality indicates a deep-seated anxiety about the blurred boundary, on a conc…
Introduction to a Forum on Migration in Early Medieval China
How do we think about migration? This question was the topic of the first installment of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, given by the exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen, at Harvard University. Gessen, who had reported on immigrants, began with a story of a Montenegro man whose family fled to the United States when he was five. Then they told a second story, then a third, followed by fifty-four more stories of individuals' sorrows, d…
Migration, Identity, and Colonial Fantasies in a Fifth-Century Story Collection
At the turn of the fifth century, a story about a man contesting real estate with a ghost circulated in several different versions in South China. In one of the versions, a young man discovered three lacquer coffins when digging a tomb for his deceased father and had the coffins reburied elsewhere. That night, he dreamed of Lu Su 魯肅 (172-217), the powerful minister in the southern Kingdom of Wu, who angrily announced that he would exact revenge. …
Restoring "History" to Historical Study
Reviewing a recent book about early medieval Chinese geographical writings, this essay asks what sort of historical contextualization is needed for historical study, and suggests looking at multiple factors, including the material conditions of textual production, that may be responsible for the proliferation of texts. It cautions against embracing a single story to account for a long historical period, especially if that story fits our modern co…
The Penumbra of the Great Tang
The turn of the eighth century witnessed, for the first time in Chinese history, a concentration of poems written by exiled courtiers. In an era when mobility was limited by curfews, passes, and vehicular technologies, banishment to faraway places, accomplished by a decreed use of exclusionary post-station horses, ironically became a sanctioned and expedited means of traversing new territories. Through the poetic texts circulated via the highly d…
Spacetime, connectivity, multipolarity, juxtaposition
Turning Point
Early Chinese autobiographical writings tend to paint a still portrait of who the author is: his temperament, personality, and achievements. They operate on a model of being and, at best, of a continuous, lifelong self-cultivation and a gradual process of self-actualization. In the fourth century, we see an emphasis on transformation in an author's life writing. A moment that sheds light on the past and points to the future is singled out as a tu…
Chinese history and philosophy (17 works) · History (16 works) · Art (13 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Literature (11 works) · Japanese History and Culture (9 works) · China (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Ancient history (6 works)