Olivia Milburn
Biographic Data
| ID | 509198 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Olivia Milburn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Olivia |
| FAMILY NAME | Milburn |
| SIGNATURE | MILBURN O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Seoul National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0340-0013 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Rewriting History
At the very beginning of the Han dynasty, Zou Yao 騶搖 (c. 250- after 192 BCE ), dispossessed of his kingdom upon the unification of China in 221 BCE , was restored to power as the King of Dong’ou 東甌王. At some point after his death, he came to be worshipped as a local deity in the city of Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province, presumed to be the site of his capital city. This article examines what is known of late imperial worship for this obscure god, and…
Warnings from History
The close relationship between the “Shiji jie” (Exposition of Historical Records) chapter of the Yi Zhoushu (Remaining Zhou Documents) and the “Wangzheng” (Portents of Destruction) chapter of the Han Feizi has long been recognized, but prior to this, the precise nature of the connection has been unexplored. This article presents a comparative study structured around an annotated translation of these two texts. The “Shiji jie” describes how King M…
Tang Dynasty Rhapsodies on Puppetry
The earliest extant rhapsodies about puppetry were produced in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907). This paper examines two short texts – the “Han yi munü jie Pingcheng wei fu” (A rhapsody on the Han dynasty use of a wooden woman to relieve the siege of Pingcheng) by Xie Guan (d. 865; jinshi 837) and the “Muren fu” (Rhapsody on a wooden man) by Lin Zi (jinshi 843) – which explore the interactions between puppets and people. In these writings,…
Power and Position in Women’s Biographies
The first collections of women’s biographies were produced during the Han dynasty, and a significant proportion of these focus on the empresses and senior consorts who achieved enormous power and political importance through their marriage into the imperial house. In a hereditary system in which emperors and kings inherited their positions at the top of the ruling elite from their fathers, the circumstances in which these women came to occupy pos…
Cooking meat in ancient China
Considerable evidence survives of the cooking and eating of kebabs as a major form of meat consumption in early China. Not only are there numerous artistic depictions in both painting and low-relief stone sculpture of this practice, but there are also some very early excavated skewers, grills, and indeed preserved meat kebabs, not to mention references in contemporary literature, and this evidence significantly predates any documentation of kebab…
Aging in Early Medieval China
The article explores the cultural importance and literary legacy of Zuo Si's "Baifa fu" or "Rhapsody on White Hair." In this playful piece, Zuo Si expressed his own hostility towards the idea of going grey, voicing an agist perspective in which he denigrated those who appear visibly aged and expressed his conviction that contemporary Chinese society was entirely youth-focused. Presenting a contrasting view, his white hairs speak up for themselves…
An Account of Burned Pepper
Article Abstract: Fen jiaolu 焚椒錄 ( An Account of Burned Pepper ) purports to be an eyewitness biographical account of the life and tragic death of the Liao dynasty empress Xiao Guanyin 蕭觀音 (1040–1075). It is explicitly attributed to the authorship of Wang Ding 王鼎 (d. 1106), a senior government official, and dated to the year 1089. Many scholars have used this text as an authoritative source for understanding Liao history, and the poems which it c…
Fateful Fashions
In the early medieval period, a number of mantic texts were produced which discussed the issue of portents expressed through fashions in clothing. It was the contention of these authors that changing fashions served to predict the decline of dynasties, the deaths of emperors, and foreign invasions. This article explores this tradition in the context of apophenia, which occurs when individuals over-interpret random pieces of information, seeking t…
Rape in early China
With the exception of legal texts, surviving records of rape in early China have been the subject of little academic study to date. This is the result of a number of factors, including the criminalization of both consensual and non-consensual sex outside of marriage in ancient China, the tradition of using euphemistic vocabulary to refer to such topics, considerable variation, depending on time and place, as to what constitutes rape and discomfor…
Spring Colors in the Han Palace
At the very end of the Qing dynasty, Xue Fucheng (1838-1894) and his circle produced a series of writings about empresses and imperial consorts of previous dynasties, in which they constructed a sympathetic discourse about elite women who had suffered exploitation and abuse. This paper analyzes a single text, Spring Colors in the Han Palace ( Hangong chunse ), and argues that this collection of short stories was written to explore new perspective…
Jealousy and Domestic Violence by Women in Early and Medieval China
Beginning in the early imperial era, Chinese texts recorded instances of domestic violence perpetrated by women living in polygynous households. These acts of abuse were commonly understood to be the result of sexual jealousy. Marital disharmony was a cause of great concern to the elite, as a result of which legal and historical texts, as well as the literature of the period, provide a rich vein of evidence concerning domestic violence perpetrate…
Aromas, Scents, and Spices
Research into early Chinese olfactory culture is only just beginning. This paper argues that before the arrival of Buddhism, elite scent culture had already begun to be transformed by the importation of foreign aromatics, though these substances arrived shorn of their original cultural context. Prior to the importing of intense foreign perfumes, the aromatics available were mostly local, and traditional Chinese practice stressed the use of indivi…
Featherwork in Early and Medieval China
This paper is concerned with the early documented history of featherwork in China, as described in historical texts and literature up until the end of the Tang dynasty in 907 CE. Although featherwork from several Pacific islands and Latin America has recently been the subject of academic attention, the important Chinese tradition has been neglected. Drawing on studies of featherwork from other cultures, this paper divides these accounts by techni…
A Taste of Honey
This paper focuses on the small group of writings from the Wei-Jin period about different kinds of sweeteners used in food and drink. Apart from any question of literary merit in these writings, there is the issue of status: all sugars were expensive, and some were extremely rare, and to consume such a sugar was a potent sign of privilege. It is not surprising that all early medieval poems and prose about sweeteners focus on the sugars considered…
Birth in Ancient China
Instructions to Women
The texts written for the instruction of women in ancient China are some of the earliest examples of didactic sources aimed at a female readership to be produced anywhere in the world. The oldest surviving texts in the transmitted tradition date to the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). However, in 2010, Peking University acquired a cache of manuscripts written on bamboo, one of which, the Jiaonü (Instructions to women), predates these Han dynasty adm…
The Blind Instructing the Sighted
This article examines representations of Music Master Kuang in early Chinese historical and philosophical texts. Music Master Kuang was entirely blind, at a time when people with disabilities suffered serious discrimination. However, in spite of his handicap, he was able not merely to become a fine musician, but also served as a key advisor to two rulers of Jin, Lord Dao (r. 573–558 BCE) and his son, Lord Ping (r. 557–532 BCE), and in some texts …
Headhunting in ancient China
Headhunting has a long and well-documented history in China, but most people are today unaware of this practice, first recorded in Shang oracle bones and regularly mentioned in ancient Chinese texts until the Han dynasty. This ignorance is because headhunting subsequently came to be seen as a barbaric practice and knowledge concerning its long history was destroyed: this was achieved by inventing a new character, guo 聝, which means "to cut the ea…
Island of Guanyin
The Xinian
The Xinian or Annalistic History is one of an important collection of ancient bamboo texts donated anonymously to Qinghua University in 2008. The Xinian covers events from the history of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045–771 b.c.e. ), through the Spring and Autumn Period (771–475 b.c.e. ) and into the Warring States era (475–221 b.c.e. ). Since the first publication of this manuscript in 2011, it has been the subject of much research, though this ha…
From Hero to Ancestor, God, and Ghost
Han Whizhong (1089–1151) was one of the generals who played a key role in the establishment of the Southern Song dynasty, after the conquest of the north by Jurchen forces in 1126. After he died, he was commemorated by his family as an ancestor, but he was also worshipped as a god in and around the city of Suzhou, the site of his retirement home. Eventually he even became a ghost, after his grave was disturbed in the eighteenth century. As a resu…
The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan
The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan is the biography of the most important statesmen and political thinkers of the Eastern Zhou dynasty China: Yan Ying (d. 500 BCE). Living through an exceptionally troubled period, he served three rulers and two dictators of the state of Qi, in Shandong Province. His experiences informed his revolutionary theories concerning the relationship between the individual and the state. Long considered to be a for…
Palace Women in the Former Han Dynasty (202 BCE–CE 23)
In the chapters concerned with palace women, the Hanshu provides a detailed description of the administrational structures of the hougong (Rear palace) in the Former Han dynasty, the earliest information of this kind to survive for any Chinese regime. This includes an account of the twenty-one official ranks granted to women at this period, and the information given here has parallels in other contemporary historical texts. Thanks to the excavati…
Rhapsodies on Midiexiang
At the end of the Han dynasty, a group of five rhapsodies were produced by some of the most important poets of the day, celebrating the presence of plants from the Roman Empire in the gardens of Cao Pi, the future first emperor of the Wei dynasty. Previously when these poems have been studied, it has been in the context of straightforward appreciation of their subject's scent and beauty. However, this group of rhapsodies is important for understa…
Urbanization in Early and Medieval China
The heart of Urbanization in Early and Medieval China consists of translations of three gazetteers written during the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), Tang (618–907), and Northern Song (960–1126) dynasties describing the city of Suzhou. The texts allow the reader to trace the dramatic changes that occurred as the city experienced enormous political and social upheavals over nine centuries. Each translation is accompanied by extensive annotation and a detail…
Headhunting in ancient China
Headhunting has a long and well-documented history in China, but most people are today unaware of this practice, first recorded in Shang oracle bones and regularly mentioned in ancient Chinese texts until the Han dynasty. This ignorance is because headhunting subsequently came to be seen as a barbaric practice and knowledge concerning its long history was destroyed: this was achieved by inventing a new character, guo 聝, which means "to cut the ea…
Featherwork in Early and Medieval China
This paper is concerned with the early documented history of featherwork in China, as described in historical texts and literature up until the end of the Tang dynasty in 907 CE. Although featherwork from several Pacific islands and Latin America has recently been the subject of academic attention, the important Chinese tradition has been neglected. Drawing on studies of featherwork from other cultures, this paper divides these accounts by techni…
Kingship and Inheritance in the State of Wu
Marked Out for Greatness
In many ancient cultures, such as the Greek and Roman civilizations of the Mediterranean, unusual physical characteristics were seen as marking out their owner for an exceptional fate. In a world where very little could be done to ameliorate the lot of a person born with a deformity or crippled by illness, the individual who triumphantly overcame these misfortunes might justifiably be seen as particularly blessed, or even as having been chosen by…
The Book of the Young Master of Accountancy
In ancient China, economic theory developed from the Warring States period onwards. Many philosophers included economic ideas in their works. A number of important theories were first articulated in an extremely obscure text, the Jinizi, a book was associated with the preunification state of Yue. The Jinizi is the earliest known text to include the concept of economic cycles, and it stresses the role of investment and savings in economic developm…
Image, Identity, and Cherishing Antiquity
Wang Ao (1449–1524) was a distinguished scholar, great statesman and major provider of literati and artistic patronage in mid-Ming dynasty Suzhou. This paper examines key aspects of both his own personal literati activities and those that he sponsored, to discern two major trends. Wang Ao was determined to aggrandise his own family and to promote the cultural legacy of the ancient kingdom of Wu which once had its capital in Suzhou. His patronage …
The Glory of Yue
The Glory of Yue is the first translation into any Western language of the Yuejue shu, a collection of essays on history, literature, religion, architecture, economic thought, military science, and philosophy related to the ancient kingdoms of Wu and Yue, in present day eastern China. This book consists of sixteen chapters, together with three additional chapters of explanation written by the compilers in approximately 25 CE. This translation is …
Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Early China
Towards the end of his life, Lord Ling of Wei (r. 534-493 BCE) effectively abdicated in favor of his wife, Lady Nanzi. Such a transfer of power seems to have been unique in Zhou dynasty China, and these events were discussed at some length in ancient historical and philosophical texts. Throughout the imperial era scholars and commentators continued to study Lord Ling and Lady Nanzi, producing a considerable body of research which reflects changin…
Bodily Transformations
This paper discusses the most important accounts of intersex individuals in early and pre-modern China, focusing specifically on the records which describe these people as changing sex at puberty. Contemporary medical knowledge interpreted this as a spontaneous sex change; in fact underlying sex was being revealed. Such transformations came to be interpreted in dynastic histories and other official texts as omens of dynastic change; when the same…
Urbanization in Early and Medieval China
The heart of Urbanization in Early and Medieval China consists of translations of three gazetteers written during the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), Tang (618–907), and Northern Song (960–1126) dynasties describing the city of Suzhou. The texts allow the reader to trace the dramatic changes that occurred as the city experienced enormous political and social upheavals over nine centuries. Each translation is accompanied by extensive annotation and a detail…
The Xinian
The Xinian or Annalistic History is one of an important collection of ancient bamboo texts donated anonymously to Qinghua University in 2008. The Xinian covers events from the history of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045–771 b.c.e. ), through the Spring and Autumn Period (771–475 b.c.e. ) and into the Warring States era (475–221 b.c.e. ). Since the first publication of this manuscript in 2011, it has been the subject of much research, though this ha…
From Hero to Ancestor, God, and Ghost
Han Whizhong (1089–1151) was one of the generals who played a key role in the establishment of the Southern Song dynasty, after the conquest of the north by Jurchen forces in 1126. After he died, he was commemorated by his family as an ancestor, but he was also worshipped as a god in and around the city of Suzhou, the site of his retirement home. Eventually he even became a ghost, after his grave was disturbed in the eighteenth century. As a resu…
The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan
The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan is the biography of the most important statesmen and political thinkers of the Eastern Zhou dynasty China: Yan Ying (d. 500 BCE). Living through an exceptionally troubled period, he served three rulers and two dictators of the state of Qi, in Shandong Province. His experiences informed his revolutionary theories concerning the relationship between the individual and the state. Long considered to be a for…
Palace Women in the Former Han Dynasty (202 BCE–CE 23)
In the chapters concerned with palace women, the Hanshu provides a detailed description of the administrational structures of the hougong (Rear palace) in the Former Han dynasty, the earliest information of this kind to survive for any Chinese regime. This includes an account of the twenty-one official ranks granted to women at this period, and the information given here has parallels in other contemporary historical texts. Thanks to the excavati…
Rhapsodies on Midiexiang
At the end of the Han dynasty, a group of five rhapsodies were produced by some of the most important poets of the day, celebrating the presence of plants from the Roman Empire in the gardens of Cao Pi, the future first emperor of the Wei dynasty. Previously when these poems have been studied, it has been in the context of straightforward appreciation of their subject's scent and beauty. However, this group of rhapsodies is important for understa…
Island of Guanyin
The Blind Instructing the Sighted
This article examines representations of Music Master Kuang in early Chinese historical and philosophical texts. Music Master Kuang was entirely blind, at a time when people with disabilities suffered serious discrimination. However, in spite of his handicap, he was able not merely to become a fine musician, but also served as a key advisor to two rulers of Jin, Lord Dao (r. 573–558 BCE) and his son, Lord Ping (r. 557–532 BCE), and in some texts …
Headhunting in ancient China
Headhunting has a long and well-documented history in China, but most people are today unaware of this practice, first recorded in Shang oracle bones and regularly mentioned in ancient Chinese texts until the Han dynasty. This ignorance is because headhunting subsequently came to be seen as a barbaric practice and knowledge concerning its long history was destroyed: this was achieved by inventing a new character, guo 聝, which means "to cut the ea…
Birth in Ancient China
Instructions to Women
The texts written for the instruction of women in ancient China are some of the earliest examples of didactic sources aimed at a female readership to be produced anywhere in the world. The oldest surviving texts in the transmitted tradition date to the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). However, in 2010, Peking University acquired a cache of manuscripts written on bamboo, one of which, the Jiaonü (Instructions to women), predates these Han dynasty adm…
A Taste of Honey
This paper focuses on the small group of writings from the Wei-Jin period about different kinds of sweeteners used in food and drink. Apart from any question of literary merit in these writings, there is the issue of status: all sugars were expensive, and some were extremely rare, and to consume such a sugar was a potent sign of privilege. It is not surprising that all early medieval poems and prose about sweeteners focus on the sugars considered…
Jealousy and Domestic Violence by Women in Early and Medieval China
Beginning in the early imperial era, Chinese texts recorded instances of domestic violence perpetrated by women living in polygynous households. These acts of abuse were commonly understood to be the result of sexual jealousy. Marital disharmony was a cause of great concern to the elite, as a result of which legal and historical texts, as well as the literature of the period, provide a rich vein of evidence concerning domestic violence perpetrate…
Aromas, Scents, and Spices
Research into early Chinese olfactory culture is only just beginning. This paper argues that before the arrival of Buddhism, elite scent culture had already begun to be transformed by the importation of foreign aromatics, though these substances arrived shorn of their original cultural context. Prior to the importing of intense foreign perfumes, the aromatics available were mostly local, and traditional Chinese practice stressed the use of indivi…
Featherwork in Early and Medieval China
This paper is concerned with the early documented history of featherwork in China, as described in historical texts and literature up until the end of the Tang dynasty in 907 CE. Although featherwork from several Pacific islands and Latin America has recently been the subject of academic attention, the important Chinese tradition has been neglected. Drawing on studies of featherwork from other cultures, this paper divides these accounts by techni…
Spring Colors in the Han Palace
At the very end of the Qing dynasty, Xue Fucheng (1838-1894) and his circle produced a series of writings about empresses and imperial consorts of previous dynasties, in which they constructed a sympathetic discourse about elite women who had suffered exploitation and abuse. This paper analyzes a single text, Spring Colors in the Han Palace ( Hangong chunse ), and argues that this collection of short stories was written to explore new perspective…
Fateful Fashions
In the early medieval period, a number of mantic texts were produced which discussed the issue of portents expressed through fashions in clothing. It was the contention of these authors that changing fashions served to predict the decline of dynasties, the deaths of emperors, and foreign invasions. This article explores this tradition in the context of apophenia, which occurs when individuals over-interpret random pieces of information, seeking t…
Rape in early China
With the exception of legal texts, surviving records of rape in early China have been the subject of little academic study to date. This is the result of a number of factors, including the criminalization of both consensual and non-consensual sex outside of marriage in ancient China, the tradition of using euphemistic vocabulary to refer to such topics, considerable variation, depending on time and place, as to what constitutes rape and discomfor…
Chinese history and philosophy (27 works) · History (27 works) · Art (20 works) · China (20 works) · Ancient history (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Archaeology (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Literature (12 works) · Eurasian Exchange Networks (8 works)