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This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in 581 AD, also known as the Six Dynasties.

This pioneering book provides a comprehensive survey of ancient Chinese women’s history, covering thousands of years from the Neolithic era to China’s unification in 221 BCE. For each period—Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Eastern Zhou—Bret Hinsch explores central aspects of female life: marriage, family life, politics, ritual, and religious roles. Deeply researched, the book draws on a wide range of Chinese scholarship and primary sources, including transmitted texts, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence. The result is a comprehensive view of women’s history from the beginnings of Chinese civilization up to the beginnings of the imperial era. Clear and readable, the book will be invaluable for both students and specialists in gender studies.

This distinctive and enlightening book explores the invention and development of tea drinking in China, using tea culture to explore the profound question of how Chinese have traditionally expressed individuality.

Western Han portent experts investigated unusual natural phenomena that they considered signs of Heaven's will. Beginning as a marginal method of historical analysis and cosmological theory, portent studies matured into a standard form of political discourse and critique. Landmark research on portents by influential scholars such as Dong Zhongshu, Jing Fang, and Liu Xiang provided sophisticated metaphysical justifications for excluding certain women from political life. This article discusses the development of Western Han portent studies to demonstrate how a new politicized ideology of gender emerged from these historical and cosmological researches. /// Durant la période Han occidentale, les experts en divination s'intéressaient aux phénomènes naturels qu'ils interprétaient comme des manifestations de la volonté céleste. Les études divinatoires commencèrent comme une méthode marginale d'analyse historique et comme une théorie cosmologique; elles se muèrent en un discours politique et critique. Des études importantes sur les signes divinatoires par des lettrés influent tels que Dong Zhongshu, Jin Fang et Liu Xiang fournirent des justification métaphysiques pour l'exclusion de certaines femmes de la vie politique. Cet article analyse le développement des études divinatoires durant la période Han occidentale et montre comment une nouvelle idéologique politiques des sexes a émergé de ces recherches historiques et cosmologiques.