A Close Reading of Two Hundred Years of the Northern and Southern Dynasties

Name: A Close Reading of Two Hundred Years of the Northern and Southern Dynasties
Author: Chen Fengtao

细读南北朝二百年

by Chen Fengtao (陈峰韬)

Status: Completed
Length: 196k Words
Genre: Historical
Updated: 2y ago
Source: Fanqie

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Synopsis

The more than 160 years from the Liu Song dynasty's replacement of the Jin to the Sui dynasty's destruction of Southern Chen was a distinctive period in Chinese history.

During this time, the Huaxia empire, led by Han civilization, stood in prolonged opposition to states founded by northern nomadic peoples. The intermingling and conflict among different peoples, which had begun during the Two Jin period, continued to intensify. From the perspective of people living at the time, this was certainly an age filled with disaster and suffering. Viewed across the span of history, however, conflict is a particular form of collision between civilizations of different natures, and its consequences were not entirely negative.

In terms of the historical course of Han civilization at the time, the Two Jin period was rife with the morbid habits of the aristocracy. These could no longer be purged or resolved through its own efforts. In other words, Han civilization had reached a bottleneck, and without violent collision and integration, it would have struggled to break through on its own. Under these circumstances, the vitality brought by peoples from beyond the frontier had a certain positive significance.

This short book approaches the subject from that perspective, seeking to lift the veil on the Northern and Southern Dynasties and, through individual stories, to understand the people and events of the past, along with the traces they left in the long river of history.

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4Chapters

510Reads

9.4Score

111Shelves

134Listens

179.2kReads · all time

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