The discovery of neolithic remains in 1936 at a place called Liangzhu near Hangzhou was the first evidence of a culture which in recent decades has revolutionized the prehistory of the lower Yangzi region. The great antiquity of sites in this region was established in the late 1960s by radiocarbon dating, which overthrew the prevailing theory that the agricultural way of life originated at a single center of innovation in the Yellow River valley and diffused to the east coast only in historic times. Subsequent archaeological work not only established the local sequence of neolithic cultures but also, at a series of major Liangzhu sites, revealed extravagantly furnished burials whose wealth raises puzzling question about the structure of Liangzhu society. Chief among the furnishings of these graves are large numbers of jades — objects remarkable for their strange shapes and designs and even more remarkable for their superlative workmanship. The first section of this essay reviews the history of Liangzhu archaeology, connecting it with the changes of thinking that Chinese neolithic archaeology has undergone in the past half century. The second section discusses a few of the issues raised by Liangzhu jades: material sources, the origin of the bi and cong shapes, and the relation between Liangzhu jades and Shang jades.

Virtually all Chinese historians, past and present, have viewed the Duke of Zhou as a paragon of the virtuous minister. However, in traditional Chinese sources concerning the Duke of Zhou there is also a distinct negative undercurrent, several texts recording that the Duke “resided in the east” in contexts implying that he went into a sort of exile. Given this ambivalence in the history and traditions regarding the Duke of Zhou, the author examines two chapters of the Book of Documents: the “Shao gao” or “Announcement of the Duke of Shao” and the “Jun Shi” or “Lord Shi.” He posits that these two chapters represent two sides of a debate over political theory and governance. The “Jun Shi,” a speech by the Duke of Zhou to the Duke of Shao, expounds a political theory that privileges ministers over kings. The “Shao gao,” on the other hand, is an address by the Duke of Shao to the Duke of Zhou in which the Duke of Shao resolutely supports the king's prerogative to rule as the “eldest son” of Heaven.

This debate between the Duke of Zhou and the Duke of Shao was but the first instance of a tension that would continue to occupy statesmen and political theorists throughout Chinese history: between the power of the king or emperor and that of his ministers. While, in later times, neither side was ever able long to maintain supremacy in this debate, in the early Western Zhou the Duke of Shao almost certainly prevailed; shortly after the Duke of Shao made the address contained in the “Shao gao,” the Duke of Zhou first relinquished power to King Cheng and then, somewhat later, went into exile or retreat, never again to play a central role in Western Zhou government.

In this article I question the assumption that all place-names in the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan refer to real places. I suggest instead a mythic origin for many of these seemingly referential elements. By analyzing a complex of myths either referred to or alluded to in the text, I show that several crucial place-names come in fact from cosmological referents rather than geographical ones. The Mu T'ien-tzu chuan cannot then be read purely as a historical account. I extend this argument by revealing how the elements of cosmological myth in the narrative must themselves be read as elements of symbolic discourse; that is, they have to be read within an astronomical context as references to celestial phenomena. By reading the cosmological and astronomical discourses of the myths together, I demonstrate the literary significance of the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, a significance which to date has been obscured by misreadings of its historicity. Finally, I argue that only by reading the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan as a literary fiction can one understand what it tells us about how notions of political legitimacy were constructed and then altered in the representation of King Mu's (fictional) journey. The narrative is thus revealed to be a wholly symbolic tale whose interpretation has implications for the wider realm of the interconnections among history, literature and culture.

Examining the birth and population control methods employed by a given culture reveals much about the power and politics of its religious and legal institutions; it can also yield important conclusions about the hierarchical relations between young and old and male and female. But conventional methods for controlling the size and gender composition of a family in the early phases of Chinese history have received little attention. In this essay I will focus on the ways in which one important form of population control, infant abandonment, was discussed and practiced in Han times, paying particular attention to the various rationales given for it and the arguments made against it.