¹ Geographically, the region of north China for Middle-Period historians commonly includes today's Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, and Shaanxi provinces. In this region, transmitted historical records on paper were considerably fewer than in the south during the same period. Partly for this reason, much of what we know about Middle-Period China in general has heavily relied on sources from the south.

² As Martin Kern has pointed out, “The only known inscribed stone monuments of preimperial China that bear a substantial amount of text are the impressive set of ten so-called ‘stone drums’ dating probably to the fifth century Kern, B.C.” Martin, The Stele Inscriptions of Chi'in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000), 50–51Google Scholar.

³ Brashier, K.E., Public Memory in Early China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)Google Scholar.

⁴ In this respect, my approach to steles is in line with media historian Lisa Gitelman's emphasis on media as historical subjects, whose stories are not just about technologies but also about social and cultural practices of representation and communication. Gitelman, Lisa, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For a brief overview of Chinese antiquarian scholarship, see Wong, Dorothy, Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form (Honolulu: University of Haiwai‘i Press, 2004), 4–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Hung, Wu, “On Rubbings: Their Materiality and Historicity,” in Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan, edited by Zeitlin, Judith, Liu, Lydia, and Widmer, Ellen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), 36, 51Google Scholar; Sena, Yunchiahn C., Bronze and Stone: The Cult of Antiquity in Song Dynasty China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), 63–64Google Scholar.

⁷ The Qing antiquarian scholars’ methods—which combined field research, travel diaries, and the systematic study of the findings that followed—formed an important origin of modern Chinese archaeology. See Visconti, Chiara, “The Influence of Antiquarianism on Modern Chinese Archaeology,” Ming Qing Yanjiu, 19 (2015), 59–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Usually arranged by dynasty and by date, such collections often include, for each entry, a basic description of the stele (its measurements, number of lines and words in each line, title, location, and so on), and a full or partial transcription of the inscription, followed by the author's annotations and comments. Typical examples of comprehensive works include Jinshi cuibian 金石萃編 and Jinshi xubian 金石續編 by Wang Chang 王昶, and Baqiongshi jinshi buzheng 八琼室金石補正 by Lu Zengxiang 陸增祥. For collections of a specific historical period or a specific region, see Liaodai jinshi lu 遼代金石錄 by Huang Renbo 黃任伯, Guanzhong jinshi ji 關中金石記 by Bi Yuan 畢沅, and Shanyou shike congbian 山右石刻叢編 by Hu Pinzhi 胡聘之.

⁹ Yu Minhui 余敏輝, “Ouyang Xiu de jinshi zhengshi” 歐陽修的金石證史, Shixueshi yanjiu 3 (1999), 68–74.

¹⁰ Not only did he own more than 8,000 rubbings in his private collection; he also explored numerous rubbings in other peoples’ collections and conducted fieldwork to examine extant steles at their original sites. Ye Changchi 葉昌熾, Yushi 語石 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1970), 1.21.

¹¹ Wang Limin 王立民, “Ye Changchi yanjiu shulun” 葉昌熾研究述論, Shehui kexue zhanxian 7 (2011), 99–100; Huang Huiqi 黃會奇, “Dui Yushi deng shikexue zhuzuo de yanjiu” 對《語石》等石刻學著作的研究, Xinshiji tushuguan 4 (2011), 90–94.

¹² For instance, Beijing tushuguan cang zhongguo lidai shike taben huibian 北京圖書館藏中國歷代石刻拓本彙編 (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1989); Beijing tushuguan shanben jinshizu 北京圖書館善本金石組, comp., Lidai shike wenxian quanbian 歷代石刻文獻全編 (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2003).

¹³ Examples of available digitalized stele inscriptions and rubbings include the “Zhongguo lidai shike shiliao huibian” 中國歷代石刻史料匯編 Database developed by the Chinese National Library and the Unihan Digital Technology Co. (www.unihan.com.cn/books/jinshi/ldsk); the “Rubbings of Stone Steles Collected at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University” Database (http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/imgsrv/takuhon/index.html); “Collections of Chinese Rubbings Preserved in Europe” Database (https://www.efeo.fr/estampages/index.php); the “Digital Archives Project for the Liao-Chin-Yuan Rubbings” at the Academia Sinica (http://rub.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/lcyrub/).

¹⁴ Liu Zeming 劉澤明 et al., Sanjin shike daquan 三晉石刻大全 (Taiyuan: Sanjin chubanshe), 2009–21.

¹⁵ Shandong shike fenlei quanji 山東石刻分類全集 (Qingdao: Qingdao chubanshe, 2013), 8 vols.

¹⁶ Most volumes in this series have been published by the Sanqin Press. See Li Hui 李慧, ed., Shaanxi shike wenxian mulu jicun 陝西石刻文獻目錄集存 (1990); Examples of individual volumes include Zhang Pei 張沛, Ankang beishi 安康碑石 (1991), Wu Gang 吳鋼 and Zhang Jiangtao 張江濤, Huashan beishi 華山碑石 (1995); Kang Lanying 康蘭英, Yulin beishi 榆林碑石 (2003); Liu Lanfang 劉蘭芳 and Liu Bingyang 劉秉陽, Fuping beike 富平碑刻 (2013); Song Ying 宋英, Wu Minxia 吳敏霞, Mu Xiaojun 穆曉軍, and Zhao Xiaoning 趙曉寧, Chang'an beike 長安碑刻 (Xian: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 2014).

¹⁷ For examples, see Wang Xingya 王興亞, Qingdai Henan beike ziliao 清代河南碑刻資料, 8 vols (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2016); Zhao Junping 趙君平 and Zhao Wencheng 趙文成, Heluo muke shiling 河洛墓刻拾零 (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2007); Hebeisheng wenwuju changcheng ziyuan diaochadui 河北省文物局長城資源調查隊, Hebei sheng Mingdai changcheng beike jilu 河北省明代長城碑刻輯錄 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2009).

¹⁸ For the systematic explanation of their fieldwork methods, see Thomas David DuBois and Jan Kiely, Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History: A Research Guide (New York: Routledge, 2020). As the authors claim, their methodology “prizes deep familiarity with a place, its physical contours, remnants from the past, and most notably, its people, who often preserve not only memories, but also textual scripts, material objects, and oral and performative traditions” (p. xv).

¹⁹ Scholars of the “South China School” have actively published many volumes of transcribed stele inscriptions from various counties and provinces in both southern and northern China; many of these inscriptional sources were first discovered during these scholars’ fieldwork. For those from northern Chinese provinces, see Zhang Zhengming 張正明 and David Faure 科大衛, Ming Qing Shanxi beike ziliao xuan 明清山西碑刻資料選 (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2005); Zhang Zhengming 張正明, David Faure 科大衛, and Wang Yonghong 王勇紅, Ming Qing Shanxi beike ziliao xuan (xuyi) 明清山西碑刻資料選（續一） (Taiyuan: Shanxi guji chubanshe, 2007); Zhao Shiyu 趙世瑜 and Deng Qingping 鄧慶平, Yuxian beiming jilu 蔚縣碑銘輯錄 (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2009). These scholars have demonstrated the great values of stele sources for studies on local society and ordinary people's daily life. See Zheng Zhenman 鄭振滿, ed, Beiming yanjiu 碑銘研究 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2014). This volume covers five broad themes: “production and circulation of steles,” “steles and local politics,” “steles and social economy,” “steles and social culture,” and “steles and lineage organizations.”

²⁰ Professor Li Xuemei and her team from the Chinese University of Political Science and Law have led the trend of Chinese legal historical research featuring the extensive use of steles. For their works, see Li Xuemei 李雪梅, Beike falü shiliao kao 碑刻法律史料考 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2009), Fazhi “Louzhi jinshi” chuantong yu Ming Qing beijin tixi 法制 “鏤之金石” 傳統與明清碑禁體系 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2015).

²¹ Dunhuang and Huizhou are probably the only two exceptions. For typical studies on how scholars use local materials from Dunhuang and Huizhou to explore local social organizations such as village associations and lineages in the Tang, Song, and Yuan periods, see Hao Chunwen 郝春文, Zhonggu shiqi sheyi yanjiu 中古時期社邑研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2019); Joseph P McDermott, The Making of a New Rural Order in South China I: Village, Land, and Lineage in Huizhou, 900–1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

²² In taking this approach, social historians have demonstrated significant social transformations in south China during the Song dynasty. Typical examples include Hymes, Robert, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Hansen, Valerie, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bossler, Beverley, Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960–1279) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

²³ In this article, I use “epigraphic genre” to refer to a particular type of stele. While we usually think of a genre more in the spirit of texts, the category of a stele is determined not just by the genre of texts inscribed on it but also by its material form.

²⁴ For a review of Japanese scholars’ enthusiasm in studying steles and stele inscriptions, see Morita Kenji 森田憲司, “Sekkoku netsu kara nijū nen” 石刻熱から二十年, Ajia yūgaku 91 (2006), 134–37; “Kaken Genchō sekkoku takuei o mokuroku ande” 可見元朝石刻拓影を目錄編んで, Tōhō 463 (2019), 3–7.

²⁵ A few examples of these scholars’ representative works include: Morita Kenji 森田憲司, “Kyokufu chiiki no Gendai sekkokugun o megutte” 曲阜地域の元代石刻群をめぐって, Nara shigaku 19 (2001), 48–70; Muraoka Hitoshi 村岡倫, “Mongoru jidai shoki no Kasei Sansei Sansei uyoku Urusu no bunchi seiritsu o megutte” モンゴル時代初期の河西・山西地方右翼ウルスの分地成立をめぐって Ryūkoku shitan 117 (2001), 1–22; Matsuda Kōichi 松田孝一, “Hikokutō shiryō no sōgōteki bunseki ni yoru Mongoru teikoku Mongoru no seiji keizai shisutemu no kibanteki kenkyū” 碑刻等史料の總合的分析によるモンゴル帝國、元朝の政治・經濟システムの基盤的研究, Heisei 12–13 nendo kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin kiban kenkyū (B) kenkyūseika hōkokusho 2002, 1–25; Sakurai Satomi 櫻井智美 and Yao Yongxia 姚永霞, “Gen shigen kyūnen kōtaishi En'ō shikō hi o megutte” 元至元9年「皇太子燕王嗣香碑」をめぐって, Sundai shigaku 145 (2012), 23–49.

²⁶ Art historical studies have already touched upon this point. For instance, the epigraphic genre of zaoxiangbei 造像碑—steles carved with Buddhist images, symbols, and inscriptions—was popularly used across wide territories in north China. Such steles appeared in the fifth century, flourished primarily during the sixth century, and basically died out by the seventh century despite lingering on in localized areas. See Wong, Chinese Steles, 2.

²⁷ See Iiyama Tomoyasu 飯山知保, Kin-Gen jidai no Kahoku shakai to kakyo seido: mō hitotsu no shijinsō 金元時代の華北社會と科舉制度: もう一つの士人層 (Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 2011); Iguro Shinobu 井黑忍, Bunsui to shihai: Kin Mongoru jidai kahoku no suiri to nōgyō 分水と支配: 金モンゴル時代華北の水利と農業 (Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 2013); Funada Yoshiyuki 船田善之, “Reiganji shisshōhi hiyō shokoku monjo o tōshite mita Gendai monjo gyōsei no ichidanmen” ‘靈巖寺執照碑’ 碑陽所刻文書を通してみた元代文書行政の一断面, Ajia Afurika gengo bunka kenkyū 70 (2005), 81–105; “Mongoru jidai Kahoku chiiki shakai ni okeru meireibun to sono kokuseki no igi: Dāritai-ke no katsudō to sono tōkaryō ni okeru Zenshikyō no jigyō” モンゴル時代華北地域社会における命令文とその刻石の意義：ダーリタイ家の活動とその投下領における全真教の事業, Tōyōshi kenkyū 73/1 (2014), 35–66; Jinping Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200–1600 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018). Some Japanese scholars also have applied the similar epigraphic approaches to study the Song dynasty and south China. See Kobayashi Takamichi, 小林隆道, Sōdai Chūgoku no tōchi to bunsho 宋代中国の統治と文書 (Tokyo: Kyūko sho'in, 2013).

²⁸ For methodological discussions of Tang–Song epitaphs, see Bossler, Powerful Relations, 12–24; Liu Jingzhen 劉靜貞, “Bunbutsu, tekisuto, kontekusuto: Godai Hoku-Sō ki ni okeru boshi shiryō no tokushitsu to sono toraekata” 文物・テキスト・ コンテクスト——五代北宋期における墓誌資料の特質とその捉え方, Ōsaka Shiritsu Daigaku Tōyōshi ronsō (2006), 79–94. For a comprehensive study of the origins, development, and functions of epitaphs in their historical and social contexts, see Timothy M. Davis, Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture in Early Medieval China: A Brief History of Early Muzhiming (Leiden: Brill, 2015); For the use of digital humanities in the analysis of epitaphs, see Tackett, Nicolas, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)Google Scholar. For a comprehensive introduction to and selective translations of Chinese funeral biographies from the Han to the Qing dynasty, see Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Yao, Ping, and Zhang, Cong Ellen, Chinese Funerary Biographies: An Anthology of Remembered Lives (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019)Google Scholar. For a review of Japanese scholars’ use of stone inscriptions in their study of Song history, see Takashi, Sue, “Updates on Song History Studies in Japan: Local Gazetteers and Stone Inscriptions,” Journal of Song–Yuan Studies 39 (2009), 145–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Choo, Jessey J.C. and Ditter, Alexei, “Workshop Report: ‘On Muzhiming’: Second Workshop of the New Frontiers in the Study of Medieval China, Reed College, May 23–24, 2016,” Early Medieval China, 22 (2016), 75–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Iiyama, Tomoyasu, “Genealogical Steles in North China during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties,” International Journal of Asian Studies 13.2 (2016), 151–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Steles and Status: Evidence for the Emergence of a New Elite in Yuan North China,” Journal of Chinese History 1 (2017), 3–26.

³¹ This argument also corresponds to the studies of Jin-Yuan funeral arts in north China by art historians. See Hong, Jeehee, “Changing Roles of the Tomb Portrait: Burial Practices and Ancestral Worship of the Non-Literati Elite in North China (1000–1400),” Journal of Song–Yuan Studies 44 (2014): 203–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² The Quanzhen Daoists also actively used print as another medium to achieve the same goal. As scholars have pointed out, there are 141 known Quanzhen works (60 extant and 81 lost), including literary collections, dialogic treatises, other didactic texts, commentaries on the Daoist classics, and histories (hagiographies, epigraphs, and local histories). See Chia, Lucille, “The Uses of Print in Early Quanzhen Daoist Texts,” in Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900–1400, edited by Chia, Lucia and de Weerdt, Hilde (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ As a result of the frenzy of stele production among Quanzhen monks and nuns in thirteenth-century north China, we now have more than six hundred extant Quanzhen inscriptions, most of which are commemorations for Quanzhen abbeys and biographical records for Quanzhen clergy. Indeed, the extant inscriptions have allowed me to reconstruct the history of how the Quanzhen order played a critical role in postwar social reconstruction in north China under Mongol rule. They have also made it possible for Mark Halperin to trace three interpretive models that thirteenth-century literati adopted to account for Quanzhen's success. See Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols, chap. 2; Halperin, Mark, “Explaining Perfection: Quanzhen and Thirteenth-Century Chinese Literati,” T'oung Pao 104 (2018), 572–625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ For a thorough study of such imperial-edict steles in Daoist monasteries, see Takahashi Bunji 高橋文治, Mongoru jidai Dōkyō bunsho no kenkyū モンゴル時代道教文書の研究 (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 2011).

³⁵ For instance, a group of Daoists skillfully used imperial-edict steles to strengthen their ties to the imperial state, enabling them to create a power base in local temples of Confucian sage-kings in southern Shanxi. See Jinping Wang, “Daoists, the Imperial Cult of Sage-Kings, and Mongol Rule,” T'oung Pao 106 (2020), 309–57.

³⁶ Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols, 69.

³⁷ On how Buddhist monks used steles to claim privileged rights and status for their religious and kinship lineages, see Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols, chap. 3.

³⁸ Kobayashi Takamichi's study on government-document steles in the Song dynasty attests to complicated relations between original documents and stele representations. As Kobayashi's study reveals, the degree of accuracy in reproducing the textual and visual information of court-issued documents was affected by both the Song state's efforts to increase its authority in the religious landscape and by local interests in preserving any objects related to emperors. His finding serves as a compelling piece of evidence for what new understandings we can achieve about the Song-dynasty court politics, administrative procedures, and local society by paying attention to textual, material, and visual information of steles. See Kobayashi Takamichi, “Songdai de ci'e chidie yu keshi” 宋代的賜額敕牒與刻石, in Beiming yanjiu, ed. Zheng Zhenman, 94–117.

³⁹ Wang, “Daoists, the Imperial Cult of Sage-Kings, and Mongol Rule,” 333–35.

⁴⁰ I substantiated this point in an example, in which Quanzhen Daoists actively destroyed old steles and made new ones to control damage caused by the canon-burning catastrophe in 1281. See Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols, 111–15.

⁴¹ McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: New American Library, 1964)Google Scholar.

⁴² About the history of this Buddhist temple in the Yuan, see Wang, In the Wake of the Mongols, 145–46. At the time when I visited the temple, its main hall had been converted to the Guandi Temple 關帝廟, with Buddhist monks’ memorial tablets still being installed inside the hall.

⁴³ Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, eds., Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011); Jennifer M. Feltman and Sarah Thompson, eds., The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2019); Felipe Rojas, The Pasts of Roman Anatolia: Interpreters, Traces, and Horizons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

⁴⁴ Peter N. Miller and François Louis, eds., Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012).

⁴⁵ Ko, Dorothy, “Stone, Scissors, Paper: Thinking Through Things in Chinese History,” Journal of Chinese History 3 (2019), 193–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ The construction project included building a middle hall (zhongdian 中殿) and bell tower (zhonglou 鐘樓), as well as renovating the main hall (zhengdian 正殿), Buddha statues (foxiang 佛像), and temple eaves (yanshi 簷石).

⁴⁷ Antony Eastmond ed., Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2–3.

⁴⁸ This arrangement of kinship names in the form of genealogical chart also applied to the second chief-patron family, the Zhangs, but in a much smaller scale (six vertical lines).

⁴⁹ Jinping Wang, “Clergy, Kinship, and Clout in Yuan Dynasty Shanxi,” International Journal of Asian Studies 13.2 (2016), 197–228; In the Wake of the Mongols, 146.

⁵⁰ There are four existing steles from the Yuan and Ming dynasties about monastic construction of the Yong'an Buddhist Monastery. While inscription of the Yuan stele (dated in 1349) is included in Dingxiang jinshi kao 定襄金石考 (Niu Chengxiu 牛誠修, Manuscript, 1932, 4.34b–39b), inscriptions of the three Ming steles (dated, respectively, in 1429, 1491, and 1609) are not published. I transcribed them from photos I took during fieldwork.

⁵¹ Yuan-dynasty steles from Hengshan village indicate two possibilities about Li Dayou's identity. First, he might be the same person who appeared as Li Huaiyuan 李懷遠 in “Zhang Zhongwei muchuang” 張仲威墓幢 and “Yaoshi xianying zhi ji” 姚氏先塋之記 (Dingxiang jinshi kao, 3.16b–18a; 3.35a–36a). Li Huaiyuan and his village fellow Yao Rong 姚榮 surrendered to the Mongol leader Mukhali 木華黎 (1170–1223) and later served as the chief-of-staff of the Marshal Office of Jiuyuan Prefecture 九原元帥府. Second, Li Dayou might be the same person who appeared as Li Congxi 李從禧 in the 1349 stele of “Da Yong'an si ji” 大永安寺記 (Dingxiang jinshi kao 4.34b–39b). Li Congxi held the same military rank of “Great General of Huaiyuan” and official position as prefect of Jiuyuan 九原府尹, and all his three sons held military and civilian official positions. For the discussion of Dingxiang men who surrendered to the Mongols including Yao Rong and Li Huaiyuan, see Iiyama Tomoyasu, Kingen jidai no kahoku shakai to kakyo seido, 185–215.

⁵² “Yaoshi xianying zhi ji,” Dingxiang jinshi kao, 3.35a–36a.

⁵³ Sanft, Charles, Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times (New York: SUNY, 2019), 5Google Scholar. Sanft's study shows how many young men drafted into the army picked up a certain amount of reading ability even though they could not write.

⁵⁴ Sanft makes this claim based on discoveries in neuroscience and psycholinguistics. See Sanft, Literate Community in Early Imperial China, 12–14.

⁵⁵ For recent comprehensive reviews on the development of the Tang–Song transition hypothesis, see Luo Yinan, “A Study of the Changes in the Tang-Song Transition Model,” Journal of Song–Yuan Studies 35 (2005), pp. 99–127; Wang Jinping 王锦萍, “Jin ershinian lai zhonggu shehuishi yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang” 近二十年來中古社會史研究的回顧與展望, in Songshi yanjiu zhu cengmian 宋史研究諸層面, edited by Deng Xiaonan 鄧小南 and Fang Chengfeng 方誠峰 (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2020), 108–20.

⁵⁶ Lucille Chia and Hilde de Weerdt, “Introduction,” Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print, 1–32.

⁵⁷ Robert Hymes defines the spread of printing—which made texts more available and literacy more attainable—as one of the three areas of striking change that “pervasively underlie otherwise distinct phenomena of Sung social change.” For his detailed discussion of the printing and the expansion of literacy in the Song, see Hymes, “Sung Society and Social Change,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Chafee, John W. and Twitchett, Denis, vol. 5, Sung China, 960–1279, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 526–664Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ It is also interesting to note that the following Jin-Yuan period witnessed a reverse movement of elites adopting stele making from non-elites, as Iiyama's study of genealogical steles has shown; see Iiyama, “Genealogical Steles in North China during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties.”