EVERYDAY LIFE · SHANG TO QING
Stories
Small questions open a window onto a different world.
Three Women on Three Stones: What a Tang Epitaph Can and Cannot Tell
A three-hundred-character epitaph, a sister buried by a brother who sold his writing. Three Tang stones give names, ages, graves and numbers of children; they give no words of her own.
Copy It Once and You Remember It: Tang Primers and the Dunhuang Schoolboys
A Dunhuang scroll ends with a schoolboy's name and a date: Zhang Gui of the Jinguangming monastery, 905. What Tang children read — Thousand Character Classic, Mengqiu, Taigong Jiajiao — and the costs no source records.
How a Tang Prescription Was Made: Diagnosis, Roasting, Boiling, Taking
A Tang formulary teaches the making of one prescription: examine first, roast and weigh the drugs, boil twenty liang in a dou of water down to four sheng, take it in three doses. And never weigh a drug raw.
How People Lived in Tang Chang'an: Wards, Rented Rooms and Inns
“Living in Chang'an is no easy matter” is usually read as a rent complaint, but the two early versions say rice and “all things” are dear. Chang'an left no rent figures at all, only wards, houses, rented rooms and inns.