Dou Xian was a Chinese general and consort kin of the Eastern Han dynasty, famous for destroying the Xiongnu nomadic empire.
Liu Xin, courtesy name Zijun, was a Chinese astronomer, classicist, librarian, mathematician, and politician during the Western Han dynasty and the Xin dynasty. He later changed his name to Liu Xiu due to the naming taboo of Emperor Ai of Han. He was the son of Imperial librarian Liu Xiang and an associate of other eminent thinkers such as the philosopher Huan Tan. Liu was a prominent supporter of the Old Text classics.
The Book of Documents or the Classic of History, is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, and served as the foundation of Chinese political philosophy for over two millennia.
The Guoyu, usually translated Discourses of the States, is an ancient Chinese text that consists of a collection of speeches attributed to rulers and other men from the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). It comprises a total of 240 speeches, ranging from the reign of King Mu of Zhou to the execution of the Jin minister Zhibo in 453 BC. Guoyu was probably compiled beginning in the 5th century BC and continuing to the late 4th century BC. The earliest chapter of the compilation is the Discourses of Zhou.
The Book of Han is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu, an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modelled their work on the Records of the Grand Historian, a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. The Book of Han is also called the History of the Former Han to distinguish it from the Book of the Later Han which covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220 CE, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye.
Huan Tan was a Chinese philosopher, poet, and politician of the Western Han and its short-lived interregnum between AD 9 and 23, known as the Xin dynasty.
Jia Yi was a Chinese essayist, poet and politician of the Western Han dynasty, best known as one of the earliest known writers of fu rhapsody and for his essay "Disquisition Finding Fault with Qin", which criticises the Qin dynasty and describes Jia's opinions on the reasons for its collapse. In particular, he is famous for his two fu, On the Owl (鵩鳥賦) and his Lament for Qu Yuan (吊屈原賦). He is also the author of the treatise Xinshu (新書), containing political and educational insights.
Denis Crispin Twitchett was a British Sinologist and historian, and is well known as one of the co-editors of The Cambridge History of China.
Peter Francis Kornicki FBA is an English Japanologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Japanese at Cambridge University and Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.
Mark Edward Lewis is an American sinologist and historian of ancient China.
Given textual and archaeological evidence, it is thought that thousands of Europeans lived in Imperial China during the Yuan dynasty. These were people from countries traditionally belonging to the lands of Christendom during the High to Late Middle Ages who visited, traded, performed Christian missionary work, or lived in China. This occurred primarily during the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, coinciding with the rule of the Mongol Empire, which ruled over a large part of Eurasia and connected Europe with their Chinese dominion of the Yuan dynasty. Whereas the Byzantine Empire centered in Greece and Anatolia maintained rare incidences of correspondence with the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties of China, the Holy See sent several missionaries and embassies to the early Mongol Empire as well as to Khanbaliq, the capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. These contacts with the West were preceded by rare interactions between the Han dynasty and Hellenistic Greeks and Romans.
The Zhuangzi is an ancient Chinese text that is one of the two foundational texts of Taoism, alongside the Tao Te Ching. It was written during the late Warring States period (476–221 BC) and is named for its traditional author, Zhuang Zhou.
Bamboo and wooden slips are long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo, each typically holding a single column of several dozen brush-written characters. They were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD.
Edwin George "Ted" Pulleyblank was a Canadian sinologist and professor at the University of British Columbia. He was known for his studies of the historical phonology of Chinese.
The translation of Han dynasty government titles into English varies within the academic community. This page is a reference to compare renderings of Chinese official titles by different sinologists.
Wilt L. Idema is a Dutch scholar and Sinologist who taught at University of Leiden and Harvard University (2000–13), presently emeritus at both universities. He specializes in Chinese literature, with interests in early Chinese drama, Chinese women's literature of the premodern period, Chinese popular narrative ballads, and early development of Chinese vernacular fiction.
Anthony François Paulus Hulsewé was a Dutch Sinologist and scholar best known for his studies of ancient Chinese law, particularly that of the Han dynasty.
Carmen Blacker OBE FBA was a British Japonologist. She was a lecturer in Japanese at the University of Cambridge.
Arthur Richard Valentine Cooper (1916–1988) was a British codebreaker, who became a translator of Chinese literature after retirement. He is best remembered for his translations of the Tang dynasty poets Li Bai and Du Fu, but is also known for his original research on the early Chinese script.
