Saturday, September 4, 2010

My first book by Michael Loewe




My first book by Michael Loewe.

The first Michael Loewe book that I read was Everyday Life in Early Imperial China. I first learned about the book in the list of books recommended in the back of Andre Norton and Susan Shwartz’s book Imperial Lady(ie. I talked about that book earlier).

This book is focused on the Han dynasty of ancient China that began in 202 BC and ended in AD 220. Actually the dynasty is divided into two parts the Former Han dynasty was created by Liu Pang(pinyin: Bang). The Liu family were of peasant origins and he had risen high in a rebel army against the previous Qin dynasty. This is very different from the previous dynasty that was started by a man who was the king of Qin and the son of the previous king. The Liu family rule over China interrupted when Wang Mang took control and made himself emperor in AD 9, but his rule ended in AD 23. The Han dynasty was rebooted in AD 25 with the Liu family back in control.

The book is full of cool pictures and drawings that tell something about how people lived back then. For instance there is a picture of a some sort of statue of a pigsty with stairways that lead up to an outhouse. Which I thought was a neat idea or maybe not neat. There is an interesting drawing of a market scene and a soldier armed his a crossbow.

An ancient Chinese book was not what we think of as a book, but a bunch of strips of bamboo that are tied together by string and rolled up for storage. To see a recreated example in a movie, check out the Jet Li movie, Hero. They also wrote on silk, but bamboo and wood were what most writing was put on. It was in the Later Han dynasty that paper was invented in AD 105.

This is a good little book that is only about 200 pages long. I was very excited when it came in the mail way back in the 1990s from a book catalog company. It was worth every penny. You need to read it. Enjoy!