Shao-yun Yang

Shao-yun Yang (b. Singapore) is an Associate Professor of East Asian history at Denison University, USA, with his research including ethnocultural identities, foreign relations, and cross-cultural interactions in medieval or ​“Middle Period” China (broadly defined as 200‑1600 CE). 

With a B.A. and M.A. from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, he had extensively published on these subjects — often with digital imagery and maps -, and authored in 2020 (with ongoing updates) a new English translation of the Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (1225), a classic Chinese text dealing with the ​“Southern countries”, including Chenla (Cambodia).

Publications

1. Making Sense of Messianism: Buddhist Political Ideology in the Mahayana Rebellion and the Moonlight Child Incident of Early Sixth-Century China, graduation thesis, National University of Singapore, 2005.
2. Becoming Zhongguo, Becoming Han: Tracing and Reconceptualizing Ethnicity in Ancient North China, 770 BC — AD 581, MD thesis, National University of Singapore, 2007.
3. ““What Do Barbarians Know of Gratitude?” — The Stereotype of Barbarian Perfidy and Its Uses in Tang Foreign Policy Rhetoric”, Tang Studies 31, Dec 2013.
4. “Connected Worlds”, conference, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, 2013 [with Benjamin A. Saltzman, Grant Parker, and Shao-yun Yang].
5. Reinventing the Barbarian: Rhetorical and Philosophical Uses of the Yi-Di in Mid-Imperial China, 600‑1300, PhD UC Berkeley, Spring 2014.
6. “Fan and Han: The Origins and Uses of a Conceptual Dichotomy in Mid-Imperial China, ca. 500‑1200”, in
   Francesca Fiaschetti and Julia Schneider eds., Political Strategies of Identity-building in Non-Han Empires in China, 2014.
7. “The Politics of Omenology”, in Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen eds., Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China. University of Washington Press, Jan 2015.
8. “ ​‘Stubbornly Chinese?’ Clothing Styles and the Question of Tang Loyalism in Ninth-Century Dunhuang’, International Journal of Eurasian Studies, Dec 2016.
9. ““Their Lands are Peripheral and Their Qi is Blocked Up”: The Uses of Environmental Determinism in Han and Tang Chinese Interpretations of the ​“Barbarians””, in Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis, The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds, Jan 2016. 
10. “Letting the Troops Loose: Pillage, Massacres, and Enslavement in Early Tang Warfare,” Journal of Chinese Military History, Jun 2017.
11. “Ge Chengyong, ​“Lighting Lamps to Pray for Blessings While ​‘Western’ Music Plays — New Knowledge on the Art of the High Tang Buddhist ​‘Eulogy to a Stone Lamp Stand’ in the Xi’an Forest of Steles”, translation of 葛承雍, 《燃灯祈福胡伎乐 — — 西安碑林藏盛唐佛教“燃灯石台赞”艺术新知》, Chinese Cultural Relics, 2017.
12. Featured review of BuYun Chen, Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China (2019), China Review International, 2019.
13. “Shi Xiaozhang’s Spirit Road Stele and the Rhetorical ​“Barbarization” of Late Tang Hebei”, Tang Studies, 2018.
14. Ten maps of the fall of the Eastern Han and the rise of the Three Kingdoms (189−220), revised 2018.
15. Maps of the An Lushan Rebellion and its consequences (755−765), revised 2018.
16. Supplementary maps for the article “ ​‘Stubbornly Chinese?’ Clothing Styles and the Question of Tang Loyalism in Ninth-Century Dunhuang”, revised 2018.
17. Supplementary maps for the article ​“Shi Xiaozhang’s Spirit Road Stele and the Rhetorical ​‘Barbarization’ of Late Tang Hebei”, nd.
18. Maps of the Jurchen invasion (1126−1140), revised 2018.
19. The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China. University of Washington Press, 2019.
20. Race and Censorship in the Siku quanshu Project, slides and talk delivered (via Zoom), Stanford CMEMS, October 2020.
21. “Ancient Chinese History in Limericks”, updated April 2020.
22. A Chinese Gazetteer of Foreign Lands: A New Translation of Part 1 of Zhao Rukuo’s Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (1225),  first published June 2020.
23. “New Evidence for Song Huizong’s Ban on the Word ​‘Han’ ”, research notes, Jan 2021.
24. Review of Randolph B. Ford, Rome, China, and the Barbarians: Ethnographic Traditions and the Transformation of Empires, The Journal of Asian Studies, 2021.
25. “Ko Ch’a-lao or Xu Chailao: A Mythical Ming Chinese Governor of Luzon”, or. June 9, 2020; revised April 12, 2022.
26. Tang ​“Cosmopolitanism”: Toward a Critical and Global Approach, talk at University of Chicago, May 19, 2022 (video).
27. Rethinking Ethnicity and Race in Imperial China, slides presentation and text for a presentation delivered at the plenary session of the American Oriental Society annual meeting, March 20, 2022.
28. “Unauthorized Exchanges: Restrictions on Foreign Trade and Intermarriage in the Tang and Northern Song Empires”, T’oung Pao, 2022.
29. Pei Xing, ​“The Kunlun Slave”, translated and illustrated, nd.
30. Section on Puduan (Butuan), Song huiyao jigao, transl., nd.
31. Journeys to the West: Kitan and Jurchen Travelers in Thirteenth-Century Central Asia, Esri Story Map, nd.
32. Twenty maps of the Period of Division, 221 – 589 CE, new 2023 edition. 
33. Frontiers of the Tang and Song empires, digital map project, nd.
34. Li Zhichang’s Daoist Master Changchun’s Journey to the West: To the Court of Chinggis Qan and Back, transl. by Ruth Dunnell, Stephen West and Shao-yun Yang, The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature, 2023.
35. “Early Tang China and the World, 618 – 750 CE,” in Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages, 2023.
36. “Late Tang China and the World, 750 – 907 CE,” in Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages, 2023.
37. “The Song-Jurchen Conflict in Chinese Intellectual History”, in War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages: East, West, and Beyond, 2023.

Unpublished essays

• “The nomen Romanum and the Mandate of Heaven: Barbarian Rule and the Idea of Empire in Ostrogothic Italy and Later Zhao North China”, revised seminar paper at UC Berkeley, 2007.
• “The Semantic Context of Word Play with the Label Hu 胡” in ​“Anecdotes About the Tang”, seminar at UC Berkeley, 2009. 
• “Facing West to Worship Heaven: ​‘Confucianizing’ Representations of Islam in Yuan and Ming Literati Writings”, revised version of a conference paper presented (virtually) at the AAS-in-Asia, Taipei, June 2015.