Li Feng | Columbia University (original) (raw)

Papers by Li Feng

A Festschrift for Professors Zhang Changshou and Chen Gongrou, 2022

A Practical Guide for Scholarly Reading in Japanese, 2023

There was once a time when Western, especially American, sinologists customarily acquired their e... more There was once a time when Western, especially American, sinologists customarily acquired their essential training in Japan. This was not only because of the political reality that after the Korean war, China was completely closed to the West in an America-centered new Asia-Pacific world order, but also because Japan had such a long tradition and rich legacy in the study of China. A good indication of Japanese influence on American Sinology is the introduction, in the time of Edwin 0. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, of NAITO Konan's theory of China's early modernity in the 10th century

Journal of Chinese History, 2023

Myth and the Making of History: Narrating Early China with Sarah Allan, SUNY, 2024

Rules that underlaid the various names of women in the bronze inscriptions and the received texts... more Rules that underlaid the various names of women in the bronze inscriptions and the received texts of the Zhou dynasty have long been disputed among the scholars. The rules functioned essentially to regulate marriage relations among the states or lineages and were critical stabilizers of the foundation of Zhou social order. The present paper examines the reasons behind the establishment of these rules from a social-historical perspective. In continuation, the paper also reviews some of the recent debates about the formation and significance of these rules, and discusses methodological issues in modern historical studies based on paleographical materials.

Qingtongqi yu jinwen 青銅器與金文, edited by Zhu Fenghan, 2019

Dialogue with the Ancients: 100 Bronzes of the Shang, Zhou, and Han Dynasties from the Shen Zhai Collection, edited by Patrick K. M. Kwok. Pp. 73-83. Singapore: Shen Zhai, 2018

In recent years, interests in the topic of “Archaism” in early China have been mounting among the... more In recent years, interests in the topic of “Archaism” in early China have been mounting among the art historians. But what is missing from their studies is an analysis of the evidence for archaism during the Western Zhou period (1045–771 BC). Zhousheng 琱生, based on information in the inscriptions, lived in the late Western Zhou period. However, the bronzes cast by Zhousheng, some of which have been discovered in Fufeng in 2006, show forms and features that were evidently discontinued in use for at least fifty years before the actual date of the production of their bronzes. The study of these bronzes offers special insights into the problem of archaism in Western Zhou bronzes. It also suggests the existence of divergent bronze manufacturing traditions in the period.

Studies of Bronzes and Inscriptional Calligraphy, 2018

Guicheng: An Archaeological Study of the Formation of States on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Late Br... more Guicheng: An Archaeological Study of the Formation of States on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Late Bronze-Age China, 1000-500 BCE

Guicheng: An Archaeological Study of the Formation of States on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Late Bronze-Age China, 1000-500 BCE, edited by Li Feng and Liang Zhonghe, 2018

The present chapter focuses on the analysis of the ceramic inventory from Guicheng in eastern Sha... more The present chapter focuses on the analysis of the ceramic inventory from Guicheng in eastern Shandong, dating to the late Bronze Age (MapⅠ.0.1). This is a region that witnessed a high degree of interaction between two cultural traditions: 1) the archaeological culture that was associated with many central sites of the Western Zhou state (1045-771 BCE) in the Wei River valley in Shaanxi Province and spread to a large part of the middle Yellow River reaches after the Zhou conquest of Shang;

Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life, edited by Anne Kolb, 2018

In an effort to understand the significance of literacy in the everyday life of Early China, the ... more In an effort to understand the significance of literacy in the everyday life of Early China, the present paper identifies three stages in literacy’s development before Empire: 1) An incipient stage (ca. 3000 BC-1250 BC) from the late Neolithic period when signs of writing (and reading) began to appear in the late Liangzhu culture in the south and Longshan culture in the north until the mid-Shang period when the condition for practicing full writing was ripe; 2) a stage marked by the use of a mature system of writing carved mainly on bones and shells for divination in the late Shang (ca. 1250-1046 BC), but the ability to do so was restricted to the group of professional scribes and some diviners; 3) during the Western Zhou period (1045-771 BC), writing moved beyond the hands of the specialized scribes to reach larger social circles, and the activity of reading and appreciation of the written words became widespread among the Zhou social elites. Particularly on the nature of the bronze inscriptions, the paper offers concrete evidence that inscribed bronzes were used in domestic as well as legal-economic contexts and so inscribed for documentary purposes, thus beyond the narrow religious perimeter. As the textual content of the inscription is usually independent of the function of the vessel that carried it, the bronzes were indeed vehicles for the written words to reach broad social contexts. In other words, the inscribed bronzes were not only very relevant to the everyday life of the Western Zhou elites, but they are part of their effort to distill, celebrate, and interpret their life experience, and even to influence their future.

Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History, edited by Paul R. Goldin , 2018

If one were to point to a dynastic house that had the longest duration in Chinese history, that h... more If one were to point to a dynastic house that had the longest duration in Chinese history, that has to be that of Zhou (1045-256 bc). Even after the pages of Zhou's glory were already turned over, the name "Zhou" still carried considerable prestige and was subsequently revived as the dynastic title of five regimes, making a total length of 857 years during which the whole or a large part of China was under "Zhou" rule. For Confucius and his disciples the Western Zhou (1045-771 bc) period was certainly the golden age of civilization. Notwithstanding the extremely long duration of its venerated name, the Western Zhou state suffered very early decline and was thereafter constantly troubled by political tensions built in or from outside. It was the cultural complex created by the Zhou under the guidance of a set of unique political and ritual institutions which were adopted by the amalgamation of diverse populations that helped penetrate the Zhou king's ceremonial role as the "Son of Heaven" even centuries after the political power of the Zhou house had already waned. In global history, the Zhou rose to dominance in a time that paralleled the so-called Dark Age (ca. 1100-900 bc; Van De Mieroop 2004, 189-194) in the Near East which anticipated the rise of large-scale empires, namely the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 bc), followed by Persia. It also paralleled the Greek "Dark Age" (ca. 1100-776 bc; Hornblower et al, 2012, 628) in the history of the Mediterranean World. The Zhou set up initial conditions for a long historical process that, through important modifications, eventually led to the rise of the Qin Empire (221-207 bc). But the Zhou also created a model of state whose structural and organizational logic was meaningfully different from that of the Assyrian Empire and the Greek "city states." We are only now beginning to understand the true nature of the Zhou polity on the basis of an expanding pool of new data helped by new methodological tools, and we are yet to seriously address its comparative value for the study of the world's early civilizations. Time and space Much of what we know about early Western Zhou dates was tied to a single most important incident, the conjunction of the five major planets of the solar system brightly visible in the northern sky of the Zhou homeland in central Shaanxi, and this is said to have happened in the thirty-second year of the last Shang king, Di Xin 帝辛 (Jinben zhushu jinian, 34). Modern historians with the help of scientific methods were able to fix this incident in the fifth month of 1059

Asian Archaeology 2: 1-39, 2014

Most full-coverage surveys have been carried out on a regional scale (a few hundred to over 1,000... more Most full-coverage surveys have been carried out on a regional scale (a few hundred to over 1,000 km 2 ). Full-coverage survey on a smaller scale has been insufficiently addressed in the literature. Such smaller-scale surveys have the unique potential to uncover sherd-distribution patterns within a large site or site cluster. At the Zhou period site of Guicheng (in Longkou, Shandong, PRC), we covered the entire 8 km 2 survey area with a systematic collection strategy. This included recovering sherds at collection points spaced 20 m apart across the entire extent of the survey area, supplemented by three complete collection units of 4,900 m 2 each. Combined with systematic coring and test excavation, this survey method enabled us not only to map out the continuum of sherds over the surface of the entire site, but also to detect and interpret correlations between surface remains and subsurface deposits. The survey provided the grounds to tackle questions about the social-political organization of the ancient city and its natural and historical formation processes.

Studies on Excavated Manuscripts and Legal History, edited by Wang Pei, 2011

Frontiers of History in China, 12.3 (2017): 485–507 (23), Brill Online Journal, Dec. , 2017

In response to Lothar von Falkenhausen’s contention that the Western Zhou government was hopeless... more In response to Lothar von Falkenhausen’s contention that the Western Zhou government was hopelessly stuck in a kinship structure that operated in accordance with the order of aristocratic lineages, the present paper offers new theoretical grounds as well as new inscriptional evidence showing that the Western Zhou government was a bureaucracy invented precisely to allow the Zhou king to overcome or manipulate the restrictions imposed by a kinship structure, in order to achieve actual political and administrative goals. This is the central debate in the study of the Western Zhou government as the fountainhead of the long-standing Chinese political culture and institutions. To refute the ill-conceived “anthropological model” of the Western Zhou government, the paper carefully examines the logical confusions, the wrong methodological choice, and the misinformation about contemporaneous bronze inscriptions as well as about current archaeology exhibited in Falkenhausen’s review, thus reconfirming bases for a correct understanding of the Western Zhou government already offered in Bureaucracy and the State in Early China (Cambridge 2008). Furthermore, the paper discusses intellectual norms in book reviews in the West and China and offers new insights into the date of the Ling group of vessels, a central problem in the dating of Western Zhou bronzes. The paper provides an important cornerstone for future constructive studies of the Western Zhou government and the issue of bureaucracy in Chinese history.

Imprints of Kinship, 2017, ed., Edward L. Shaughnessy

Jianbo (Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts), October 6, 2017 (internet publication))