107. Zhang, “Cultural Encounters,” 93, suggests the bones were an offering rather than remains of an animal sacrifice. For the tombs’ directional arrangement, see Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu,” 177. Mentions of Red Mountain come from early Chinese efforts to describe the Serbi and their Wuhuan cousins, in SGZ 30.832. Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 8–9, points out that arrangement of the 12 Shaling tombs was mixed, some with east-west orientation, some with the Chinese preference for north-south; he adds that within a century, at the new capital at Luoyang, the Chinese north-south arrangement predominated; on this topic, see the figure given on p. 6 of “Shanxi Datong Shaling Bei Wei bi hua mu fa jue jian bao”; and also Zhang, “Cultural Encounters,” 67–68, who suggests these were two different cemeteries, with the north-south tombs made later in time.
108. Dick Whittaker, “Ethnic Discourses on the Frontiers of Roman Africa,” in Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition, ed. Ton Derks and Nico Roymans (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 202.
109. The guiding principle of Zhang’s “Cultural Encounters” is that the Land of Dai cannot be pigeonholed; and that although its arts drew on both, those artistic expressions were “an idiosyncratic production that cannot be defined by or interpreted through either the Chinese or the Inner Asian traditions” (13).
110. A fascinating piece of evidence giving at least a hint of these transactions has been found in another Pingcheng tomb, a billing report giving hours worked that was left inside the 477 burial of Song Shaozu: Zhang Qingjie 张庆捷 and Liu Junxi 刘俊喜, “Bei Wei Song Shaozu mu chu tu zhuan ming ti ji kao shi” 北魏宋绍祖墓出土砖铭题记考释, in Datong Yan bei shi yuan Bei Wei mu qun, ed. Liu Junxi (Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she, 2008), 200–4 (and 106 figure 86 in the same volume); and Fan Zhang raises details on this and other reports of transactions in “Cultural Encounters,” 51–52. See also comments on production and producers in Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 26ff. More work needs done on this topic, along the lines of Anthony Barbieri-Low’s Artisans in Early Imperial China. Various questions present themselves, only some of which could be resolved. One wonders, for instance, if sketches were presented before the actual production of the murals. An exception proving the rule may be in a 495 niche at Longmen’s Guyang cave, in an inscription Kate Lingley has suggested showed that Lady Yuchi “took a more active role in its design than the average Guyang patron” in avoiding typical formulaic language in expressing grief at the death of her son and a desire that he pass to a better world (“Lady Yuchi in the First Person,” 41).
111. Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu,” 169–70; and see the table given by Ni Run’an 倪润安, Guang zhai zhong yuan: Tuoba zhi Bei Wei de mu zang wen hua yu she hui yan jin 光宅中原: 拓跋至北魏的墓葬文化与社会演进 (Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chu ban she, 2017), 169–70.
112. See Zhang Mingyuan 张明远, “Yungang Tanyao wu ku zhong de wai lai yin su” 云岗昙曜五窟中的外来因素, in 4–6 shi ji de bei Zhongguo yu Ou Ya da lu, ed. Zhang Qingjie et al. (Beijing: Ke xue chu ban she, 2006), 247–62; and for tombs, Ni Run’an 倪润安, “Bei Wei Pingcheng mu zang zhong de Hexi yin su” 北魏平城墓葬中的河西因素, in Wei Jin Nan bei chao shi de xin tan suo, ed. Lou Jing (Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chu ban she, 2015), 603–23.
113. See Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 26; and with a particular focus on borrowings from northeast, Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu.” For overall discussion of the cultural overlap of Kogury· and the Murong Serbi Yan regimes, see Tian Likun 田立坤, “San Yan wen hua yu Gaogouli kao gu yi cun zhi bi jiao 三燕文化与高句丽考古遗存之比较, in Qing guo ji: Jilin da xue kao gu xi jian xi shi zhou nian ji nian wen ji, ed. Jilin da xue kao gu xi (Beijing: Zhi shi chu ban she, 1998), 328–41.
114. Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu,” 168; Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 7–8.
115. For description of the old burial practices of the people of Dai, see SoS 95.2322, which among other things relates that the deceased’s clothing, as well as horse gear, was burnt as part of the funeral. We will see this practice below with the death of the emperor Wencheng. See also Ni, Guang zhai Zhongyuan, Chapter 2. In personal communication, the archaeologist Fan Zhang points out that choice of tomb style was not simply a matter of wealth, since some Pingcheng pit tombs (including M107 and M109 of the Nanjiao cemetery) contained “luxury burial goods, including the imported gilt silver vessels.”
116. Tseng, Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 74.
117. WS 27.665, in which the man’s surname is given in Sinicized form as Mu 穆, an eminent family within Dai. For this lineage, see Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 25–28.
118. Tseng, The Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 85, suggests that placement of the subjects in fixed structures may be convention rather than accurate description of the reality of these events. It should be noted that a second image of the couple was also produced for the tomb, on the lacquer covering of the coffin: see “Shanxi Datong Shaling Bei Wei bi hua mu fa jue jian bao,” 13, figure 19.
119. Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 1, 42.
120. This creative pictorial depiction of hierarchy was, of course, not confined to Dai tombs, being well known in the south as well, in the paintings of such as Gu Kaizhi; see Müller, “Lacquerware,” 56, citing Furuta Shinichi 古田真一, on the exchange of paintings between Pingcheng and the Yangtze region: “Rikucho· kaiga ni kansuru ichi ko·satsu—Shiba Kinryū bo shutsudo no shiga byōbu o megutte” 六朝絵画に关する一考察—司马金龙墓出土の漆画屏风をめぐって, Bigaku 42.4 (1992): 57–67.
121. I do this cautiously, keeping in mind caution given by Fan Zhang in personal communication that it is problematic “to link a depicted figure with a specific personage,” since the images are fundamentally “part of the formulaic composition available at the workshops.”
122. Zhang, “Cultural Encounters,” 70.
123. Tseng, Making of the Northern Wei, 82, puts this well in her suggestion that we see in this and other Pingcheng sites the tomb as “functional space in which a myriad of performances intersected to define the deceased by his or her role in society,” which she contrasts with the “module” style of Han funerary art (75–76).
124. This began with the princes: see Zhang Hequan 张鹤泉, “Bei Wei qian qi feng shou zhu wang jue wei jia bai jiang jun hao zhi du shi tan” 北魏前期封授诸王爵位加拜将军号制度试探, Shi xue yue kan (2012.11): 14–21. Miyazaki Ichisada 宫崎市定,九品官人法の硏究: 科举前史 (Kyōto: Tōyōshi Kenkyūkai, 1956), 408, discusses the reduction of most at least of generalships to prestige titles (san guan 散官). This will be seen in concrete form in Chapter 14’s discussion of Emperor Wencheng’s “Nan xun bei.” Based on conclusions reached in Chapter 11, it seems fair to infer that part of the reason for assignment of military rank was probably the salary that accompanied such titles.
125. Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 26; Wang, “Datong Bei Wei mu zang chu tu yong qun de shi dai te shu,” 302; Tseng, The Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 87–88.
126. See a clear portrayal of the distinctions based on miniature statuary in Liu Junxi and Li Li, “The Recent Discovery of a Group of Northern Wei Tombs in Datong,” Orientations 33.5 (2002): 44.
127. Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 14.
128. In the Ming dynasty, see Kenneth Swope, “The Beating of Drums and Clashing of Symbols: Music in Ming Dynasty Military Operations,” Chinese Historical Review 16:2 (2009): 147–77; and further afield, Kate Van Orden, Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
129. Examples of female cavalry are given in Chapter 11.
130. Timothy Davis, Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture in Early Medieval China (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 354.
131. Mary Douglas, cited by Kaori O’Connor in her The Never-ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 15. Or as Epicurus said: “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink” (3). And once we’ve done so, says Ian Sansom in his Times Literary Supplement 18 December 2018 article titled “Jubilant Devastation,” we should remember that according to a magazine called Good Housekeeping, Christmas dinner is “instrumental, a way of asserting one’s dominance over the food, oneself and one’s guests.”
132. Or at least his “cynical acquiescence”: Michael Dietler, “Clearing the Table: Some Concluding Reflections on Commensal Politics and Imperial States,” in The Archaeology of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, ed. Tamara L. Bray (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2003), 272. In connection with this, Dietler points out how the feast has played a powerful, ongoing role within the arena created by fixed monuments and institutions, and never could be entirely replaced by them.
133. In another piece, Michael Dietler argues that the “potential of food and hospitality to be manipulated as a toll in defining social relations lies at the crux of the notion of commensal politics”: “Feasts and Commensal Politics in the Political Economy,” in Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Polly Wiessner and Wulf Schiefenh·vel (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), 91.
134. O’Connor, Never-ending Feast, 46. See also Martin Jones, Feast: Why Humans Share Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 191–92.
135. Tamara L. Bray, “Commensal Politics of Early States and Empires,” in The Archaeology of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, 6; on p. 1 of the same work, Bray defines “feasting” as a “communal food consumption event that differs in some way from everyday practice.” For the multiple purposes of the feast, see O’Connor, Never-ending Feast, 9.
136. Tseng, The Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 76; and for depiction in poetry of the feast as the man’s, see Tian, Halberd at Red Cliff, 89. See general discussion of male appropriation of food and its presentation by Carolyn Clark (“Land and Food, Women and Power in Nineteenth Century Kikuyu,” Africa 50 [1980]: 357–70, cited by Michael Dietler, “Clearing the Table,” 279). In her article (367), Clark asks whether women are “controllers of resources or themselves resources controlled by men·” In the Poduoluo Lady’s tomb, at least, it seems to be the former, which Dietler goes on in his discussion of Clark’s question to note occurs in at least some cases.
137. Though in the palace, we are told by a critical observer from Jiankang, they would sit on chairs with their legs splayed out: Jenner, Memories of Loyang, 25, citing NQS 57.986.
138. Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu,” 177.
139. This is said of a woman who had married Wenming’s brother, Feng Xi: BS 13.499 (WS 13.332). It certainly extended beyond this family, applying to most at least of the elite households of Pingcheng, and later Luoyang as well. Drawing upon funerary inscriptions, Wang Yongping 王永平 describes the power of women within elite households in Chapter 17 of迁洛元魏皇族与士族社会文化史论 (Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chu ban she, 2017).
140. WS 30.803. This anecdote is raised by Song, Bei Wei nü zhu lun, 196, in discussion of the power of feasting. And see Alice Gregory’s mention of “the archetype of woman as family ambassador” in her article “Finished: Life at the Last Swiss Bastion of Etiquette Training,” New Yorker, 8 October 2018.
141. Zhang and Wang, “Bei Wei huang di ci yan kao lüe,” 29. In WS 2.33 see creation of an officer for manners at feasts, at least for Daowu’s feasts. For broader study of feast and hierarchy, see O’Connor, Never-ending Feast, 50; and Bray, who in her “Commensal Politics of Early States and Empires,” 9, speaks powerfully of “pots as functioning objects and the relationship between pottery and food in articulating, defining, and negotiating identity and power,” helping us gain further insight into why Daowu took the craftsmen and forcibly brought them up into the highlands.
142. Mauss, The Gift, 41: “The obligation to accept is no less constraining. One has no right to refuse a gift, or to refuse to attend the potlatch” (the italics are Mauss’s). This is, of course, an essential part of Mauss’s vision of “the gift.”
143. Tseng, Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 76–78.
144. See discussion of manufacture of these goods in Müller, “Lacquerware.”
145. For discussion of entertainments, see Zhang and Wang, “Bei Wei huang di ci yan kao lüe,” 30; and more broadly still, focusing on the Tang, Wang Yongping 王永平,游戏, 竞技与娱乐: 中古社会生活透视 (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2010).
146. WS 109.2828.
147. Cheng, “Exchange across Media,” 117–18, as part of a broader discussion of west-east exchange throughout the article.
148. Tseng, Making of the Tuoba Northern Wei, 88–89; Seo, “Cong Shaling bi hua mu,” 174.
149. These imports are much discussed: inter alia, see Wang Yanqing 王雁卿, “Bei chao shi dai de yin shi qi ju” 北朝时代的饮食器具, Bei chao yan jiu 4 (2004): 158–68; examples of these vessels in Liu Junxi, ed., Datong nan jiao Bei Wei mu qun, 224–43; Boris I. Marshak, “Central Asian Metalwork in China,” in China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200–750 ad, ed. James C. Y. Watt et al. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 46–55; and Dien’s discussion of “exotics” in Six Dynasties Civilization, 275–86. For a more general discussion of the influx of goods with direct opening of Pingcheng to the Silk Roads, see Wang, “Si chou zhi lu yu Bei Wei Pingcheng,” 143–61. Fan Zhang, “Silver Handled Cup: Syncretism, Materiality, and Banquets in Northern Wei Art,” Artibus Asiae 82.1 (2022): 6, notes that while popular among Serbi, such objects were apparently resisted by Chinese living in the Pingcheng area.
150. WS 4B.97. Private maintenance of Buddhist monks and other sorts of sorcerers were banned in the same pronouncement.
151. See pictures of the ceramics found in the tomb in “Shanxi Datong Shaling Bei Wei bi hua mu fa jue jian bao,” 8, 10, 11.
152. See discussion of the foodstuffs eaten at feasts in Lü Yifei 吕一飞, 胡族习俗与隋唐风韵: 魏晋北朝北方少数民族社会风俗及其对隋唐的影响 (Beijing: Shu mu wen xian chu ban she, 1994), Chapter 2; and Zhang and Wang, “Bei Wei huang di ci yan kao lüe,” 29–30. In viewing these materials, we need to remember the findings on meat eating among some—but only some—of the people of Dai of Hou Liangliang et al., “Nong ye qu you mu min zu yin shi wen hua de zhi hou xing.”
153. Lü, Hu zu xi su yu Sui Tang feng yun, 51.
154. Luoyang qie lan ji jiao zhu 3.147–48; with modification, the translation comes from Jenner, Memories of Loyang, 215–16. See also the discussion in Pearce, Ebrey, and Spiro, “Introduction,” in Culture and Power in the Reconstitution of the Chinese Realm, 200–600, 21–22.
155. Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 25.
156. See discussion of women’s control of grain stores among the Kikuyu in Kenya, by Clark, “Land and Food, Women and Power,” 365–66.
157. See detailed discussion given in Lin, “Bei Wei Shaling bi hua mu yan jiu,” 25. Bunker, Ancient Bronzes, 91–92, discusses a Serbi bronze cauldron excavated from the Hohhot region, dated to the fourth century.
