[Book Review] Northern and Southern Dynasties

“Beifangren, Nanpangren.” These are terms that this writer would often hear during trips to China last year. When I commended great taste of food while meeting with a Chinese man in the northeastern region, he showed self-confidence in northern recipes by comparing them with southern recipes in details. He said, “Unlike people in southern regions, people in northern regions are mannish and cool.” In fact, people in northern regions centered on the Huang River and those in southern regions focused on the Yangtze River display stark differences in terms of appearances, character and ways of living.

Reading this book, you can learn that the different cultural backgrounds of the northern and southern regions in China are closely related with the era of the Wei Jin Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Mark Edward Lewis, a professor of Chinese history at Stanford University, entitled his book “The Northern and Southern Dynasties," by outright removing "Wei Jin" from the title. He comprehensively labels the 400 years from the collapse of the late Han Dynasty to China’s reunification by the Sui Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty as the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

There is a good reason the author interprets the era, a period of divide when countless dynasties rose and fell, based on the framework of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. As foreign tribes invaded into the dynasties during the period, a large number of Han people moved from northern regions to southern regions, and created diverse social and cultural spectrums.

The Han tribe expanded the basis for China’s economy by developing remote mountainous areas in southern provinces into farmlands. This contributed to the establishment of splendid culture of noblemen during Wei Jin Northern and Southern Dynasties. Notably, the Great Waterway that was constructed by the Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty to transport grains abundant in southern regions made major contributions to the unification of the Chinese Continent.

Notably, the author pays attention to nomadic tribes in northern regions during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. For example, he claims the Sui and Tang dynasties that were founded by the Han tribe reportedly absorbed en masse institutions and practices of Bei Wei, Bei Zhou, and Bei Qi dynasties that had been founded in northern regions by foreign tribes during the 5th and 6th centuries.

김상운 기자sukim@donga.com