Qiaomei Tang

Harvard University, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Graduate Student

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Assistant Professor at Grinnell College (2017-)
Visiting Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College (2016-2017).
Visiting Instructor at Colgate University (2015-2016).
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Supervisors: Professors Xiaofei Tian, Stephen Owen and Wilt Idema

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Michael Stanley-Baker 徐源

Nanyang Technological University

Claire Bishop

Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Julia Hell

University of Michigan

Robert Mayer

University of Oxford

keith knapp

The Citadel

Sarah E Fraser

Universität Heidelberg

André Bueno

UERJ - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Rio de Janeiro State University

Fabrizio Pregadio

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

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Papers by Qiaomei Tang

Politicization of Ritual Matters: Debates on “Two Principal Wives” (Liangdi) in Early Medieval China

Early Medieval China, Sep 21, 2022

The tumultuous political environment of early medieval China gave rise to a social phenomenon kno... more The tumultuous political environment of early medieval China gave rise to a social phenomenon known as liangdi 兩嫡, a situation in which a man kept two principal wives. This anomaly caused a great deal of confusion not only in terms of inheri- tance of title, rank, and property for the sons born of the two wives, but more importantly, in mourning observances by the sons for their mothers. To provide gui- dance for those involved in such situations, many discussions and debates around liangdi cases took place, both publicly among officials in courts and privately between colleagues and friends. This article, through analyzing four recorded dis- cussions and debates on liangdi cases from the Jin dynasty (265–420), examines how a private issue of having two wives, resulting from the geopolitical conditions of civil war and segregation following the disintegration of the Han empire, became a public matter that had a profound ritual and political significance. At the heart of the politicization of ritual matters was the question of the political legitimacy of a newly unified empire.

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From Talented Poet to Jealous Wife: Reimagining Su Hui in Late Tang Literary Culture

Nan nü, 2020

Su Hui was a late fourth century Chinese woman who is famed for her creation of bro-cade palindro... more Su Hui was a late fourth century Chinese woman who is famed for her creation of bro-cade palindromic poems. Due to an account of her life story, attributed to the female emperor Wu Zetian, that highlighted her jealous disposition, Su Hui is remembered today primarily as a talented but jealous wife, which is in contrast with how she was viewed in the period prior to the Wu version. Tracing the genealogy of Su Hui's narrative in pre-Tang and Tang literary and visual materials, this article demonstrates that the definitive version of Su Hui's story is misattributed to Wu Zetian and, more importantly, that the image of this well-known figure of early medieval China underwent a transformation that reflects important aspects of Late Tang literary culture. In 'boudoir lament' poetry of the Southern Dynasties period, Su Hui is the stock image of a melancholy wife longing for her absent husband. In 'frontier' poetry of the Tang dynasty, she is a worrying wife concerned with her military husband fighting on the borderlands. It is in a Late Tang prose account misattributed to Wu Zetian that we finally see her as a jealous woman competing for her husband's affections. The transformation of Su Hui's image across three major literary genres over a period of half a millennium offers readers a window into the literary and cultural changes that took place in medieval China.

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Divorcing North and South: Gender, Poetry and Politics in Early Medieval China

Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA), 2017

In early medieval China (220–589 CE), the territory once ruled by the Han empire (206 BCE–220 CE)... more In early medieval China (220–589 CE), the territory once ruled by the Han empire (206 BCE–220 CE) was divided into competing cultural, ethnic and political regions. The north, controlled by the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei tribe (fourth–sixth centuries), 1 and the south, governed by a series of Chinese dynasties headquartered in Jiankang (present-day Nanjing), had pronounced cultural differences that are discussed in the writings of the period. The heightened sense of regional difference and pride is exemplified in a clash between a northern princess and an elite southern lady documented in a peculiar entry found in the well-known sixth-century work A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang (Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記). 2 Written around 547 CE by the northern official and Buddhist scholar Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之 (fl. 528–547), the work lists some of the grandest Buddhist temples that once flourished in the Northern Wei (386–534) capital of Luoyang. 3 One finds among these entries on grand structures that of a modest nunnery in which an account of the aforementioned clash is relayed through the perspective of its northern author. While unremarkable at first glance, the entry reveals an intriguing tale of regional rivalry.

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Politicization of Ritual Matters: Debates on “Two Principal Wives” (Liangdi) in Early Medieval China

Early Medieval China, Sep 21, 2022

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From Talented Poet to Jealous Wife: Reimagining Su Hui in Late Tang Literary Culture

Nan nü, 2020

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Divorcing North and South: Gender, Poetry and Politics in Early Medieval China

Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA), 2017

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