The question of boundaries - physical or political - has become fertile ground in the analysis of Chinese history and society. These essays cover the early decades of the Zhou dynasty to the early centuries after the Manchu conquest.

Nicola Di Cosmo is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and specializes in the history of the relations between China and Central Asia from the ancient to the early modern period. His recent publications include 'The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China' in The Cambridge History of Ancient China (1999) and Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (2002)
Don J. Wyatt is Professor of History at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. He specializes in Chinese intellectual history and philosophy, with particular emphasis on the many intersections between cosmological and political thought that prevailed among pre-modern scholars during various periods. Among his recent publications are The Recluse of Loyang: Shao Yung and the Moral Evolution of Early Sung Thought (1996) and 'Bonds of Certain Consequence: The Personal Responses to Concubinage of Wang Anshi and Sima Guang' in Presence and Presentation: Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition (1999).

Acknowledgements Contributors Table of Dynasties Nicola Di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt Introduction 1. Edward L. Shaughnessy Toward a Social Geography of the Zhouyuan during the Western Zhou Dynasty: The Jing and Zhong Lineages of Fufeng County 2. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann Mapping a 'Spiritual' Landscape: Representation of Terrestrial Space in the Shanhaijing 3. Dorothy C. Wong Ethnicity and Identity: Northern Nomads as Buddhist Art Patrons during the Period of Northern and Southern Dynasties 4. Marc Samuel Abramson Deep Eyes and High Noses: Physiognomy and the depiction of Barbarians in Tang China 5. Naomi Standen Raiding and Frontier Society in the Five Dynasties 6. Irene S. Leung 'Felt Yurts Neatly Arrayed, Large Tents Huddle Close': Visualizing the Frontier in the Northern Song Dynasty 7. Don J. Wyatt The Invention of the Northern Song 8. John E. Herman The Mu'ege Kingdom: Rise and Fall of a Frontier Empire in Southwest China 9. Andrea Riemenschnitter Traveler's Vocation - Xu Xiake and his Excursion to the Southwestern Frontier 10. Joanna Waley-Cohen Changing Spaces of Empire in Eighteenth Century Qing China 11. Nicola Di Cosmo Kirghiz Nomads on the Qing Frontier: Tribute, Trade, or Gift-Exchange? 12. Daphne Pi-Wei Lei Envisioning New Borders for the Old China in Late Qing Fiction and Local Drama Index