Scott Pearce (Western Washington University)

All textual traditions are based on their own particular sets of assumptions and preoccupations. This was the case of the Chinese classical tradition as well, which having taken full shape under the Han empire, continued to be used as the only available language of written record by the very different regimes that controlled the Yellow River plains after Han collapse. One of these was Northern Wei (386-534), a new kind of empire in East Asia, of Inner Asian origin, whose leadership for generations continued to speak an Inner Asian language and conceptualized the world in terms apparently quite different from those embedded in the Literary Chinese that gives the only descriptions we have of these people and their actions. Here we use the case of a royal kinsman called in the text “Yuan Pi 元丕” (422-503) to examine various ways in which we might attempt to look behind (or through, or under) received text to get a glimpse at least of the actual man.