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This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend.

History of Asia --- China --- Philosophy, Chinese --- Social groups --- Philosophie chinoise --- Groupes sociaux --- S12/0216 --- S12/0222 --- China: Philosophy and Classics--Political philosophy --- China: Philosophy and Classics--Chinese philosophy: Ancient --- Association --- Group dynamics --- Groups, Social --- Associations, institutions, etc. --- Social participation

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Violence --- History. --- Histoire --- China --- Chine --- Social conditions --- History --- Conditions sociales --- S06/0200 --- S04/0510 --- S07/0200 --- S11/0491 --- China: Politics and government--Government and political institutions: general and before 1911 --- China: History--Pre-Han: before 206 B.C. --- China: Army and police force--Military history --- China: Social sciences--Society before 1840 --- Violent behavior --- Social psychology --- China: History--Pre-Han: before 206 B.C

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Floods --- Religious aspects --- Religious aspects. --- S13A/0402 --- S16/0195 --- China: Religion--Mythology (incl. pantheon, ghosts, myths and legends) --- China: Literature and theatrical art--Thematic studies --- Inondation --- Folklore. --- Folklore --- Aspect religieux --- Flooding --- Inundations --- Natural disasters --- Water --- Floods - China - Folklore --- Floods - China - Religious aspects

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Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China.In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.

Floods --- Flooding --- Inundations --- Natural disasters --- Water --- Religious aspects.

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The Tang dynasty is often called China's "golden age," a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu.

China --- History --- HISTORY / Asia / China. --- China - History - Tang dynasty, 618-907