Category Books

Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts, 600-1400 » (New Edition)

Book cover image of Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts, 600-1400 by Valerie Hansen

Authors: Valerie Hansen
ISBN-13: 9780300060638, ISBN-10: 0300060637
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Yale University Press
Date Published: August 1995
Edition: New Edition

Author Biography: Valerie Hansen

Book Synopsis

This intriguing book illuminates specific everyday concerns during China's medieval transformation by exploring how ordinary people in traditional China used contracts for transactions both in the world of the living and the afterlife. Hansen gives a rare picture of how these ordinary people understood the law during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties.

	List of Illustrations
	Acknowledgments
	Note on Conventions
	Table of Equivalent Measures
1	Why Study Contracts?	1
Pt. I	Contracting with People
2	The State's Reluctance to Recognize Private Contracts	17
3	Government Recognition of Contracts	47
4	The Age of Governmental Taxation	78
5	Contracts under Mongol Rule and Afterward	113
Pt. II	Contracting with the Gods
6	Tomb Contracts	149
7	The Courts of the Underworld	189
8	The Courts of the Living and the Courts of the Dead	222
	Appendix A Known Tomb Contracts	231
	Appendix B Deities Named as Sellers in Tomb Contracts	239
	Glossary	243
	Bibliography	251
	Index	277