Event Details
Jonathan Spence PhD '65, the late Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, often placed the everyday lives of ordinary people within their broader historical context, revealing the complexities of an era through seemingly mundane details of marriage, family, and livelihood.
On August 20, as part of Yale Center Beijing's Jonathan Spence Memorial Series, Guogang Zhang, Distinguished Professor of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, and Chang Xu, Professor at the School of History, Beijing Normal University, will discuss Professor Zhang's book The Tang Family: Life, Livelihood, and Family Ethos, drawing on four decades of scholarship. Focusing on the changing roles of women in marriage and family life, the two scholars will offer a closer look at the lived experiences of ordinary people in the Tang Dynasty. Through these intimate details of daily life, the conversation will illuminate how society functioned at the grassroots level and what life was really like beneath the grandeur of the Tang Dynasty's golden age.




