Event

The fourth-century southward migration of the northern Chinese was a traumatic event. The migrants were refugees fleeing from non-Han invaders; they were also settler colonialists forcefully asserting sovereignty over indigenous peoples with their distinct linguistic identities and a self-sufficient cultural and religious system native to the land. This talk discusses the complex issues of class, ethnicity, and gender in this settler-colonialist community’s encounter with the local population by focusing on an early fifth-century story collection, the “Account of the Hidden and Visible Realms” (You ming lu), compiled by an imperial prince of the Liu Song dynasty. I argue that it reveals the émigrés’ anxieties about the old “barbarian south” inhabited by multiple ethnic groups including a much earlier stratum of Han Chinese, and the tensions and conflicts in the violent process of migration and colonization.