do you have any resources concerning shang dynasty clothes?
Unfortunately I don't. There isn't much discovery on Shang dynasty clothing. We knew that they liked the colour white, wore a set of top and bottom (as in not robes). There might be trousers at the end of Shang dynasty. They also wore 蔽膝 bixi, which is the rectangular piece of fabric tied to their waist.
They also worn hats of various shape.
New hanfu has an English post on it, but I think it was very generalized.
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Anyone who’s tried to learn Chinese has had to tackle its complex writing system. It’s a system whose origins can be traced back thousands of years to the Shang Dynasty of 1600 BC.
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Fu Hao, queen and general in the Shang dynasty.
I watched a documentary about her on Arte TV and was instantly inspired to draw this! A pretty fascinating history.
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I've seen lately that in some fsyy media, they are trying to portray Su Daji as someone who helped Zhou and put Zhou as the real villain and not an innocent victim of Daji's manipulation and bootlicking (I understand they are possibly trying to demolish "women are always to blame"). I watched this in Jiang Ziya's animated film, that Nezha animated series and the recent adaptation of fsyy, creation of the gods. But I wanted to ask, is it true what they say that the real Su Daji was slandered just to give King Zhou a bad reputation? Or was she really bad?
I assume that, by "the real Su Daji", you mean the historical Su Daji. Which is...tricky, because her very name might be a later invention!
Like, in Zhou dynasty + Spring & Autumn period sources, there were mentions of King Zhou's concubines; 尚书 described King Zhou as a "woman pleaser" and someone who was easily influenced by their words, and 逸周书 recorded that the two concubines of King Zhou hang themselves after his defeat, and their bodies were decapitated by King Wu and put on a flagpole.
This lines up with what we know about the historical Shang dynasty, where aristocratic women could, and did participate directly in political and military affairs: the most famous of them being Fu Hao, King Wu Ding's wife.
However, the name "Da Ji" did not appear in written sources until the Warring State period; the earliest one, 国语·晋语, said that when King Zhou warred against the You Su clan, they surrendered a woman named Da Ji as tribune, who gained favors at court and became the seed of Shang dynasty's destruction.
Subsequent documents like 世本 and 史记 then merged that anecedote together with earlier records, and formed a new narrative:
1)Da Ji was offered up as a tribune by the You Su clan,
2)King Zhou loved her so much that he listened to her every words,
3)King Wu killed her and put her head on a flagpole.
Once this narrative gained popularity, together with the name, it was only a matter of time before ancient historians were blaming the end of Shang dynasty solely on Da Ji, and even attributing King Zhou's supposed tyrannical deeds(cutting out Bi Gan's heart, making Mei Bo into meat sauces) to her.
"So, was she really bad?"
We will never know! No, really, it is hard to make any moral judgements when her very existence is based on shaky evidence and later extrapolations.
This extends to King Zhou/Di Xin too; whenever he was brought up in ancient historical writings, it was less about actual Shang dynasty history, and more about the writers' ideals of virtuous rulership and its opposite.
Lastly, there is the matter of value dissonance: we know, from archaeological evidence, that human sacrifice was widely practiced in the historical Shang dynasty. At its heights, oracle bone scripts recorded the killing of a thousand people in one go, and though the quantity was significantly reduced by King Zhou's time, the practice went on until the dynasty's end.
From a modern day standpoint, it is absolutely horrifying, but for a king of the Shang dynasty or a warrior-priestess like Fu Hao, to which spirits and gods and ancestral ghosts were very real, fearsome forces that could only be placated with sacrifices, it would be a vital duty.
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Mandate Of Heaven And Supreme Justice
In the Zhou dynasty, the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, revolutionary for Chinese philosophy, emerged and took root for millennia. According to the then political-religious narrative, the Mandate of Heaven was given to the most worthy and righteous one. While from the very beginning it served as an encouraging rationale for overthrowing the Shang dynasty, more and more ambiguities arose as the…
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TW/ Graphic Description of Human Sacrifice
I was reading The Revelation by Li Shuo and came across the description of a site of human sacrifice from late Shang Dynasty and it was… I was speechless and there wasn't quite any good way to put my feelings to words. Not only because of the cruelty and graphicness but also it's hauntingly resonant with the story I'm writing and planning.
There were the remains of an adult male who cradled tightly in his mutilated arms the remains of a toddler. The adult was hacked in halves from waist, his upper and lower bodies placed in parallel, and all that remained of his upper body was his head and incomplete arms, his cervical vertebrae, ribs, as well as one hand were gone. Yet still he cradled tightly the child with what remained of his arms - the shins and forearms of the child were hacked off as well. The author wrote "evidently, the male would not give up the child for sacrifice and the priest was unwilling to kill them immediately so they dismembered them bit by bit."
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Jade pendant in the form of a water bird, Western Zhou dynasty, ca. 1050-ca. 950 BCE.
Jade pendant in the form of a water bird, Anyang period, Late Shang dynasty, ca. 1300-1050 BCE.
Jade pendant in the form of a bird, Anyang period, Late Shang dynasty, ca. 1300-1050 BCE.
Jade pendant in the form of a water bird, Anyang period, Late Shang dynasty, ca. 1250-1050 BCE.
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