Review on Chittick, Andrew, Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison, 400-600 CE. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.

Frontiers of History in China, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2012.9)

Sun Yinggang

This volume provides a study of a provincial society, the Xiangyang 襄阳 region (in modern northern Hubei province) in the fifth and sixth centuries. Emphasizing the shortcomings of our current models of aristocracy and oligarchy, which have been applied to the social system of early medieval China, the author introduces the model of patron-client relations to characterize the interactions between local men and representatives of the southern court at Jiankang 建康 during the Northern and Southern dynasties. Arguing that patronage is the most useful model with which to understand the general political organization of the southern dynasties, the author has presented Xiangyang as a local society whose members had ambiguous identities and loyalties but a more coherent cultural tradition. The culture and tradition in Xiangyang, according to the author, were different from the literati culture in Jiankang the capital, which has been described by previous scholarship as representing the general southern culture. Below I will summarize the main points of this work and also provide my own understanding of related topics. …