The Ba-shu Cultural Imagination in Ancient China

In this project, I am going to use regional culture of ancient Sichuan (Bashu) and environs to elaborates on previous interpretations of cultural change and to highlight the negotiation of identity between metropolitan and local agents. Metropolitan and local identities of early imperial and medieval China were fluid, changed over time, and mutually constitutive. But how exactly were these identities created and constituted and what factors were involved during the seven-hundred-year period of contact? This study deploys an interdisciplinary approach to address this question and to produce a critical synthesis based on the methods of narrative research and history