Cultural Notes

1. Tang Sancai:

Tang sancai is a low-fired, lead-glazed pottery that flourished during the Tang dynasty, typically featuring yellow, green, white, and brown glazes — "sancai," literally "three colors," does not refer strictly to only three hues. Its range of forms includes everyday tableware, human figurines, horse figurines, camel figurines, and more, with the three-color horse being especially iconic. As lavish burials were fashionable during the Tang dynasty, sancai ware was produced in great quantity as funerary goods, embodying people's hopes and imaginings of life after death.

The faces of sancai human figurines were typically left unglazed; only after the glaze firing was complete were the eyebrows, eyes, hair, and lips painted on, a process known as "kaixiang" ("opening the likeness"), also commonly called "kailian" ("opening the face") today. Capturing a figure's spirit and expression in just a few brushstrokes demanded exceptional skill from the craftsman.

Important Tang sancai kiln sites discovered to date include the Huangye kiln in Gong County, Henan; the Huangbao kiln in Tongchuan, Shaanxi; the Liquan Ward kiln in Chang'an; and the Xing kiln in Neiqiu, Hebei.

The kiln yard in the novel, where the Zhang siblings fire their Tang sancai, is modeled on archaeological findings from Liquan Ward in the Tang-dynasty city of Chang'an. Located in the western part of the city, excavations at Liquan Ward have uncovered the remains of four Tang-dynasty kilns and ten ash pits, along with large quantities of pottery fragments — Tang sancai, unglazed bisque ware, molds, kiln furniture, and more — confirming that kilns for firing tricolor wares did in fact exist within the city of Chang'an at that time.

2. The West Market:

The West Market of Tang-dynasty Chang'an lay not far from Liquan Ward. A thriving commercial hub, it was also a gathering place for merchants both domestic and foreign, where Hu traders from Central Asia, Persia, and elsewhere conducted business, and rare and exotic goods from far and wide converged within its bounds. Archaeological excavations at the West Market site have also uncovered glassware and other artifacts associated with cross-cultural exchange with distant lands.

Glass was one of the important commodities imported into China via the Silk Road, and remained a precious commodity during the Tang dynasty.

3. Yuezhou Celadon:

The Yue kilns were a famous celadon kiln system of the Tang dynasty, located primarily around present-day Ningbo and Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. Their celadon glaze had a warm, lustrous quality that Tang-dynasty people often described as "like jade" or "like ice." In his Classic of Tea, Lu Yu ranks tea bowls from various regions and singles out Yuezhou celadon as superior above all, holding that its bluish-green hue enhances the beauty of the brewed tea itself.

4. The Five Surnames and Seven Prominent Lineages:

"Commandery of origin" (junwang) was a designation used by medieval aristocratic clans to mark their lineage and pedigree by the name of an ancestral commandery, and did not necessarily indicate where the clan actually resided at the time. The famous "Five Surnames and Seven Prominent Lineages" of the Tang dynasty referred to the Li clan of Longxi, the Li clan of Zhaojun, the Cui clan of Boling, the Cui clan of Qinghe, the Lu clan of Fanyang, the Zheng clan of Xingyang, and the Wang clan of Taiyuan — since both the Li and Cui surnames each had two distinct commandery branches, the group came to be called "five surnames, seven lineages." In the novel, Lu Jing hails from the Lu clan of Fanyang, while his mother comes from the Wang clan of Taiyuan — both among the most prestigious aristocratic houses of this group.

The Five Surnames and Seven Prominent Lineages placed tremendous weight on pedigree and marriage alliances, and their social prestige was correspondingly immense. Emperor Taizong of Tang once ordered the compilation of the Genealogical Register of Clans, reranking the aristocratic families by status; later, in the fourth year of the Xianqing era under Emperor Gaozong (659 CE), the court issued a further edict restricting intermarriage among ten especially eminent branches of these families — an episode remembered in history as the "seven surnames, ten houses" marriage ban. Yet the ban never truly succeeded in cutting off marriage ties between these great houses.

During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian, the imperial examination system was further developed and expanded, allowing more scholar-officials from outside the traditional aristocratic families to enter government service, gradually checking the political dominance of the old clans. Even so, the influence of the Five Surnames and Seven Prominent Lineages did not disappear as a result — their prestige in matters of pedigree and marriage continued on regardless.

5. Jiang:

"Jiang" was one of the common beverages of ancient China, typically produced by fermenting grains, with a mildly sour taste. It served to quench thirst and relieve summer heat, and was also an everyday drink among the common people.