Building on recent scholarship that highlights social change caused by the Anti-Japanese War, this paper traces the politicization of women working in the cotton mills of Chongqing, the Nationalist wartime capital. Upon joining the workforce in the late 1930s, most cotton mill hands were young, uneducated women expected to endure hard work and remain physically confined to the factories. By 1945, women workers were at the forefront of a militant labour movement, writing manifestoes and petitioning government officials. This process of politicization stemmed from their decision to work in factories, which breached societal norms, and their experience of disciplined labour regimes and brutal working conditions, which fostered an incipient class-consciousness. Moreover, Nationalist-sponsored factory education campaigns had the unintended effect of leading women to challenge class exploitation and sexual discrimination. Their participation in the labour movement, which was fuelled by their struggle for economic justice and desire for higher social status, used both legal forms— especially petitions and letters to the press couched in the wartime nationalist rhetoric of shared sacrifice—and extralegal means, namely class violence. The paper concludes that the social changes and conflict that accompanied women's wartime work helped prepare the terrain for Communist rule.

The abstract concept of “the Silk Road” linking east and west shapes manypopular narrative histories, encouraging readers to think dreamily ofdazzling silks carried as luxury trade items on the backs of camels oversun-scorched sand dunes, and conveniently skirting more complex issues suchas political, military, religious and cultural barriers. The actualmechanics of how any trading and other financial or economic transactionstook place are seldom addressed, and references to money are few and farbetween.

In January 2013 we published our third special issue ‘Perfumery and Ritualin Asia’. As I wrote in the Introduction to that group of articles, theJournal's broad remit, both in terms of historical period and geographicalboundaries, affords us the privilege of exploring those elements of humanactivity that historically ‘bind’ or ‘separate’ different Asian cultures. Bythe beginning of 2013 we had already published two other special issues, oneon a linguistic topic and the other on a politico/religious topic and so wefelt it was appropriate to devote space to the exploration of ‘material’culture, an equally powerful force in shaping a huge range of humaninteractions.

From the inception of its military campaign into Central Asia via the Gansucorridor, the Tang dynasty had to ensure the shipment of extensive militarysupplies to support the activities of its occupying armies north and southof the Tianshan Mountains. Since the government paid soldiers’ salaries andbought supplies using silk, the timely delivery of silk from central Chinawas critical. Most of the silk was collected in the central provinces underthe zuyongdiao 租庸調 tax system, whether as stipulatedpayments of tax textiles or cloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. Allthis silk had to be shipped to the Western Regions. This article examineswhere this silk was made, how it was shipped to the north-west and how thesystem changed over time.

The excavation of tombs in the Astana graveyard, Turfan, has provided awealth of evidence for studying everyday life on the Silk Road. Manuscriptsand textiles constitute two major groups of the excavated finds. Among themanuscripts are over 60 burial inventories (yiwushu),listing items that would accompany the deceased to the afterlife. Some ofthe items on the inventories were real and can be identified with objectsfound in the tombs; some were represented symbolically: for example inminiature form; and others, probably included for formulaic purposes, wereimagined. Although there have been several studies on the burial inventoriesand textiles from Turfan, the two are usually considered separately, withlittle attention to their correlation, mainly because burial inventoriestend to be studied by specialists working on documents, and textiles areusually studied by textile specialists. In 2005 we were fortunate to be ableto examine all the textiles from a mid-sixth century tomb at Astana(72TAM170), and to study the three burial inventories found in that tomb.Comparing the physical textile remains against the burial inventories fromthe same tomb offered us a rare opportunity to test the accuracy of theburial inventories, and also to identify the physical textile remains withthe textile terminology of that time. This article is arranged in four partswhich present a brief description of the tomb, details of the burialinventories, a comparison of the textile remains against the burialinventories and a closer look at the silk textiles found in the tomb.

The kingdom of Khotan lay 2,628 kilometres to the north-west of the Tangcapital at Chang'an. Strategically located in the south-west of theTaklamakan Desert, Khotan was a meeting point of different ethnic groups,languages, cultures and traditions, and was renowned as a centre ofBuddhism. With its unique combination of influences, Khotanese society wasquite different from that of Turfan to the north of the Taklamakan. Inaddition to the indigenous practices and traditions that developed inKhotan, this kingdom was always under the influence of major externalpolitical powers: Khotan was a vassal kingdom of the Hephtalites or Turkicpeoples during the sixth century, came under increasing Chinese influence inthe seventh and eighth centuries, was under Tibetan occupation from the 790sto 840s, and thereafter under the Chinese again. The secular documentaryevidence from Khotan, written in Khotanese and Chinese, from the seventh andeighth centuries reflects everyday life there, and reveals the impact ofChinese administrative changes on traditional practices.