In the mid-1950s, Kyoto University was gifted a manuscript entitled Xiaozi zhuan 孝 子傳 “Accounts of Filial Children” that once had belonged to the private Funahashi 船橋 Library. In 1959, the great Sinologist Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎 published a book entitled Kōshiden 孝子傳, which contained a photographic copy of this manuscript, along with Yoshikawa's translation of the text. Happily, I came across this book in Berkeley's East Asian Library. Later in 1992 while studying Japanese in Yokohama, I heard about another Xiaozi zhuan at Kyoto's Yömei Library (Yōmei bunko 陽明文庫). I telephoned the director of the library and begged him for a photocopy of the text. He was only willing to send me one because I knew Fujieda Akira 藤枝晃, the famed Dunhuangologist. A xerox copy of the text arrived the day before I left Japan. After reading both manuscripts, I realised just how closely related they were: each contains the exact same 45 filial piety accounts in the exact same order, the wording of the tales is similar as well. Even though the two texts share many resemblances, unexpectedly, they also have several noteworthy variations.

During the Eastern Han (25–220), Confucianism had become the guiding philosophy of both governance and social life. But as political infighting, peasant rebellions, and warlordism tore apart the Han Empire, many intellectuals lost confidence in Confucianism and looked to other systems of meaning for guidance and solace. To make sense of their chaotic, dangerous, and evanescent world, some turned to xuanxue (Dark Learning), or to Buddhism, or to organized Daoism. Based on these changes, Western scholars have concluded that, at the end of the Eastern Han, Confucianism was passé and its influence was in steep decline. If the fall of the Han state truly discredited Confucianism and educated men looked for meaning elsewhere, how, then, did Confucianism survive? Why did early medieval literati continue to view Confucianism as valuable? Admittedly, Confucianism was not important in the philosophical salons; it offered little in terms of the current understanding of ontology or metaphysics, nor did it help secure one’s postmortem welfare.

Periods of disunity in Chinese history do not usually receive the attention they deserve, yet it is just in those years of apparent disorder and even chaos that important developments, social, cultural, artistic, and even institutional, often find their earliest expression. The Six Dynasties period (220–589 ce) was just such a time of momentous changes in many aspects of the society. But it is precisely the confusing tumult and disorder of the political events of those four centuries that create the strongest impression. We find this perception mirrored in the reaction of the put-upon Gao Laoshi, the middle-school schoolmaster described by Lu Xun in one of his stories, who was so dejected when he had been assigned to teach a course on the Six Dynasties. All he remembered about the subject was how very confusing it was, a time of much warfare and turmoil; no doubt what would have come to his mind was the common saying wu Hu luan Hua 五胡亂華 “the Five Barbarians brought disorder to China.” He felt that he could do a creditable job with the great Han and Three Kingdoms that came before or the glorious Tang after it, but what could he say about those miserable years in between? The very nomenclature reflects its apparent disjointed nature.