Abstract
China under the Mongol Yuan rule in the 13th and 14th centuries was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Socio-cultural interactions among various ethnic groups constitute a major focus in Yuan studies.
Mainly based on a poem collection recently discovered in Korea, Jinsizhai yigao, this paper offers a detailed study on the social network of a Uighur young man, Xie Boliaoxun (1319-1360), in the 14th century. The six core sections of this paper examine how this young man interacted with his kin, teachers, friends, and Buddhist and Daoist monks and how his growing process, personality and personal culture were affected by his social surroundings. Xie Boliaoxun’s social network is studied as an indicator of the ways in which Semu young men grew up in Jiangnan society and the general direction in which the interethnic socio-cultural relations moved in late Yuan.
As the findings of this paper show, the social network of Xie Boliaoxun was one of the Confucian literati, since most persons closely interacting with him were literati and the basis on which they interacted was common literati culture. However, their close marital ties with other Uighur families and their retention of Uighur style of familial and personal names indicated that the Xies did not yet give up their original ethnic identity. It would be inappropriate to use the term “sinicization” to describe the socio-cultural status of the Xies and many other Mongol and Semu families like them in the late Yuan. The new term “literatization” would serve that purpose better.
Keywords
Yuan dynasty, Semu, social network, Xie Boliaoxun, literatization
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