An Eastern Han stele with an unusual relief decoration and 367 character memorial inscription tells us much about the south-west of China in early imperial times. Unearthed in 2004 from the banks of the Yangtze River and dated to 173 ce, the stele was dedicated to Quren county magistrate Jing Yun who died 70 years earlier in 103 ce. The paper provides a full translation, annotation, and analysis of the stele's commemorative text, which borrows from the content and language of one of China's oldest anthologies of poems, the Chuci, and places it in its historical context. It also examines the iconography at the head of the stele which reflects beliefs in transcendence and the pursuit of immortality prevalent at the time and demonstrates its close relation to the inscription. Overall, the paper suggests that the decoration and text together exhibit a regional heritage that is distinct to the south-west, its memorial culture, and poetic and religious traditions.

The literary form and rhetorical structure of ancient Chinese poems have not been sufficiently studied. The “Jiu zhang” 九章 (Nine Avowals) attributed to Qu Yuan 屈原 contain distinctive formal features which are highly suggestive for interpretations of Qu Yuan's life and works. At the level of rhetoric, the protagonist frequently describes his own mental state using metaphors of knots and entanglement. At the level of form, the internal structure of the poems, and “Chou si” 抽思 (Unravelled Yearnings) in particular, involves series of overlapping, cross-referencing units that recall the “strange loop” discussed by Douglas Hofstadter as a model of human consciousness. Reading these poems is not just a matter of reconstructing their historical contexts but also of understanding their intended effects on the reader, who is effectively transported into a simulation of Qu Yuan's mind.

The influential Chu ci zhangju 楚辭章句, the earliest received edition of the foundational poetry anthology Chuci 楚辭, performs a distinct gender bias in its exegesis of deities, and this bias accords with the Eastern Han ideology of the editor Wang Yi 王逸 (2nd c. CE) more than with immanent features of the original Warring States texts. The gender bias is an essential feature of Wang Yi’s canonization of the Chuci, and it lays the groundwork of the allegorical tradition of interpreting the Chuci. This paper analyzes the zhangju presentation of archetypal Chuci texts to elucidate the hermeneutic transformation of gender and religion in early China, comparing the Eastern Han exegeses with earlier and later interpretations, immanent textual features, and fresh perspectives on Warring States and Han culture that have emerged from archeological evidence. The analysis demonstrates that the Chuci zhangju treats the male deities more literally than the female deities, reflecting the reduction in status of goddesses in late Han discourse. The history of gender ideology is an essential critical lens for understanding the Chuci and the tradition that emerged from it.