辽宋西夏金社会生活史

Song, Liao, Western Xia and Jin was a period of multinational dispute and blend, which contains every aspect of social life and shows the colorfulness of customs of different ethnic groups. During this time, the changes of customs of Chinese people mainly had four expressions. The first was the change from kneeling on a mat to sitting, which resulted in a series of changes in courtesy and furniture. And the heatable brick bed (kang) brought in by Nvzhen people became more and more popular in North China. The second change was the long process of cotton in replacement of silk and hemp. The third one was using coal in large amount as domestic fuel. The last one was the colloquialization of Chinese and the change of standard language from Luoyang dialect to Beijing dialect. The economy and culture of the Song dynasty had a leading role in the world at that time. The entertainments were diversified, such as talking and singing, poetic drama, dancing, acrobatics, martial arts, sumo, football, birds and insects fighting, backgammon, dice and etc. The diversity of festivals and the consumption of holidays peaked in Song dynasty. Khitan people love eating games, while lamb was the most loved meat in the palace of Song dynasty. Silk fabrics and cotton winter coat were common clothes, while cotton cloth and cotton wadded robe were rare items. Ladies went out in ox cart, instead of horse cart or donkey cart. This book is one of the book series of the History of Chinese Ancient Social Life. It refers to a great many document literature materials, makes a deep investigation on the every aspect of social life of Song, Liao, Western Xia and Jin period, which covers diet, clothes, transportation, marriage, religion and etc. It is a monograph of high level on the history of social life.