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The first chapter of this paper seeks to explain how Chinese people perceived

these black slaves by analyzing representations of people with dark skin in fictional and

nonfiction sources from the fifth century through the Song dynasty, tracing the evolution

of the meanings and connotations of the term kunlun

This mysterious and poorly

understood word first applied to dark-skinned Chinese and then expanded over time to

encompass multiple meanings, all connoting dark skin. This chapter examines the

meaning of the term kunlun in nonfiction before and during the Tang; fictional tales about

magical, superhuman kunlun slaves from the Tang fiction compendium Taiping guangji

 

Free PDF:56 pages

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Interesting Stuff. i remember reading this a long time ago. its my personal belief that you cant separate Africa from magic in terms of its ancient history. which is why i feel that besides racism of course, African history has not received the attention it deserves. Theres even a letter floating around about King Leopold telling his Generals to purposely separate the native Congolese from their systems of mysticism in favor of orthodox Christianity. in my opinion it shows how threatened he felt by possibly their attainments, besides the obvious indoctrination attempt. which was incredibly interesting to me to say the least. I also find it interesting that Kunlun Mountains is well known for having a lot of magic arts.

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