Military governor, architect, alchemist and poet, Gao Pian (821–87) was one of the most intriguing characters to shape events in ninth-century China. His trajectory provides a step-by-step record of the late Tang empire's military, fiscal, and administrative unravelling. Utilising exceptionally rich sources, including documents from Gao Pian's secretariat, inscriptions, narrative and religious literature, and Gao Pian's own poetry, Franciscus Verellen challenges the official historians' portrait of Gao as an 'insubordinate minister' and Daoist zealot. In an innovative analysis, he argues that the life of this extraordinary general casts much-needed light on ideas of allegiance and disobedience, provincial governance, military affairs and religious life in the waning years of the Tang.

‘A powerful account of the collapse of a once-great empire through the life of a statesman-general who fought, in vain, to save it. Employing both historical and literary scholarship, Verellen masterfully reconstructs a complex and fascinating figure long buried under sediments of posthumous slander and caricature.’

Shao-yun Yang - Denison University