Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Usage -- Introduction -- Assembling a Food System -- Why Study the Chinese Food System? -- The World-SystemModel -- Diffusion, Cultural Choice, and Chinese Distinctiveness -- Chapter 1: Prehistoric Origins Across Eurasia -- China Before Agriculture -- A Bit About Physical Ancestry -- A Bit About Languages -- The Origins of Agriculture -- Chapter 2: China's Early Agriculture -- The Dawn of Domesticated Grain -- Early Farming in China -- The Later Neolithic -- Animals -- Meanwhile in Central Asia . . . Another Neolithic -- Chapter 3: The Origins of Chinese Civilization -- Civilization? -- The Earliest Dynasties -- Later Zhou and the Warring States -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4: The Development of China's Sustainability During Zhou and Han -- Ideology and Behavior -- Cosmology -- Philosophy and Politics: Origins of Chinese Traditions -- Concepts of Nature -- Words for Knowing -- Morality -- The Systematization of Environmental Management in Han -- Chapter 5: Dynastic Consolidation Under Han -- A Summary of Han History -- Han Foodways -- Han Food and Medicine -- Han Central Asia -- Chapter 6: Foods from the West: Medieval China -- Three Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties -- Sui and Tang -- Tang Environment and Farming -- Tang Food -- Tang Culture and Poetry -- Central Asia in Tang Times -- Definitive Shaping of the Food System: Song Its Neighbors -- Liao and Jin -- Chapter 7: The Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty -- The Mongol Empire and Knowledge Flows Within It -- Mongol Rule in China -- Food Under the Mongols -- The Huihui Yaofang -- Medicinals: Numbers and Classification -- Places of Origin of Major Medicinals -- The Moral: Chinese and Western Medicines United -- The Yinshan Zhengyao -- During and After . . . -- The End of the Mongol Information Superhighway.

Chapter 8: Shifting Grounds in Ming -- Ming and Impossible Rule -- Ming Fails in the West but Thrives in the Southeast -- Ming Learning and Development -- Chapter 9: Overview: Imperial China Managing Landscapes -- Patterns and Pasts -- Environmental History -- Explaining Foodways -- Forests -- Modern Folk Views Continued Much of the Old Ideology -- A Summary of the Old Ways -- Appendix I: Conservation Among China's Neighbors -- Appendix II: An Introduction to Central Asian Food -- Bibliography -- Index.