Writing two thousand years ago, Chinas historians and men of letters have left us a wealth of information on the rise, decline and fall of their empires. But nowhere do we find a direct account of how an individual man or woman passed through the stages of life in Han China. In this volume, Michael Loewe, esteemed historian of the Han, draws on original writings, material finds and recent scholarly research to compose an account of the life of a fictional character, Bing Wu, from his meager childhood on a rural farm, his service as a county laborer and a conscript solder, his apprenticeship to a traveling merchant, his career in the civil service and his appointment as magistrate of a rural county.
