Acknowledgements
This book originated when Brian Lander applied for a Henry Luce Foundation/ ACLS Program in China Studies Collaborative Reading-Workshop Grant to read the materials from Zoumalou. Maxim Korolkov suggested inviting Ling Wenchao, who agreed to participate, and the application was successful. In September 2016 Lander and Ling led this workshop at the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE), which provided the administrative support and the space. More generally, HUCE also provided Brian Lander with a salary for two years of a productive postdoctoral fellowship that allowed him to begin this project. Without the support of Luce/ACLS and HUCE, this book would not exist. This book also benefitted greatly from a subsequent workshop funded and hosted in April 2017 by the Tang Center for Early China at Columbia University that focused on the potential of these documents for studying economic history.
Ling prepared a collection of documents for the Harvard workshop that included the second chapter of this book and the beginnings of the third. The participants in the workshop were Andrew Chittick, Chris Foster, Luke Habberstad, Wen-yi Huang, Ren Li, Michael Lüdke, Terry Kleeman, Keith Knapp, Charles Sanft, Griet Vankeerberghen, Matthew Wells and Xin Wen. This group spent three days translating these documents, providing a basis for the translation chapter. Afterwards, Lander asked Xin Wen if he would like to contribute to this project. Wen drafted the “World of Zoumalou Documents” chapter, and in doing so turned what had been conceived as a long article into a book. The book is therefore a collaboration in which each member contributed very differently. Lander is listed as first author because he led the project from beginning to end and crafted the structure and language of the book. Chapter One is primarily the work of Wen, with contributions from Lander. The second and third chapters are the work of Ling, translated and expanded by Lander.
We thank Daisy Yuk Ping Wan