Below, Prof. Tristan G. Brown walks us through a typical exam question from the course and explains what sort of response it’s designed to elicit.
Here’s an example of a question from the 2024 makeup midterm. Students taking the exam will be seeing this passage for the first time:
What does the following passage mean and what is its significance? Who do you think wrote it? When did they write it?
“Records of the Splendors of the Capital”
都城紀勝
Chapter on Eateries
食店
Most eateries of the capital are opened by people from the former capital, such as lamb-rice shops, which also sell wine.
都城食店，多是舊京師人開張，如羊飯店兼賣酒。
When ordering a sequence of dishes, timing is of the essence: if you want to feel full quickly, begin with heavier dishes and end with lighter ones; if you want to be full more slowly, begin with lighter dishes and end with heavier ones. Heavy dishes include Head Soup, Stone Marrow Rice, Big Bone Rice, Soaked Rice, Tender Lamb, and Zhejiang Rice.
凡點索食次，大要及時：如欲速飽，則前重後輕；如欲遲飽，則前輕後重。重者如頭羹、石髓飯、大骨飯、泡飯、軟羊 、浙米飯。
Southern-food shops…were originally established in the capital to accommodate southerners who were not accustomed to northern food. But now that they are in the south, the name is misleading!
南食店……蓋因京師開此店，以備南人不服北食者，今既在南，則其名誤矣!
An answer that merits a 9/10 or 10/10 will be able to infer that it was written in the Southern Song (1127–1279 CE) by someone who was educated, urban, and almost certainly living in Hangzhou, the Southern Song capital.
The key clues are all in the text itself. The reference to “the former capital” tells us that a displacement has occurred and that the author is writing from a new capital, not the original one. That detail narrows the range of possibilities. Unlike the Ming dynasty’s move of the capital from south to north. (A common wrong answer is the Ming, but the direction is reversed, and the Ming retained Nanjing as a second capital after moving north.) Most students will also recall that lamb was more likely to be consumed in the north, so its presence in the southern capital means people who migrated from the north would be eating it.
A strong answer will also note that the author’s tone suggests someone of the literati class with the leisure and literacy to document everyday urban commercial life, and that this kind of gazetteer flourished in the Southern Song precisely because educated Chinese felt an urgent need to record the texture of city life they feared was precarious. The best answers display some recognition that the author’s small joke about restaurant names at the end conceals the quiet melancholy of a dynasty living in the shadow of what it had lost. Students might also note the “heavy and light” ordering passage reflects sophisticated urban dining etiquette and consumer behavior, another mark of Hangzhou’s commercial vibrancy.
After the exams, I tend not to ask students how they did; I just ask if they learned something new. Could they apply their knowledge? That’s more important than the precise score.
