Legends of the Building of Old Peking draws together themes from across various areas of Hok-lam Chan's prolific body of work. Here he examines a corpus of stories of Peking lore (distinguished from modern Beijing) gathered by folklorists and scholars in the twentieth century to trace their historical, religious, and fictional roots. Chan begins with a thoroughgoing summary of astrological, geomantic, and classical Chinese theories of urban planning that shaped the construction of Peking. The four main chapters are divided into two parts: the design of the city to resemble the divine warrior Nezha (or Nazha), and Mongol/Chinese legends of siting the city and its perimeters by bowshot. Most of Chan's study focuses on three stages in Peking's myth making. First is the Mongol Yuan, when Dadu was built under the direction of Liu Binzhong (1216–74), the Buddhist/Daoist advisor to Qubilai Qaghan. By the fourteenth century, supernatural powers were attributed...

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