Visualizing Data from an Early Medieval Chinese Anecdote Collection

Jack Chen
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Asian Languages and Cultures

This is an early pass at providing graphic representations of the early medieval Chinese anecdote collection, Shishuo xinyu (Recent Anecdotes and the Talk of the Age). This text is comprised of approximately one thousand anecdotes, divided into thirty-six behavioral categories, and encompassing some six hundred historical figures. I will provide visualizations for the geographic distribution of historical figures mentioned in the text, for the frequency of the figures as they occur throughout the anecdotes, and for the comparison of chapters within the anecdote collection. The purpose of this approach will be to identify latent structures within and across the inherent order given by the collection itself.


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