Brenda, Simone, Nya, Marsai, Andrew

In Book One of the Years of Rice and Salt the “West” which is predominantly Christian is wiped out by plague removing Chrisitanity and European culture from having a lasting impact on world history. Book One examines a plague in "Christendom", the Golden Horde, Zheng He's explorations and imperial China. It also looks at the global development of Muslim, Chinese, and Hindu culture in a world without Western Christianity and is difficult to follow because of a lack of sophiscated knowledge of these cultures and the unfamilar names, mostly Chinese or Arabic names, given to particular regions. Hopefully our examination of key historical references in Book One (Awake to Emptiness) in The Years of Rice and Salt will help everyone to better understand Book One, and the novel as a whole. You can find links to individual historical references below.

Temur the Lame
Monkey
The Yongle Emperor
The Hongxi Emperor
Zheng He
Tripitika
Tianfei
Castration
Animal Labor
Islam
Geographical References
Chinese Festivals
Plague
Slavery in China
Reincarnation
Religion
Confucianism
Buddhism
Daoism
Golden Horde
Mongol Empire


Feel free to add comments to the pages under Rice and Salt Book One (Awake to Emptiness).Those not in this group should click on the add comments button to add the names of people, places, events and references you think the group doing research on Book III should add information on when they add pages. (Note: Those not in the group should add comments, those in the group pages).