Texts, historicity and metaphors in early China: reading Tang Resides Near the Mound of Tang (Tang chuyu Tangqiu 湯處於湯丘) in the Tsinghua collection of Warring States bamboo manuscripts

Many pre-Qin texts offer compelling evidence of identifiable formulations of the language of persuasive discourse. These texts used various rhetorical devices to convey the (semi-)hidden or complex meanings of philosophical or political messages. This chapter focuses on the text Tang Resides Near the Mound of Tang (Tang chuyu Tangqiu 湯處於湯丘) in the Tsinghua collection of the Warring States (475–221 BCE) bamboo manuscripts as an example of the use of historicity and metaphors in pre-Qin writings. The recovered text uses historical personages of the legendary Shang King, Tang and, his minister to present political ideas with cooking and bodily metaphors. Through establishing the connection between culinary skills and statecraft, history and present, the discussion of the Tang chuyu Tangqiu manuscript reveals how authors of the early texts imagined and constructed a rhetorical discourse that presents a holistic approach to understanding the world, temporally and spatially ⸺ the human realm is seen as part of the cosmic order and, across time and space humans live by the same universal principle(s). This study will also include other early texts such as the Tang zai Chimen 湯在啻門 in the same Tsinghua collection.