For our latest Emerging Voices feature, we are thrilled to hear from Fang Wu at the University of Chicago about her research on horses in early China!
Fang Wu is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation explores the roles of horses during the Qin and Han periods using a range of sources, including administrative records, medical manuscripts, funerary art, literary texts, and archaeological evidence. She examines how horses functioned in daily life and what they meant to people in early China, challenging the idea that animals were merely peripheral to human-centred history. Her research seeks to reframe animals not just as symbols or tools, but as active participants in shaping historical experience. Her broader interests include animal studies, palaeography, and manuscript culture.
Hi Fang! To start, what first inspired you to include animals in your research?
I first became interested in animals while working on my master’s thesis, which focused on depictions of apes in unearthed manuscripts from early China. Around the same time, I came across a brief mention of Han Emperor Wen’s (r. 180–157 BCE) imperial hunting park, and that passing detail stayed with me. I began to wonder: what kinds of animals filled the landscape of early Chinese life, and what roles did they play beyond the obvious ones of labour or sacrifice? That question eventually drew me into the world of early medical manuscripts, where I was surprised to find detailed veterinary prescriptions for horses. These texts portrayed animals not as passive background figures, but as beings who required care, attention, and even ritual protection. It made me reflect on the many ways animals shaped human experience—economically, emotionally, and spiritually. That, in turn, challenged my assumptions about human-centred history. I began to ask: what would Chinese history look like if we took animals seriously as historical agents?
Your Ph.D. focuses on horses in the daily life of early China. Could you summarise your thesis topic for us?
My dissertation looks at the everyday lives of horses during the Qin and Han periods (221 BCE–220 CE). Instead of treating horses simply as tools of war or symbols of elite power, I explore how they were deeply woven into the social, administrative, medical, and spiritual fabric of early China. I draw on different kinds of sources, such as administrative documents, veterinary manuscripts, tomb art, and archaeological findings, to show how horses were not only vital to imperial logistics but also cared for through elaborate systems of care, institutional oversight, and ritual practice. In literature and religious practice, they were often imagined as mediators between worlds: life and death, human and divine. By following the lives of horses, I hope to offer new ways of thinking about power, labour, and human-animal relationships in early imperial history.
Is there anything surprising you’ve come across in your research so far?
One of the most striking discoveries in my research has been how vividly horses were imagined in early Chinese narratives and funerary art. Among the most compelling figures is a horse-headed deity, a hybrid being depicted in certain portrait stones. Neither fully human nor entirely animal, this liminal figure appears to derive its spiritual potency precisely from its ambiguous status. In some representations, the horse assumes greater authority than the human, positioned at the threshold between gods, people, and animals. This imagery has led me to ask: how did early Chinese texts and visual cultures use animals, particularly hybrid figures such as the horse-headed human, to explore or negotiate the boundaries between the human and the divine? And what might these boundary-crossing figures reveal about early conceptions of the sacred, the self, and the cosmological place of non-human beings?
Is there a resource or theory you’ve found particularly helpful while developing your research?
Wendy Doniger’s Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares (2021) has been incredibly inspiring, especially in how she weaves together myth, ritual, and cultural memory over time.1 Her work opened up new ways for me to think about animals as powerful figures in dreams, metaphors, and cosmologies. I also admire how her writing is both playful and rigorous, which has encouraged me to be more creative in how I write about animals myself. Recently, I’ve also been engaging with theories of agency, mediation, and embodiment, particularly in religious studies and visual culture. These approaches have helped me think about how animals act as mediators between different realms, not only in symbolic terms but also through the physical presence of their bodies and the ways they are represented.
How can we find out more about your research?
Right now, I’m organising a panel for the 2026 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference centred on horses in early China. I’ll also be presenting at a conference in Hungary on “Event and Mediation,” where my paper, “From Mount to Mourning: The Religious Symbolism of Horses in Early China,” explores how horses functioned as ritual and spiritual mediators in Han funerary art and myth. At the 2025 annual meeting of the History of Science Society, my paper, “Crafting Equine Bodies: Healing Practices in Early Chinese Medical Manuscripts,” examines how veterinary treatments reflect broader concerns about governance, care, and the management of animal labour. Each of these papers grows out of ideas from my dissertation, so it’s been exciting to hear feedback from other scholars and engage in conversations across different fields!
Finally, if you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?
I think I’d like to be a Bichon Frise. They’re cheerful, loyal, and full of personality, and they always seem to bring joy and comfort to the people around them. There’s something heartwarming about the way they form close emotional bonds with humans. In a way, I feel like dogs today play a role similar to what horses did in ancient times. Back then, horses were essential companions in work, travel, and ritual. Today, dogs offer emotional support and a sense of connection, and they’ve become a meaningful part of many people’s everyday lives. As Yi-Fu Tuan writes in Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (1984), the relationship between humans and pets is shaped by a complex mix of power, care, and affection.2 I love how dogs, like the Bichon Frise, embody that balance. They remind us that the human-animal bond has always been about more than function. It is really about love, trust, and shared presence. Sometimes I ask myself, am I also imagining and shaping the idea of a pet based on my own emotional needs?