Dagmar Schäfer is Director of Department III, 'Artefacts, Action and Knowledge', of the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin. She has published widely on materiality, the processes and structures that lead to varying knowledge systems, and the changing role of artefacts - texts, objects and spaces - in the creation, diffusion and use of scientific and technological knowledge. Martina Siebert works as area specialist for China at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and as an independent scholar. She has written on the role of nature studies in the Chinese world of learning, the classification of animals and the construction of technological pasts. Roel Sterckx is Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History, Science, and Civilization at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare College. He is the author of Food, Sacrifice and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge, 2011) and other studies on the cultural history of pre-imperial and early imperial China.

'This thoughtfully edited collection offers rich and varied work by an interdisciplinary community of scholars thinking with and about animals over the longue durée of Chinese history. The volume demonstrates the value of ranging broadly across region, time period, and source, and readers will find exciting new work on animals in agronomy, ritual practices, consumption of all sorts, literature, ethics, material culture, and much more.' Carla Nappi, University of British Columbia

• 1. Shang sacrificial animals material documents and images Adam C. Schwartz; 2. Animal to edible the ritualization of animals in early China Roel Sterckx; 3. Noble creatures filial and righteous animals in early medieval Confucian thought Keith N. Knapp; 4. Walking by itself the singular history of the Chinese cat Timothy H. Barrett and Mark Strange; 5. Bees in China a brief cultural history David Pattinson; 6. Where did the animals go? Presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises Francesca Bray; 7. Animals as text producing and consuming 'text-animals' Martina Siebert; 8. Great plans song dynastic (960–1279) institutions for human and veterinary healthcare Han Yi and Dagmar Schäfer; 9. Animals in nineteenth-century eschatological discourse Vincent Goossaert; 10. Reconsidering the boundaries multicultural and multilingual perspectives on the care and management of the emperors' horses in the Qing Sare Aricanli; 11. Animals as wonders writing commentaries on monthly ordinances in Qing China Zheng Xinxian; 12. Reforming the humble pig pigs, pork and contemporary China Mindi Schneider.