Cranes at Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Courts

This article provides a brief cultural history of the crane in ancient and early medieval China. Although the crane is an agonistic species, there is literary evidence of the domestication of the crane in China as early as the seventh century BCE. The main sites of crane domestication in China were courts. Cranes have a natural ability to dance, and ancient Chinese texts contain a number of accounts of cranes dancing to music to entertain the ruler and members of his court. By the early medieval period, poets began to write poems about cranes. The most detailed piece is Bao Zhao’s “Fu on the Dancing Cranes,” an annotated translation of which is included in this article.