China Biographical Database (CBDB

Website of CBDB

Entry of a person in CBDB.

This database is a relational database containing information of over 360,000 historical figures from 7-19^th century China. As mentioned, I focus on Song China so I will be extracting information of that period from the database. This database is in MS Access format and is freely accessible to all users. There is also an online version with the same data in a simplified structure.

The structure of CBDB includes the following entities:

-          People

This obviously is the main entity in the database. This provide biographical data that I need for letter writers and recipients in my study.

-          Kinship and lineage

-          Non-kinship associations

These kinds of associations include the epistolary exchanges that I am focusing on. These are not always covered by the dataset of Song letters that I will discuss below, so some additional data can be found here.

-          Status

-          Modes of entry into government

-          Events

-          Administrative hierarchy

-          Physical places

-          Texts

These may sometimes contain information about the works of letter writers.