Communication and Identity: the Literati World in Ouyang Xiu's Letters

There were more than 700 epistles in Ouyang Xiu's corpus. By reading these materials, it can make us observe the literati life of North Song dynasty in the middle of the 11th century more closely. The urban business was developed in the Song dynasty, which facilitated the communication of the scholars. They liked to mail such things as wine, tea, water, food and medicine, among them, the scholar's four jewels embodied their unique elegant taste. The gift enclosed the letter was a good media for literati emotion communication, through which they could achieve value and emotion recognition, then formed a relatively stable group of elite scholars in Ouyang Xiu's era.