A whole lot of new information
A few days ago I was shopping for glutinous rice and it occurred to me that I didn't know whether I should get polished (white) glutinous rice or brown/black/purple glutinous rice. So I asked http://reddit.com/r/askhistorians . I got an answer! It's white rice. But the historian who answered me cited two works: Bray, Francesca. Science and Civilisation in China Volume 6, Part 2: Agriculture . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. 381-86. Shi, Sheng-han. A Preliminary Survey of the Book Ch’i Min Yao Shu: An Agricultural Encyclopedia of the 6th Century. Peking: Science, 1974. 53-54 (an annotated English-language translation of Qimin Yao Shu ). The first book is one I knew existed but costs something like $300 on Amazon . So its contents are a mystery. But the second one is the same book I've been working on translating... and there's apparently an English translation already floating around. In my defense, I didn't find it because that transl