I've got the perfect book. "Life Along the Silk Road" by Susan Whitfield. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164257.Life_along_the_Silk_Road Each chapter recounts the life of one person during the Tang dynasty. It's a historically accurate, fictionalized narrative of vignettes of different types of people during the time period.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-who-shaped-China-Stories/dp/9881235014/
I enjoyed this. It only briefly touches on each period though.
Likely the best book in the vicinity of this topic is Andrew Chittick's (unfortunately quite expensive) The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History, which treats the Southern Dynasties (the Eastern Jin dynasty through the Chen dynasty) as a relatively consistent state with fluctuations in leadership*.* While essentially a political history, there is a great deal of attention paid in the book to economic affairs. I believe Chapter 7, which addresses the economy and life in the capital, could be helpful.
Unfortunately I don't, however this is a book I've skimmed in the past maybe they'll have some more info about any historical figures.
Hi! Read this amazing historical fiction novel. I fell in love with Genghis khan's personal live!
The Cruel Age: Genghis Khan's birth and rise: The thorny path of the greatest medieval commander
The best history text on Chinese history!
These two are very beautiful tho.
Looks similar to this product which is a complete set:
I've never heard that before and it is from this book which hardly seems factual but who knows. I know martial exercises for monks began with Shaolin and that was a couple hundred years later. All that said, there are certainly Buddhist monk exercises from China but I am unsure about this reference.
For the Japanese historical perspective on Chinese characters (they imported them around the year 400-500 CE), Christopher Seeley is probably the world's leading expert - I have begun reading his essay A History of Writing in Japan, and its suitably thorough.
For the Chinese perspective, a good summary of the whole history of the characters (from seal script onwards) is given in the opening pages of The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji, again written partly by Christopher Seeley. It's around 7 pages long, if I recall, so it may be insufficient for your needs.
Do tell me if you find just the book you need in the end.
I immediately thought of some bits from Zhuangzi, but didn't feel confident to explain my take and googled it, finding that there's a whole book (by a Japanese author in Japanese) titled Zhuangzi - existentialism of ancient China. So although I'm not giving you what you want, Zhuangzi's inner chapters are short and interesting enough that you should read them with existentialism in mind and see if you think it's relevant.