In contrast to the economic and cultural dominance by the south and the east coast over the past several centuries, influence in China in the early Middle Ages was centered in the north and featured a significantly multicultural society. This book endeavors to expose a number of long-hidden non-Sinitic characteristics and manifestations of heritage, some lasting to this very day. These "foreign"-origin elements were largely the legacy of the Tuoba. This not only added a strong pre-Islamic Iranian layer to the contemporary Sinitic culture but also commenced China's golden age under the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty, whose nominally "Chinese" ruling house is revealed by Chen to be the biological and cultural heir of the Tuoba.