Abstract: This thesis examines the northern society’s cognition towards the south and the impact of this cognition on the construction of its own culture in the formation of Jiangnan (regions south of the Yangtze River) culture in the Six Dynasties. In the northern society, there were differences in Jiangnan cognition between Xianbei ethnic noblemen and Han scholar-bureaucrats, namely, the different modes of understanding between heterogeneous cultures, and the different understandings of the roles of various kinds of local knowledge in a homogeneous culture. The consensus of the Hu and Han cultures in the late Northern Wei Dynasty was based on the cultural context created by Emperor Xiaowen, in which “Chinese style” of Jiangnan was set up as the spiritual criterion in the northern society. As the result of the cultural assimilation into Jiangnan, Chinese awareness in the northern society became apparent. However, this kind of Chinese awareness was to create a new culture beyond the south, which laid a conceptual foundation for the coming of the flourishing Sui-Tang age.

Key words: Jiangnan cognition, Chinese identity, the Northern Wei Dynasty