Best of
China

1983

From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet


Vikram Seth - 1983
    After two years as a postgraduate student at Nanjing University in China, Vikram Seth hitch-hiked back to his home in New Delhi, via Tibet.  From Heaven Lake is the story of his remarkable journey and his encounters with nomadic Muslims, Chinese officials, Buddhists and others.

The Crimson Pagoda


Christopher Nicole - 1983
     She is desperately excited to explore not only the foreign land with all its alien culture but also the role of a wife and all the pleasures that come with it… In no time at all Constance is shocked on both accounts. China stuns her with its barbaric and improper behaviour which, almost against her will, begins to tease her imagination. At the same time, Mr Henry Baird, despairing of his sinful desires, proves unable to indulge Constance’s wishes. The marriage, failing from the beginning, spirals further and further out of control as Constance, aided by her only ally Kate, inadvertently becomes a famous ‘Devil Woman’ throughout the region and faces an audience with the Empress herself. As her new life unfolds, Constance finds herself tortured by desire, teetering on the edge of love and caught up in a dangerous whirlwind of international politics. She ricochets between the Chinese extremes of complete intimacy and deadly violence as they head slowly into war. What does ‘The Crimson Pagoda’ promise? ‘The Crimson Pagoda’ is a gripping and engaging historical romance by a master of the genre. Praise for Christopher Nicole: ‘Well-researched…Evocative descriptions of scenery and edifices, and exact period dialogue’ – Historical Novels Society Christopher Nicole was born and brought up in British Guyana and the West Indies. His output of books has been prolific and many of his novels are historical with a Caribbean background.

Entry Into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-Yen Buddhism


Thomas Cleary - 1983
    Cleary presents a survey of the unique Buddhist scripture on which the Hua-yen teaching is based and a brief history of its introduction into China. He also presents a succinct analysis of the essential metaphysics of Hua-yen Buddhism as it developed during China's golden age and full translations of four basic texts by seminal thinkers of the school.

Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese


Steven W. Mosher - 1983
    Mosher, lived and worked in rural China in late 1979 and early 1980.  His shocking revelations about conditions there have earned him the condemnation of the Beijing (Peking) government, which denounces him as a "foreign spy."

Adventures Of The Magic Monkey Along The Silk Roads


Evelyn Nagai-Berthrong - 1983
    

China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912


Richard J. Smith - 1983
    A concluding chapter systematically explores the legacy of traditional Chinese culture to the twentieth century.

P'u Ming's OXHERDING PICTURES & VERSES


Red Pine - 1983
    The background of P'u Ming is unknown according to Red Pine's introduction. English and Chinese text opposite illustrations throughout. Unpaginated.

A History of Chinese Philosophy, Volume 1: The Period of the Philosophers


Feng Youlan - 1983
    In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy" (New York Times Book Review). Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete work on the subject in any language.Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century.

Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty


John W. Dardess - 1983
    

Son of the Revolution


Liang Heng - 1983
    An autobiography of a young Chinese man whose childhood and adolescence were spent in Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution.

China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries


Morris Rossabi - 1983
    to the nineteenth century. China ruled out equality with any nation: foreign rulers and their envoys were treated as subordinates or inferiors, required to send periodic tribute embassies to the Chinese emperor. The Chinese court was otherwise uninterested in foreign lands. Its principal interests were to maintain peace with what it perceived to be barbarian neighbors and to coax or coerce them into admitting China's superiority and accepting the Chinese emperor as the Son of Heaven. But Chinese foreign policy was not monolithic. Court officials in traditional times were much more realistic and pragmatic than is commonly assumed. They did not scorn foreign trade, nor were ignorant of foreign lands. Challenging the accepted view of Chinese foreign relations, the authors of China among Equals contribute to a clearer assessment of Chinese foreign relations and policy. From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, China did not dogmatically enforce its own world order. Chinese were eager for foreign trade and knowledgeable about their neighbors. The Sung (960-1279), the principal dynasty during that era, was flexible in its dealings with foreigners. Its officials recognized the military and political weakness of the dynasty, and in general they adopted a realistic and pragmatic foreign policy. They were compelled to accept foreign states as equals, and the relations between China and other states were defined by diplomatic parity.

Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914


Michael H. Hunt - 1983
    

Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 5: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Physiological Alchemy


Joseph Needham - 1983
    The volume as a whole covers the subjects of alchemy, early chemistry, and chemical technology (which includes military invention, especially gunpowder and rockets; paper and printing; textiles; mining and metallurgy; the salt industry; and ceramics).