Best of
China

1993

City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City


Ian Lambot - 1993
    With over 320 photographs, 32 extended interviews, and essays on the City's history and character, this reprint is not only an informative glimpse of a now vanished landmark but a sensitive and penetrating portrait of a unique community.

The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China


Ralph D. Sawyer - 1993
    It presents us with an Eastern tradition of strategic thought that emphasizes outwitting one’s opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of force—an approach very different from that stressed in the West, where the advantages of brute strength have overshadowed more subtle methods.Safeguarded for centuries by the ruling elites of imperial China, even in modern times these writings have been known only to a handful of Western specialists. In this volume are seven separate essays, written between 500 b.c. and a.d. 700, that preserve the essential tenets of strategy distilled from the experience of the most brilliant warriors of ancient China.Only one of these seven essays, Sun Tzu’s famous Art of War, has been readily available in the West. Thanks to this faithful translation of the complete Seven Military Classics, the insights of these ancient Chinese texts are now accessible in their entirety.It’s not uncommon to see a “salaryman” on a crowded Tokyo subway studying one of the many popular Japanese editions of these essays. But why do so many businesspeople in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan study a 2,000-year-old military text? Because it embodies the strategic tradition of outwitting an opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of effort. These principles have been proven both on the battlefield and in the marketplace. Now they are available in the West for the first time in their entirety.The lessons found in this book were exploited by such pivotal Asian war leaders as Japan’s Yamamoto, China’s Mao Tse-tung, and Vietnam’s Giap to inflict terrible defeats on their enemies. And in more recent times, when Japan and others have decided to win their laurels on the field of international economic competition, these principles have been a key to the achievements of many Asian corporations. Executives in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan regularly study the Seven Military Classics. Unfortunately, even those far-sighted Western business leaders who have read Sun Tzu have glimpsed only a fraction of the knowledge their best Asian competitors use to plan corporate strategy—until now.Those who appreciate Chinese literature and philosophy will also discover much that is new in these pages. Here is a substantial but previously inaccessible body of thought that stands in contrast to Confucianism, which deprecated the military sphere in favor of self-cultivation and the ethical life.The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China remedies a serious gap in Western knowledge of Asian thought. This accurate translation is based on the best available classical Chinese manuscripts, some only recently discovered by archaeologists. It is a uniquely important contribution to the world’s military literature and is essential reading for anyone interested in China’s rich cultural heritage or in the timeless principles of successful strategy.

A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy


Steven W. Mosher - 1993
    A searing and candid look at a place where the state brutally intrudes into the most intimate parts of a woman's life.--Kirkus Reviews.

A Single Tear: A Family's Persecution, Love, and Endurance in Communist China


Ningkun Wu - 1993
    Two years later, he wa s arrested as an ultra-rightest. This illuminating narrative tells Wu's story over the next 30 years--the harrowing tale of a "class enemy" and a remarkable testament to a family's love and perseverance.

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits


Bill Porter - 1993
    Lessons of spiritual wisdom emerge from his interviews with more than twenty male and female hermits.

The Man Who Stayed Behind


Sidney Rittenberg - 1993
    military in the 1940s. A student activist and labor organizer who was fluent in Chinese, Rittenberg became caught up in the turbulence that engulfed China and remained there until the late 1970s. Even with access to China’s highest leaders as an American communist, however, he was twice imprisoned for a total of sixteen years. Both a memoir and a documentary history of the Chinese revolution from 1949 through the Cultural Revolution, The Man Who Stayed Behind provides a human perspective on China’s efforts to build a new society. Critical of both his own mistakes and those of the Communist leadership, Rittenberg nevertheless gives an even-handed account of a country that is now free of internal war for the first time in a hundred years.

The Selected Poems


Tao Yuanming - 1993
    THE SELECTED POEMS OF TAO CHIN brings into English some of the most important poetry in all of Chinese literature. As David Hinton writes in his introduction, Tao Chien "stands at the head of the great Chinese tradition like a revered grandfather: profoundly wise, self-possessed, quiet, comforting." Tao was the first writer to make a poetry of his natural voice and immediate experience, thereby creating the personal lyricism which distinguishes ancient Chinese poetry and makes it seem so contemporary. While maintaining a scholar's attention to the complexities of the original, Hinton here recreates Tao Chien as a compelling poetic voice in English.

Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life


Liyi He - 1993
    In 1979, his wife sold her fattest pig to buy him a shortwave radio. He spent every spare moment listening to the BBC and VOA in order to improve the English he had learned at college between 1950 and 1953. For "further practice," he decided to write down his life story in English. Humorous and unfiltered by translation, his autobiography is direct and personal, full of richly descriptive images and phrases from his native Bai language.At the time of He Liyi's graduation, English was being vilified as the language of the imperialists, so the job he was assigned had nothing to do with his education. In 1958, he was labeled a rightist and sent to a "reeducation-through-labor farm." Spirited away by truck on the eve of his marriage, Mr. He spent years in the labor camp, where he schemed to garner favor from the authorities, who nevertheless shamed him publicly and told him that all his problems "belong to contradictions between the people and the enemy." After his release in 1962, the talented Mr. He had no choice but to return to his native village as a peasant. His stratagems for survival, which included stealing "nightsoil" from public toilets and extracting peach-pit oil from thousands of peaches, personify the peasant's universal struggle to endure those difficult years.He Liyi's autobiography recounts nearly all the major events of China's recent history, including the Japanese occupation, the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the experience of labor camps, changes brought about by China's dramatic re-opening to the world after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, and the recent social and economic changes occurring in the post-Deng China. No other book so poignantly reveals the travails of the common person and village life under china's tempestuous Communist government, which He Liyi ironically refers to as "Mr. China." Yet he describes his saga of poverty and hardship with humor and a surprising lack of bitterness. And rarely has there been such an intimate, frank view of how a Chinese man thinks and feels about personal relationships, revealed in dialogue and letters to his two wives.He Liyi's autobiography stands as perhaps the most readable and authentic account available in English of life in rural China.

The Problem of China


Bertrand Russell - 1993
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Historian of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale


Judith T. Zeitlin - 1993
    This is the first book in English on the seventeenth-century Chinese masterpiece Liaozhai's Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred fantastic tales and anecdotes written in Classical Chinese.

The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng


Harrison E. Salisbury - 1993
    China's dragons, guardians of the throne, are unlike those of the West. They are benign and protective but can turn like terrible emperors on the people. If they do so, it is the fault of the people, not the dragons. They breathe fire and thrash their tail only if betrayed, a convenient concept for an emperor.

Endless River


Li Bai - 1993
    For over 20 years they carried on a conversation in poetry, and this book records 90 poems, 45 by each poet, in which they discuss many subjects, including their friendship.

Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor


Elizabeth J. Perry - 1993
    It draws on abundant sources and studies which have appeared in the People's Republic of China since the early 1980s and which have not been systematically used in Western historiography. China has undergone a series of fundamental political transformations: from the 1911 Revolution that toppled the imperial system to the victory of the communists, all of which were greatly affected by labor unrest. This work places the politics of Chinese workers in comparative perspective and a remarkably comprehensive and nuanced picture of Chinese labor emerges from it, based on a wealth of primary materials. It joins the concerns of 'new labor history' for workers' culture and shopfloor conditions with a more conventional focus on strikes, unions, and political parties. As a result, the author is able to explore the linkage between social protest and state formation.

Chinoiserie


Dawn Jacobson - 1993
    This beautifully illustrated book shows the development of the style from its very beginnings, demonstrating its continuous influence in all of the decorative arts. With sumptuous photography showing all aspects of Chinoiserie, the book clarifies the ways in which the exotic East was incorporated into Western taste, in a way that still is relevant to all those involved in interior decoration today.

A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night: An Autobiography in Art


Song Nan Zhang - 1993
    The tiger returned twice before disappearing into the bamboo forest forever. For a child to see a tiger meant luck, but Song Nan Zhang wasn’t sure if living in China was lucky or not. Life was so difficult that sometimes he felt like the lost tiger itself, hoping for a home only to be forced back into the dark.In this, his autobiography, Song Nan Zhang paints the dispersal of his family, his development as an artist, the humor that lightened some of the more difficult times, and finally, his journey to Canada.

A Traveller's Companion to Central Asia


Kathleen Hopkirk - 1993
    From Genghis Khan to Mao, it is an area that has witnessed some of the most extraordinary events in history. This guide, arranged alphabetically for the user's convenience, is a concise handbook which also offers an epic account of this region.

A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai


Tess Johnston - 1993
    

Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince


William Theodore de Bary - 1993
    Since the time of Confucius and Mencius, no other work in the long Confucian tradition has stood out so clearly as a major critique of Chinese dynastic institutions.

The Storm Clouds Clear Over China: The Memoir of Ch'en Li-Fu, 1900-93


Ch'en Li-Fu - 1993
    Chen served as the private secretary and close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, president of the Republic of China, holding important official posts during the momentous years from 1926 to 1950. His recollection encompasses the titanic struggle between the Kuomintang (the Chinese National party) and the Chinese Communist party. To this day, no high-ranking member from either party has published memoirs of the period; and Chen thus provides invaluable portrayals of some of the personalities who shaped the destiny of modern China. Chen's unique account provides details about the April 1927 purge of the Communists from the Kuomintang. He presents new information about Chiang Kai-shek's arrest of Kuomintang veteran Hu Han-min in March 1931, an act which fatally split the Kuomintang and set the stage for a decline in the Kuomintang's prestige and authority and its loss of popular support. Chen also sheds new light on Wang Ching-wei's flight to Hanoi in 1938 and Li Tsung-jen and his Kwangsi clique's opposition to Chiang during the civil war from 1945 to 1949. Chen, who served Chiang Kai-shek loyally and capably, still believes that Chiang was the most suitable person to lead China in those stormy decades. With candor and clarity he describes the personality clashes, the internal power struggles, economic reforms, and difficulties in handling foreign affairs that ultimately led to the defeat of the Kuomintang and the ignominious retreat of the Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949. After twenty years' absence from activepolitical life, Chen returned to Taiwan from the United States in 1970, at Chiang's invitation. In addition to devoting himself to the arts, traditional Chinese medicine and Confucian learning, Chen continued his close relationship with the Kuomintang leadership. He provides add

Resistance, Chaos, and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts, and Tiananmen


Robert P. Weller - 1993
    Its three cases - the Taiping Rebellion in the 1840s and 1850s, ghost worship in modern Taiwan and the aftermath of the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square - contribute to ongoing debates among historians, social scientists and literary theorists on the relationship between culture and resistance. Resistance, Chaos and Control in China compares active resistance movements with everyday actions that imply unspoken resistance. It shows how certain areas of life defuse attempts at cultural domination by dissolving official interpretations. At the same time, these cultural "free spaces" nurture ambiguous and multiple alternatives of their own, including the possibility of erupting into open political resistance. The three cases demonstrate how attempts to push such ambiguous meaning into a single, explicit interpretation as resistance succeed or fail. The material on the Taiping Rebellion offers new views of the role of spirit possession in the movement, and the section on surging ghost worship in Taiwan addresses the reproportioning of religion as the island's economy and political structure have been transformed in the last two decades. The Tiananmen chapters examine the nature of cultural control and resistance in China and other socialist societies.

Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China


Robert P. Hymes - 1993
    Connections between intellectual change and sociopolitical change are a consistent focus; attitudes toward history and problems of authority are a recurrent concern. The authors suggest new kinds of continuity between the disparate intellectual worlds of Northern and Southern Sung China. Their findings have important implications for our understanding of the neo-Confucian movement in Sung history and of the Sung in the history of Chinese ideas about politics and social action.

Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Quian


Sima Quian - 1993
    

Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers` Jaws


Lynn A. Struve - 1993
    Lynn A. Struve has translated, introduced, and annotated absorbing testimonies from a wide range of individuals in different social stations—Chinese and Europeans, missionaries and viceroys, artists and merchants, Ming loyalists and Qing collaborators, maidservants and eunuchs—all telling stories of hardship and challenge in the midst of cataclysmic change."It is a book that brings history graphically to life."—Keith Pratt, Asian Affairs"A fascinating view of the dynamics of dynastic change in China."—Jonathan Porter, History"The book combines skillful translation of a rich variety of primary sources with authoritative commentary and meticulously researched annotation."—Helen Dunstan, Historian"One of the most engaging works of scholarship to appear in the field for a long time. . . . An extraordinarily good book destined to be read and enjoyed by a very wide audience beyond the professional one."—Craig Clunas, Bulletin of SOAS"Struve [is] the most knowledgeable American scholar of the history of the ‘Southern Ming.’ . . . This fascinating volume . . . can be readily used in any college course on late imperial Chinese history for wonderful examples of the personal experiences of the Chinese people living through the fall of the Ming dynasty to their Manchu conquerors."—Benjamin A. Elman, China Review International"The scholarship behind this work is impeccable. . . . The translations are an important contribution to the field."—Jerry Dennerline, International History Review"Throughout the volume, Struve’s translations capture the different voices of the cataclysm. Students of Chinese history will find a wealth of information here."—Choice

Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China


Suzanne Cahill - 1993
    Drawing on medieval Chinese poetry, fiction, and religious scriptures, this book illuminates the greatest goddess of Taoism and her place in Chinese society.

The Rise of China: How Economic Reform is Creating a New Superpower


William H. Overholt - 1993
    In 1992 it grew 12. 8 percent, rising to 13.4 percent in 1993. Cumulatively, this is the greatest sustained growth in human history. Even if it slows substantially it is likely to surpass the economy of the United States early in the twenty-first century.Overholt, who holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, is a managing director of Bankers Trust Company in Hong Kong and the author of several books. Based in Hong Kong since 1985, he has traveled widely in China and has served as political adviser to several of Asia's major political figures. This book is his account of China's remarkable growth, told authoritatively and in unique detail by a close and astute observer.

Sky Burial: An Eyewitness Account of China's Brutal Crackdown in Tibet


Blake Kerr - 1993
    doctor of the recent turmoil in Tibet.

Warriors Who Ride the Wind: Flying Tigers-- Fourteenth Air Force = Fei Hu Feng Yun


William F.X. Band - 1993
    

Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual


Tu Weiming - 1993
    The Confucian vision, rooted in the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese civilizations, has been sustained through more than two millennia of constant social change and holds special meaning for both industrial and socialist East Asia today. Indeed, as a living force defining our humanity and exploring our human potential for authentic self-realization, it addresses evolving concerns of East Asian civilizations with profound implications for the post-modernized world.This book, by a leading scholar and thinker of the New Confucian Humanism, offers a panoramic view of the core values of the Confucian intellectual from historical and comparative cultural perspectives. Grounded in sound sinological scholarship, it brilliantly interprets the Confucian project: the formation of a moral community and the embodiment of the Mandate of Heaven in ordinary human existence through authentic self-realization. In the words of the eminent Princeton sinologist, Fritz Mote, through Tu Wei-ming's thought-provoking ideas, "we are shown what has constituted the life-blood of Confucianism throughout its history, and are led to understand how it still lives. We are made to see where it resides in the world today, especially within the consciousness of modern East Asians (whether or not so identified by them) and increasingly, in the awareness of philosophers and historians of thought everywhere."Like Professor Tu's earlier book, Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation, this book will stir modern minds and evoke powerful responses from scholars in ethics, religion, history, and philosophy as well as those in East Asian studies.

British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire


Nigel Leask - 1993
    There has been a tendency, however, to confine such study to the European scene. In this book, Nigel Leask sets out to study the work of Byron, Shelley and De Quincey (together with a number of other major and minor Romantic writers, including Robert Southey and Tom Moore) in relation to Britain's imperial designs on the 'Orient'. Combining historical and theoretical approaches with detailed analyses of specific works, it examines the anxieties and instabilities of Romantic representations of the Ottoman Empire, India, China and the Far East. It argues that these anxieties were not marginal but central to the major concerns of British Romantic writers. The book is illustrated with a number of engravings from the period, giving a visual dimension to the discussion of Romantic representations of the East.