A true believer--and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University--her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock & roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.Red China Blues is Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism (which crumbled as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism); her dramatic firsthand account of the devastating Tiananmen Square uprising; and her engaging portrait of the individuals and events she covered as a correspondent in China during the tumultuous era of capitalist reform under Deng Xiaoping. In a frank, captivating, deeply personal narrative she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong reveals long-hidden dimensions of the world's most populous nation.In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, she reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland.

    In 1986, when he placed ads in Chinese newspapers calling for people's experiences, he received over 4000 responses. Those he has selected are disturbing, utterly compelling, seamlessly told and, together, constitute a many-layered and intimate picture. The interviews, which read like monologues, are prefaced by the person's age and occupation in 1966. One man, who was a 16-year-old student at the time, enjoyed destroying churches with the Red Guard, but when a classmate and an elderly man were beaten, he became a "non-participant." "I found that if you want to be a non-participant, the best thing to do is go fishing." A middle-aged housewife was not so lucky. When her husband was falsely charged with counterrevolutionary activity, they were both sentenced to No. 63, a prison camp where inmates were routinely tortured to death. She describes not just the cruelties she miraculously survived but the incidentals like the opera record, The Red Lantern, that the guards played to mask screams. Another woman, a gifted young dancer in 1966, was brainwashed into believing that her father was a "rightist." He died before she recognized the lie, and she now lives with terrible guilt. Feng includes four appendices: a chronology; key figures; an interview with the author; and several dozen short interviews to sample the widely varying attitudes towards the Cultural Revolution of those born after 1976. "What I fear most," says Feng, "is that later generations will adopt a sensationalist attitude towards the suffering of an earlier one." (From Publishers Weekly)

    Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong.Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. With China's reclamation of Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever. As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable book...strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."

    Buck was one of the most renowned, interesting, and controversial figures ever to influence American and Chinese cultural and literary history--and yet she remains one of the least studied, honored, or remembered. In this richly illustrated and meticulously crafted narrative, Conn recounts Buck's life in absorbing detail, tracing the parallel course of American and Chinese history. This cultural biography thus offers a dual portrait: of Buck, a figure greater than history cares to remember, and of the era she helped to shape.

    751--814) developed an experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep introspection. This is truly major work-- work that may be the most radical in the Chinese tradition. And though written more than a thousand years ago, it is remarkably fresh and contemporary. But, in spite of Meng's significance, this is the first volume of his poetry to appear in English.Until the age of forty, Meng Chiao lived as a poet-recluse associated with Ch'an (Zen) poet-monks in south China. He then embarked on a rather unsuccessful career as a government official. Throughout this time, his poetry was decidedly mediocre, conventional verse inevitably undone by his penchant for the strange and surprising. After his retirement, Meng developed the innovative poetry translated in this book. His late work is singular not only for its bleak introspection and avant-garde methods, but also for its dimensions: in a tradition typified by the short lyric poem, this work is made up entirely of large poetic sequences.

    to the end of the imperial system in 1911.This collection of over 600 pieces, translated with great clarity and sense of the original, presents the tradition in historical and aesthetic context. Moving roughly chronologically through the tradition, An Anthology of Chinese Literature gathers texts in a variety of genres songs, letters, anecdotes, poetry, political oratory, plays, traditional literary theory, and more to show how the essential texts build on and echo each other. Coupled with highly readable commentary, this innovative structure uniquely highlights the interplay among Chinese literature, culture, and history.

    It brings together nearly 300 hundred stunning photographs, most of them never before published outside China, and an authoritative and accessible text by Jonathan Spence and Annping Chin. Here are the last rulers of the waning empire and the revolutionaries who were to overthrow them; the warlords and capitalists who exploited the new order; the chaos of civil war and the brutality of the Japanese invasion and occupation; the Long March and the great famine; the triumph of the Red Army and the terrible cruelty and suffering of the Cultural Revolution; the depredations and downfalls of the Gang of Four; and the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. Alongside these often shocking scenes are glorious landscapes and teeming cities, intimate portraits of Chinese men and women, townspeople and peasants, artists, writers, film stars and the country's leaders, as they have rarely been seen in the West. THE CHINESE CENTURY's spectacular array of photographs bring to life, as never before, the hidden face of China.

    A member of the famed Magnum photo agency, Riboud was permitted to return to China at regular intervals over the next four decades, observing and recording the enormous changes that have taken place. French journalist Jean Daniel provides a thoughtful introduction and Riboud himself comments on each photograph, explaining the time, the place, and the circumstance. This is a book that will intrigue and disturb - through its insights into the soul of the Chinese people, and through its picture of a nation transforming itself with such wrenching speed.

    The full story in Chinese and instructions for making traditional Chinese paper-cuts are also included.

    It challenges received wisdom about Chinese popular religion, which, until now, presented all Chinese deities as mere functionaries and bureaucrats. The essays in this volume eloquently document the existence of other metaphors that allowed Chinese gods to challenge the traditional power structures and traditional mores of Chinese society. The authors draw on a variety of disciplines and methodologies to throw light on various aspects of the Chinese supernatural. The gallery of gods and goddesses surveyed demonstrates that these deities did not reflect China's socio-political order but rather expressed and negotiated tensions within it. In addition to reflecting the existing order, Chinese gods shaped it, transformed it, and compensated for it, and, as such, their work offers fresh perspectives on the relations between divinity and society in China.

    Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention–and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of language–where the word for “beginning” is the same as the word for “end”; “little big brother” means older sister; to be “scientific” means to be lazy; and “streetsickness” is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful characters–from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite him–A Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language.

    This new translation synthesizes the results of modern study, presenting the work in its historical context. The first book to render original Chinese rhymes into rhymed English.

    Based on archival research, this is a history of the Russo-Chinese border which examines Russia's expansion into the Asian heartland during the decades of Chinese decline and the 20th-century paradox of Russia's inability to sustain political and economic sway over its domains.

    Five essays are included by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, edited and expanded upon by the editor, Nathan Sivin. The essays offer broad and readable accounts of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology. Professor Sivin's extensive introduction discusses these essays, placing them in their historical and medical context, and surveys recent medical discoveries from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.

    This is a valuable guide for Westerners who have come to realize the benefits to be derived from a study of traditional Chinese medicine.

    Schooled in painting and music in the hope of securing a place in the imperial palaces of Beijing's Forbidden City, Lotus learns other arts from her father's concubine that are at odds wit the teachings of straitlaced Confucian scholars. Meanwhile, her lively, book-loving cousin prepares herself for the difficult life of a wife and daughter-in-law, seeking a suitable husband who isn't put off by the smallpox scars that mar her face. As the cousins wend their way through the seductive world of the senses, a second tale, one of spiritual pilgrimage, unfolds: Lotus's beloved mother has died, and her spirit wanders between the realms, struggling to return to life in the flesh. While Lotus explores the mysteries of sex and seeks an end to her mourning, her mother refuses to learn the lessons of the gods and goddesses.

    Wang's energetic, creative, and highly intelligent take on Chinese culture provides a broad portrait of the post-revolutionary era and a provocative inquiry into the nature of Chinese modernity.In seven linked essays, the author examines the cultural dynamics that have given rise to the epochal discourse. She traces the Chinese Marxists' short debate over "socialist alienation" and examines the various schools of thought—Li Zehou and the Marxist Reconstruction of Confucianism, the neo-Confucian Revivalists, and the Enlightenment School—that came into play in the Culture Fever. She also critiques the controversial mini-series Yellow River Elegy. In mapping out China's post-revolutionary aesthetics, Wang introduces the debate over "pseudo-modernism," refutes the pseudo-proposition of "Chinese postmodernism," and looks at the dawning of popular culture in the 1990s.This book delivers a ten-year intertwined history of Chinese intellectuals, writers, literary critics, and cultural critics that gives us a deeper understanding of the China of the 1980s, the 1990s, and beyond.

    Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon but rather as an embodiment of greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion—as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn’s study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.Surveying Chinese religion from 1000 BCE to the beginning of the twentieth century, The Sinister Way views the Wutong cult as by no means an aberration. In Von Glahn’s work we see how, from earliest times, the Chinese imagined an enchanted world populated by fiendish fairies and goblins, ancient stones and trees that spring suddenly to life, ghosts of the unshriven dead, and the blood-eating spirits of the mountains and forests. From earliest times, too, we find in Chinese religious culture an abiding tension between two fundamental orientations: on one hand, belief in the power of sacrifice and exorcism to win blessings and avert calamity through direct appeal to a multitude of gods; on the other, faith in an all-encompassing moral equilibrium inhering in the cosmos.

    Interactive student participation is encouraged through a variety of activities, from role-playing techniques to puzzles to discussion topics. Students using the book should have a proficiency level equivalent to the second semester of the second year in college. Taiwan Today is also appropriate for heritage learners and accelerated high school programs. This revised edition includes photographs of life in Taiwan and expanded indices, including those by pinyin, bopomofo, and stroke count. Each of the twelve lessons introduces 45-50 new words (vocabulary lists include traditional and simplified characters and pinyin as well as the English definition). Lessons start with texts in simplified and traditional characters on facing pages. Topics are from contemporary Taiwan, and include Exercise in the Park, Visiting a Night Market, Marriage and Match-Makers, Religions and Folk Beliefs, and The Excitement of Festivals. English translations and pinyin do not appear in the readings. General exercises (presented in both simplified and traditional characters) include vocabulary practice, composition, and supplementary activities. Audio cassettes are sold separately.

    Porter then argues that the discursive structures of flood myths, elements of which appear in the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, have their origins in an attempt to mediate linguistically the frightening consequences of the falsification of cosmological truths.The heuristic potential of the psychoanalytical theory of the symbol is used to explain the specific cosmogonic intentions underlying the genesis of myth, as well as broader manifestations of historical, social, and cultural behavior, most particularly literary works like the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan. The author explains how mythic symbols invested with cosmogonic and regenerative significance are appropriated in the literary resolution of a socio-political trauma analogous to those mediated by flood myths. Finally, she argues that not simply the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan but Chinese fictional discourse in general is most appropriately understood as a wholly symbolic form.

    "This first substantial collection of Yuan Mei's poems in English is a major achievement. J.P. Seaton's luminous translations are accurate in presenting the meaning and order of words and images from the original while revealing the true spirit of this very great poet" -Sam Hamill.

    The release of secret Chinese police files by the C.I.A. allow the inner workings of these terrorist groups, and their links to the Green Gang just before Pearl Harbor was bombed and World War II erupted, to be exposed for the first time.

    Connecting China's heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. To travel those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China, and Simon Winchester takes us along with him as he encounters the essence of China--its history and politics, its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and its people in remote and almost inaccessible places. This is travel writing at its best: lively, informative, and thoroughly enchanting.

    More than a system of medicine in the Western sense of the term, the Chinese approach to health care reflects the Taoist belief in the importance of promoting balance and harmony in body, mind, and spirit. In traditional Chinese medicine, this goal is achieved through nutrition, herbs, acupuncture, massage, exercise, meditation, and other holistic methods that restore the natural patterns of the human system. This book is an accessible and highly readable introduction to all the major aspects of this vast tradition. Topics covered include:    •  The foundation of traditional medicine in Chinese history    •  The theory of chi (energy) and how it influences health    •  The Chinese approach to health, happiness, and longevity    •  The use of Chinese herbal medicine and herbal formulas    •  Diet and nutrition as a form of preventive medicine    •  Acupuncture, acupressure, and massage—including sample techniques for self-massage    •  The practice of chee-gung, or "moving meditation," as a means of promoting good health    •  Meditation and internal alchemy    •  Suggestions for further reading and other resources

    Cahill vividly surveys its first great flowering among artists working in the Southern Sung capital of Hangchou, probably the largest and certainly the richest city on earth in this era. He shows us the revival of poetic painting by late Ming artists working in the prosperous city of Suchou. And we learn how artists in Edo-period Japan, notably the eighteenth-century Nanga masters and the painter and haiku poet Yosa Buson, transformed the style into a uniquely Japanese vehicle of expression. In all cases, Cahill shows, poetic painting flourished in crowded urban environments; it accompanied an outpouring of poetry celebrating the pastoral, escape from the city, immersion in nature. An ideal of the return to a life close to nature--the lyric journey--underlies many of the finest, most moving paintings of China and Japan, and offers a key for understanding them.

    Thus, the progressive increase in our knowledge of the content of Chinese mathematics has been accompanied by the realisation that, as far as results are concerned, there are numerous similarities between Chinese mathematics and other ancient and medieval mathematics. For example, Pythagoras' theorem, the double-false-position rules, Hero's formulae, and Ruffini-Harner's method are found almost everywhere. As far as the reasoning used to obtain these results is concerned, the fact that it is difficult to find rational justifications in the original texts has led to the reconstitution of proofs using appropriate tools of present-day elementary algebra. Consequently, the conclusion that Chinese mathematics is of a fundamentally algebraic nature has been ventured. However, in recent decades, new studies, particularly in China and Japan, have adopted a different approach to the original texts, in that they have considered the Chinese modes of reasoning, as these can be deduced from the rare texts which contain justifications. By studying the results and the methods explicitly mentioned in these texts hand in hand, this Chinese and Japanese research has attempted to reconstruct the conceptions of ancient authors within a given culture and period, without necessarily involving the convenient, but often distorting, social and conceptual framework of present-day mathematics.

    Judith Linzer explores the phenomenon of Jews seeking spiritual fulfillment in Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. Written with the intention of encouraging unity and understanding amongst all Jews, Torah and Dharma will allow those who are not seeking meaning outside of traditional Judaism to better understand those who are, and it will provide comfort and inspiration to those embarking on a spiritual quest of their own.

    The Spirit of Traditional Chinese Law studies the views held throughout the centuries by the educated elite on the role of law in government, the relationship between law and morality, and the purpose of punishment.Geoffrey MacCormack's introduction offers a brief history of legal development in China, describes the principal contributions to the law of the Confucian and Legalist schools, and identifies several other attributes that might be said to constitute the "spirit" of the law. Subsequent chapters consider these attributes, which include conservatism, symbolism, the value attached to human life, the technical construction of the codes, the rationality of the legal process, and the purposes of punishment.A study of the "spirit" of the law in imperial China is particularly appropriate, says MacCormack, for a number of laws in the penal codes on family relationships, property ownership, and commercial transactions were probably never meant to be enforced. Rather, such laws were more symbolic and expressed an ideal toward which people should strive. In many cases even the laws that were enforced, such as those directed at the suppression of theft or killing, were also regarded as an emphatic expression of the right way to behave.Throughout his study, MacCormack distinguishes between "official," or penal and administrative, law, which emanated from the emperor to his officials, and "unofficial," or customary, law, which developed in certain localities or among associations of merchants and traders. In addition, MacCormack pays particular attention to the law's emphasis on the hierarchical ordering of relationships between individuals such as ruler and minister, ruler and subject, parent and child, and husband and wife. He also seeks to explain why, over nearly thirteen centuries, there was little change in the main moral and legal prescriptions, despite enormous social and economic changes.

    It recounts both how this proud community was subjected to intense suffering during the Maoist era, culminating in its forcible resettlement in December 1960 to make way for the construction of a major hydroelectric dam, and how the village eventually sought recovery through the commemoration of that suffering and the revival of a redefined religion.Before 1949, the Kongs had dominated their area because of their political influence, wealth, and, above all, their identification with Confucius, whose precepts underlay so much of the Chinese ethical and political tradition. After the Communists came to power in 1949, these people, as a literal embodiment of the Confucian heritage, became prime targets for Maoist political campaigns attacking the traditional order, from land reform to the “Criticize Confucius” movement. Many villagers were arrested, three were beheaded, and others died in labor camps. When the villagers were forced to hastily abandon their homes and the village temple, they had time to disinter only the bones of their closest family members; the tombs of earlier generations were destroyed by construction workers for the dam.

    A comprehensive narrative account of this colossal event, written by Yan Jiaqi, one of the principal leaders of China's pro-democracy movement, and his wife, Gao Gao, a noted sociologist, appeared in Hong Kong in 1986 and was quickly banned by the Communist government. Not surprisingly, censorship and restricted circulation in China resulted in underground reproduction and serialization. The work was thus widely read, coveted, and appreciated by a populace who had just freed itself from the cultural drought and political dread of the event. Yan and Gao later spent two years revising and expanding their work. The present volume, Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution, is based on the revised edition and has been masterfully edited and translated by D. W. Y. Kwok in consultation with the authors. Following Professor Kwok's eloquent introduction and a short foreword in which the authors analyze the basic causes of the Cultural Revolution, Part One of the narrative focuses on the years 1965-1967. In two short years, Mao managed to turn public opinion against Liu Shaoqi, president of the Republic, and launch the Cultural Revolution. The reader is introduced to the Red Guards and encounters the cult of personality, the first resistance to the Cultural Revolution, the attack on Zhou Enlai, and the persecution and death of Liu Shaoqi. Part Two examines the rise and fall of Lin Biao during the years 1959-1971. Lin's bid for power, which began with the consolidation of his personal clique in the army and mass-level persecution in the late stages of theCultural Revolution, ended in a failed coup and his death in an air crash. Part Three follows Jiang Qing from 1966 to her arrest in 1976 for her part in instigating mass violence and the persecution of key figures, including Zhou Enlai. During this period, the political fortunes of Deng Xiaoping rose and fell for a second time, the first protest at Tiananmen Square in 1976 ended in a bloody suppression, and that same year the Gang of Four were arrested. Unlike social scientific treatments of political phenomena, Turbulent Decade includes little discussion of economics, still less of international relations, and no institutional analysis. Instead, the authors' fervent belief in the truthful telling of history through its leading personalities pervades the work.

    . .Build a simple machine like the ancient Egyptians might have usedto build the pyramids. Construct your own rocket thrusters tosimulate those used by U.S. astronauts. Make your own paper using a2,000-year-old recipe from China.These are just some of the exciting projects you'll find in Sciencearound the World, a fun and fact-filled book of experiments andactivities highlighting scientific discoveries from throughouthistory that shaped the way we live. Travel from England toAustralia, Germany to Japan, Mexico to Canada, as you explore someof history's most famous moments in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and more. Each experiment includes a list of requiredmaterials, illustrations, and easy-to-follow, step-by-stepinstructions.

    A poet from a backwater town, Lu Xun was propelled by the times into the various careers of educator, writer, publicist, professor, and polemicist. He was, however, first and foremost a classical scholar, writing some of his best works in classical form. The Lyrical Lu Xun is the most complete treatment of his classical-style poetry in any foreign language, containing translations and extensive discussions of sixty-four poems in the highly stylized forms of jueju (quatrains) and lushi (full-length regulated verse) - forms with detailed, strict rules for rhyme and tonal prosody that evolved according to pronunciations and standards set up more than a thousand years ago.

    Ethical model and eccentric, socialite and eremite, Shao Yung is perhaps not only the greatest enigma of early Neo-Confucianism, but also one of its undisputed giants. In this impressive life-and-thought study, Don J. Wyatt painstakingly sifts through all available evidence relating to Shao Yung and his scholarship to provide a portrait that fully exposes the moral center of the man and his work. Drawing on the abundant store of letters and accounts by Shao's contemporaries and his own much-neglected poetry, Wyatt has assembled a study that intimately relates Shao's life to his thought. He challenges the assumptions of previous Western scholarship by persuasively arguing against the acceptance of works traditionally ascribed to Shao - specifically, the Kuan-wu wai-p'ien (Outer Chapters on Observing Things), the Yu-ch'iao wen-ta (Fisherman and Woodcutter Dialogue), and the cryptic quasi-autobiographical essay Wu-ming kung chuan (Biography of the Nameless Lord). Shao is presented as an independent thinker whose philosophical lexicon functioned according to a profound interdependence that was unique among the systems of his peers. His metaphysical concepts, which appear impervious to and beyond the scope of human influence - namely, his ching-shih (world ordering), kuan-wu (observing things), and I-Ching - derived hsien-t'ien (before Heaven) methodologies - are essentially the products of a morally reflective life. Wyatt's discoveries, therefore, refute the common assertion of Shao Yung's moral indifference. Moreover, by meticulously integrating the progress of this Neo-Confucian's thought into the course of his life, the author has produced one of the most textured and accessible works on a philosopher of the Sung era.

    The first complex presentation of Chinese urbanism in a Western language.

    China, is gaining recognition as one of the classics of world literature. Writing in beautiful prose and poetry, Zhuangzi mixes humor with relentless logic in attacking claims to knowledge about the world, particularly evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. His arguments seem to admit of no escape. And yet where does that leave us? Zhuangzi himself clearly does not think that our situation is utterly hopeless, since at the very least he must have some reason for thinking we are better off aware of our ignorance.This book addresses the question of how Zhuangzi manages to sustain a positive moral vision in the face of his seemingly sweeping skepticism. Zhuangzi is compared to the Greek philosophers Plato and Sextus Empiricus in order to pinpoint more exactly what he doubts and why. Also examined is Zhuangzi's views on language and the role that language plays in shaping the reality we perceive. The authors test the application of Zhuangzi's ideas to contemporary debates in critical theory and to issues in moral philosophical thought such as the establishment of equal worth and the implications of ethical relativism. They also explore the religious and spiritual dimensions of the text and clarify the relation between Zhuangzi and Buddhism.

    of photos.

    It quickly grew into the Xia empire, a multiethnic, multilingual state whose ruling dynasty, a people ethnically and linguistically related to Tibetans, adapted elements of Chinese and Inner Asian statecraft, culture, and religion. Xia continued to grow in prominence, and its people became renowned throughout Asia as devout Buddhists. An imperial state was formally born in 1038 and chronicled its existence up to 1227, when it was finally crushed in Chinggis Khan's last campaign. The Great State of White and High is the first book-length treatment in English of Tangut Xia history. Exhibiting a mastery of languages, Ruth Dunnell has produced a pioneering, systematic study using primary and secondary sources in Tangut and Chinese to reconstruct early imperial Xia history from the inside.

    Remarkably, today's problems in China are spiritual in nature-"a crisis of faith"-stemming from the clash between capitalist realities and lingering socialist values and ideas. "The Deng Xiaoping Era "is the story of that crisis and of Deng Xiaoping's promise of socialist democracy that has degenerated into bureaucratic capitalism. Maurice Meisner shows how the social contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the people was grossly violated by the Deng regime, and why capitalism has emerged as the dynamic force in today's socioeconomic and cultural life. Now, after more than a decade of capitalist reforms, he argues that Chinese spiritual malaise is deepening with the brutal suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement and its politically repressive aftermath. This is an indispensable study of contemporary Chinese history-from the Chinese Revolution and the founding of the Maoist state to the establishment of the Deng regime and the social consequences of Deng's reforms-as well as a formidable analysis of the failure of the world's greatest socialist experiment.

    Of the 55 essays included, 47 are translated here for the first time, including two essays by Lu Xun.In addition to the selections themselves, the author has provided, in an extensive General Introduction and shorter introductions to the five parts of the book, historical background, a synthesis of current scholarship on modern views of Chinese literature, and an original thesis on the complex formation of Chinese literary modernity. In the author's view, literary discourses were actively reshaped by Chinese writes and critics as responses to deep-set cultural problematics and the socio-historical imperative of the times.The selection of the essays reflects both the mainstream Marxists interpretation of the literary values of modern China and the marginalized views proscribed, at one time or another, by the leftist canon. With both the canonical and the marginal, this collection offers a full spectrum of modern Chinese perceptions of fundamental literary issues: the nature of the creative act; the relationship between the literary text and reality; the moral, social, and political role of literature; and the filiation of language, literary form, and content.In presenting the Western reading with a Chinese discourse (in the more traditional sense of the term) about literature, the editor attempts to construct a cultural context for the production of texts in modern Chinese literature. Why did modern Chinese writers write? What goals did they have? How did they think about literature and its relation to its audience and the world? To read the response to these questions is to deepen our understanding of the experience of modernity that lies at the root of works of modern Chinese literature.The selections were translated by 33 leading scholars in the field of modern Chinese literature.

    Guided by their own interests rather than by directives from Beijing, farmers have restored family autonomy in farming, created new markets, established rural industries that now generate over half of China's industrial production, migrated to cities despite rigid governmental controls, shaped their own family-size policy, and redefined the role of women.Drawing on rich primary source material and her own years of experience in the countryside, the author focuses on the farmers' initiatives and the stories of ordinary people who collectively have played a central role in the economic upsurge. She takes issue with most current interpretations, which credit China's economic success almost entirely to reforms put in place by the Chinese leadership. Indeed, Zhou argues that the farmers were effective precisely because their movement was spontaneous, unorganized, leaderless, nonideological, and apolitical. In stark contrast to the turmoil surrounding the Tiananmen Square protests, farmers have been gradually yet remorselessly leaching power away from the central government without overt confrontation or violence. Their “reform from below” may well have generated the most long-lasting and fundamental changes contemporary China has witnessed.

    "Windows to the heart and soul of the Chinese!"

    The author provides the first easily accessible introduction to the developing mathematical and observational practices of ancient Chinese astronomers and shows how the generation and validation of knowledge about the heavens in Han dynasty China related closely to developments in statecraft and politics. This book will be fascinating reading for scholars in the history of science, Chinese history, and astronomy.

    Drawing on his unique access to local archives of the Chinese Communist Party and on extensive interviews with party officials, the victims' relatives, and the murderers themselves, Zheng Yi paints a disturbing picture of official compliance in the systematic killing and cannibalization of individuals in the name of political revolution and “class struggle.”The treasure-trove of evidence Zheng Yi has unearthed offers unprecedented insights into the way the internecine, factional struggles of the Cultural Revolution reached a horrifying level of insanity and frenzy among the ethnic Zhuang people of Guangxi. Profoundly moving, acutely observed, and unflinchingly graphic, Scarlet Memorial is a shining example of a genre of investigative reporting that courageously and independently records obscure and officially censored historical events, revealing hidden dimensions of modern Chinese history and politics.

    

    The Sino-American opening in 1971-72 and Washington's subsequent establishment of full diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979 opened up an entirely new set of questions, and ultimately brought about a fundamental reappraisal of conventional wisdom about Chinese communist foreign policy on both sides of the Pacific.

    Evans (Chinese, Univ. of Westminster) is well grounded in both feminist and Chinese studies, which allows her to deepen her analysis with references to China's present-day pop culture and conversations she has had with Chinese colleagues. Her major finding is that Chinese discourses consistently use medical and/or scientific explanations of gender differences to, essentially, denigrate women. Evans's analysis is consistent with much that has been written on China's political system?that it cannot survive without maintaining order and stability. However, she assumes that the audience is fluent in postmodernist language.

    Davis convincingly argues that Song martyrs were dying for more than dynasty alone: martyrdom can be linked to other powerfully compelling symbols as well. Seen from the perspective of the conquered, the phenomenon of martyrdom reveals much about the cultural history of the Song.Davis challenges the traditional view of Song martyrdom as a simple expression of political duty by examining the phenomenon instead from the perspective of material life and masculine identity. He also explores the tensions between the outer court of militant radicals and an inner court run by female regents--tensions that reflect the broader split between factions of Song government as well as societal conflict. Davis reveals the true magnitude of the loyalist phenomenon in this beautifully written, fascinating study of Song political loyalty and cultural values.