Best of
China

2000

To the Edge of the Sky: A Story of Love, Betrayal, Suffering, and the Strength of Human Courage


Anhua Gao - 2000
    Anhua Gao (her name means Tranquil Flower) was born in 1949, the year that Mao Tse Tung declared the foundation of the People's Republic of China. "To The Edge of the Sky" is, like Jung Chang's "Wild Swans," an inspiring and heartrending story of life under communist rule and, at the same time, a compelling and detailed history of China's political upheaval through the twentieth century. Gao's early childhood is idyllic-both of her parents are highly respected workers in the Communist army and the family lives in comfort, with many privileges. By the time Anhua is eleven, however, both are dead-and their reputation proves a fragile shield from the horrors of communist China. With an assured and deliberate voice, and from the perspective of her new and hard-won safety of a new life in Britain (her mother once pointed out the island country to her on a Chinese world map, located on the far left "on the edge of the sky"), Gao interweaves a picture of calamitous Maoist policies with her own story of shocking family betrayal, cruel imprisonment, and bureaucratic absurdity. "To the Edge of the Sky" is a powerful and evocative autobiography-the story of a woman who, against unbelievable odds, survived to find a happiness she had not dared hope for.

Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu


Zhuangzi - 2000
    Although less well known in the West than the Tao Te Ching, the work of Chuang Tzu is every bit its equal as a classic of Taoist thought. But this collection of tales, poems, and parables is also one of the most playful and witty books in world literature. In this vivid, contemporary translation, Victor Mair captures the quintessential life and spirit of Chuang Tzu while remaining faithful to the text. ... Complete with an authoritative introduction on Chuang Tzu and his place in Chinese thought and history, as well as a glossary of key terms and concepts, this translation by Victor Mair is destined to become the definitive edition of Chuang Tzu's work in our time. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts by the illustrator of the Tao Te Ching.

The Lost Daughters of China


Karin Evans - 2000
    Presents a cultural history of the events that led to the controversial one-child policy in China and the subsequent generation-long abandonment of Chinese daughters to American families.

Imperial China 900-1800


Frederick W. Mote - 2000
    A senior scholar of this epoch, F. W. Mote highlights the personal characteristics of the rulers and dynasties and probes the cultural theme of Chinese adaptations to recurrent alien rule. No other work provides a similar synthesis: generational events, personalities, and the spirit of the age combine to yield a comprehensive history of the civilization, not isolated but shaped by its relation to outsiders.This vast panorama of the civilization of the largest society in human history reveals much about Chinese high and low culture, and the influential role of Confucian philosophical and social ideals. Throughout the Liao Empire, the world of the Song, the Mongol rule, and the early Qing through the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns, culture, ideas, and personalities are richly woven into the fabric of the political order and institutions. This is a monumental work that will stand among the classic accounts of the nature and vibrancy of Chinese civilization before the modern period.

The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village


Dongping Han - 2000
    Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China's rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, in Shandong Province, Han shows that the Cultural Revolution helped overthrow local hierarchies, establish participatory democracy and economic planning in the communes, and expand education and public services, especially for the elderly. Han lucidly illustrates how these changes fostered dramatic economic development in rural China.The Unknown Revolution documents a neglected side of China's Cultural Revolution, demonstrating the potential of mass education and empowerment for radical political and economic transformation. It is a bold and provocative work, which demands the attention not only of students of contemporary Chinese history but of all who are concerned with poverty and inequality in the world today.

The Generalissimo's Son: Chiang Ching-Kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan


Jay Taylor - 2000
    In his youth Ching-kuo was a Communist and a Trotskyite, and he lived twelve years in Russia. He died in 1988 as the leader of Taiwan, a Chinese society with a flourishing consumer economy and a budding but already wild, woolly, and open democracy. He was an actor in many of the events of the last century that shaped the history of China's struggles and achievements in the modern era: the surge of nationalism among Chinese youth, the grand appeal of Marxism-Leninism, the terrible battle against fascist Japan, and the long, destructive civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1949, he fled to Taiwan with his father and two million Nationalists. He led the brutal suppression of dissent on the island and was a major player in the cold, sometimes hot war between Communist China and America. By reacting to changing economic, social, and political dynamics on Taiwan, Sino-American rapprochement, Deng Xiaoping's sweeping reforms on the mainland, and other international events, he led Taiwan on a zigzag but ultimately successful transition from dictatorship to democracy.Jay Taylor underscores the interaction of political developments on the mainland and in Taiwan and concludes that if China ever makes a similar transition, it will owe much to the Taiwan example and the Generalissimo's son.

Dream of the Walled City


Lisa Huang Fleischman - 2000
    Dream of the Walled City Born in 1890, the privileged and sheltered daughter of a high-ranking imperial official, Jade Virtue spends her childhood enclosed by the towering walls of her family's sprawling mansion, never glimpsing the desperate struggle of China's ancient society, as the old ways are challenged and the twentieth century - fast, fearsome, and tumultuous - rushes in. But when her father mysteriously dies, young Jade Virtue is suddenly thrust into poverty, and experiences firsthand a traditional culture falling apart under the onslaught of growing rebellion against the Emperor, rapid social changes, and the mounting aggression of Japan and the West. Fleischman has rendered a richly textured, panoramic vision of Chinese life in the perilous years between the end of the empire and the Communist triumph of 1949, charting Jade Virtue's arranged first marriage to the corrupt opium addict Wang Mang, who harbors a terrible secret in his family's past; her awakening independence and ambivalent politics; her struggles with motherhood; and her fascinating acquaintance with a gifted, idealistic, fiercely ambitious young man named Mao Zedong. But the most important choices of her life are shaped by her conflicting loyalties to her intense lifelong friendship with Jinyu, a fiery woman revolutionary, and to Guai, a government official and sworn enemy of the Communists, with whom she finally discovers true and redemptive love. Exquisitely nuanced and lyrical yet marked with a driving power, Dream Of The Walled City is an enthralling novel of hard-won personal independence set against the vivid backdrop of a rapidly changing world. From the final days of the last dynasty through the savage Japanese invasion during World War II to the formidable red dawn of the Communist triumph; from the backward rural province of Hunan to exile on the tropical shores of Taiwan; and from the binding chains of predetermined fate to the exhilarating liberation of a human spirit, this is a remarkable odyssey you will never forget.

Falun Dafa: Essentials for Further Advancement


Li Hongzhi - 2000
    

Chinese (Mandarin) I, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Mandarin Chinese with Pimsleur Language Programs


Pimsleur Language Programs - 2000
    Mandarin is the official spoken language in Mainland China and Taiwan. It is also widely spoken in Singapore and Malaysia, and it is one of the five official languages of the UN. Mandarin is used in Chinese schools, colleges, universities, and in the media. Learn Mandarin Chinese today with Pimsleur.Comprehensive Mandarin Chinese I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus a Culture Booklet. Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. In the first 10 lessons, you’ll cover the basics: saying hello, asking for or giving information, scheduling a meal or a meeting, asking for or giving basic directions, and much more.  You’ll be able to handle minimum courtesy requirements, understand much of what you hear, and be understood at a beginning level, but with near-native pronunciation skills.In the next 10 lessons, you’ll build on what you’ve learned. Expand your menu, increase your scheduling abilities from general to specific, start to deal with currency and exchanging money, refine your conversations and add over a hundred new vocabulary items.  You’ll understand more of what you hear, and be able to participate with speech that is smoother and more confident.In the final 10 lessons, you’ll be speaking and understanding at an intermediate level. More directions are given in the target language, which moves your learning to a whole new plane.  Lessons include shopping, visiting friends, going to a restaurant, plans for the evening, car trips, and talking about family.  One hour of recorded Cultural Notes are included at the end of Unit 30. These notes are designed to provide you with some insight into Chinese culture. A Notes Booklet is also included in PDF format.

Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese


Sam Hamill - 2000
    Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese represents a lifetime's devotion to the classic originals, in the words of W. S. Merwin, begun when Hamill was introduced to classical Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth and the Beat poets of the late 1950s. Unlike earlier translators of Chinese and Japanese poetry, Hamill attempts to bring the poems into English with their directness and simplicity intact, at the same time attempting to remain true to the poet's orginal message. Hamill includes the rarely-translated social poems of Tu Fu, the poems and songs of Tzu Yeh and Li Ch'ing-Chao, and lyrical selections from Li Po, Shih Ching, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p'o and others. Hamill's introduction provides the most definitive overview to date of aesthetic impulses propelling Chinese poetry and reveals his own reasons for his lifetime's devotion. I sit at the feet of the great old masters of my tradition not only to be in a position to pass on their many wonderful gifts, Hamill says, but to pay homage while in the very act of nourishing, sustaining and enhancing my own life. Sam Hamill's celebrated translations include The Art of Writing: Lu Chi's Wen Fu; The Essential Chuang Tza; The Essential Basho; The Spring of My Life & Selected Haiku by Kobayashii Issa and Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love & Longing. He is the author of a dozen volumes of original poety and three collections of essays. He is Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press, director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference and contributing editor at The American Poetry Review. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings


Andy Ferguson - 2000
    Andrew Ferguson moves chronologically through successive generations of Zen masters, supplementing their core teachings with history, biography, and poetry. The result is an organic understanding of the tradition's evolution as a religious, literary, and historical force. Capturing the austere beauty of the Zen masters' manner of teaching — their earthy style, humor, and humanity — Zen's Chinese Heritage is an intimate and profound human portrait of the enlightened Zen ancients, and an unprecedented look into the depths of this rich cultural heritage. The book includes a deluxe fold-out lineage chart of the Zen ancestors.

Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations - Volume I: From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty


John Minford - 2000
    The selections include poetry, drama, fiction, songs, biographies, and works of early Chinese philosophy and history rendered in English by the most renowned translators of classical Chinese literature: Arthur Waley, Ezra Pound, David Hawkes, James Legge, Burton Watson, Stephen Owen, Cyril Birch, A. C. Graham, Witter Bynner, Kenneth Rexroth, and others.Arranged chronologically and by genre, each chapter is introduced by definitive quotes and brief introductions chosen from classic Western sinological treatises. Beginning with discussions of the origins of the Chinese writing system and selections from the earliest "genre" of Chinese literature--the Oracle Bone inscriptions--the book then proceeds with selections from:- early myths and legends;- the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry, the Book of Songs;- early narrative and philosophy, including the I Ching, Tao-te Ching, and the Analects of Confucius;- rhapsodies, historical writings, magical biographies, ballads, poetry, and miscellaneous prose from the Han and Six Dynasties period;- the court poetry of the Southern Dynasties;- the finest gems of Tang poetry; and- lyrics, stories, and tales of the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties eras.Special highlights include individual chapters covering each of the luminaries of Tang poetry: Wang Wei, Li Bo, Du Fu, and Bo Juyi; early literary criticism; women poets from the first to the tenth century C.E.; and the poetry of Zen and the Tao.Bibliographies, explanatory notes, copious illustrations, a chronology of major dynasties, and two-way romanization tables coordinating the Wade-Giles and pinyin transliteration systems provide helpful tools to aid students, teachers, and general readers in exploring this rich tradition of world literature.

When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains: The Selected Poems of Chia Tao


Mike O'Connor - 2000
    Presented in both the original Chinese and Mike O'Connor's beautifully crafted English translation, When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains brings to life this preeminent poet and his glorious religious tradition, offering the fullest translation of Chia Tao's poems to date.

Unlock: Poems


Bei Dao - 2000
    He has been in exile since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.Unlock presents forty-nine new poems written in the United States, and may well be Bei Dao's most powerful work to date. Complex, full of startling and sometimes surreal imagery, sudden transitions, and oblique political references, and often embedding bits of bureaucratic speech and unexpected slang, his poetry has been compared to that of Paul Celan and Cesar Vallejo: poets who invented a new poetry and a new language in the attempt to speak of the enormity of their times.The sixth book of Bei Dao's work published by New Directions, Unlock has been translated by Eliot Weinberger, the distinguished essayist and critically acclaimed translator of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges, in collaboration with the historian Iona Man-Cheong and the poet himself.

The Tiananmen Papers


Liang Zhang - 2000
    In this extraordinary collection of hundreds of internal government and Communist Party documents, secretly smuggled out of China, we learn how these events came to pass from behind the scenes. The material reveals how the most important decisions were made; and how the turmoil split the ruling elite into radically opposed factions. The book includes the minutes of the crucial meetings at which the Elders decided to cashier the pro-reform Party secretary Zhao Ziyang and to replace him with Jiang Zemin, to declare martial law, and finally to send the troops to drive the students from the Square. Just as the Pentagon Papers laid bare the secret American decision making behind the Vietnam War and changed forever our view of the nation's political leaders, so too has The Tiananmen Papers altered our perception of how and why the events of June 4 took the shape they did. Its publication has proven to be a landmark event in Chinese and world history.

Operation China: Introducing All the People of China


Paul Hattaway - 2000
    These diverse cultures, from the blue-eyed Muslims of Xinjiang to the tribal people of the jungles of Yunnan, are presented using brilliantly colored photographs, anthropological and geographical data, maps, statistics and a prayer calendar. Operation China is indexed with an extensive bibliography of English and Chinese-language publications. Also available on CD-ROM.

Taoism and the Arts of China


Stephen Little - 2000
    Produced to accompany the first major exhibition ever organized on the Taoist philosophy and religion, this opulent book includes more than 150 works of art from as early as the late Zhou dynasty (fifth-third century b.c.) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Many of these works are paintings that show the breathtaking range of style and subject that makes the Taoist heritage so rich. Sculpture, calligraphy, rare books, textiles, and ritual objects are also represented.Like the exhibition, the book is organized thematically. It begins with the sage Laozi (to whom the Daode Jing is attributed), and moves on to explore the birth of religious Taoism and the interaction between Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. A wealth of subjects are covered: the gods of the Taoist pantheon, ritual, the boundaries and intersections between Taoism and popular religion, Taoist Immortals and Realized Beings, the role of alchemy, sacred landscape and its significance, and Taoist temples and their architecture.Taoism and the Arts of China includes an engaging series of introductory essays by scholars with a deep understanding of their subjects. Among the topics discussed are a historical introduction to Taoism, archaeological evidence for early Taoist art, and a general introduction to the functions of art in religious Taoism. Lavishly illustrated with over 150 color images, this volume affords a sweeping view of an artistic terrain that until now has received too little exposure in the West. Its publication constitutes a major advance in Western understanding of this important tradition.

American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin


Hua-Ling Hu - 2000
    Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected ten thousand Chinese women and children and made her a legend among the Chinese people she served.Vautrin, who came to be known in China as the "Living Goddess" or the "Goddess of Mercy," joined the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and went to China during the Chinese Nationalist Revolution in 1912. As dean of studies at Ginling College in Nanking, she devoted her life to promoting Chinese women's education and to helping the poor.At the outbreak of the war in July 1937, Vautrin defied the American embassy's order to evacuate the city. After the fall of Nanking in December, Japanese soldiers went on a rampage of killing, burning, looting, rape, and torture, rapidly reducing the city to a hell on earth. On the fourth day of the occupation, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. . . . Oh, God, control the cruel beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking."When the Japanese soldiers ordered Vautrin to leave the campus, she replied: "This is my home. I cannot leave." Facing down the blood-stained bayonets constantly waved in her face, Vautrin shielded the desperate Chinese who sought asylum behind the gates of the college. Vautrin exhausted herself defying the Japanese army and caring for the refugees after the siege ended in March 1938. She even helped the women locate husbands and sons who had been taken away by the Japanese soldiers. She taught destitute widows the skills required to make a meager living and provided the best education her limited sources would allow to the children in desecrated Nanking.Finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940, Vautrin returned to the United States for medical treatment. One year later, she ended her own life. She considered herself a failure.Hu bases her biography on Vautrin's correspondence between 1919 and 1941 and on her diary, maintained during the entire siege, as well as on Chinese, Japanese, and American eyewitness accounts, government documents, and interviews with Vautrin's family.

Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road


Roderick Whitfield - 2000
    In some five hundred caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi desert are preserved one thousand years of exquisitemurals and sculpture. Mogao, founded by Buddhist monks as an isolated monastery in the late fourth century, evolved into an artistic and spiritual center whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the far western kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are miles of stunning wallpaintings, more than two thousand statues, magnificent works on silk and paper, and thousands of ancient manuscripts, such as sutras, poems, and prayer sheets, which in 1900 were found sealed in one of the caves and then dispersed to museums throughout the world.Illustrated in color throughout, Cave Temples of Mogao combines lavish photographs of the caves and their art with the fascinating history of Mogao, Dunhuang, and the Silk Road to create a vivid portrait of this remarkable site. Chapters discuss the development of the cave temples, the iconographyof the wall paintings, and the extraordinary story of the rare manuscripts, including the oldest printed book in existence, a ninth-century copy of the Diamond Sutra. The book also describes the long-term collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and Chinese authorities in conservationprojects at Mogao as well as the caves and the museum that can be visited today. The publication of this book coincides with the centenary of the discovery of the manuscripts in the Library Cave.

Po Chü-i: Selected Poems


Bai Juyi - 2000
    His appealing style, marked by deliberate simplicity, won him wide popularity among the Chinese public at large and made him a favorite with readers in Korea and Japan as well. From Po Chü-i's well-preserved corpus -- personally compiled and arranged by the poet himself in an edition of seventy-five chapters -- the esteemed translator Burton Watson has chosen 128 poems and one short prose piece that exemplify the earthy grace and deceptive simplicity of this master poet.For Po Chü-i, writing poetry was a way to expose the ills of society and an autobiographical medium to record daily activities, as well as a source of deep personal delight and satisfaction -- constituting, along with wine and song, one of the chief joys of existence. Whether exposing the gluttony of arrogant palace attendants during a famine; describing the delights of drunkenly chanting new poems under the autumn moon; depicting the peaceful equanimity that comes with old age; or marveling at cool Zen repose during a heat wave... these masterfully translated poems shine with a precisely crafted artlessness that conveys the subtle delights of Chinese poetry.

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China


Benjamin A. Elman - 2000
    Elman uses over a thousand newly available examination records from the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties, 1315-1904, to explore the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the civil examination system, one of the most important institutions in Chinese history. For over five hundred years, the most important positions within the dynastic government were usually filled through these difficult examinations, and every other year some one to two million people from all levels of society attempted them.Covering the late imperial system from its inception to its demise, Elman revises our previous understanding of how the system actually worked, including its political and cultural machinery, the unforeseen consequences when it was unceremoniously scrapped by modernist reformers, and its long-term historical legacy. He argues that the Ming-Ch'ing civil examinations from 1370 to 1904 represented a substantial break with T'ang-Sung dynasty literary examinations from 650 to 1250. Late imperial examinations also made "Tao Learning," Neo-Confucian learning, the dynastic orthodoxy in official life and in literati culture. The intersections between elite social life, popular culture, and religion that are also considered reveal the full scope of the examination process throughout the late empire.

Chinese Proverbs for Today's World


Emil William Chynn - 2000
    Simple, insightful truths from the East-a treasure trove of wisdom for any reader.

An Art of Spiritual Warfare: A Guide to Lasting Inner Peace Based on Sun Tsu's The Art of War


Grant Schnarr - 2000
    Going deeper, Grant Schnarr finds how to defeat our true enemy- our own negativity. Read by rock stars and military generals, here are brilliant tactics for enlisting higher powers, outwitting self-destruction, and championing integrity and love.

The Hong Kong Filmography, 19771997: A Complete Reference to 1,100 Films Produced by British Hong Kong Studios


John Charles - 2000
    The guide provides information on 1,100 films produced in Hong Kong.

Spearhead: A Complete History of Merrill's Marauder Rangers


James E.T. Hopkins - 2000
    Although the names of these battles are not as familiar to the public as Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, the name of the legendary American volunteer regiment that fought in them echoes throughout modern military history. Thrown into combat in the Burmese jungle in February 1944 at the request of the British government, Merrill's Marauders was the first American infantry regiment to fight on the Asian continent since the Boxer Rebellion. Assembled in 1943 as the 5037th Composite Unit (Provisional), the three thousand infantryman who answered FDR's call for volunteers for a secret, "dangerous and hazardous mission" found themselves in India training for jungle combat. Created to spearhead undertrained (and American-led) Chinese troops in Burma and reopen the land route to China, the 5037th was expected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take 85 percent casualties and be disbanded within three months. As it turned out, the Marauders existed for eleven months, operating successfully in hostile territory, pioneering long-range military activities in jungle and mountainous regions, and completing one of the most productive -- and perilous -- military campaigns in American history.Despite its considerable achievements under the most difficult conditions, there has never been a complete history of the regiment until now. In Spearhead, James E. T. Hopkins -- a field surgeon with the Marauders' Third Battalion -- in collaboration with John M. Jones, provides a detailed history of the highly decorated unit, from the circumstances under which the 5037th was formed and its arduous training to the many battles in which the Maraudersdistinguished themselves to the unit's deactivation in July 1945.Drawing on unpublished logs, personal diaries, and histories kept by members of the regiment, Hopkins provides a personal story of combat in an environment that was nearly as deadly as the enemy. As a medical officer, he witnessed the horrors of jungle combat, the resolute heroism of the volunteers who fought, and the genuine respect that men and officers in the regiment had for one another. He also chronicles the remarkable efforts of the unit's rear echelon to keep the combatants supplied. With Spearhead, Hopkins reveals the real story behind a chapter in the history of the Second World War too often officially forgotten or clouded by myth. Spearhead offers a heartfelt tribute to the men who served as Merrill's Marauders -- and a comprehensive account of their deeds in the treacherous jungles of Burma fifty years ago.

Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928


Edward J.M. Rhoads - 2000
    But given that the dynasty that was overthrown--the Qing--was that of a minority ethnic group that had ruled China's Han majority for nearly three centuries, and that the revolutionaries were overwhelmingly Han, to what extent was the revolution not only anti-monarchical, but also anti-Manchu?Edward Rhoads explores this provocative and complicated question in Manchus and Han, analyzing the evolution of the Manchus from a hereditary military caste (the "banner people") to a distinct ethnic group and then detailing the interplay and dialogue between the Manchu court and Han reformers that culminated in the dramatic changes of the early 20th century.Until now, many scholars have assumed that the Manchus had been assimilated into Han culture long before the 1911 Revolution and were no longer separate and distinguishable. But Rhoads demonstrates that in many ways Manchus remained an alien, privileged, and distinct group. Manchus and Han is a pathbreaking study that will forever change the way historians of China view the events leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty. Likewise, it will clarify for ethnologists the unique origin of the Manchus as an occupational caste and their shifting relationship with the Han, from border people to rulers to ruled.Winner of the Joseph Levenson Book Prize for Modern China, sponsored by The China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919-1927


Alexander Pantsov - 2000
    The aim of this work is to incorporate these new documents into a scholarly study and on that basis to explore the essence of the Russian Bolsheviks' main concepts concerning the Chinese revolution. The work was designed to determine the influence of these concepts exerted on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through an analysis of the way various adherents of the Chinese Communist movement perceived them.The primary sources used in this book include: previously unpublished archival material on the Comintern, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), and the CCP, reflecting the theories and political practice of Leninism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism, and of the Russian and Chinese Left Oppositions; works by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and other leaders of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the CCP published in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S.; Comintern journals and bulletins; private interviews carried out by the author with participants and eyewitnesses of the events treated in the book; and memoirs of various Chinese revolutionaries.

Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900


Susan Naquin - 2000
    Using the city's temples as her point of entry, Naquin carefully excavates Peking's varied public arenas, the city's transformation over five centuries, its human engagements, and its rich cultural imprint. This study shows how modern Beijing's glittering image as China's great and ancient capital came into being and reveals the shifting identities of a much more complex past, one whose rich social and cultural history Naquin splendidly evokes. Temples, by providing a place where diverse groups could gather without the imprimatur of family or state, made possible a surprising assortment of community-building and identity-defining activities. By revealing how religious establishments of all kinds were used for fairs, markets, charity, tourism, politics, and leisured sociability, Naquin shows their decisive impact on Peking and, at the same time, illuminates their little-appreciated role in Chinese cities generally. Lacking most of the conventional sources for urban history, she has relied particularly on a trove of commemorative inscriptions that express ideas about the relationship between human beings and gods, about community service and public responsibility, about remembering and being remembered. The result is a book that will be essential reading in the field of Chinese studies for years to come.

The Monkey and the Dragon: A True Story about Friendship, Music, Politics and Life on the Edge


Linda Jaivin - 2000
    This is a book about friendship, music, politics and life on the edge. Linda Jaivin first met Taiwan pop star Hou Dejian in 1981. His song ‘Heirs of the Dragon’ was the unifying anthem of an awakening generation in Taiwan, Hong Kong and on mainland China.In June 1983 Hou defected to communist China, a stunning and bizarre move which shocked his friends and fans. In 1989 he was one of the last hunger-strikers on Tiananmen Square where he saved the lives of thousands of protestors, and later, with Linda’s help, took refuge in the Australian Embassy in Beijing. After seventy days he returned to the streets but wouldn’t be silenced. In 1990 the authorities abducted him and put him on a fishing boat bound for Taiwan where he became a fengshui master. He still writes the occasional song.

Travelers' Tales Hong Kong


Larry Habegger - 2000
    It will delight the senses, and heighten the sensibilities."- Profiles, Continental Airlines inflight magazineNotable authors include: Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, Suzy Gershman, and Simon Winchester.

The Modern Chinese State


David Shambaugh - 2000
    Leading scholars on modern China carefully assess the internal organization of the Chinese state over time, the ruling parties that have governed it, the foreign and indigenous systems that have served as models for state-building and political development, and the array of concepts that have guided Chinese thinking about the state.

Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895-1937


Kristin Stapleton - 2000
    This work examines the history of urban planning and administration during modern China's first age of city-centred politics, focusing on the new policies of the late Qing and the city administration movement of the 1930s.

Movies


Gilbert Adair - 2000
    From the Lumiere brothers' first public film screening at the end of the nineteenth century to the technical wizardry of today, cinema has recorded, created, even revised our history. Its images, icons, follies, and foibles endure as part of our collective consciousness. However, does the end of the century also herald the "end of cinema"? Has mainstream, formulaic, big-budget moviemaking triumphed over other alternatives? Covering a panoramic range of genres and styles, from B-movies and Nazi propaganda films to independent features and animated productions, and with texts by Orson Welles, Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Colette, John Updike, Umberto Eco, and other modern visionaries, this eclectic volume is a refreshing look at the ever-fascinating world of the movies and a much-needed corrective to the Hollywood bias.

China's Invisible Crisis: How a Growing Urban-Rural Divide Could Sink the World's Second-Largest Economy


Scott Rozelle - 2000
    Marveling at its stratospheric growth, observers have christened it "the inevitable superpower." But as Stanford economist Scott Rozelle and writer Natalie Johnson reveal, China faces a massive crisis invisible to outside observers, and to the Chinese themselves. China's future will be decided in the countryside, where over two-thirds of Chinese children are growing up. It is not a pretty picture. For decades, rural Chinese received poor nutrition and education. Now, as wages rise, manufacturing flees, and automation progresses, many of those left behind are ill-equipped for jobs in a new knowledge economy. As China's Invisible Crisis shows, hundreds of millions of people could soon be without work, with grave potential costs in China and around the world.

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975


Qiang Zhai - 2000
    Indeed, the rise and fall of this alliance is one of the most crucial developments in the history of the Cold War in Asia. Drawing on newly released Chinese archival sources, memoirs and diaries, and documentary collections, Qiang Zhai offers the first comprehensive exploration of Beijing's Indochina policy and the historical, domestic, and international contexts within which it developed.In examining China's conduct toward Vietnam, Zhai provides important insights into Mao Zedong's foreign policy and the ideological and geopolitical motives behind it. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he shows, Mao considered the United States the primary threat to the security of the recent Communist victory in China and therefore saw support for Ho Chi Minh as a good way to weaken American influence in Southeast Asia. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, when Mao perceived a greater threat from the Soviet Union, he began to adjust his policies and encourage the North Vietnamese to accept a peace agreement with the United States.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China


Michael David Kwan - 2000
    His father serves the Japanese while secretly working for the Resistance. After the war, with his father imprisoned, he leaves the country at the age of twelve, unsure that they will ever be reunited. This memoir was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for Nonfiction.

A Basic Confucius: An Introduction to the Wisdom and Advice of China's Greatest Sage


Kujie Zhou - 2000
    This book contains some of the more eclectic tenets of Confucius and his disciples compiled from The Four Books and other works. Each quote features an accompanying historical vignette displayed on the opposite page. Offers an outstanding introduction to the world of Chinese philosophy and culture.

China: The Photographs of Lois Conner


Lois Conner - 2000
    For the past fifteen years Lois Conner has traveled alone throughout China equipped with a huge banquet camera. She photographs the landscapes and the people, documenting the ancient and unchanging geological terrain as well as the social and cultural upheaval of contemporary China. Her camera, which weighs forty pounds, produces a negative that is seven inches high and seventeen inches wide, enabling her to make breathtaking panoramas.

The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China


Børge Bakken - 2000
    Although these reactions to modernity have a Chinese coloring, they are not exclusive to the Chinese culture. By describing the terra incognita of China, The Exemplary Society also describes something about ourselves.

Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China


Aihe Wang - 2000
    It crosses the disciplines of history, social anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy to illustrate how cosmological systems, particularly the Five Elements, shaped political culture. By focusing on dynamic change in early cosmology, the book undermines the notion that Chinese cosmology was homogenous and unchanging. By arguing that cosmology was intrinsic to power relations, it also challenges prevailing theories of political and intellectual history.

Human Rights and Asian Values: Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representations in Asia


Michael Jacobsen - 2000
    This volume takes a clear stand for universal rights, both theoretically and empirically, by analysing social and political processes in a number of East and Southeast Asian countries. On the national arenas, Asian values are linked to the struggle between authoritarian and democratic forces, which both tend to convey stereotyped images of the 'west', but with reversed meanings.

Tête-bêche: A Wong Kar Wai Project


Kar-Wai Wong - 2000
    Also includes Liu Li-chang's short story "Intersection", the inspiration for the film.

Masculinity Besieged?: Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century


Xueping Zhong - 2000
    Reading through a feminist psychoanalytic lens, Zhong argues that understanding the nature of male subjectivities as portrayed in literature and film is crucial to understanding China’s ongoing quest for modernity. Before the 1990s onslaught of popular culture decentered the role of intellectuals within the nation, they had come to embody Chinese masculinity during the previous decade. The focus on masculinity in literature had become unprecedented in scale and the desire for “real men” began to permeate Chinese popular culture, making icons out of Rambo and Takakura Ken. Stories by Zhang Xianliang and Liu Heng portraying male anxiety about masculine sexuality are employed by Zhong to show how “marginal” males negotiate their sexual identities in relation to both women and the state. Looking at writers popular among not only the well-educated but also the working and middle classes, she discusses works by Han Shaogong, Yu Hua, and Wang Shuo and examines instances of self-loathing male voices, particularly as they are articulated in Mo Yan’s well-known work Red Sorghum. In her last chapter Zhong examines “roots literature,” which speaks of the desire to create strong men as a part of the effort to create a geopolitically strong Chinese nation. In an afterword, Zhong situates her study in the context of the 1990s. This book will be welcomed by scholars of Chinese cultural studies, as well as in literary and gender studies.

Clothed to Rule the Universe: Ming and Qing Dynasty Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago


John E. Vollmer - 2000
    Essays survey the entire collection and explore the history of Chinese textile collecting in Chicago.

Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty


Bradly Reed - 2000
    Yet until now we have known very little about these critically important persons beyond the caricatured portrayals of corruption and venality left by Qing high officials and elites.Drawing from the rich archival records of Ba county, Sichuan, the author challenges the simplicity of these portrayals by taking us inside the county yamen to provide the first detailed look at local administrative practice from the perspective of those who actually carried it out. Who were the county clerks and runners? How were they recruited, organized, disciplined, and rewarded? What was the economic basis for a career in the yamen? How did clerks and runners view themselves as well as legitimize their role in Qing government? And what impact did their interests and practices have on symbolically laden elements of imperial government such as the magistrate's court?In addressing these questions, the author traverses the disjuncture between statutory regulations and the realities of daily administrative practice, uncovering a realm of informal, semiautonomous, yet highly structured and even rationalized procedures. Although frequently in violation of formal law, this extra-statutory system nevertheless remained an irreducible component of local government under the Qing. Recognizing the centrality of such informal practice to yamen administration forces us to rethink not only traditional assumptions concerning local corruption in the Qing, but also the ways in which we conceptualize the boundaries between state and society in late imperial China.

State and Economy in Republican China: A Handbook for Scholars


William C. Kirby - 2000
    Following a general discussion of archival research and research aids for the Republican period, the handbook introduces the collections of archives in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan that contain materials in the areas of economics and business, with data on the history of the archives, descriptions of their holdings, and publications on their collections.The second half of the work consists of guided readings in Republican-era documents, such as government decrees, regulations, and business letters, with complete vocabulary lists and explanations of terms. Also included with the handbook are facsimile reproductions of these documents.

Economic History of Modern China


Joseph C.H. Chai - 2000
    

Fu Ssu-Nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics


Fan-sen Wang - 2000
    This biography offers the first in-depth examination of his role in intellectual and educational development in modern China. Wang Fan-sen follows Fu's early career as a student activist, his efforts to establish a modern historical discipline in China, and his legacy as a founder of modern academe in China. This book, incorporating unpublished material from Fu's personal archives, fills a major gap in the cultural and intellectual history of modern China.

Made in China


Robert Lawrence Kuhn - 2000
    To understand the transformation, author and business consultant Robert Lawrence Kuhn has devoted the past ten years of his life to interviewing new Chinese entrepreneurs, private business leaders, government officials, and the heads of state-owned factories, as well as everyday workers and families, capturing China in change as no other chronicler has.American and Chinese trade officials recently concluded thirteen years of negotiations by signing one of the largest trade deals in American history. This comprehensive agreement to open China's economy to foreign competitors in return for Beijing's entry into the World Trade Organization makes this new investigation of China's business practices more timely than ever.In Made in China, Kuhn takes readers into the state of China's economy at the dawn of a new century, featuring insider information from China's first major bankruptcy -- the Ah Cheng Sugar Factor in Manchuria -- to the largest private company in China -- the Orient Group -- and introducing us to China's richest people.

The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature


Victor H. Mair - 2000
    It also contains fresh translations by newer voices in the field.

In Love with the Way: Chinese Poems of the Tang Dynasty (The Calligrapher's Notebooks)


François Cheng - 2000
    The best loved and most influential of all Chinese poems come from this period. Like all books in the Shambhala Calligraphy series, In Love with the Way takes a classic spiritual text that has been a subject for calligraphers for many years—and uses it to showcase a uniquely modern example of the calligrapher's art, bringing the text to life in a striking new way. In Love with the Way is accompanied by François Cheng's introductory essay on poetry of the Tang period, and by a closing essay on the work of the calligrapher, Fabienne Verdier. Calligraphy (from the Greek for "beautiful writing") is an art where word and image meet, where the artist strives to give visual expression to the meaning of words in a way that transcends the text while remaining completely faithful to it. It is a discipline that has been invested with spiritual significance wherever it has arisen—and it has arisen throughout the world in every age, in virtually every language, culture, and religion. The Shambhala Calligraphy series is a collection of books devoted to contemporary expressions of this "art of the word," featuring contemporary calligraphers' striking new interpretations of texts that have been traditional subjects for calligraphic interpretation. Whether in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or Chinese pictographs, the characters, words, and sentences are brought to life anew here in a choreography of mind, hand, and heart by which letter and spirit fuse in a single stroke.

Lily Dragon


Mary Ellis - 2000
    Lily and her brother Tom travel to China where they find out about their ancestor - Grandfather Tsui - who helped to hide court treasures from being plundered. These treasures are Lily's heirlooms.

The Opium War


Compilation Group - 2000
    A Communist Chinese view of the Opium War of 1840-42, between Britain and China, compiled in 1976 by members of the history departments of Futan University and Shanghai Teachers' University.

Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao


Stanley Lubman - 2000
    This book analyzes the principal legal institutions that have emerged and assesses the prospects for increasing the rule of law in China.The book first establishes the cultural and institutional context in which legal reforms take place. It traces the main features of pre-Communist Chinese legal tradition, the drastic impact on law of thirty years of Maoist rule, and the extensive changes throughout Chinese society since Mao’s death, notably the rise of the local party-state at the expense of central government power. The book’s analysis begins with the Chinese leadership’s policy toward law, identifying basic ambivalence toward law that makes the Chinese commitment to legality incomplete. It then surveys major developments, emphasizing the creation of new rights, revision of criminal law and procedure, and construction of a nascent administrative law.The book then examines in detail dispute resolution by extrajudicial mediation and the courts. Although mediation is no longer infused with Maoism, it is still used as an instrument to maintain public order. The study of the courts examines court organization, the selection and training of judges, the rise of litigation, the critical influence of localism, and ongoing conflicts between professionalism and a continuing tendency to view the judge as a soldier of the state. The author suggests that the limited role that Chinese courts are today permitted to play combines with the organization of the judicial process and the mentality of the judiciary to make Chinese adjudication more akin to bureaucratic decision making than judging in the West.How should the accomplishments of legal reform and the continuing obstacles to further reform affect U.S. policy toward China? The book concludes by appraising implications for U.S. policy on such issues as human rights, Chinese involvement with the World Trade Organization, and bilateral relations generally. The author argues that U.S. policy makers must neither moralize about the rule of law nor dismiss it as a concept alien to China. They must also curb both optimism and expectations that legal reform will lead to political reform. Chinese law can only grow slowly, no matter how urgently the West may desire quick progress.

Mountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China


Stevan Harrell - 2000
    In the 1960s China's Cultural Revolution suppressed and eroded Nuosu culture, but since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of Nuosu ethnic identity and culture, and a revival of traditional arts.An introductory chapter presents the history and culture of the Nuosu, and essays illustrate each of the traditional visual arts: wooden house architecture, featuring intricate post-and-beam construction and carved decoration; clothing and textiles, including elaborate needlework; red-yellow-black lacquerware, seen in both traditional village-made and modern factory-made versions; silversmithing and jewelry; musical instruments and their use; and two aspects of the ritual culture of the bimo priests -- ceremonies for the souls of deceased ancestors and rituals to expel and exorcise ghosts.Mountain Patterns, includes photographs representing every corner of Nuosu territory and displaying a wide variety of regional styles.

Hua Song: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora


Suchen Christine Lim - 2000
    Christine Lim shows how the Chinese came to settle in North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Southeast Asia, India, Europe, South America, and all parts of the globe. Lim has assembled oral histories, remembrances, testimonials, and hundreds of rare photographs to form a fascinating yet intimate historical tapestry immense in both breadth and scope. These are the stories of a migration of a people, their hopes, fears, aspirations, and dreams for a better life. Presented in bilingual English/Chinese text.

The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University


Sohail Inayatullah - 2000
    The university is being refashioned, often by forces out of the control of academics, students, and even administrators. However, there remain possibilities for informed action, for steering the directions that the university can take. This book maps both the historical factors and the alternative futures of the university. Whereas most books on the university remain focused on the European model, this volume explores models and issues from non-Western perspectives as well.Inayatullah and Gidley draw together essays by leading academics from a variety of disciples and nations on the futures of the university, weaving historical factors with emerging issues and trends such as globalism, virtualization, multiculturalism, and politicization. They attempt to get beyond superficial debate on how globalism and the Internet as well as multiculturalism are changing the nature of the university, and they thoughtfully assess these changes.

China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China


Suisheng Zhao - 2000
    Consequently the progress, or lack of progress, of China's transition to democracy has become a central concern of the international community. This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy. The contributors seek to bridge the gap between normative theories of democracy and empirical studies of China's political development by providing a comprehensive overview of China's domestic history, economy, and public political ideologies.Overall the volume contends that Chinese culture and Confucianism are not the obstacles to democratic transition that some scholars have said they are, and that the success of market reforms has eroded authoritarian rule. This weakening does not guarantee a successful transition, however, and the contributors show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about the short-term prospects for democracy in China, including historical failures, the underdevelopment of civil society, political apathy, and competing social values. Though China's political culture is essentially neither anti-democratic not pro-democratic, it must still overcome many obstacles in order to achieve democracy.

Sui-Tang Chang’an: A Study in the Urban History of Late Medieval China


Victor Cunrui Xiong - 2000
    Located in the present day Xi’an area of Shaanxi Province, it was the most spacious and often the most populous urban center in the world during its existence. Laid out as the terrestrial abode of the Son of Heaven, the axis mundi from which he sought and received divine sanction from Heaven, Earth, ancestral spirits, and other gods, Sui-Tang Chang’an was the medieval Chinese city at its most spectacular. Its symmetrical plan was executed to perfection, following an ancient urban cosmology, and its gridiron framework included over a hundred orthogonally designed mini-cities—the consummation of a centuries-old urban ward system. Although dominated by a sophisticated secular culture, Chang’an was permeated with the spirit of monastic religion. Although governed by officials schooled in an anti-mercantile tradition, Chang’an played host to a dynamic and thriving business community. Offering diversity, tolerance, and above all, civilization, Chang’an attracted travelers, merchants, pilgrims, and scholars from all over China and Asia.Sui-Tang Chang’an is the first comprehensive study of the Sui-Tang capital in the English language. Following a background sketch of the earlier Han dynasty Chang'an and an analysis of the canonical and geomantic bases of the layout of the Sui-Tang capital, Victor Xiong focuses on the essential components of the city—its palaces, central and local administrative quarters, ritual centers, marketplaces, residential wards, and monasteries. Based on careful textual and archaeological research, this volume vividly narrates why Sui-Tang Chang'an was considered the most spectacular metropolis of its age.

Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change


Susan H. Whiting - 2000
    Susan Whiting explores the complex interactions of individuals, institutions, and the broader political economy to examine variation and change in property rights and extractive institutions in China's rural industrial sector. Whiting explains why public ownership predominated during the early years of reform and why privatization is now taking place. This book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Chinese economic development, but also of comparative politics and political economy more generally.

The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi


Rudolf G. Wagner - 2000
    It has become the book of Chinese philosophy most widely appreciated for its philosophical depth and lyrical form. Nevertheless, very little attention has been paid to the way in which this book was read in China. This book introduces the reader to a highly sophisticated Chinese way of reading this Taoist classic, a way that differs greatly from the many translations of the Laozi available in the West.The most famous among the Chinese commentators on the Laozi--a man appreciated even by his opponents for the sheer brilliance of his analysis--is Wang Bi (226-249). Born into a short period of intellectual ferment and freedom after the collapse of the Han dynasty, this self-assured genius, in the short twenty-three years of his life, dashed off two of the most enduring works of Chinese philosophy, a commentary on the Laozi and another on the Book of Changes.By carefully reconstructing Wang Bi's Laozi text as well as his commentary, this book explores Wang Bi's craft as a scholarly commentator who is also a philosopher in his own right. By situating his work within the context of other competing commentaries and extracting their way of reading the Laozi, this book shows how the Laozi has been approached in many different ways, ranging from a philosophical underpinning for a particular theory of political rule to a guide to techniques of life-prolongation. Amidst his competitors, however, Wang Bi stands out through a literary and philosophical analysis of the Laozi that manages to use the Laozi to explain the Laozi, rather than imposing an agenda on the text. Through a critical adaptation of several hundred years of commentaries on the classics, Wang Bi reaches a scholarly level in the art of understanding that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Xu Xiake (1586-1641): The Art of Travel Writing


Julian Ward - 2000
    The general view of his work, that he brought a sober, analytical approach to a genre previously the domain of the dillentante and that his writing was 'utilitarian' and lacking in literary merit is cast aside, revealing Xu to be a figure of his age, his concerns perfectly in tune with the exuberant tastes of other late Ming literati.Essential background is provided with a survey of the history of Chinese travel writing in general with particular emphasis given to the late-Ming period and a resume of Xu Xiake's life. The core of the work examines the wealth of new information to be found in a longer version of Xu's account of his great journey to southwest China, rediscovered in the 1970s. Detailed study of Xu's use of language serves to underline the breadth of achievement of a man who utilised traditional and contemporary Chinese poetic language in order to express an emotional response to the landscape through which he passed. This is reinforced by a complete annotated translation of a deeply personal essay, written towards the end of Xu's life.The book covers a broad spectrum of voguish sinological subjects relating to late Ming China ranging from the huge growth in all forms of geographical writing to the anthropological analysis of the non-Han peoples of southwest China. This book will interest both seasoned sinologists and anyone who has spent time travelling in China or is interested in the art of travel writing.