It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.“Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.” –Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004

    Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism.Expecting to find an isolated citadel populated by supernatural ascetics that he’d seen in countless badly dubbed chop-socky flicks, Matthew instead discovered a tacky tourist trap run by Communist party hacks. But the dedicated monks still trained in the rigorous age-old fighting forms—some even practicing the “iron kung fu” discipline, in which intensive training can make various body parts virtually indestructible (even the crotch). As Matthew grew in his knowledge of China and kung fu skill, he would come to represent the Temple in challenge matches and international competitions, and ultimately the monks would accept their new American initiate as close to one of their own as any Westerner had ever become.Laced with humor and illuminated by cultural insight, American Shaolin is an unforgettable coming-of-age tale of one young man’s journey into the ancient art of kung fu—and a funny and poignant portrait of a rapidly changing China.

    Their culture is filled with music, dance, family, and love of tradition passed down by storytelling through the ages.For millennia, they have survived clashes in the shadow of China, Russia, and Central Asia. Rebiya Kadeer’s courage, intellect, morality, and sacrifice give hope to the nearly eleven million Uyghurs worldwide on whose behalf she speaks as an indomitable world leader for the freedom of her people and the sovereignty of her nation.Her life story is one of legends: as a refugee child, as a poor housewife, as a multimillionaire, as a high official in China’s National People’s Congress, as a political prisoner in solitary confinement for two of nearly six years in jail, and now as a political dissident living in Washington, DC, exiled from her own land.

    Taught to play the piano by her mother, she developed quickly into a prodigy, immersing herself in the work of classical masters like Bach and Brahms. She was just ten years old when she began a rigorous course of study at the Beijing Conservatory, laying the groundwork for what was sure to be an extraordinary career. But in 1966, when Xiao-Mei was seventeen, the Cultural Revolution began, and life as she knew it changed forever. One by one, her family members were scattered, sentenced to prison or labor camps. By 1969, the art schools had closed, and Xiao-Mei was on her way to a work camp in Mongolia, where she would spend the next five years. Life in the camp was nearly unbearable, thanks to horrific living conditions and intensive brainwashing campaigns. Yet through it all Xiao-Mei clung to her passion for music and her sense of humor. And when the Revolution ended, it was the piano that helped her to heal. Heartbreaking and heartwarming, The Secret Piano is the incredible true story of one woman’s survival in the face of unbelievable odds—and in pursuit of a powerful dream.

    In this magisterial new work, Giovanni Arrighi shows how China’s extraordinary rise invites us to read The Wealth of Nations in a radically different way than is usually done. He examines how the recent US attempt to bring into existence the first truly global empire in world history was conceived in order to counter China’s spectacular economic success of the 1990s, and how the US’s disastrous failure in Iraq has made the People’s Republic of China the true winner of the US War on Terror. In the 21st century, China may well become again the kind of noncapitalist market economy that Smith described, under totally different domestic and world-historical conditions.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    But when Comrade Li, one of Mao's political officers, moves into a room in their apartment, Ling begins to witness the gradual disintegration of her world. In an atmosphere of increasing mistrust, Ling fears for the safety of her neighbors and, soon, for herself and family. Over the course of four years, Ling manages to grow and blossom, even as she suffers more horrors than many people face in a lifetime.

    Translated by Keith Holyoak, this volume includes an introduction to the poets and their work, plus a bibliography. Holyoak's translations capture the essential beauty of the poets’ language, while retaining key elements of the structure of the original poems, including their metric form and rhyme scheme. The poems transport the reader back to the Tang dynasty of 8th-century China, while at the same time conveying timeless insights into the human condition that remain as relevant today as they were centuries ago.

    The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original.The companion volume How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook presents 100 famous poems (56 are new selections) in Chinese, English, and romanization, accompanied by prose translation, textual notes, commentaries, and recordings.Contributors: Robert Ashmore (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Zong-qi Cai; Charles Egan (San Francisco State); Ronald Egan (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara); Grace Fong (McGill); David R. Knechtges (Univ. of Washington); Xinda Lian (Denison); Shuen-fu Lin (Univ. of Michigan); William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Univ. of Wisconsin); Maija Bell Samei; Jui-lung Su (National Univ. of Singapore); Wendy Swartz (Columbia); Xiaofei Tian (Harvard); Paula Varsano (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Fusheng Wu (Univ. of Utah)

    Drawing from interviews, statistical analysis, and archival research, this book is the first to develop a framework with which to analyze how elite politics impact both monetary and banking policies. This book serves as an important reference point for all subsequent work on Chinese banking.

    Two additional lessons use texts from later periods to help students appreciate the changes in written Chinese over the centuries.Each lesson consists of a text, a vocabulary list featuring discussions of meaning and usage, explanations of grammar, and explications of difficult passages. The standard modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean pronunciations are indicated for each character, making this a learning tool for native speakers of those languages as well. Appendices give suggestions for further readings, review common and significant words, explain the radical system, and provide Japanese kanbun readings for all the selections. Glossaries of all vocabulary items and pronunciation indexes for modern Chinese and Korean are also included.

    Based on remarkable fieldwork and extensive interviews in Chinese textile, apparel, machinery, and household appliance factories, Against the Law finds a rising tide of labor unrest mostly hidden from the world's attention. Providing a broad political and economic analysis of this labor struggle together with fine-grained ethnographic detail, the book portrays the Chinese working class as workers' stories unfold in bankrupt state factories and global sweatshops, in crowded dormitories and remote villages, at street protests as well as in quiet disenchantment with the corrupt officialdom and the fledgling legal system.

    Script, grammar and vocabulary are taught from scratch. The work can be used as a first introduction to traditional literary Chinese by anyone with no knowledge of the language. It is also suitable as part of a course in Classical Chinese for private study with or without previous knowledge of Chinese. The exercises are progressive in that each is restricted to the vocabulary and grammar met so far. The book serves as an introduction to Chinese verse for its own sake. It will be of great interest to ethnic Chinese wishing to recover their cultural roots.

    For the past five years, Greg Girard has been photographing the city’s buildings, shops, homes, and neighborhoods. This stunning photographic journey is a look at present-day Shanghai, where politically inspired neglect meets politically inspired development.Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer living in Shanghai since 1998. Largely self-taught, he combines anthropology with a lyrical realism in his work. He is represented in North America by Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto. His editorial work appears in publications such as TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, and The New York Times Magazine.William Gibson is an American-born Canadian science fiction author. He has been called the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. He is credited with coining the term “cyberspace.” His first novel, Neuromancer, has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1984. He is also responsible for Pattern Recognition and the screenplay for Johnny Mnemonic.

    Tales and Traditions was specifically created to help learners of Chinese achieve that goal, by collecting the most well-known works in the Chinese literary canon in a series of convenient supplementary readers.Perfect for pleasure reading outside of class, or class instruction, Tales and Traditions exposes students to a wealth of information essential for the development of cultural fluency in Chinese.This first volume for beginning learners contains fables and literary quotations, sayings and stories from classical philosophers, and myths and legends that are at the heart of Chinese traditional culture. This series of readings will be especially welcomed as the AP® Chinese Language and Culture exam requires knowledge of China's literary, cultural, and historical traditions.

    Gradually Nate discovers the case is entwined with an international quest for a small stone tablet, (a stele) that might contain the key to ancient China's long-lost link with the West.In the 1980's, old Beijing's walls and hutong alleyways were disappearing, victims of Deng Xiaoping's proclamation 致富光 荣!(To get rich is glorious!). While juggling teaching English, his business, (and women), Nate seeks refuge at the bar on the roof of the Friendship Hotel with a legation of self-imposed exiles from the both sides of the Cold War. There he enters a netherworld of sex, spies, strange religion and the hidden history of China's Cultural Revolution.

    A detailed exploration of the country's long, rich history paired with its complex present makes China a one-of-a-kind reference that offers an eye-opening, thought-provoking and authoritative visual guide to one of the world's great nations. AUTHOR BIO: Written by an international team of China specialists.

    The practice was promoted by senior Communist Party leaders as a uniquely Chinese healing tradition and as a harbinger of a new scientific revolution, yet the movement's mass popularity and the almost religious devotion of its followers led to its ruthless suppression.In this absorbing and revealing book, David A. Palmer relies on a combination of historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives to describe the spread of the qigong craze and its reflection of key trends that have shaped China since 1949, including the search for a national identity and an emphasis on the absolute authority of science. Qigong offered the promise of an all-powerful technology of the body rooted in the mysteries of Chinese culture. However, after 1995 the scientific underpinnings of qigong came under attack, its leaders were denounced as charlatans, and its networks of followers, notably Falungong, were suppressed as "evil cults."According to Palmer, the success of the movement proves that a hugely important religious dimension not only survived under the CCP but was actively fostered, if not created, by high-ranking party members. Tracing the complex relationships among the masters, officials, scientists, practitioners, and ideologues involved in qigong, Palmer opens a fascinating window on the transformation of Chinese tradition as it evolved along with the Chinese state. As he brilliantly demonstrates, the rise and collapse of the qigong movement is key to understanding the politics and culture of post-Mao society.

    In 240 pages and more than 100 full-color images, this volume traces China through its tales and stories, plays and poetry, paintings and objects--from ancient divinations incised on bovine scapula to modern "people's literature" spawned from revolution; from Tang dynasty silk scrolls depicting sublime mountain valleys to government-commissioned propoganda posters. China incorporates text and images that are chornologically ordered in each of its eight thematic chapters:Birth & LifeNature & EnvironmentLove & FamilyMind & MemoryFood & DrinkWar & PoliticsReligion & SpiritualityDeath & AfterlifeAmong the literary selections included are the famous Book of Songs, the epic Dream of Red Towers, the complex dramatic masterpiece The Romance of the Western Chamber, and works from Confucious, Laozi, Du Fu, and Su Shi. More than 100 works of art from the ancient to the contemporary, by artists including Gu Kaizhi, Wang Hui, Lam Qua, and Li Keran. The majority of the images will be from top Asian art collections in the US: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in Kansas City, The De Young in San Francisco with the rest coming from Europe (the British Museum) and China.The unique pairings of art and literature in China will enrapture as they reveal--this anthology will inevitably grip all who enter it, be they sophisticated appreciators or eager novices of China.

    They have robbed people of the developing countries of their progeny and the people of the developed world of their pocketbooks. Determined to stop population growth at all costs, those Mosher calls "population controllers" have abused women, targeted racial and religious minorities, undermined primary health care programs, and encouraged dictatorial actions if not dictatorship. They have skewed the foreign aid programs of the United States and other developed countries in an anti-natal direction, corrupted dozens of well-intentioned nongovernmental organizations, and impoverished authentic development programs. Blinded by zealotry, they have even embraced the most brutal birth control campaign in history: China's infamous one-child policy, with all its attendant horrors.There is no workable demographic definition of "overpopulation." Those who argue for its premises conjure up images of poverty--low incomes, poor health, unemployment, malnutrition, overcrowded housing to justify anti-natal programs. The irony is that such policies have in many ways caused what they predicted--a world which is poorer materially, less diverse culturally, less advanced economically, and plagued by disease. The population controllers have not only studiously ignored mounting evidence of their multiple failures; they have avoided the biggest story of them all. Fertility rates are in free fall around the globe.Movements with billions of dollars at their disposal, not to mention thousands of paid advocates, do not go quietly to their graves. Moreover, many in the movement are not content to merely achieve zero population growth, they want to see negative population numbers. In their view, our current population should be reduced to one or two billion or so. Such a goal would keep these interest groups fully employed. It would also have dangerous consequences for a global environment.

    A constant thread across two hundred years of Chinese presence has been the vigour of British national identity among migrants' descendants. This study argues that transnational studies reinforce essentialist conceptions of identity and of cultural authenticity in diasporic communities, and thus frustrate the promotion of ethnic co-existence and social cohesion in multi-ethnic societies.

    Illustrating life in the colourful area south of Hollywood Road, Hong Kong, the author paints the town red - and orange, and yellow, and green, and blue.

    Providing a fascinating look into the lives of some of the opera’s key actors, he explores their methods for earning a living; their status in an ever-changing society; the methods by which theaters functioned; the nature and content of performances; audience make-up; and the larger relationship between Peking opera and Chinese nationalism.Propelled by a synergy of the commercial and the political patronage from the Qing court in Beijing to modern theaters in Shanghai and Tianjin, Peking opera rose to national prominence. The genre’s star actors, particularly male cross-dressing performers led by the exquisite Mei Lanfang and the “Four Great Female Impersonators” became media celebrities, models of modern fashion and world travel. Ironically, as it became increasingly entrenched in modern commercial networks, Peking opera was increasingly framed in post-May fourth discourses as profoundly traditional. Drama Kings demonstrates that the process of reforming and marketing Peking opera as a national genre was integrally involved with process of colonial modernity, shifting gender roles, the rise of capitalist visual culture, and new technologies of public discipline that became increasingly prevalent in urban China in the Republican era.

    Their interests range from banking to property, from shipping to sugar, from gambling to lumber. At their peak, eight of the world's two dozen richest families were south-east Asian, yet they are largely unknown outside the region. A complex mythology surrounds them, one which informs Asian views on culture, entrepreneurialism and economics. In this explosive account, Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths, as he lifts the lid on a world of hypocrisy, power and enormous wealth. Through the hidden lives of some mysterious and fascinating men, Studwell explores the broader economic and political issues facing a region of 500 million people: how the Asian tycoons took such a strong hold over their local economies, how they survived the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997, and what their endurance teaches us about the real state of the countries they live in.

    The Great Wall Revisited presents 72 of the most elucidating then-and-now comparisons accompanied by concise histories of the sites that Lindesay's images revisit.

    This book discusses the interaction of this demand and the early-nineteenth-century Latin American independence movements, changes in the world economy, the resulting disruptions in the Qing dynasty, and the transformation from the High Qing to modern China. Man-houng Lin shows how the disruption in the world's silver supply caused by the turmoil in Latin America and subsequent changes in global markets led to the massive outflow of silver from China and the crisis of the Qing empire. During the first stage of this dynastic crisis, traditional ideas favoring plural centers of power became more popular than they ever had been. As the crisis developed, however, statist ideas came to the fore. Even though the Qing survived with the resumption of the influx of Latin American silver, its status relative to Japan in the East Asian order slipped. The statist inclination, although moderated to a degree in the modern period, is still ascendant in China today. These changes--Qing China's near-collapse, the beginning of its eclipse by Japan in the East Asian order, and shifting notions of the proper relationship between state and market and between state and society--led to China upside down.

    Under the Liang, literary activities, such as writing, editing, anthologizing, and cataloguing, were pursued on an unprecedented scale, yet the works of this era are often dismissed as decadent and no more than a shallow prelude to the glories of the Tang.This book is devoted to contextualizing the literary culture of this era--not only the literary works themselves but also the physical process of literary production such as the copying and transmitting of texts; activities such as book collecting, anthologizing, cataloguing, and various forms of literary scholarship; and the intricate interaction of religion, particularly Buddhism, and literature. Its aim is to explore the impact of social and political structure on the literary world.

    This riveting work of history examines this well-publicized crime and the highly sensationalized trial of the killer. In a fascinating investigation of the media, political, and judicial records surrounding this cause célèbre, Eugenia Lean shows how Shi Jianqiao planned not only to avenge the death of her father, but also to attract media attention and galvanize public support. Lean traces the rise of a new sentiment—"public sympathy"—in early twentieth-century China, a sentiment that ultimately served to exonerate the assassin. The book sheds new light on the political significance of emotions, the powerful influence of sensational media, modern law in China, and the gendered nature of modernity.

    The main purpose of Graded Chinese Readers is to help students improve their reading comprehension. Graded Chinese Readers can be useful both inside and outside the classroom. The vocabulary of Graded Chinese Reader 1 is limited to about 2000 Chinese words. This is based on the 1033 Chinese words defined as basic vocabulary in the Level A (????)of the Chinese Proficiency Test (??????, HSK), together with some words from the Level B of HSK basic vocabulary (????).

    Anyone who has ever known and loved a pet will instantly recognize Minutka's favorite activities: she shakes paw, snatches socks, runs in circles, and has fun around the house and garden with her family and friends. Readers don't need to know Polish (or even be children) to be entranced by this lovable dog.

    The invasion marks the end of the British Empire and the reversal of all accepted values. The social order which has long been established in Hong Kong begins to disintegrate. The main characters engage on a journey of self discovery as their world falls apart. Their once apparently happy and perfect lives are shown to be shallow, hopeless faades behind which there is nothing but failure, self-denial and cowardice.

    Previous novels by Williams include 'The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure' and 'The Emperor's Bones'.

    Using Hong Kong as a case study, Janet Scott looks at paper offerings from every conceivable angle - how they are made, sold, and used. Her comprehensive investigation touches on virtually every aspect of Chinese popular religion as it explores the many forms of these intricate objects, their manufacture, their significance, and their importance in rituals to honor gods, care for ancestors, and contend with ghosts.Throughout For Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors, paper offerings are presented as a vibrant and living tradition expressing worshippers' respect and gratitude for the gods, as well as love and concern for departed family members. Ranging from fake paper money to paper furniture, servant dolls, cigarettes, and toiletries - all multihued and artfully constructed - paper offerings are intended to provide for the needs of those in the spirit world.Readers are introduced to the variety of paper offerings and their uses in worship, in assisting worshippers with personal difficulties, and in rituals directed to gods, ghosts, and ancestors. We learn of the manufacture and sale of paper goods, life in paper shops, the training of those who make paper offerings, and the symbolic and artistic dimensions of the objects. Finally, the book considers the survival of this traditional craft, the importance of flexibility and innovation, and the role of compassion and filial piety in the use of paper offerings.

    In Evoking Tang, a bilingual collection, Xiaolong offers English translations of more than 70 classic Chinese poems. The original texts represent the work of almost 40 poets from the Tang period, whose poems are comparable in importance, for English-speaking readers, to those of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Longfellow. The anthology is illustrated with 30 traditional Chinese paintings, which are included to aid interpretation and to stir the imagination of readers as they enter the poetic world.

    

    Even today the hypersexual female ghost continues to be a source of fascination in East Asian media, much like the sexually predatory vampire in American and European movies, TV, and novels. But while vampires can be of either gender, erotic Chinese ghosts are almost exclusively female. The significance of this gender asymmetry in Chinese literary history is the subject of Judith Zeitlin's elegantly written and meticulously researched new book.Zeitlin's study centers on the seventeenth century, one of the most interesting and creative periods of Chinese literature and politically one of the most traumatic, witnessing the overthrow of the Ming, the Manchu conquest, and the subsequent founding of the Qing. Drawing on fiction, drama, poetry, medical cases, and visual culture, the author departs from more traditional literary studies, which tend to focus on a single genre or author. Ranging widely across disciplines, she integrates detailed analyses of great literary works with insights drawn from the history of medicine, art history, comparative literature, anthropology, religion, and performance studies.The Phantom Heroine probes the complex literary and cultural roots of the Chinese ghost tradition. Zeitlin is the first to address its most remarkable feature: the phenomenon of verse attributed to phantom writers--that is, authors actually reputed to be spirits of the deceased. She also makes the case for the importance of lyric poetry in developing a ghostly aesthetics and image code. Most strikingly, Zeitlin shows that the representation of female ghosts, far from being a marginal preoccupation, expresses cultural concerns of central importance.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    Activist. Fearless. Faithful. The story of one man who has taken on the world's largest authoritarian regime... And, in the eyes of many, won. Born and raised in a cave with only the stars to tell time, Gao Zhisheng rose from poverty to become China's most important lawyer. He has courageously sought justice for vulnerable groups such as the poor, the disabled, and the persecuted. Yet Gao's fortitude has drawn the ire of Communist authorities. Today, physical threat and police surveillance are a constant reality for both Gao and his family. Undeterred, he has responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes to intensify the call for justice and human rights in China. His undaunted resolve and generous spirit have won the hearts of millions. Whispers can be heard in China's streets, Will Gao Zhisheng become the next president? Part memoir, part social commentary, part call to action, A China More Just is a penetrating account of contemporary China through the life of one attorney. Its selection of writings takes readers from a village in rural China to urban courtrooms, mountainside torture chambers, and the halls of a reluctant government. A China More Just is at once witty and raw, touching and wrenching, sober and playful.

    This book uses a variety of previously untapped sources, including a wide range of news sources within China itself, weblogs, and interviews with prominent figures, to make a powerful new argument about the causes and consequences of the new Chinese nationalism.

    An inspirational read with 198 pictures and illustrations, China's Christian Martyrs not only retells the facts of their lives, but identifies the heart of each person's love for the Lord Jesus. To help the reader understand what was happening in China at the time, the book is laid out in chronological order and includes many final letters and statements made before death, as well as the historical context and incidents leading to these martyrdoms. This moving read will motivate readers today to have a closer walk with and a deeper commitment to Christ. "God's time is now, and China is experiencing a rich harvest that has grown out of the ground, watered by the tears and blood of these martyrs." --From the Foreword by Brother Yun

    This book is a tale of East meets West set in the wild and heady days of inter-war China. It is an account of how two cultures clashed, bickering over business deals and social norms as they tried to find a way to live with each other.

    Written in lively vernacular prose interspersed with poems and songs, the novel takes its readers over vast distances across China, to the heavens, and into the underworld. Readers listen to debates among Confucians, Daoists, and Buddhists and witness trials of faith and the performance of magical feats. Similar in style, content, and vintage to the popular Buddhist novel Journey to the West (also known in English as Monkey), The Story of Han Xiangzi uses colorful characters, twists of plot, witty dialogue, and action suitable for a superhero comic book to convey its religious message--that worldly life is ephemeral and that true contentment can be found only through Daoist cultivation. This is the first translation into any Western language of Han Xiangzi quanzhuan (literally, The Complete Story of Han Xiangzi). On one level, the novel is a delightful adventure; on another, it is serious theology. Although The Story of Han Xiangzi's irreverent attitude toward the Confucian establishment prevented its being taken seriously by literary critics in imperial China, it has remained popular among Chinese readers for four centuries. Philip Clart's Introduction outlines the Han Xiangzi story cycle, presents Yang Erzeng in his social context, assesses the literary merits and religious significance of the text, and explores the theory and practice of inner alchemy. This unabridged translation will appeal to students of Chinese literature, readers who enjoy international fiction, and readers with an interest in Daoism.

    Asian Studies. Translated from the Chinese by Taylor Stoehr. These adroit translations of an assortment of Classical Chinese poets provide modern readers access to an ancient lyrical tradition of celebrating real intimate lives. Equally a display of the contemporary practice of translation and of the specific power of the included poems themselves, Stoehr's collection suggests parallels between the lives of past and present. The effect of such a union between source and transmission leads David Budbill to marvel: "This is a passionate, clear, honest book of poems translated by a passionate, clear, honest man." A teacher as well as a writer, Stoehr helped found "Changing Lives Through Literature," an alternative sentencing program in Dorchester, Massachusetts District Court.

    During his life, he witnessed the Boxer Rebellion, the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, the Sino-Japanese War, Japan's occupation of China during World War II, the Cultural Revolution...a full lifetime indeed, packed with struggle, love, conflict, and always, art. In 1992, when Deep in the Mountains begins, Zhu, the teller of tales, is 100 years old, still pushing himself to create, still experimenting with form and color. A lonely boy from the other side of the earth enters Zhu's world. Through the artist's stories of the past, the present, and the future, the boy learns who he is and what he can become in this beautiful, haunting story of growing up and accepting life's challenges—and its joys.• Multicultural appeal, features renowned Chinese artist Zhu Qizhan• Moving story of connection across the generations by critically acclaimed author• Blends China's history in the 20th century with a compelling modern-day tale

    Approaching their works from multiple perspectives, including the question of origins, nostalgia, the everyday, feminine "psychic interiority," commodification, biopolitics, migration, education, homosexuality, kinship, and incest, and concluding with an account of the Chinese films' epistemic affinity with the Hollywood blockbuster Brokeback Mountain, Chow proposes that the sentimental is a discursive constellation traversing affect, time, identity, and social mores, a constellation whose contours tends to morph under different historical circumstances and in different genres and media. In contemporary Chinese films, she argues, the sentimental consistently takes the form not of revolution but of compromise, not of radical departure but of moderation, endurance, and accommodation. By naming these films sentimental fabulations--screen artifacts of cultural becoming with irreducible aesthetic, conceptual, and speculative logics of their own--Chow presents Chinese cinema first and foremost as an invitation to the pleasures and challenges of critical thinking.

    Yet, this nationalism was also formed in dialogue with a more familiar, internal Other--the so-called barbarians of imperial China. By de-centering the nation-state, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism explores the role of the frontier and its indigenes in fashioning the contours, boundaries, and meaning of modern Chinese identity. Leibold argues that the rugged and sparsely populated frontier regions of the Qing empire proved central rather than peripheral to the process of revolution in modern China. He explores some of the key political and discursive strategies adopted by the Republican state in constructing a more inclusive myth of national belonging, providing important new insights into how China was able to successfully navigate the transition from empire to nation without following other Old World empires into a destructive implosion of competing ethnic sovereignties.

    We know where the aging leadership has taken and is taking China, but what about the very young? What are they like? When JoAnn Dionne arrived in Guangzho, she came prepared to live and teach elementary school in a Communist country. She expected to see soldiers in the streets, people in grey Mao suits, and lineups to buy toilet paper. Instead she found the world’s oldest country, throwing itself headlong into the future. She found traffic jams and 24/7 constructions, neon lights and smog, shopping malls and modern high-rises. And then she met the people who would live in that future – her students. Along with crisp insights into Chinese culture as seen through the eyes of a North American, Dionne provides a funny, often poignant glimpse of a nation undergoing rapid transformation.

    According to family legend, he abandoned his career as a scholar and began working as a physician. In doing so, he founded a medical lineage that continues to the present day. This book describes the development, flourishing, and decline of this lineage and its many branches, as well as that of the other medical lineages and families with which it merged over time to form the "current of Menghe learning" (Menghe xuepai). This current and its offshoots produced some of the most influential physicians in the Chinese medical tradition during the 19th and 20th centuries. Menghe physicians, their disciples and students treated emperors, imperial mandarins, Nationalist Party generals, leading figures in the Communist Party, affluent businessmen, and influential artists. In late imperial China, Menghe medicine was a self-conscious attempt to unite diverse strands of medical learning into one integrated tradition centered on ancient principles of practice. In Republican Shanghai, Menghe physicians and their students were at the forefront of medical modernization, establishing schools, professional associations, and journals that became models for others to follow. During the 1950s and 1960s, the heirs of Menghe medicine were key players in creating the institutional framework for contemporary Chinese medicine. Their students are now practicing all over the world, shaping Chinese medicine in Los Angeles, New York, Oxford, Mallorca, and Berlin. The history of the Menghe current is relevant to anyone interested in the development of Chinese medicine in late imperial and modern China. This book traces Chinese medical history along the currents created by generations of physicians linked to each other by a shared heritage of learning, by descent and kinship, by sentiments of native place as well as nationalist fervor, by personal riv

    These tours were exercises in political theater that took the Manchu emperor through one of the Qing empire's most prosperous regions.This study elucidates the tensions and the constant negotiations characterizing the relationship between the imperial center and Jiangnan, which straddled the two key provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Politically, economically, and culturally, Jiangnan was the undisputed center of the Han Chinese world; it also remained a bastion of Ming loyalism and anti-Manchu sentiment. How did the Qing court constitute its authority and legitimate its domination over this pivotal region? What were the precise terms and historical dynamics of Qing rule over China proper during the long eighteenth century?In the course of addressing such questions, this study also explores the political culture within and through which High Qing rule was constituted and contested by a range of actors, all of whom operated within socially and historically structured contexts. The author argues that the southern tours occupied a central place in the historical formation of Qing rule during a period of momentous change affecting all strata of the eighteenth-century polity.

    Now settled in New York, Paris and Sydney, over the past decade these artists--including Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu Bing, Wenda Gu, Zhang Huan, Huang Yong Ping and Chen Zhen--have become leading international figures. They have shown at major American institutions and have had important solo exhibits. For example, Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder work has recently appeared in solo shows at Tate Modern in London and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Huang Yong Ping's Walker Art Center retrospective recently went on international tour. "Breakout" features in-depth analyses of this important group's work, much of it based on interviews with the artists. The book's editor and author, Melissa Chiu, is a leading authority on Asian contemporary art. She was until recently the Asia Society's Curator for Contemporary Asian and Asian-American art; she is now its Museum Director. A Getty Curatorial Research Fellow, Chiu has organized more than 30 exhibitions, published widely in journals, magazines and catalogues, and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

    Organized into sections, this book presents Chinese characters that embrace a diversity of themes, including peace, happiness, love, long life, and many others. Each of 300 characters is presented with an explanation of its meaning and a note on how it is pronounced. Clear, step-by-step directions show beginning students exactly how to render the series of strokes which, when combined, create each elegant Chinese character. The author lists all necessary tools and materials, which include different kinds of paper, brushes and brush stands, paperweights, ink sticks, and ink stones. A chapter titled "Gallery of Chinese Calligraphy" presents many examples of traditional and contemporary Chinese calligraphic art from a variety of renowned artists. A glossary defines all items and terms that are cited in the book.

    1952) and her Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which won the 1992 NCR book award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award, and got officially banned in China. Despite its popular reception and crucial acclaim, Chang's work has invited a lot of attacks. Among the most common is the contention that it merely focuses on the experience of the privileged and does not tell the reader what other memoirs have not already revealed. Chinese Women Writers in Diaspora is a pioneering study that focuses on four Chinese women writers currently living in the United States and England, whose works have been popularly received-and are in many cases, highly controversial-but have received little scholarly attention: Xinran (b. 1958), Hong Ying (b. 1962), Anchee Min (b. 1957), and Adeline Yen Mah (b. 1937). The chapters illuminate how Xinran constructs her identity and her fellow Chinese women in dialectics of self and other; how Hong Ying evokes cycles of return that blend Western and Chinese philosophical concepts; how Min employs images of theatre and theatrical conventions to depict the entrapment and transgression of her protagonists; and how Mah transliterates and appropriates both Western and Chinese fairy tale motifs to fashion her Chinese feminist utopia. While Jung Chang's memoir seems confining, it has aroused interest in the genre of Chinese female autobiography, and Chinese women writers who live and write between cultures.

    Norman Smith reveals the literary world of Japanese-occupied Manchuria (Manchukuo, 1932-45) and examines the lives, careers, and literary legacies of seven prolific Chinese women writers during the period. He shows how a complex blend of fear and freedom produced an environment in which Chinese women writers could articulate dissatisfaction with the overtly patriarchal and imperialist nature of the Japanese cultural agenda while working in close association with colonial institutions.

    Although the Chinas are thought by western societies to advocate racial equality in their respective countries, this book uncovers the everyday racial attitudes of the Chinese people and governments toward Africans and African-Americans. In this book, crucial events in the Chinas such as the forced opening of China by the west and Chinese philosophical views throughout her history, are analyzed in how they have been instrumental in shaping racial attitudes that have led to racial polarization, racial violence and race riots against Africans and African-Americans in the Chinas.

    ...It is a significant addition to the literature and...I know of no immediate competitors with which this can be compared.Its publication is to be welcomed as a contribution to the debates about culture, modernity and gender in twentieth-century China, and, more widely, to the growing body of work on clothing and identity. ' --Verity Wilson, formerly Curator of Costume, Victoria and Albert Museum, London'This is the long-awaited, authoritative and definitive study of fashion in modern China, a topic if not a nascent field that has attracted recent scholarly and media attention. The author, a pioneer in this area, has accomplished an incredible feat-producing a vigorously-argued book that would advance intellectual debates while remaining accessible to the general reader.This book has a great many strengths. Previous Anglophone monographs on Chinese dress--by Vollmer, Garrett and Wilson for example--were works of collectors and museum curators. They focus on the material construction of dress and their regional or social variations at the expense of systemic cultural and economic analyses. As a result, the meaning of fashion as a cultural-economic phenomenon in China remains dimly understood. This is the first book-length work that situates fashion in historical contexts, from the world trading system and urban development to revolutionary movements in modern China. ... The book will launch fashion study as a serious intellectual endeavor in the field of Chinese studies while appealing to scholars in comparative fields (fashion studies, socio-economic history, cultural history, and post-colonial studies) and the general reader alike. It would make an appropriate textbook in an advanced undergraduate class on modern Chinese history or comparative history of fashion.' --Professor Dorothy Ko, Columbia University.

    Set in the historical period of the disunion (220-280 AD), Three Kingdoms fuses history and popular tradition to create a sweeping epic of heroism and political ambition. The essays in this volume explore the multifarious connections between Three Kingdoms and Chinese culture from a variety of disciplines, including history, literature, philosophy, art history, theater, cultural studies, and communications, demonstrating the diversity of backgrounds against which this novel can be studied.Some of the most memorable episodes and figures in Chinese literature appear within its pages, and Three Kingdoms has had a profound influence on personal, social, and political behavior, even language usage, in the daily life of people in China today. The novel has inspired countless works of theater and art, and, more recently, has been the source for movies and a television series. Long popular in other countries of East Asia, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, Three Kingdoms has also been introduced to younger generations around the globe through a series of extremely popular computer games. This study helps create a better understanding of the work's unique place in Chinese culture.

    Chinese poets had always looked backward to some degree, but for many Late Tang poets the echoes and the traces of the past had a singular aura.In this work, Stephen Owen resumes telling the literary history of the Tang that he began in his works on the Early and High Tang. Focusing in particular on Du Mu, Li Shangyin, and Wen Tingyun, he analyzes the redirection of poetry that followed the deaths of the major poets of the High and Mid-Tang and the rejection of their poetic styles. The Late Tang, Owen argues, forces us to change our very notion of the history of poetry. Poets had always drawn on past poetry, but in the Late Tang, the poetic past was beginning to assume the form it would have for the next millennium; it was becoming a repertoire of available choices--styles, genres, the voices of past poets. It was this repertoire that would endure.

    Often viewed as one of the most cosmopolitan regimes in China's past, the Tang had roots in Inner Asia, and its rulers continued to have complex relationships with a population that included Turks, Tibetans, Japanese, Koreans, Southeast Asians, Persians, and Arabs.Marc S. Abramson's rich portrait of this complex, multiethnic empire draws on political writings, religious texts, and other cultural artifacts, as well as comparative examples from other empires and frontiers. Abramson argues that various constituencies, ranging from Confucian elites to Buddhist monks to barbarian generals, sought to define ethnic boundaries for various reasons but often in part out of discomfort with the ambiguity of their own ethnic and cultural identity. The Tang court, meanwhile, alternately sought to absorb some alien populations to preserve the empire's integrity while seeking to preserve the ethnic distinctiveness of other groups whose particular skills it valued. Abramson demonstrates how the Tang era marked a key shift in definitions of China and the Chinese people, a shift that ultimately laid the foundation for the emergence of the modern Chinese nation.Ethnic Identity in Tang China sheds new light on one of the most important periods in Chinese history. It also offers broader insights on East Asian and Inner Asian history, the history of ethnicity, and the comparative history of frontiers and empires.

    The book offers a readable history of the special lineage institutions for which south China has been noted and argues that these institutions fostered the mechanisms that enabled south China to be absorbed into the imperial Chinese state—first, by introducing rituals that were acceptable to the state, and second, by providing mechanisms that made group ownership of property feasible and hence made it possible to pool capital for land reclamation projects important to the state. Just as taxation, defense, and recognition came together with the emergence of powerful lineages in the sixteenth century, their disintegration in the late nineteenth century signaled the beginnings of a new Chinese state.

    In the only book on the subject to be based on extensive interviews with elite political leaders, diplomats, and others in China, the United States, and countries on China's periphery, David M. Lampton investigates the military, economic, and intellectual dimensions of China's growing influence. His account provides a fresh perspective from which to assess China—how its strengths are changing, where vulnerabilities and uncertainties lie, and how the rest of the world, not least the United States, should view it. Lampton gives a valuable historical framework by discussing how the Chinese have thought about state power for over 2,500 years, and he asks how they are thinking about the future use of power through instruments such as their space program. He also provides broad suggestions for policy toward China in light of the 2008 elections in the United States and China's hosting of the Olympic Games, in a book that is essential reading for understanding one of the most significant developments of the twenty-first century.

    262), translated by Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama from the fifth-century Chinese version by the scholar-monk Kumarajiva, is one of the most important and revered texts in East Asian Buddhism. With its vivid descriptions of cosmic events and large cast of characters, the Saddharmapundarika-sutra (Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Fine Dharma) unfolds like a magnificent drama. Its twenty-eight chapters offer a combination of doctrine, teachings, stories and parables, devotional practices, and portraits of the many Buddhas and bodhisattvas that inhabit the world of the Lotus Sutra. This text presents an emerging Mahayana vision that affirms the possibility of enlightenment for all. [Ch: Miao-fa-lien-hua-ching] [Jpn: Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo]

    The massive drought/famine that killed at least ten million people in north China during the late 1870s remains one of China's most severe disasters and provides a vivid window through which to study the social side of a nation's tragedy. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley's original approach explores an array of new source materials, including songs, poems, stele inscriptions, folklore, and oral accounts of the famine from Shanxi Province, its epicenter. She juxtaposes these narratives with central government, treaty-port, and foreign debates over the meaning of the events and shows how the famine, which occurred during a period of deepening national crisis, elicited widely divergent reactions from different levels of Chinese society.

    Drawing on official documents and the testimony of people who knew Zhou, Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen provide an in-depth analysis of Zhou's complex personality, both as a person and a leader of the CCP, and his controversial actions. Their biography thoroughly and sensitively explains his political behavior, especially how such behavior shaped modern Chinese history.

    Your success depends on seeing things as Chinese do. You need Chinese glasses. Don’t wear them and you do business blind. The problems are not what you think.This book will open your eyes to the reality of doing successful business with Chinese.GREG BISSKY knows Chinese like few others. Business owner as well as consultant, project leader and teacher, since 1985 he has negotiated contracts, led Chinese teams, hired, fired and managed Chinese, and worked for numerous Chinese clients and bosses.Should you be polite to Chinese? Of course, if you are Western polite the Chinese will think you are impolite. You need to know how Chinese see polite. You need more than good intentions.Are relationships important to Chinese? Yes, except if you use Western ideas about relationships you will fail. You need to know how Chinese see relationships.Don’t worry about making mistakes.Chinese don’t care if you pass business cards with two hands or use chopsticks well. They expect you to make cultural mistakes. All non-Chinese are barbarians.Chinese meet Good, Bad and Ugly Westerners.You have to be a sensitive, flexible barbarian. Be polite, try things the Chinese way: after all, you are in China making Chinese money. A little respect goes a long way.You have to understand why before how.Tips are only useful if you understand why Chinese think and act as they do. Chinese ways make sense…to Chinese. The key to success is knowing why they make sense. You already know what to do.If you have a best friend back home, if you are married, you already know how to succeed in China. Everything in Chinese Asia is built on making good relationships.

    These stories draw the reader into a dimension that hovers over a magical landscape where ordinary mortals confront extraordinary powers. This is a journey into the psyche of eternal China.”—Christine Mathieu, co-author of Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the WorldChina is a land that has fascinated the world for centuries. Take a journey in this book back to a China that is both stunning and mysterious, back to the places where tales of magic were born. Victoria Cass retells both popular and little-known stories of emperors and empresses, ghosts, spirits, warriors, maidens, and magical realms amid landscapes potent with history.The stories are arranged by geography, providing an unprecedented look into how folklore and culture were shaped by China’s natural surroundings. Cass shows us where mortals, demons, and gods have for centuries belonged, taking the reader on a “grand tour” of China. This is a book that will capture the imagination of a new generation of readers.In the Realm of the Gods also goes where no other book on Chinese folk traditions has gone before by featuring stunning photography from some of China’s most critically acclaimed landscape photographers. Their studies of abandoned villas, vertiginous cliffs, nighttime pathways, serene canals, and temples at dusk provide a rich visual complement to the stories.By presenting the stories and photographs together, Cass has assembled a perfect synthesis of words and images while showing how the physical and cultural geography of China is at the root of its most popular legends and its tales of the natural and supernatural. This book represents a stunning achievement in storytelling.Victoria Cass is the author of Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming.

    100 sections are arranged under twelve topics such as "Benevolence", "The Rites", "Piety and Fraternity", "Administration", "Knowledge and Practice", "Teaching and Learning", etc., systematically representing the master's opinions about morality, education, personal cultivation, family management, and state administration together with his lofty ideals. This book is also reader-friendly as supplemented with modern Chinese pronunciation, English translation, and necessary annotations.

    Hundreds of specially commissioned photographs explore every nook and cranny of this vast country bringing readers a wealth of perspectives on the country’s immense and diverse range of sights. Depicting the varied topographies of China’s landscape as well as millennia-old monuments and modern architecture, the many facets of China come alive in this handsome volume. Densely populated cities contrast with the forests and brilliant lakes of Sichuan, the Himalayan peaks, and the deserts and Blue Mountains of Xinjiang. From Zhenghou and its archaeological riches to the majesty of the Great Wall of China, these images present unexpected views of familiar landmarks as well as reveal obscure sights that readers would never experience without the benefit of these dramatic pictures. This collection of photographs presents China, with its unique terrain, monuments, and people, as a veritable masterpiece.

    At the same time it analyzes, illustrates and argues that major steps are under way in taking up these challenges. In doing so the book provides an in-depth, balanced and comprehensive assessment of contemporary environmental reforms in China.This book was previously published as a special issue of Environmental Governance.

    The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with the China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibilities of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness might be a strategy by which that is possible. Such an idea calls identity into question, and Lu Xun is read here as a writer for whom that is a wholly problematic concept. The book makes use of critical and cultural theory to consider these short stories in the context of not only Chinese fiction, but in terms of the art of the short story, and in relation to literary modernism. It attempts to put Lu Xun into as wide a perspective as possible for contemporary reading. To make his work widely accessible, he is treated here in English translation.

    A stunning, richly illustrated portrait of Basil Pao's extensive travels through every province of China, published in time for the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008.

    The essays collected in this timely volume are the product of these scholars’ research on this historical problem. Delving deeply into the nature of the occupation, the authors examine local variations in the role of the Japanese in local politics, economics, and society, in such diverse localities as Manchuria, Mongolia, Shanghai, Jiangxi, and Yunnan, where the wartime experience has been little studied.Contributors include: Timothy Brook, John Dower, Kubo Toru, Chang Jui-te, Shao Minghuang, Tsukase Susumu, Xie Xueshi, Lu Minghui, Odoric Y. K. Wou, Ju Zhifen, Zhuang Jianping, Wei Hongyun, Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Peter Merker.

    Its fourfold narrative of the writing of weddings and its spirited engagement with the texts--ritual manuals, engagement letters, nuptial songs, calendars and almanacs, and legal texts--offer a form and style for a cultural history that accommodates the particularities of the sources of the Chinese imperial past.

    Divided into chapters by neighborhoods, plus excursions, the guide highlights famous sites and little-known enjoyments: the French Concession, the Bund, the Shanghai Museum, the old city, the Suzhou area by bike, the Huangpu River by boat, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and more. Each guidebook in this series details how to get around and what not to miss... the most gracious hotels and recommended restaurants... the best spots for festivals, wildlife watching, water sports, and more—all presented with the reliable reporting and magnificent photos and maps that are the hallmarks of National Geographic.

    Its territory was divided among three (sometimes more) municipal governments integrated into various national states and empires. No government building or religious institution gave Shanghai a “center." Yet amidst deep cleavages, the city functioned as a coherent whole. What held Shanghai together? The authors' answer is that a group of middlemen with myriad connections across political and social boundaries created networks that held Republican Shanghai together.Contributors Include: Sei Jeong Chin, Parks Coble, Bryna Goodman, Brian Martin, Elizabeth J. Perry, Kuiyi Shen, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, and Wen-hsin Yeh