Offering multilevel insight into one of the most astounding real-life dramas of modern history, The Fall and Rise of China weaves together the richly diverse developments and sociopolitical currents that created the China we now see in the headlines.As we enter what some are already calling the "Chinese century," the role of China is deeply fundamental to our reading of the direction of world civilization and history. In 48 penetrating lectures, The Fall and Rise of China takes you to the heart of the events behind China's new global presence, leaving you with a clear view of both the story itself and its critical implications for our world.Course Lecture Titles48 Lectures, 30 minutes per lecture 1. The Splendor That Was China, 600–1700 2. Malthus and Manchu Hubris, 1730–1800 3. Barbarians at the Gate, 1800–1860 4. Rural Misery and Rebellion, 1842–1860 5. The Self-Strengthening Movement, 1860–1890 6. Hundred Days of Reform and the Boxer Uprising 7. The End of Empire, 1900–1911 8. The Failed Republic, 1912–1919 9. The Birth of Chinese Communism, 1917–1925 10. Chiang, Mao, and Civil War, 1926–1934 11. The Republican Experiment, 1927–1937 12. "Resist Japan!" 1937–1945 13. Chiang's Last Stand, 1945–1949 14. "The Chinese People Have Stood Up!" 15. Korea, Taiwan, and the Cold War, 1950–1954 16. Socialist Transformation, 1953–1957 17. Cracks in the Monolith, 1957–1958 18. The Great Leap Forward, 1958–1960 19. Demise of the Great Leap Forward, 1959–1962 20. "Never Forget Class Struggle!" 1962–1965 21. "Long Live Chairman Mao!" 1964–1965 22. Mao's Last Revolution Begins, 1965–1966 23. The Children's Crusade, 1966–1967 24. The Storm Subsides, 1968–1969 25. The Sino-Soviet War of Nerves, 1964–1969 26. Nixon, Kissinger, and China, 1969–1972 27. Mao's Deterioration and Death, 1971–1976 28. The Legacy of Mao Zedong—An Appraisal 29. The Post-Mao Interregnum, 1976–1977 30. Hua Guofeng and the Four Modernizations 31. Deng Takes Command, 1978–1979 32. The Historic Third Plenum, 1978 33. The "Normalization" of U.S.-China Relations 34. Deng Consolidates His Power, 1979–1980 35. Socialist Democracy and the Rule of Law 36. Burying Mao, 1981–1983 37. "To Get Rich Is Glorious," 1982–1986 38. The Fault Lines of Reform, 1984–1987 39. The Road to Tiananmen, 1987–1989 40. The Empire Strikes Back, 1989 41. After the Deluge, 1989–1992 42. The "Roaring Nineties," 1992–1999 43. The Rise of Chinese Nationalism, 1993–2001 44. China's Lost Territories—Taiwan, Hong Kong 45. China in the New Millennium, 2000–2008 46. China's Information Revolution 47. "One World, One Dream"—The 2008 Olympics 48. China's Rise—The Sleeping Giant Stirs

    . . A beautiful, searing book that leaves an indelible presence in the mind." --Patricia Hampl, author of "The Florist's Daughter "Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng-- City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love--and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?Told through Will and Katherine's alternating viewpoints--and inspired by the lives of the author's maternal grandparents--"City of Tranquil Light" is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation. A deeply spiritual book, it shows how those who work to teach others often have the most to learn, and is further evidence that Bo Caldwell writes "vividly and with great historical perspective" ("San Jose Mercury News").

    These are stories which Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - because they were too painful and close to home. In the footsteps of Xinran's Good Women of China, this is personal, immediate, full of harrowing, tragic detail but also uplifting, tender moments. Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women - students, successful business women, midwives, peasants, all with memories which have stained their lives. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity... these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned. Here are the 'extra-birth guerrillas' who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold onto more than one baby; naive young student girls who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the 'pebble mother' on the banks of the Yangzte still looking into the depths for her stolen daughter; peasant women rejected by their families because they can't produce a male heir; and finally there is Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but 'confiscated' by the state. The book sends a heartrending message from their birth mothers to all those Chinese girls who have been adopted overseas (at the end of 2006 there were over 120,000 registered adoptive families for Chinese orphans, almost all girls, in 27 countries), to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten.

    The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton’s book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet's work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poeets. From the classic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on nature, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight. And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel remarkably fresh and contemporary, presenting a literature both radically new and entirely resonant.

    Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the most loyal historians, but now a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting and magnificently detailed book chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented. Dikotter shows that instead of lifting the country among the world's superpowers and proving the power of communism, as Mao imagined, in reality the Great Leap Forward was a giant - and disastrous -- step in the opposite direction. He demonstrates, as nobody has before, that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate - and catastrophe for the natural environment - in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikotter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised. Exhaustively researched and brilliantly written, this magisterial, groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

    The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. As an organization alone, the Party is a phenomenon of unique scale and power. Its membership surpasses seventy-three million, and it does more than just rule a country. The Party not only has a grip on every aspect of government, from the largest, richest cities to the smallest far-flung villages in Tibet and Xinjiang, it also has a hold on all official religions, the media, and the military. The Party presides over large, wealthy state-owned businesses, and it exercises control over the selection of senior executives of all government companies, many of which are in the top tier of the Fortune 500 list. In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China's inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military, and how it keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party's decisions have a global impact, yet the CPC remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law, unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world's only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is steadfastly poised to think the worst of the West. In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China's Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future.

    maritime strategy in Asia. They argue that China is laying the groundwork for a sustained challenge to American primacy in maritime Asia, and to defend this hypothesis they look back to Alfred Thayer Mahan's sea-power theories, now popular with the Chinese. The book considers how strategic thought about the sea shapes Beijing's deliberations and compares China's geostrategic predicament to that of the Kaiser's Germany a century ago. It examines the Chinese navy's operational concepts, tactics, and capabilities and appraises China's ballistic-missile submarine fleet. The authors conclude that unless Washington adapts, China will present a challenge to America's strategic position.

    Raised in tradition-bound China, she wrestles with internal and external pressures, striking out on a journey from her homeland to America and back again. As the powers of survival and love bring her slowly and steadily into a world of abandoned children struggling to survive in China's orphanages, the strength of Lily's soul gathers, at times calm and soothing and at times a churning force sweeping away the obstacles that keep families from coming together. Out of moments of brokenness - the pain of betrayal and the grief of holding the body of a child never given a chance to live - Lily finds the power and persistence to change the lives of thousands of forsaken children, and generations to come.

    Topics include word order, time, nouns, verbs, adjectives, word choices with verbs and adverbs, and letter writing. The simple format has one goal: quick mastery and growing confidence.Qin Xue Herzberg, a graduate of Beijing Normal University, has taught Chinese for decades and has been an upper-level Chinese professor at Calvin College for ten years.Larry Herzberg did his PhD work in Chinese and founded the Chinese language programs at Albion College and Calvin College.Qin and Larry live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and are co-authors of the popular China Survival Guide as well as the recently released Chinese Proverbs and Popular Sayings.

    Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying minzu and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a “scientific” survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.

    Volume 2: From the Great Qing Empire through the People's Republic of China (1644—2009).

    Keen insights into entrepreneurial drive, Asian business, and business-success fundamentals.

    

    Departing from this tradition, The Battle for China brings together Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars to provide a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the military operations that shaped much of what happened in political, economic, and cultural realms. The volume's diverse contributors have taken pains to sustain a scholarly, dispassionate tone throughout their analyses of the course and the nature of military operations, from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the final campaigns of 1945. They present Western involvement in Sino-Japanese contexts, and establish the war's place in World War II and world history in general.

    Yet, as an ancient civilization, the region had both an historical and cultural coherence. It shared, for example, a Confucian heritage, some common approaches to Buddhism, a writing system that is deeply imbued with ideas and meaning, and many political and institutional traditions. This shared past and the interconnections among three distinct, yet related societies are at the heart of this book, which traces the story of East Asia from the dawn of history to the early twenty-first century. Charles Holcombe is an experienced and sure-footed guide who encapsulates, in a fast-moving and colorful narrative, the vicissitudes and glories of one of the greatest civilizations on earth.

    Whether your native language is English or Chinese, you can learn the rhymes along with your children. Just follow the words on the page, or play the CD and sing along! Nursery rhymes and songs include:Muffin ManHappy Birthday to YouI See the MoonAs I Was Going AlongHickory Dickory DockI Love Little PussyAnd many more…

    Homeland trips offer great opportunities for helping adopted children develop a coherent narrative that makes sense of their complicated beginnings. Although the trip can be a joyful experience, it can also raise many challenges. The chapters of this book - by Joyce Maguire Pavao, Jane Brown, Jane Leidtke, Rose Lewis, and many others - offer the engaging perspectives of adoptive parents, professionals, researchers, and, most importantly, adopted children themselves. Together, they comprise a unique, invaluable resource that will help families prepare for a homeland trip, make decisions about how to travel, anticipate what they might experience in China, and meaningfully integrate events and emotions after arriving back home. From Home to Homeland is for all internationally adoptive families considering a homeland trip or figuring out how to best make sense of a trip after returning home.

    In 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, collective killings were widespread in rural China in the form of public execution. Victims included women, children, and the elderly. This book is the first to systematically document and analyze these atrocities, drawing data from local archives, government documents, and interviews with survivors in two southern provinces. This book extracts from the Chinese case lessons that challenge the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings and contributes to the historiography of the Cultural Revolution, in which scholarship has mainly focused on events in urban areas.

    The government had fled, leaving several hundred thousand civilians and soldiers behind, among them a twelve-year-old girl.To face the unthinkable.An unprecedented historical novel, When the Purple Mountain Burns presents a riveting, profoundly intimate portrait of Nanjing and its people during the first six days after its fall to the Japanese army. Within the city walls are men and women, young and old, soldiers and civilians, Chinese and a dozen foreigners, all caught up in the whirling, turbulent fires of history.Purple Mountain: A Story of the Rape of Nanking probes deeply into the souls of victims and perpetrators of war atrocities, and hails its unassuming heroes and heroines. It is a powerful allegory against the folly of war and the horrors of genocide.This WindsAsClouds edition is based on When the Purple Mountain Burns: A Novel published by the Long River Press (2005). Two Chinese editions (one in simplified Chinese and one in classic Chinese) were published in Shanghai and Hong Kong respectively at the same time. A screenplay Qi wrote on the same story has been optioned for production. The novel was inspired by the author’s intimate knowledge of his hometown and by letters, testimonies, survivor accounts, diaries, and other documents made available through the work of many scholars, journalists, and others in China, Japan, and the United States. A native of Nanjing, Shouhua Qi came to the United States for his doctoral studies in 1989. He is the author of When the Purple Mountain Burns: A Novel (in both English and Chinese editions), Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories, Bridging the Pacific: Searching for Cross-Cultural Understanding Between the United States and China, and more than ten other books. Qi is Professor of English at Western Connecticut State University.

    Volume 2: From the Great Qing Empire through the People's Republic of China (1644—2009).

    China's most famous tourist attraction is the Great Wall, which runs across about 5,000 miles of northern China. Rich with Chinese culture, this title explores Chinese food, holidays, and daily life. Eager readers will also get to challenge their tongues with a few common words from the unique Chinese language!

    Filled with vivid accounts of everyday life during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the riots of 1967, all of this history fades into insignificance when food comes into the picture—traditional Cantonese dishes like carrot and green turnip soup, taro in ginger and brown sugar, and sticky rice dumplings.

    Above all, the warriors and leaders in this retelling, their loyalties and conflicts, show why this classic has been valued as the best introduction to Chinese thought.The second edition adds beginnings and endings to some chapters as well as material between certain chapters to improve the transitions.

    Focusing on the jazz-age nightlife of the city in its -golden age, - the book examines issues of colonialism and modernity, urban space, sociability and sexuality, and modern Chinese national identity formation in a tumultuous era of war and revolution.

    Bei Dao, one of China's foremost modern poets, has been translated into 30 languages and several times candidate for the Nobel Prize. Bei Dao is currently Professor of Humanities at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

    Not only has progress toward modernity often been equated with secularization, but when religion is admitted into modernity, it has been distinguished from superstition. That such ideas are continually contested does not undercut their extraordinary influence.These divisions underpin this investigation of the role of religion in the construction of modernity and political power during the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937) of Nationalist rule in China. This book explores the modern recategorization of religious practices and people and examines how state power affected the religious lives and physical order of local communities. It also looks at how politicians conceived of their own ritual role in an era when authority was meant to derive from popular sovereignty. The claims of secular nationalism and mobilizational politics prompted the Nationalists to conceive of the world of religious association as a dangerous realm of "superstition" that would destroy the nation. This is the first "superstitious regime" of the book's title. It also convinced them that national feeling and faith in the party-state would replace those ties--the second "superstitious regime."

    Calligraphy—the art of producing decorative handwriting or lettering with a pen or brush—has been around for thousands of years. In this fun calligraphy-for-kids book, readers will follow along with Mimi, an eigh- year-old, who takes her first steps towards learning this magical art. Dive in, and explore:The Evolution of Chinese Writing—how Chinese characters first began, thousands of years ago, and how they have evolvedThe Order of the Strokes—learn how to write the strokes in the correct orderThe Radicals—what are they, and how to unlock their secretsThe Four Treasures of Calligraphy— the four essential tools to get startedMovements and Position—how to master your mind's focus, your breathing and even how to moveThe Five Styles of Calligraphy—Zhuan Shu (seal), Li Shu (clerical), Kai Shu (regular), Cao Shu (cursive), and Xing Shu (running)The Eight Strokes— how to draw the eight strokes; with them, you can write anythingWriting a Character in Calligraphy—create an entire character in calligraphyThe included interactive CD-ROM enables learners to play creative games to see, hear and try Chinese writing; listen to the pronunciation of the Chinese characters; observe calligraphers in action and print the characters to create practice pages.

    The local culture and the people of Asia fascinated him, and in 1868 he made his second trip, this time settling in Hong Kong. Between 1868 and 1872, Thomson made extensive trips to Guangdong, Fujian, Beijing, China's northeast and down the Yangtse River, covering nearly 5000 miles. This exhibition catalogue is drawn from his time in these regions. These were the early days of photography when negatives were made on glass plates that had to be coated with emulsion before the exposure was made. A huge amount of cumbersome equipment had to be carried from place to place and with perseverance, great energy and stamina, Thomson managed to take a wide variety of images and themes, including landscapes, people, and architecture, domestic and street scenes. As a foreigner, his ability to gain access to photograph women is also remarkable. In China, Thomson excelled as a photographer in quality, depth and breadth, and in artistic sensibility.

    Watts is a correspondent for The Guardian in Beijing. In Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

    China's War of Resistance began in 1937 with the Japanese invasion and ended in 1945 after eight long years. Diana Lary, one of the foremost historians of the period, tells the tragic history of China's war and its consequences from the perspective of those who went through it. Using archival evidence only recently made available, interviews with survivors, and extracts from literature, she creates a vivid and highly disturbing picture of the havoc created by the war, the destruction of towns and villages, the displacement of peoples, and the accompanying economic and social disintegration. Her focus is on families torn apart, men, women, and children left homeless and struck down by disease and famine. It is also a story of courage and survival. By 1945, the fabric of China's society had been utterly transformed, and entirely new social categories had emerged. As the author suggests in a new interpretation of modern Chinese history, far from stemming the spread of communism from the USSR, which was the Japanese pretext for invasion, the horrors of the war, and the damage it created, nurtured the Chinese Communist Party and helped it to win power in 1949.

    Through a nuanced analysis of the Nuosu population, this book seeks to answer why the Nuosu has a disproportionately large number of opiate users and HIV positive individuals relative to others in Sichuan. By focusing on the experiences of Nuosu migrants and drug users, it shows how multiple modernities, individual yearnings, and societal resilience have become entwined in the Nuosu's calamitous encounter with the Chinese state and, after long suppression, their efforts at cultural reconstruction.This ethnography pits the Nuosu youths' adventures, as part of their passage to manhood, against the drastic social changes in their community and, more broadly, China over the last half century. It offers fascinating material for courses on migration, globalization, youth culture, public health, and development at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

    Anecdotes from Baum's professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching -- the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

    Not only are the eleven plays in this volume expertly translated into lively, idiomatic English; they are each provided with illuminating, scholarly introductions that are yet fully intelligible to the educated lay reader. A marvelous volume.--Victor Mair, University of Pennsylvania

    Yet the Chinese government has consistently resisted these efforts, countering with repression and a sophisticated strategy of state-sanctioned propaganda emphasizing interethnic harmony and Chinese nationalism. After decades of struggle, Uyghurs remain passionate about establishing and expanding their power within government, and China's leaders continue to push back, refusing to concede any physical or political ground.Beginning with the history of Xinjiang and its unique population of Chinese Muslims, Gardner Bovingdon follows fifty years of Uyghur discontent, particularly the development of individual and collective acts of resistance since 1949, as well as the role of various transnational organizations in cultivating dissent. Bovingdon's work provides fresh insight into the practices of nation building and nation challenging, not only in relation to Xinjiang but also in reference to other regions of conflict. His work highlights the influence of international institutions on growing regional autonomy and underscores the role of representation in nationalist politics, as well as the local, regional, and global implications of the "war on terror" on antistate movements. While both the Chinese state and foreign analysts have portrayed Uyghur activists as Muslim terrorists, situating them within global terrorist networks, Bovingdon argues that these assumptions are flawed, drawing a clear line between Islamist ideology and Uyghur nationhood.

    Looking south, I saw a great mass of black smoke rising into the sky. My father came and stood beside me. I could see that he was very upset. His face was grim as he turned to me and said, 'Now we must face an unpredictable future.'So began the turmoil that turned China upside down and set an intelligent young man born to wealth and power off on an amazing journey through this world and the otherworldly in search of meaning and freedom. A Time of Ghosts is his remarkable, true story.

    As China nears a 2012 leadership transition, it is faced with myriad challenges, both internal and external, and understanding these challenges is critical to being able to predict and prepare for the China of the next decade.

    Moreover, most of the relevant primary documents have existed only in Chinese, scattered in hard-to-find publications. Contemporary Chinese Art remedies this situation by bringing together carefully selected primary texts in English translation. Arranged in chronological order, the texts guide readers through the development of avant-garde Chinese art from 1976 until 2006. Because experimental Chinese art emerged as a domestic phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s and its subsequent development has been closely related to China’s social and economical transformation, this volume focuses on art from mainland China. At the same time, it encompasses the activities of mainland artists residing overseas, since artists who emigrated in the 1980s and 1990s were often key participants in the early avant-garde movements and have continued to interact with the mainland art world. The primary documents include the manifestos of avant-garde groups, prefaces to important exhibitions, writings by representative artists, important critical and analytical essays, and even some official documents. Each chapter and section begins with a concise preface explaining the significance of the texts and providing the necessary historical background; the volume includes a timeline summarizing important art phenomena and related political events.Publication of the Museum of Modern Art

    Primarily comprising works from the People's Republic of China, though including representative plays from Hong Kong and Taiwan, this collection not only showcases the revolutionary rethinking of Chinese theater and performance that began in the late Qing dynasty. It also highlights the formation of Chinese national and gender identities during a period of tremendous social and political change, along with the genesis of contemporary attitudes toward the West.Early twentieth-century Chinese drama embodies the uncertainty and anxiety brought on by modernism, socialism, political conflict, and war. After 1949, PRC theater painted a complex portrait of the rise of communism in China, with the ideals of Chinese socialism juxtaposed against the sacrifices made for a new society. The Cultural Revolution promoted a "model theater" cultivated from the achievements of earlier, leftist spoken drama, even though this theater arose from the destruction of old culture. Post-Mao drama addresses the socialist legacy and the attempts of a wounded nation to reexamine its cultural roots. Taiwan's spoken drama synthesizes regional and foreign traditions, and Hong Kong's spoken drama sparkles as a hybrid of Chinese and Western influences. Immensely valuable for cross-disciplinary, comparative, and performance study, this anthology provides essential perspective on China's theatricality and representation of political life.

    This comprehensive book provides an analytical view of the remarkable economic development of the most exciting economy in the world. China's impressive economic growth has propelled it from being one of the poorest countries in the world to becoming its third largest economy. It is a complex economy with a mix of characteristics resulting from being both a transition economy and a developing country, which also points to the challenges that it still faces. This book explains China's remarkable transformation from a centrally planned to a more market-oriented economy through examination of the institutional reforms necessary to support such marketisation and eventual global integration. Although no book will be able to be completely comprehensive given the scale of the economy and the remarkable pace of transformation over three decades, this study highlights the key areas giving an overview of the major developments in China's economy, enabling its prospects of continuing growth to be assessed.With topical discussion incorporating recent data and developments, this book will be a stimulating read for academic researchers, postgraduate students in economics, international business, Chinese and area studies, as well as anyone interested in understanding the Chinese economy.

    For most of East Asia, Buddhist sutras were written in classical Chinese and inaccessible to many devotees. How, then, did such devotees access these texts? Charlotte D. Eubanks argues that the medieval genre of “explanatory tales” illuminates the link between human body (devotee) and sacred text (sutra). Her highly original approach to understanding Buddhist textuality focuses on the sensual aspects of religious experience and also looks beyond Japan to explore pre-modern book history, practices of preaching, miracles of reading, and the Mahayana Buddhist “cult of the book.”

    Many believe China is antimilitary and reluctant to use force against its enemies. It practices pacifism and refrains from expanding its boundaries, even when nationally strong.In a path-breaking study traversing six centuries of Chinese history, Yuan-kang Wang resoundingly discredits this notion, recasting China as a practitioner of realpolitik and a ruthless purveyor of expansive grand strategies. Leaders of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) prized military force and shrewdly assessed the capabilities of China's adversaries. They adopted defensive strategies when their country was weak and pursued expansive goals, such as territorial acquisition, enemy destruction, and total military victory, when their country was strong. Despite the dominance of an antimilitarist Confucian culture, warfare was not uncommon in the bulk of Chinese history. Grounding his research in primary Chinese sources, Wang outlines a politics of power that are crucial to understanding China's strategies today, especially its policy of "peaceful development," which, he argues, the nation has adopted mainly because of its military, economic, and technological weakness in relation to the United States.

    Even though China is an international leader in modern business and technology, its ancient history exerts a powerful force on its foreign policy. In The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations, Christopher A. Ford expertly traces China's self-image and its role in the world order from the age of Confucius to today. Ford argues that despite its exposure to and experience of the modern world, China is still strongly influenced by a hierarchical view of political order and is only comfortable with foreign relationships that reinforce its self-perception of political and moral supremacy.Recounting how this attitude has clashed with the Western notion of separate and coequal state sovereignty, Ford speculates -- and offers a warning -- about how China's legacy will continue to shape its foreign relations. Ford examines major themes in China's conception of domestic and global political order, sketches key historical precedents, compares Chinese ideas to the tradition of Western international law, and outlines the remarkable continuity of China's Sinocentrism. Artfully weaving historical, philosophical, religious, and cultural analysis into a cohesive study of the Chinese worldview and explaining its relevance, Ford offers a unique perspective of modern China.

    As sacred images of the Buddha proliferated over time, it is said that his relics were divided among 84,000 South Asian sites of Buddhist worship, or stupas. This abundance of sacred sites in turn rendered pilgrimage and worship increasingly prominent influences on Asian culture and daily life.Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art employs sacred objects, textiles, sculpture, manuscripts, and paintings to discuss the relationship between Buddhist pilgrimage and Asia’s artistic production. Accompanying an exhibition of approximately 90 extraordinary objects, many of which have never before been displayed publicly, this book addresses the process of the sacred journey in its entirety, including discussion of pilgrimage motivation, ritual preparation, and worship at the sacred destination. Exceptional and visually stunning examples of painted mandalas, reliquaries, prayer wheels, and traveling shrines demonstrate that pilgrims and pilgrimage inspired centuries of artistic production and shaped the development of visual culture in Asia.Through insightful essays by a team of scholars, Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art illuminates artwork’s complex role in Buddhist culture, in which art serves as a form of memory and a bridge to the spiritual world as well as a functional tool with temporal purposes.

    Its 243 color photographs, which include 12 panoramic gatefolds, show us the country’s most famous landmarks—like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall—as we have never seen them before, and and introduce us to less familiar but just as fascinating sights, like the the multicolored travertine lakes of Huanglong Valley and the beautiful calligraphic inscriptions on the rugged rocks of Mount Taishan. Extended captions at the back of the book provide a concise introduction to the history and significance of each of the forty-four locales depicted, twenty-eight of which have been designated as World Heritage sites by UNESCO.

    That's the general public's reaction to the crucial movement of oil around the world's oceans. Yet this vital supply chain that allows the world to function is constantly under enormous, largely unreported pressure. The uninterrupted flow of oil is essential to globalization and increasingly so as manufacturing and markets move Eastwards to Asia. However, it is threatened by conflicts between nation states, pirates and global warming. All too often the movement of oil by ocean is something taken for granted by the majority of the world yet it is fraught with difficulty, and could haemorrhage global growth if issues covered in this book are not resolved or allowed to escalate. From reporting onboard giant tankers to looking at the geopolitical shift in oil consumption, Oil on Water is holistic, all encompassing and engrossing look at the way oil is moved and consumed mixing reportage, examples and hard-hitting facts.

    However, they were also often troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence figures centrally in the period's experience of China and of contact with foreign countries and cultures more generally. David Porter analyzes the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth and Horace Walpole, and broader reflections on cross-cultural interaction, Porter's readings develop new interpretations of eighteenth-century ideas of luxury, consumption, gender, taste and aesthetic nationalism. Illustrated with many examples of Chinese and Chinese-inspired objects and art, this is a major contribution to eighteenth-century cultural history and to the history of contact and exchange between China and the West.

    Traditional Chinese collectors, like present-day scholars of Chinese painting, have favored the "literati" paintings of the Chinese male elite, disparaging vernacular works, often intended as decorations or produced to mark a special occasion. Cahill challenges the dominant dogma and doctrine of the literati, showing how the vernacular images, both beautiful and appealing, strengthen our understanding of High Qing culture. They bring to light the Qing or Manchu emperors' fascination with erotic culture in the thriving cities of the Yangtze Delta and demonstrate the growth of figure painting in and around Beijing's imperial court. They also revise our understanding of gender roles and show how Chinese artists made use of European styles. By introducing a large, rich body of works, "Pictures for Use and Pleasure" opens new windows on later Chinese life and society.

    With parts open to the public since 1925, nearly 8 million tourists flock there annually. Yet the elegant, intimate Qianlong Garden—itself a “mini-Forbidden City” inside the Forbidden City—has remained sequestered from view. Dating from the 18th century, the Qianlong Garden was built as a retirement retreat for its namesake emperor, a visionary patron of the arts who designed his garden to reflect a perfect union of art, architecture, and nature. Now undergoing restoration thanks to a groundbreaking international collaboration, it is intended to be open fully to visitors in 2019.The Emperor’s Private Paradise gives an unprecedented and in-depth analysis of the garden and its extravagant imperial interiors. Essays offer an overview of the history of Chinese gardens and the extraordinary reign of the Qianlong emperor, while contextualizing the importance of the Qianlong Garden and its artworks.This lavishly illustrated volume is published to accompany a remarkable exhibition of ninety objects from the Qianlong Garden, many of them never seen before, including superlative examples of Qing murals, paintings, wall coverings, furniture, architectural elements, and jades.By illuminating this little-known yet architecturally significant area of the Forbidden City, this volume represents a major contribution to the fields of Chinese art, history, architecture, and gardens.

    This implicit view has also colored the study of social life in China, where both Confucian ethics and Communist policies have shaped collective structures with little room for individual agency and choice.What is actually happening, however, is a growing individualization of China - not only changing perceptions of the individual but also rising expectations for individual freedom, choice, and individuality. The individual has also become a basic social category in China, and a development has begun that permeates all areas of social, economic, and political life. How this process evolves in a state and society lacking two of the defining characteristics of European individualization--a culturally embedded democracy and a welfare system - is one of the questions that the volume explores.A strength of this volume is that its authors succeed in depicting the individualization process in conceptually acute and empirically sensitive terms, and as something with its own distinctively Chinese profile. That makes this book a must read for all those wanting to understand present-day Chinese society, with all of its ambivalences, contingencies and contradictions. Moreover, the volume makes an essential contribution to the current debate in sociology about how the meaning of modernity should be conceptualized and redefined from a cosmopolitan perspective.

    Artists working in this highly traditional medium draw from a wealth of ancient themes, but must resolve them within contemporary Chinese culture. In Fresh Ink, ten of China's leading contemporary artists engage directly with the past by creating ten new works in response to older masterpieces, ranging from classical Chinese scrolls to a scholar's rock to a drip painting by Jackson Pollock. Their personal visions reflect diverse concerns and influences, whether Xu Bing's play on the absurdly monumental, Qin Feng's system of communicative signs, or the keen eye for society evident in the work of Li Jin, Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong. An adventurous pairing of contemporary artworks with their forbears, Fresh Ink blurs the boundaries between traditional and contemporary, East and West.

    Focusing on the specialty of “medicine for women”(fuke), Yi-Li Wu explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. She draws on a rich array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases. These points of contention touched on fundamental issues: How different were women's bodies from men's? What drugs were best for promoting conception and preventing miscarriage? Was childbirth inherently dangerous? And who was best qualified to judge? Wu shows that late imperial medicine approached these questions with a new, positive perspective.

    While in the United States, he is faced with extreme racial prejudice during the Korean War. Several transgressions happen to him, changing his life forever. The book covers many historical events that have never been explained over the years which are masterminded by Qin Shi Chong. While the story unfolds, the reader considers many potential futures for the United States, some of which are rather grim, to say the least. As Qin Shi Chong returns to China, he is determined to create havoc in a lifelong quest to destroy the United States. His revenge takes many avenues and clandestine plots. From creating a network to sell drugs to soldiers during the Vietnam War, to secretly training North Vietnamese soldiers in ways of killing American soldiers, Qin Shi Chong succeeds. Blue Skies Red Soil covers an 80-year span in Qin Shi Chong's life, including the explosion of the computer revolution, where he inadvertently stumbles on a weapon capable of immobilizing civilian and military technology in America. Author David Mudra lives in a suburb of Cleveland. He works for an American automotive company in heavy manufacturing. He is also a state-certified medical first responder, a state-certified firefighter, a part-time police officer for a local municipality, and a commercially rated pilot.

    Before World War II, most Chinese could not vote and many were illegal immigrants, so brokers played informal but necessary roles asrepresentatives to the larger society. Lisa Rose Mar's study of Chinatown leaders shows how politics helped establish North America's first major group of illegal immigrants. Drawing on new Chinese language evidence, her dramatic account of political power struggles over representing ChineseCanadians offers a transnational immigrant view of history, centered in a Pacific World that joins Canada, the United States, China, and the British Empire.

    Fueled by a newfound openness in the East, and by an economic boom that has promoted a vibrant cultural confidence, art made in Asia or by Asian artists since the 1990s has become dynamic and exciting, acknowledged and appreciated by collectors, critics, and curators. This authoritative, wide-ranging volume surveys the contemporary art of Asia, examining key issues and themes: art’s relationship to history and tradition, its engagement with politics, society, and the state, its exploration of consumerism and popular culture, and its interplay with the urban environment. Artists range from the established—Nam June Paik, On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Cai Guo-Qiang, Takashi Murakami—to the emerging—Indonesian cartoon artist Wedhar Riyadi, Mongolian site-specific artist Chaolun Baatar, Pakistani graffiti artist Naiza Khan, Vietnamese-American photo artist Dinh Q. Le, and many more. Together, these artists represent the range of Asian countries, from Indonesia to Japan, Uzbekistan to South Korea, Iran to China. More than 230 sumptuous illustrations capture the full scope of the artists’ practice, from calligraphy, painting, sculpture, and photography to performance, installation, video, and Internet art. Complete with comprehensive biographies, Asian Art Now is both a superb critical overview and the consummate visual reference.

    The Neustadt is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize for Literature and is often referred to as the "American Nobel" because of its record of twenty-seven laureates, candidates, or jurors who in the past thirty-nine years have been awarded Nobels following their involvement with the Neustadt. Duo Duo is the twenty-first Neustadt laureate and the first Chinese author to win the prize.Chinese poet Mai Mang, who currently teaches Chinese literature at Connecticut College, served on the Neustadt Prize jury and nominated Duo Duo for the award. He notes that "Duo Duo is a great lone traveler crossing borders of nation, language, and history, as well as a resolute seer of some of the most basic, universal human values that have often been shadowed in our troubled modern time: creativity, nature, love, dreams, and wishful thinking."Robert Con Davis-Undiano, WLT's executive director, adds that "Duo Duo is foremost among a group of first-rate Chinese poets who deserve serious attention and recognition in the West."Duo Duo (Li Shizheng) was born in Beijing in 1951. He started writing poetry in the early 1970s as a youth during the isolated midnight hours of the Cultural Revolution, and much of his early writing critiqued the Cultural Revolution from an insider's point of view in a highly sophisticated, original style.

    Within Tibet, discussion of those events has long been banned, and no visual records of this history were known to have survived. In Forbidden Memory the leading Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser presents three hundred previously unseen photographs taken by her father, then an officer in the People’s Liberation Army, that show for the first time the frenzy and violence of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Found only after his death, Woeser’s annotations and reflections on the photographs, edited and introduced by the Tibet historian Robert Barnett, are based on scores of interviews she conducted privately in Tibet with survivors. Her book explores the motives and thinking of those who participated in the extraordinary rituals of public degradation and destruction that took place, carried out by Tibetans as much as Chinese on the former leaders of their culture. Heartbreaking and revelatory, Forbidden Memory offers a personal, literary discussion of the nature of memory, violence, and responsibility, while giving insight into the condition of a people whose violently truncated history they are still unable to discuss today.Access the glossary.

    Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questionsof Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influencedmuch of the political, military, and even cultural history of China. Ropp also examines Sino-Indian relations, highlighting the impact of the thriving trade between India and China as well as the profound effect of Indian Buddhism on Chinese life. Finally, the author discusses the humiliation ofChina at the hands of Western powers and Japan, explaining how these recent events have shaped China's quest for wealth, power and respect today, and have colored China's perception of its own place in world history.

    

    And despite the city's pace of change, traces of this colourful past can still be found.Let this walking guide show you the way. Hidden behind Hong Kong's modern facade, there are wartime tunnels, backstreet shophouses, ancient shrines and colonial forts - and there's a story to each one. With clear maps and archive photography, this book will lead you on your own explorations of Hong Kong's heritage.

    Heart of Buddha, Heart of Chinatraces Tanxu's journey from his birth in 1875 to his death in 1963. Through Tanxu's life we come to know one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history as it moved from empire to republic. James Carter draws on archives and interviews to provide a book that is part travelogue, part history, and part biography.

    Susan Greenhalgh, one of the foremost authorities on China's one-child policy, places the governance of population squarely at the heart of China's ascent.Focusing on the decade since 2000, and especially 2004-09, she argues that the vital politics of population has been central to the globalizing agenda of the reform state. By helping transform China's rural masses into modern workers and citizens, by working to strengthen, techno-scientize, and legitimize the PRC regime, and by boosting China's economic development and comprehensive national power, the governance of the population has been critically important to the rise of global China.After decades of viewing population as a hindrance to modernization, China's leaders are now equating it with human capital and redefining it as a positive factor in the nation's transition to a knowledge-based economy. In encouraging "human development," the regime is trying to induce people to become self-governing, self-enterprising persons who will advance their own health, education, and welfare for the benefit of the nation. From an object of coercive restriction by the state, population is being refigured as a field of self-cultivation by China's people themselves.

    In Southeast Asia this influence can be seen in the architecturally eclectic homes these migrants and their descendants built as they became successful; homes that combined Chinese, European and local influences, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia strives not only to be an informative but also an authoritative book on the subject of hybrid architecture—filled with stunning color photographs and essays on nearly thirty well-preserved homes. An introductory essay portrays the historical circumstances that gave rise to Chinese houses overseas, and includes historic images, color photographs, paintings and line drawings. At the core of the book is a comprehensive set of stunning color photographs of nearly thirty well-preserved homes built by Chinese immigrants and their descendants in various countries of Southeast Asia. Images and drawings from southeastern China help clarify similarities and differences. For each home, extensive captions accompany the photographs and the essay supplies background information concerning the individual and family who built and resided in each house. The historical context, nature of the building, and the restoration history of the home is included. Extensive information about the symbolism implicit in the decorative elements that make up each of the homes is presented. This includes an examination of ornamental elements that are Chinese in origin as well as those decorative components that are Western. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia has been written in a nontechnical style, accessible to lay readers who are interested in the extraordinary architectural heritage of China, much of which is only now beginning to be appreciated.

    Immediately, misery and death from cold, hunger, disease, and brutality descended upon the Japanese civilians at the hands of the Soviet Army and revenge-seeking mobs and bandits. Nearly 2,500 Japanese died daily. Three courageous men embarked on a secret mission and escaped to Japan to eventually bring an end to the Manchurian nightmare. In the riveting story, Escape from Manchuria, the son of one of the three courageous men narrates for the Western readers a compelling tale of the rescue and repatriation of nearly 1.7 million Japanese that began almost a year after the surrender of Japan.Escape from Manchuria describes the indispensable role that General Douglas MacArthur and his staff played in the repatriation. It also discloses the role played by the Catholic Church in Manchuria and Japan in assisting the three men to achieve this monumental success. The heroics of the three men have not been fully recognized, even in Japan, because they took on the mission of rescue as private citizens, without the consent or knowledge of the then-utterly helpless Japanese government. This is the story of their courage and determination to save the lives of their fellow Japanese!

    Fearless seeing, ancient mutterings on contemporary pathways and boulevards, inventive poetics, merciless memories and tender, knowing hands all take their proper place here."—Peter LevittShin Yu Pai is the author of several collections including Sightings: Selected Works and Equivalence.

    Contributors spanning three generations in China studies place their distinct qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches in the framework of the discipline and point to challenges or opportunities (or both) of adapting new sources and methods to the study of contemporary China. How can we more effectively use new sources and methods of data collection? How can we better integrate the study of Chinese politics into the discipline of political science, to the betterment of both? How can we more appropriately manage the logistical and ethical problems of doing political research in the challenging Chinese environment? In addressing these questions, this comprehensive methodological survey will be of immense interest to graduate students heading into the field for the first time and experienced scholars looking to keep abreast of the state of the art in the study of Chinese politics.

    Three diverse families intertwine as cultures collide, deceptions unravel, and the legacy of a legendary "big luck" grabs hold of them all!Can a legendary jade amulet really possess the power to change the luck not only of the living but also of the dead? For decades, Meili and her heirs must hold on to a small jade goat to unlock its legendary "big luck." Little do they know that the White Jade, guarded by a mysterious ghostly figure and sought after by a rising tong leader, is destined to launch them on an incredible journey that spans cultures and generations.""I warn you, luck can come disguised in many ways. You must wear the White Jade well-this you must do for the sake of the ancestors.""

    The Daoist religion, in particular, long despised as “superstitious”, has recovered its place as “the native higher religion.” But while the Chinese state tried from the fifth century on to construct an orthodoxy based on Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, local society everywhere carved out for itself its own geomantically defined space and organized itself around local festivals in honor of gods of its own choosing—gods who were often invented and then represented by illiterate mediums. Looking at China from the point of view of elite or popular culture therefore produces very different results. John Lagerwey has done extensive fieldwork on local society and its festivals. This book represents a first attempt to use this new research to integrate top-down and bottom-up views of Chinese society, culture, and history. It should be of interest to a wide range of China specialists, students of religion and popular culture, as well as participants in the ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue between historians and anthropologists.

    While China's relationship to Africa has been thoroughly examined, knowledge and analysis of India's role in Africa has until now been limited. This book fills the gap and compares and contrasts India to China’s role as a rising global power in the African continent.

    In that context, Tang Dynasty Tales offers the first annotated translations of six major tales (often called chuanqi, “transmitting the strange”) which are interpreted specifically for students and scholars interested in medieval Chinese literature. Following the model of intertextual readings that Glen Dudbridge introduced in his The Tale of Li Wa (Oxford, 1983), the annotation points to resonances with classical texts, while setting the tales in the political world of their time; the “Translator's Notes” that follow each translation explain how these resonances and topical contexts expand the meaning of the text. Each translation is also supported by a short glossary of original terms from the tale and a bibliography guiding the reader to further studies.The meticulous scholarship of this book elevates it above all existing collections of these stories, and the inclusion of a history of the translation work in the west, intended for graduate students, researchers, and other translators, broadens the collections' appeal.

    The Maoists, on the other hand, claim they are the only revolutionary force in India today. The debate in India seems polarized between the hardline advocates of a military response to leftwing extremism on the one hand, and those who sympathize with the Maoists on the other. There is need, however, to look at the roots and origins of left sectarianism and critique it from a Marxist standpoint. In articulating a Left critique of 'Maoism', this book adds a crucial dimension to the ongoing debate in India.

    This book brings events right up to date and includes the results of a survey about the Hong Kong public’s attitude towards the CCP. The numerous appendices on the key targets of the party’s united front activities also make it an especially useful read for all who are interested in Hong Kong history and politics, and readers who are interested in the history of modern China.

    Homer Lea: American Soldier of Fortune paints a revealing portrait of a diminutive yet determined man who never earned his valor on the field of battle, but left an indelible mark on his times.Lawrence M. Kaplan draws from extensive research to illuminate the life of a "man of mystery," while also yielding a clearer understanding of the early twentieth-century Chinese underground reform and revolutionary movements. Lea's career began in the inner circles of a powerful Chinese movement in San Francisco that led him to a generalship during the Boxer Rebellion. Fixated with commanding his own Chinese army, Lea's inflated aspirations were almost always dashed by reality. Although he never achieved the leadership role for which he strived, he became a trusted advisor to revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen during the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Manchu Dynasty.As an author, Lea garnered fame for two books on geopolitics: The Valor of Ignorance, which examined weaknesses in the American defenses and included dire warnings of an impending Japanese-American war, and The Day of the Saxon, which predicted the decline of the British Empire. More than a character study, Homer Lea provides insight into the establishment and execution of underground reform and revolutionary movements within U.S. immigrant communities and in southern China, as well as early twentieth-century geopolitical thought.

    The world is beginning to have an idea of its importance. Those who have long known it, who have given attention to its traditions and the sources of its social and industrial strength, have the con- viction that China will become a factor of the first magnitude in the composition of the world of the twentieth century. They have penetrated beyond the idea that China is a land of topsy-turvy, the main function of which is to amuse the out- sider with unexpected social customs, and which, from a political point of view, is in a state bordering upon chaos. When we ask ourselves what are the elements which may constitute China's contribution to the future civilization of the world, what are the characteristics which render her civilization significant to all of us, we enter upon a subject that would in itself require a volume merely to present in outline. From the point of view of social action, there is the widely diffused sense of popular equity which has enabled Chinese society for these many centuries to govern itself, to maintain property rights, personal honour and dignity with- out recourse to written law or set tribunals, chiefly through an informal enforcement by society itself acting through many agencies, of that underlying sense of proportion and rightness which lives in the hearts of the people. From the point of view of economic life, China presents the picture of a society in which work has not been robbed of its joy, in which the satisfaction of seeing the product of industry grow in the hands of the craftsman still forms the chief reward of a labour performed with patient toil but without heartbreakingdrudgery. From the point of view of social organization, China forms an extremely intricate organism in which the specific relationship between definite individuals counts far more than any general principles or ideas. Loyalty, piety, a sense of fitness give meaning to the ceremonial of Chinese social life, which is more than etiquette as a mere ornament of social intercourse in that it bodies forth in visible form as every-day observances, the relations and duties upon which society rests. From the point of view of art, China stands for a refinement of quality which attests the loving devotion of generations to the idea of a perfect product; in the repre- sentative arts, calmness of perception has enabled the Chinese to set a model for the artistic reproduction of the environments of human life. In their conception of policy and world position, the Chinese people have ever shown a readiness to base any claim to ascendancy upon inherent ex- cellence and virtue. They have not imposed upon their neighbours any artificial authority, though they have proudly received the homage and admiration due their noble culture.At this time, when the Far Eastern question is the chief subject-matter of international conferences and negotiations, China stands before the world in the eyes of those who really know her, not as a bankrupt pleader for indulgence and assistance, but as a great unit of human tradition and force which, heretofore somewhat over-disdainful of the things through which other nations had won power and preference and mechanical mastery, has lived a trifle carelessly in the assurance t

    This book examines gender relations in the two ancient societies as reflected in convivial contexts such as family banquets, public festivals & religious feasts. Two distinct patterns of interpersonal affinity & conflict emerge from the Chinese & Greek sources that show men & women organizing themselves & interacting with each other in social occasions intended for collective pursuit of pleasure. Thru an analysis of the two different patterns, Zhou illuminates the different sociopolitical mechanisms, value systems & fabrics of human bonds in the two classical traditions. Her book will be important for readers who are interested in the comparative study of societies, gender studies, women's history & the legacy of civilizations.Introduction: Kinship & friendship Among men. Greece: comrades, citizens & boysChina: ancestors, brothers & sonsBetween men & women, among women. Public festivals & domestic ritesAt the table & behind the scenesFemale experience & male imagination. What women sang ofConclusion

    The men were family friends, colleagues, and were all living in Shanghai during the late 19th century. Much of their combined transcription became shaped into the book we know today as the "Tao Te Ching." "China and the Manchus" by Herbert Giles is a series of legends and recollections from ancient China, ordered by chronology. Herbert Giles is also known for creating the first Chinese-English Dictionary and helping to develop the system of Chinese translation known as the "Wade-Giles Romanization System." "Leaves from My Chinese Scrapbook" by Frederic Balfour is a collection of stories, legends and anecdotes by a British expatriate scholar, who was working for local Chinese newspapers and contributing travel articles to "Harpers Magazine." Many of these stories are taken from the source scrolls Balfour used to write the ground-breaking "Taoist Texts" in 1884. "Biographies of Immortals" by Lionel Giles is the first partial Western translation of the ancient Chinese book of "Liexian Zhuan," containing mythic heroes from Chinese history, including the "Eight Immortals of China." Lionel Giles, the son of Herbert Giles, is also known for his original translation of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" as well as "The Analects" of Confucius.

    Several months later, Xiao was arrested in order to fulfill an absurd quota and, without trial, declared a counterrevolutionary. He was sent to a labor prison on an island in Taihu Lake, where he worked in a stone quarry.The Visiting Suit chronicles Xiao's arrest through his release from the labor prison five years later.The book, told in stories—which have appeared in The Atlantic, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus—focus equally on Xiao's fellow inmates (a local theater director, a veterinarian, a university professor), and capture their mutual everyday struggle to survive their sentences with dignity intact.The cruelties inflicted upon the Chinese population by the government are ongoing, and The Visiting Suit provides a unique and important glimpse behind the curtain.

    Flynn and Arturo GirAldez concerns the origins and early development of globalization. It opens with their 1995 "Silver Spoon" essay and a theoretical essay published in 2002. Subsequent sections deal with Pacific Ocean exchanges, interconnections between the Spanish, Ottoman, Japanese and Chinese empires, and the necessity of multidisciplinary approaches to global history. The volume follows the evolution of the authors' thinking concerning the central role of China in the global silver trade, as well as interrelations among silver and non-silver markets. Research before 2002 paved the way for development of a coherent 'Birth of Globalization' narrative that portrays economic factors in the context of powerful epidemiological, ecological, demographic, and cultural forces. In the final essay Flynn and GirAldez argue for incorporating the work of all academic disciplines when attempting to understand the history of globalization, advocating an inclusive historical data base which recognizes contextual realities and an inductive process of reasoning.

    It seeks to guide readers through some of the primary source material and to introduce them to continuing, contemporary debates and interpretations of religious ideas, concepts and practices in China and beyond. Defining religion as a way of life, this book examines religious beliefs and practices in particular cultural contexts, and highlights the relevance of religion to personal, communal and political life.In this clear account, Xinzhong Yao and Yanxia Zhao move away from the traditional and outmoded definition of Chinese religion, towards a multi-layered hermeneutic of the diverse and yet syncretic nature and functions of religions in China. Additional features include questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter and suggestions for further reading at the end of the book.