On the other side of town lives Pony Boy, a member of a lower-class family—but Benfu’s best friend all the same. Their futures look different but guaranteed…until they’re faced with a perilous opportunity to leave a mark on history.At the announcement of China’s Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao’s Red Guard members begin their assault, leaving innocent victims in their wake as they surge across the country. With political turmoil at their door, both Benfu and Pony Boy must face heart-wrenching decisions regarding family, friendship, courage, and loyalty to their country during one of the most chaotic periods in history.The prequel to the beloved Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters series, The Palest Ink depicts Benfu’s coming-of-age during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution.

    In that moment, she understood the nature of her life: an outlier."In 1883, a young Chinese woman is sold by her father to human traffickers and forcibly taken from her family and home in the mountains of Hunan. Facing brutality and deprivation, Ya Zhen must forge within herself a core of strength that will allow her to survive. Her journey ends thousands of miles and a continent away when she’s purchased in San Francisco as an indentured prostitute and taken to Eureka, a rugged and remote area of coastal California. This fledgling outpost—a coarse place filled with lumber mills, brothels, churches, and saloons—is bounded by ocean on one side and heavy redwood forests everywhere else.In Eureka, another woman, Rose Allen, doesn’t quite fit in. Big-hearted, but hard-headed and outspoken, Rose struggles against the prejudices and social expectations of her Victorian neighbors and acquaintances—especially after she falls in love with the Chinese shopkeeper, Bai Lum. When she learns that several Chinese women are kept as virtual slaves at Salyer’s Hotel, Rose joins forces with a small group of friends who are determined to help Ya Zhen escape her grim incarceration. But even as they devise a plan to get her free, a terrible accident precipitates the upheaval of the entire town, and tension mounts as the clock begins ticking for everyone.With a rich cast of unforgettable characters both fictional and historical, Chasing Down the Moon is based on true events that tore a community apart. This gripping historical fiction and literary love story will break your heart, give you reason to hope, and ultimately make you believe in the resilience of the human spirit.

    For three years, Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown to his wife’s family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing, in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights. Once a commune, Wasteland is now a company town, a phenomenon happening across China that Meyer documents for the first time; indeed, not since Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth has anyone brought rural China to life as Meyer has here.   Amplifying the story of family and Wasteland, Meyer takes us on a journey across Manchuria’s past, a history that explains much about contemporary China—from the fall of the last emperor to Japanese occupation and Communist victory. Through vivid local characters, Meyer illuminates the remnants of the imperial Willow Palisade, Russian and Japanese colonial cities and railways, and the POW camp into which a young American sergeant parachuted to free survivors of the Bataan Death March. In Manchuria is a rich and original chronicle of contemporary China and its people.

    The first, Thomas, is an entitled deadbeat, content to pass the rest of his days in Asia skating by on the fact that he's white, while the second, a recent college graduate named Daniel, is an idealist at heart. Over the course of the novel, these two characters fight to establish primacy in Ningyuan, a remote town in the south of Hunan, with one of their more overzealous students, Bella, caught in between. Quincy Carroll's cleverly written debut novel examines what we bring from one country to another.

    Equally important, it lays out an in-depth analysis of the possible pathways to peace. Written like a geopolitical detective story, the narrative encourages reader interaction by starting each chapter with an intriguing question that often challenges conventional wisdom. Based on interviews with more than thirty top experts, the author highlights a number of disturbing facts about China's recent military buildup and the shifting balance of power in Asia: the Chinese are deploying game-changing "carrier killer" ballistic missiles; some of America's supposed allies in Europe and Asia are selling highly lethal weapons systems to China in a perverse twist on globalization; and, on the U.S. side, debilitating cutbacks in the military budget send a message to the world that America is not serious about its "pivot to Asia." In the face of these threatening developments, the book stresses the importance of maintaining US military strength and preparedness and strengthening alliances, while warning against a complacent optimism that relies on economic engagement, negotiations, and nuclear deterrence to ensure peace.Accessible to readers from all walks of life, this multidisciplinary work blends geopolitics, economics, history, international relations, military doctrine, and political science to provide a better understanding of one of the most vexing problems facing the world.

    As such, he is an entertaining storyteller who is deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture, both ancient and modern, who brings readers into the journey—from standing at the edge of the trash pit that used to be Tu Mu's grave to sitting in Han Shan's cave where the Buddhist hermit "Butterfly Woman" serves him tea.Illustrated with over one hundred photographs and two hundred poems, Finding Them Gone combines the love of travel with an irrepressible exuberance for poetry. As Porter writes: "The graves of the poets I'd been visiting were so different. Some were simple, some palatial, some had been plowed under by farmers, and others had been reduced to trash pits. Their poems, though, had survived... Poetry is transcendent. We carry it in our hearts and find it there when we have forgotten everything else."Poets’ graves visited (partial list): Li Pai, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Su Tung-p’o, Hsueh T’ao, Chia Tao, Wei Ying-wu, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Han-shan (Cold Mountain).

    China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976--an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.Mao's China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao's greatest achievements--victory in the civil war, the creation of China's first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life--also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.Misdiagnosing China's problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided.

    Whereas many scholars assume the emergence of queer cultures in China signals the end of Marxism and demonstrates China's political and economic evolution, Liu finds the opposite to be true. He challenges the persistence of Cold War formulations of Marxism that position it as intellectually incompatible with queer theory, and shows how queer Marxism offers a nonliberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation. The work of queer Chinese artists and intellectuals not only provides an alternative to liberal ideologies of inclusion and diversity, but demonstrates how different conceptions of and attitudes toward queerness in China and Taiwan stem from geopolitical tensions. With Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Liu offers a revision to current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

    In southwestern Taiwan the Dutch establish a trading settlement; in Nagasaki a boy is born who will become immortalized as Ming dynasty loyalist Koxinga. Lord of Formosa tells the intertwined stories of Koxinga and the Dutch colony from their beginnings to their fateful climax in 1662. The year before, as Ming China collapsed in the face of the Manchu conquest, Koxinga retreated across the Taiwan Strait intent on expelling the Dutch. Thus began a nine-month battle for Fort Zeelandia, the single most compelling episode in the history of Taiwan. The first major military clash between China and Europe, it is a tale of determination, courage, and betrayal – a battle of wills between the stubborn Governor Coyett and the brilliant but volatile Koxinga. Although the story has been told in non-fiction works, these have suffered from a lack of sources on Koxinga as the little we know of him comes chiefly from his enemies. While adhering to the historical facts, author Joyce Bergvelt sympathetically and intelligently fleshes out Koxinga. From his loving relationship with his Japanese mother, estrangement from his father (a Chinese merchant pirate), to his struggle with madness, we have the first rounded, intimate portrait of the man. Dutch-born Bergvelt draws on her journalism background, Chinese language and history studies, and time in Taiwan, to create an irresistible panorama of memorable characters caught up in one of the seventeenth century’s most fascinating dramas.

    Yet, much like other developing nations, the Chinese state now finds itself entrenched in a status quo characterized by free trade and American domination. Through a cutting-edge historical, sociological, and political analysis, Ho-fung Hung exposes the competing interests and economic realities that temper the dream of Chinese supremacy--forces that are stymieing growth throughout the global South.Hung focuses on four common misconceptions about China's boom: that China could undermine orthodoxy by offering an alternative model of growth; that China is radically altering power relations between the East and the West; that China is capable of diminishing the global power of the United States; and that the Chinese economy would restore the world's wealth after the 2008 financial crisis. His work reveals how much China depends on the existing order and how the interests of the Chinese elites maintain these ties. Through its perpetuation of the dollar standard and its addiction to U.S. Treasury bonds, China remains bound to the terms of its own prosperity, and its economic practices of exploiting debt bubbles are destined to fail. Dispelling many of the world's fantasies and fears, Hung warns of a postmiracle China that will grow increasingly assertive in attitude while remaining constrained in capability.Ho-fung Hung is an associate professor of sociology at the Johns Hopkins University and researches the development of capitalism, state formation, and protests in China and the world. He is the author of the award-winning book Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty.

    In nearly every language, 80% of what's spoken daily derives from 20% of the entire language. What does that mean for you? Picking up a new language does not require a laborious study of grammar formulas and verb conjugations. Instead, if you just focus on the right parts of the language- the absolute essentials- you WILL be able to communicate in a new language WITHIN DAYS. This book helps you achieve just that. This Chinese language guidebook supplies you with ALL THE ESSENTIAL spoken Chinese language you need in daily conversations and on trips abroad. This book is written by a NATIVE CHINESE SPEAKER who has lived in Beijing, China and taught Mandarin Chinese to English speakers. In addition to language instruction, this book takes a step further to distinguish between "local talk" from mere dictionary words. A Preview of What You'll Learn Here: - Comprehensive Pronunciation Guide - A Grammar Foundation - Essential Survival Phrases ○ Greetings ○ What to Say During Emergencies ○ Asking for Directions ○ On the Taxi ○ Asking for Necessities ○ Talking About Different People ○ Most Common Adjectives, Verbs, and Places - Talk about Numbers, Time, and Day - Phrases for Specific Situations ○ Getting to Know Someone ○ Eating Out ○ Shopping and Bargaining ○ Money and Currency ○ At the Bar ○ BONUS: Romantic Endeavors - Guide to the Most Useful Chinese Characters to Recognize During Your Travels GET YOUR BOOK TODAY!

    Her wits, strength and knowledge of history not only helps her to travel through the Han Empire and Xiongnu Empire, but also helps her to view history, philosophy, love and marriage in a different light.While at the same time, she has a big secret that will separate her from the rest of the world.Based on actual historical events, author of “My Soul is in the Sky” gives a vivid description of the lives at ancient China, from Emperor to Empress, from generals to shop owners, from the Imperial University to nomadic tribes on Mongolia Steppe.

    It saw the far-sighted establishment of an embassy in Beijing in the 1970s by Gough Whitlam, headed by Stephen FitzGerald. Here, FitzGerald’s story as diplomat, China scholar, adviser to Gough Whitlam, first ambassador to China under prime ministers Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, is interwoven with the wider one of this dramatic moment in Australia’s history. Comrade Ambassador also highlights the challenge Australia faces in managing itself into an Asian future.

    The work traces the development of tea drinking from its mythical origins to the nineteenth century and examines the changes in aesthetics, ritual, science, health, and knowledge that tea brought with it.The shift in drinking habits that occurred in late medieval China cannot be understood without an appreciation of the fact that Buddhist monks were responsible for not only changing people's attitudes toward the intoxicating substance, but also the proliferation of tea drinking. Monks had enjoyed a long association with tea in South China, but it was not until Lu Yu's compilation of the Chajing (The Classic of Tea) and the spread of tea drinking by itinerant Chan monastics that tea culture became popular throughout the empire and beyond. Tea was important for maintaining long periods of meditation; it also provided inspiration for poets and profoundly affected the ways in which ideas were exchanged. Prior to the eighth century, the aristocratic drinking party had excluded monks from participating in elite culture. Over cups of tea, however, monks and literati could meet on equal footing and share in the same aesthetic values. Monks and scholars thus found common ground in the popular stimulant—one with few side effects that was easily obtainable and provided inspiration and energy for composing poetry and meditating. In addition, rituals associated with tea drinking were developed in Chan monasteries, aiding in the transformation of China's sacred landscape at the popular and elite level. Pilgrimages to monasteries that grew their own tea were essential in the spread of tea culture, and some monasteries owned vast tea plantations. By the end of the ninth century, tea was a vital component in the Chinese economy and in everyday life.Tea in China transcends the boundaries of religious studies and cultural history as it draws on a broad range of materials—poetry, histories, liturgical texts, monastic regulations—many translated or analyzed for the first time. The book will be of interest to scholars of East Asia and all those concerned with the religious dimensions of commodity culture in the premodern world.courtesy of http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9322-...

    Transience is a poetry anthology that connects the different transient stages of love and romance in a failed love story.

    The recent release of a new edition of SMS signals the potential for dramatic shifts in the PLA's approach to a number of strategic questions, but the book remains underutilized by many Western China analysts due to the lack of both an English translation and expert analysis to place these changes into context.China's Evolving Military Strategy aims to bring knowledge of these important developments to a mass audience of China watchers, policymakers, and the broader foreign policy community by providing a sector-by-sector analysis of changes in the PLA's thinking and approach from the previous edition of SMS to the present. Each chapter addresses the implications for a different portion of the Chinese military, ranging from the air, sea, and space domains to cyberspace and electromagnetic warfare, and each is written by one of the world's foremost experts on that subsection of China's military development. China's Evolving Military Strategy will serve as the cornerstone reference for a generation to come on one of China's most important declarations of its military-strategic goals and intentions.

    Organised into three major areas of the digital economy within China, this ground-breaking book explores the surge in e-commerce of consumer goods, the way in which multi-screen and mobile Internet use has increased in popularity, and the cultural emphasis on the mobile Internet as a source of lifestyle- and entertainment-based content. Targeted at the global business community, this lucid and engaging text guides business leaders, investors, investment banking professionals, corporate advisors, and consultants in grasping the challenges and opportunities created by China's emerging mobile economy, and its debut onto the global stage.Year 2014-15 marks the most important inflection point in the history of the internet in China. Almost overnight, the world's largest digitally-connected middle class went both mobile and multi-screen (smart phone, tablets, laptops and more), with huge implications for how consumers behave and what companies need to do to successfully compete. As next-generation mobile devices and services take off, China's strength in this arena will transform it from a global "trend follower" to a "trend setter."Understand what the digital transformation in China is, and impact on global capital markets, foreign investors, consumer companies, and the global economy as a whole Explore the e-commerce consumption boom in the context of the Chinese market Understand the implications of the multi-screen age and mobile Internet for China's consumers See how mobile Internet use, its focus on lifestyle and entertainment is aligned with today's Chinese culture Learn about the mobile entertainment habits of China's millennial generation and the corresponding new advertisement approaches The development of China's mobile economy is one of the most important trends that will reshape the future of business, technology and society both in China and the world. China's Mobile Economy: Opportunities in the Largest and Fastest Information Consumption Boom introduces you to the digital transformation in China, and explains how this transformation has the potential to transform both China and the global consumer landscape.

    By contrast, the story of the month-long campaign before this notorious massacre has never been told in its entirety. Nanjing 1937 by Peter Harmsen fills this gap.

    In 1956, she married Sidney Rittenberg, an idealistic American who had stayed in China to help the Communists after 1949. Working for Radio Peking, they had four children and a good life until the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, when her husband was jailed on false charges of spying. Taunted by her colleagues as a "dog-spy's wife," Yulin was locked up with her children, persecuted at work, and sent to "reeducation" camps, with no news of her husband. In this memoir, she tells her tumultuous life story, a tale of determination, resilience, and struggle.

    With his smooth, warm, red face which radiated light in all directions, Chairman Mao Zedong was a fixture in Chinese propaganda posters produced between the birth of the People's Republic in 1949 and the early 1980s. Chairman Mao, portrayed as astoic superhero (a.k.a. the Great Teacher, the Great Leader, the Great Helmsman, the Supreme Commander), appeared in all kinds of situations (inspecting factories, smoking a cigarette with peasant workers, standing by the Yangzi River in a bathrobe, presiding over the bow of a ship, or floating over a sea of red flags), flanked by strong, healthy, ageless men and masculinized women and children wearing baggy, sexless, drab clothing. The goal of each poster was to show the Chinese people what sort of behavior was considered morally correct andhow great the future of Communist China would be if everyone followed the same path toward utopia by uniting together.This book brings togethera selection of colorful propaganda artworks and cultural artifactsfrom Max Gottschalk s vast collection of Chinese propaganda posters, many of which are now extremely rare. About the Series: Bibliotheca Universalis Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing.Bibliotheca Universalisbrings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Bookworm s delight never bore, always excite! Text in English, French, and German "

    A few years after adopting her son and daughter from China, Johanna Garton and her husband took them back to the land of their birth - leaving the only lives she and her family knew for the adventure of a lifetime.

    and later to Canada. Twice she returns to China to reunite with her mother as well as friends, and to see how Chinese society and politics are evolving. However, as an escaped citizen who has returned with an American passport, Nina puts herself in dangerous situations and finds herself needing to flee from the red terror once again.“Zoe S. Roy’s novel, Calls Across the Pacific, is a fascinating journey of a young woman, Nina Huang, whose adventure begins during the Cultural Revolution in China, follows her immigration to the United States, and eventually leads her to a new life in Canada. The story entwines the intimacy of a memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, enmeshing us in the challenges of breaking away not only from the violent persecution of communism, but also from the oppressive moral norms of a tradition bound China. This courageous tale of perseverance in the face of adversity is a timeless rendering of the never ending quest for transformation and beauty.” —Bianca Lakoseljac, author of Summer of the Dancing Bear“With Calls Across the Pacific, Zoë Roy continues to plumb her firsthand knowledge of everyday life in Maoist China. Her experience of this endlessly fascinating era, combined with a talent for detailed, humorous and sometimes heartbreaking storytelling, makes for a fine novel which delights and informs in equal measure. Roy captures the culture shock that assaults her protagonist Nina Huang, and shows how her birth culture never quite lets go, despite ownership of the iconic American passport.”—Amanda Hale, author of Sounding the Blood, The Reddening Path, My Sweet Curiosity, and In the Embrace of the Alligator

    1957) is a truly 21st–century creative, influential across a variety of media. During his childhood, criticism of his father’s poetry—he was labeled as a dissident—meant that Ai and his family were exiled to a remote region of China for 16 years. Following the death of Chairman Mao, Ai left to train as an artist in Beijing and New York. Ai is today an artist of global stature, and his strong social conscience has galvanized a generation of Chinese artists. With works that touch on topics such as imprisonment, borders, and disaster, Ai has often found himself in conflict with the Chinese authorities.  Ai Weiwei is published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London—the largest showing of Ai’s work to date. This volume includes installations and artworks specially created for the exhibition, an interview with Ai by Tim Marlow, and contributions from a team of scholars, analyzing the variety of Ai’s output and concerns.

    The structure is deliberately designed to help readers build a solid foundation for understanding the PLA and develop a progressively more sophisticated perspective. Ten appendixes provide additional resources including an extensive bibliography on PLA and Chinese security affairs as well as short guides on where to find regular PLA-related analysis, what Chinese-language sources to acquire, and whose analysis to follow.

    Enhanced by stories of their discovery, and those of their modern-day keepers, The Great Wall in 50 Objects is a personal and historical exploration of a world wonder. 'William Lindesay has a knack for approaching the iconic Great Wall of China in ways that are creative, idiosyncratic, and deeply personal . . . He has succeeded again with The Great Wall in 50 Objects.' Peter Hessler, author of River Town and Oracle Bones'William Lindesay shows us the Wall in a completely new light by looking at the smaller objects that make up its history . . . Through these objects we feel the Great Wall transform from architecture into a living part of the history and culture of China.' Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World'For years, Lindesay has hiked and studied the Great Wall with exceptional passion. To him, it seems, the Great Wall is not a mere structure, a political icon, or a cultural curiosity, but a treasure trove of stories.' Jaime FlorCruz, former Beijing bureau chief of Time magazine and CNN'If you are going to China, and intend to see the Great Wall (or even if, unwisely, you don't), take this book on the plane with you, and absorb as many of its intriguing nuggets of Wall-lore and China-lore as you can - it will make your visit infinitely richer.' Prof. Christopher Cullen, Emeritus Director, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge'William Lindesay lives and breathes Great Wall history and he exudes it with an engaging passion.' Mike Loades, author of Swords and Swordsmen'Lindesay presents a coherent and highly informative account of the geography, history, and material culture of China's Great Wall. His compelling and well-written account is rich in profound and often quite unexpected insights.' Lothar von Falkenhausen, Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History, UCLA'China's Great Wall is both a monument and a mystery, an almost magical construction mixing beauty and terror. No better book panders to our fascination with its grandeur and the details of its construction. William Lindesay answers our wish to get closer to the people who built it and lived with it by revealing so many aspects of the Wall, taking us a journey across the centuries and its vast length.' Jasper Becker, author of City of Heavenly Tranquility andHungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine

    China is next. Despite being a heavily censored society, China has over 560 million active Internet users, more than double that of the U.S.. China-watcher Liz Carter shows how the Internet in China is leading to a coming together of activists, ordinary people and cultural trendsetters on an unprecedented scale. News about protests and natural disasters, or gossip and satirical jokes, are virtually uncensorable and spread quickly through Weibo-the Chinese Twitter and the Chinese Internet underground. Lively, ground-breaking and brilliantly researched, this book reveals a new side to the world s largest country and is the must-read guide to its future and the future of the state, protest and censorship in the Internet age."

    He was smuggled into Hong Kong in 1974 to escape the South Vietnamese military draft. At first living in rooftop squats, he started to trade used vinyl records on the streets of Kowloon, and finally established an underground reputation for his eclectic blend and unending supply of recorded music.

    This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China's importance to their own national destiny. Fateful Ties draws on literature, art, biography, popular culture, and politics to trace America's long and varied preoccupation with China.China has held a special place in the American imagination from colonial times, when Jamestown settlers pursued a passage to the Pacific and Asia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans plied a profitable trade in Chinese wares, sought Chinese laborers to build the West, and prized China's art and decor. China was revered for its ancient culture but also drew Christian missionaries intent on saving souls in a heathen land. Its vast markets beckoned expansionists, even as its migrants were seen as a "yellow peril" that prompted the earliest immigration restrictions. A staunch ally during World War II, China was a dangerous adversary in the Cold War that followed. In the post-Mao era, Americans again embraced China as a land of inexhaustible opportunity, playing a central role in its economic rise.Through portraits of entrepreneurs, missionaries, academics, artists, diplomats, and activists, Chang demonstrates how ideas about China have long been embedded in America's conception of itself and its own fate. Fateful Ties provides valuable perspective on this complex international and intercultural relationship as America navigates an uncertain new era.

    There he partnered with three friends to open a café that became much more than simply an outpost of Western cuisine in a far-flung corner of the world. Over the course of a decade, Salvador’s Coffee House became home to more than fifty young women from mountain villages in the surrounding countryside. Most knew nothing about coffee or Western food, but they moved to the city to work at Salvador’s and earn their independence. Great Leaps follows the challenges faced by Colin, his partners and his employees as they leave their old lives behind to make a new home in a foreign land. They encounter unlikely successes, endure heartbreaks and nearly lose everything. But by taking the leap together, they all find their own places in the modern Chinese dream.

    China needed war horses to protect its northern frontier and Tibet could supply them. When the Tibetans discovered tea in the 7th century, it became a staple of their diet, but its origins are in southwest China, and they had to trade for it. The result was a network of trails covering more than 3,000 kilometers through forests, gorges and high passes onto theHimalayan plateaus, traversed by horse, mule and yak caravans, and human porters. It linked cultures, economies and political ambitions, and lasted until the middle of the 20th century. Re-tracing the many branches of the Road, photographer and writer Michael Freeman spent two years compiling this remarkable visual record, from the tea mountains of southern Yunnan and Sichuan to Tibet and beyond. Collaborating on this fascinating account, ethno-ecologist Selena Ahmed's description of tea and bio-cultural diversity in the region draws on her original doctoral research.

    Posing four questions that Westerners routinely ask about China, the authors respond using these ten Chinese key words. Not surprisingly, the answers differ in startling ways from standard Western responses. Creating a cultural cartography through both text and image, the authors provide readers with a vivid sense of what is uniquely Chinese about China.

    By analyzing over 1200 legal cases from local and central court archives, Matthew Sommer explores the functions played by marriage, sex, and reproduction in the survival strategies of the rural poor under conditions of overpopulation, worsening sex ratios, and shrinking farm sizes. Polyandry and wife-selling represented opposite ends of a spectrum of strategies. At one end, polyandry was a means to keep the family together by expanding it. A woman would bring in a second husband in exchange for his help supporting her family. In contrast, wife sale was a means to survive by breaking up a family: a husband would secure an emergency infusion of cash while his wife would escape poverty and secure a fresh start with another man.Even though Qing law prohibited both practices under the rubric “illicit sexual relations,” Sommer shows how magistrates charged with propagating and enforcing a fundamentalist Confucian vision of female chastity tried to cope with their social reality in the face of daunting poverty. This contradiction illuminates both the pragmatism of routine adjudication and the increasingly dysfunctional nature of the dynastic state in the face of mounting social crisis. By casting a spotlight on the rural poor and the experiences of both men and women, Sommer provides an alternative to the standard paradigms of women’s history that have long dominated scholarship on gender and sexuality in late imperial China.

    It is the lecture notes of History of Chinese Philosophy, which was published by the American MacMillan Publishing Company in 1948. With more than 200 thousand words, this book tells the history of Chinese philosophy in the last thousands of years in layman's language. It has been not only a common textbook in many universities in the world for Chinese philosophy, but also an introductory book for many westerners to learn more about Chinese ideology and culture.

    He shows us what to read and how to read it. Yu Qiuyu traces a bright line of the very best literature that China has produced: from the first carvings on bone, through the first poems, the first philosophers, the greatest historian, to the ultimate stylists of the Tang Dynasty and beyond. And because brilliant literature is always a product of its time and place, Yu tells us about the men who did the writing and the worlds in which they lived. Most of all, Yu tells us about the ideas that motivated them, how they read the writers of the past, and how each writer of genius transformed and added his own stamp to the literary canon. The Yellow Emperor, the Book of Poetry, Confucius and Laozi, the great historian Sima Qian, Cao Cao, Kumārajīva, Li Bai, Du Fu, Cao Xueqin… Their thread weaves in and out of the history of the first Chinese, the Warring States, the unification under Qin, the destructive split into the Three Kingdoms, and the cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty. All of this history is interpreted and presented in the warm, distinctive voice of a truly great reader, Yu Qiuyu.

    In Shanghai Nightscapes, sociologist James Farrer and historian Andrew David Field examine the cosmopolitan nightlife culture that first arose in Shanghai in the 1920s and that has been experiencing a revival since the 1980s. Drawing on over twenty years of fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, the authors spotlight a largely hidden world of nighttime pleasures—the dancing, drinking, and socializing going on in dance clubs and bars that have flourished in Shanghai over the last century. The book begins by examining the history of the jazz-age dance scenes that arose in the ballrooms and nightclubs of Shanghai’s foreign settlements. During its heyday in the 1930s, Shanghai was known worldwide for its jazz cabarets that fused Chinese and Western cultures. The 1990s have seen the proliferation of a drinking, music, and sexual culture collectively constructed to create new contact zones between the local and tourist populations. Today’s Shanghai night scenes are simultaneously spaces of inequality and friction, where men and women from many different walks of life compete for status and attention, and spaces of sociability, in which intercultural communities are formed. Shanghai Nightscapes highlights the continuities in the city’s nightlife across a turbulent century, as well as the importance of the multicultural agents of nightlife in shaping cosmopolitan urban culture in China’s greatest global city. To listen to an audio diary of a night out in Shanghai with Farrer and Field, click here: http://n.pr/1VsIKAw.

    When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition.Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.

    The situation was bleak when Gen. Matthew Ridgway ordered a last stand at the village of Chipyong-ni. There a single regiment (the 23rd Infantry) of fewer than 5,000 U.S. soldiers defeated a Chinese division of 25,000 men in what has been called the Gettysburg of the Korean War.

    The Liao-Shen Campaign was the final act in the struggle for control of China's northeast. After the Soviet defeat of Japan in Manchuria, Communist Chinese and then Nationalist troops moved into this strategically important area. China's largest industrial base and a major source of coal, Manchuria had extensive railways and key ports (both still under Soviet control). When American mediation over control of Manchuria failed, full-scale civil war broke out. By spring of 1946, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies had occupied most of the southern, economically developed part of Manchuria, pushing Communist forces north of the Songhua (Sungari) River. But over the next two years, the tide would turn. The Communists isolated the Nationalist armies and mounted a major campaign aimed at destroying the Kuomintang forces. This is the story of that campaign and its outcome, which were to have such far-reaching consequences.

    China has been the home not only of its indigenous philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Daoism, but also of uniquely modified forms of Buddhism. As Ronnie L Littlejohn shows, these traditions have for thousands of years formed the bedrock of the longest continuing civilization on the planet; and Chinese philosophy has profoundly shaped the institutions, social practices and psychological character of East and Southeast Asia. The author here surveys the key texts and philosophical systems of Chinese thinkers in a completely original and illuminating way. Ranging from the Han dynasty to the present, he discusses the six classical schools of Chinese philosophy (Yin-Yang, Ru, Mo, Ming, Fa and Dao-De); the arrival of Buddhism in China and its distinctive development; the central figures and movements from the end of the Tang dynasty to the introduction into China of Western thought; and the impact of Chinese philosophers ranging from Confucius and Laozi to Tu Weiming on their equivalents in the West."

    Guoguang Wu provides the first analysis of how the Party Congress operates to elect Party leadership and decide Party policy, and explores why such a formal performance of congress meetings, delegate discussions, and non-democratic elections is significant for authoritarian politics more broadly. Taking institutional inconsistency as the central research question, this study presents a new theory of 'mutual contextualization' to reveal how informal politics and formal institutions interact with each other. Wu argues that despite the prevalence of informal politics behind the scenes, authoritarian politics seeks legitimization through a combination of political manipulation and the ritual mobilization of formal institutions. This ambitious book is essential reading for all those interested in understanding contemporary China, and an innovative theoretical contribution to the study of comparative politics.

    This engaging and insightful history of Qing political, social, and cultural life traces the complex interaction between the Inner Asian traditions of the Manchus, who conquered China in 1644, and indigenous Chinese cultural traditions. Noted historian Richard J. Smith argues that the pragmatic Qing emperors presented a "Chinese" face to their subjects who lived south of the Great Wall and other ethnic faces (particularly Manchu, Mongolian, Central Asian, and Tibetan) to subjects in other parts of their vast multicultural empire. They were attracted by many aspects of Chinese culture, but far from being completely "sinicized" as many scholars argue, they were also proud of their own cultural traditions and interested in other cultures as well. Setting Qing dynasty culture in historical and global perspective, Smith shows how the Chinese of the era viewed the world; how their outlook was expressed in their institutions, material culture, and customs; and how China's preoccupation with order, unity, and harmony contributed to the civilization's remarkable cohesiveness and continuity. Nuanced and wide-ranging, his authoritative book provides an essential introduction to late imperial Chinese culture and society.

    In Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, novelist and philosopher Will Buckingham puts the I Ching to work, using it to weave together 64 stories of chance and change, each flowing from one of the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams. Moving between myth, fable, and travel writing, the collection offers an attempt to make sense of the maddening, changeable book that is the I Ching, with tales of inventors and fox-spirits, ancient poets and nonexistent rulers, kleptomaniac pensioners and infernal bureaucrats. Like the I Ching itself, this new Book of Changes is a puzzle, a conundrum, and a journey of many transformations, where nothing is quite what it seems.

    Considered China's "leading market liberalist," the author offers a unique perspective on the market economy, implementation of free-market economic policies, and the potential for Chinese economic development. He describes the market economy as "...humanity's greatest creation. It provides the best rules of the game for human progress," and he believes it exemplifies the old Chinese proverb: "benefit yourself by benefiting others." The author believes that only the institutional arrangements of "private property, unhampered prices, enterprises, entrepreneurs, and profit" guarantee that in a market economy, "enriching oneself at the expense of others cannot be done." In fact, he argues, it is this logic of the market that has led to China's recent unprecedented economic progress and prosperity.

    Bringing together scholars from China, Europe, North America, and Taiwan, this volume marshals new research to reveal a stunning diversity of individual viewpoints and local experiences during China s years of high socialism.Focusing on the period from the mid-1950s to 1980, the authors provide insights into the everyday lives of citizens across social strata, ethnicities, and regions. They explore how ordinary men and women risked persecution and imprisonment in order to assert personal beliefs and identities. Many displayed a shrewd knack for negotiating the maze-like power structures of everyday Maoism, appropriating regime ideology in their daily lives while finding ways to express discontent and challenge the state s pervasive control.Heterogeneity, limited pluralism, and tensions between official and popular culture were persistent features of Maoism at the grassroots. Men had gay relationships in factory dormitories, teenagers penned searing complaints in diaries, mentally ill individuals cursed Mao, farmers formed secret societies and worshipped forbidden spirits. These diverse undercurrents were as representative of ordinary people s lives as the ideals promulgated in state propaganda."

    A celebratory evening on the company yacht Copious turns to horror as the yacht suddenly explodes and is engulfed in flames. Maxine is thrown overboard by her husband Logan, as Copious is rapidly sinking. He says to her, "You'll forgive me"! Then, he vanishes. Was he trying to save her or kill her? In a story taken from current headlines, a power struggle in China results in a battle for control of billions of dollars in hidden assets. The Shroud of the Red Dragon is a multibillion-dollar business enterprise that hides the personal wealth of families of the Red Nobility, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. They have hidden their vast wealth from the Chinese people and from the world, but a purge of the old regime threatens to expose the secrecy of these illicit assets. The new leader in China sends his agents to repatriate, for his own purposes, the hidden assets of the former regime. The secrecy of the assets of the Shroud, and the struggle for control must be protected at all costs, even if it means death to all who learn of it. Logan, his family, and business associates are caught in the middle of this deadly battle for possession of the secret assets. He ends up fighting the new leader's murderous henchmen and, ultimately, his own government. His quest turns to a desperate struggle for survival, revenge, and redemption.

    But that may not be the case next time: as Minqi Li argues convincingly in China and the 21ˢᵗ Century Crisis, by the time of inevitable next crisis, China will likely be at the epicenter.   Li roots his argument in an analysis of the political and economic imbalances in China that would exacerbate a crisis, and possibly even precipitate a full collapse—and he shows in detail the reasons why that collapse could happen much more quickly than anyone imagines. Writing from a Marxist and ecologically oriented perspective, Li shows unequivocally that the limits to capitalism are fast approaching, and that events in China—essentially the last great frontier for capitalist expansion—are likely to be pivotal.

    Since then, they’ve been fascinated by the micro-level of urban life in Hong Kong, and it’s led to a major project: the pair investigated the ways the city’s residents use the narrow lanes that run behind and between the city’s high-rises, semi-public spaces that offer venues for business, social interaction, and a wide range of informal encounters. Hong Kong in Between presents the results of this exploration through a mix of black-and-white drawings, diagrams, plans, photographs, and texts that reveal the active, ever-changing life of these forgotten, in-between spaces. An enthusiastic engagement with urban life and a work of art in its own right, Hong Kong in Between reveals a city little seen and endlessly fascinating.

    But what about young people who are not on the path to academic success? What happens to youth who fail the state's high-stakes exams? What many—even in China—don't realize is that up to half of the nation's youth are flunked out of the academic education system after 9th grade. Class Work explores the consequences for youth who have failed these exams, through an examination of two urban vocational schools in Nanjing, China. Through a close look at the students' backgrounds, experiences, the schools they attend, and their trajectories into the workforce, T.E. Woronov explores the value systems in contemporary China that stigmatize youth in urban vocational schools as "failures," and the political and economic structures that funnel them into working-class futures. She argues that these marginalized students and schools provide a privileged window into the ongoing, complex intersections between the socialist and capitalist modes of production in China today and the rapid transformation of China's cities into post-industrial, service-based economies. This book advances the notion that urban vocational schools are not merely "holding tanks" for academic failures; instead they are incipient sites for the formation of a new working class.

    Imbued with the blessings of the power of prayer invoked by Shakyamuni Buddha himself, recitation of this sutra produces a great mass of positive karma that can quickly ripen, even in this life. This new version (2006) is the long-anticipated complete translation from the Tibetan by Ven. Lhundup Damchö. 2006 Edition.

    This book is your indispensable guide to “The Workshop of the World,” filled with essential information that is impossible to find anywhere else. This is a comprehensive guidebook, with concrete, practical advice on where to go, and how to get there. It provides many insider tips to save you time and money, the result of expert knowledge that can only come from twenty years experience living in the beating economic heart of Southern China. Section one provides detailed listings and honest reviews that will guide you to hotels, restaurants, and bars that are suitable for all budgets, as well as practical transportation information will help you to find your way around this huge metropolis. Section two covers nearly 300 individual wholesale markets that are listed in more than 30 different product categories. Much of this information is simply unobtainable anywhere else. Not only does it cover the very largest markets, but it also visits those hard to find areas that are well off the beaten path. From the the enormous clothing markets in Shahe and Shisanhang to the madness of the thousands upon thousands of fabric outlets that make up Zhongda. It also details many of the lesser known areas such as the second-hand catering equipment markets of Tanwei and the drug dealer's supply shops of Renmin Road. It even covers the exotic underwear and sex toy markets. Scattered throughout the market descriptions are interesting sections on unexpected local oddities and entertaining cultural insights. Each market listing comes with detailed directions and full addresses in both English and Chinese characters. The breadth and depth of the information presented here is unmatched anywhere else. When you only have a short time to spend in a strange new city, you really need to do your homework and plan your trip carefully to avoid getting taken to the cleaners. Considering that a good local guide can cost a hundred dollars a day, this compendium of invaluable knowledge is a real bargain.

    But other ancient Chinese scholars also shared critical knowledge for businesspeople, including Fan Li, a strategist turned entrepreneur also known as Tao Zhu Gong, who achieved great wealth before writing a treatise on business and enterprise. His twelve principles of business continue to be relevant, and you'll learn them in this book, along with tips from other ancient Chinese scholars, such as Bai Gui, who founded the first business school in China. Bai Gui outlined four characteristics of successful entrepreneurs and emphasized that businesspeople could be compassionate and moral while achieving great wealth. In his teachings, he explained that strength does not mean power or skill; he used the word to represent the fortitude in self-discipline. Filled with inspirational quotes and easy-to-follow examples, this book includes business lessons from modern businesspeople that achieved fortune or suffered disaster as a result of following-or not following-ancient Chinese wisdom. Kick your career into a higher gear and enhance business operations with The Business Wisdom of Ancient Chinese Entrepreneurs.

    Now he is an exile. In 1780, three years of wandering have brought him to Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border. He expects a quiet outpost barely conscious of its place within the empire, but Dayan is teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. The crowds have been drawn by the promise of an unmatched spectacle; an eclipse of the sun, commanded by the Emperor himself. Amid the frenzy, Li Du befriends an elderly Jesuit astronomer. Hours later, the man is murdered in the home of the local magistrate, and Li Du suspects it was no random killing. Everyone has secrets: the ambitious magistrate, the powerful consort, the bitter servant, the irreproachable secretary, the East India Company merchant, the nervous missionary, and the traveling storyteller who can't keep his own story straight. Beyond the sloping roofs and festival banners, Li Du can see the pass over Jade Dragon Mountain that will take him out of China forever. But he cannot ignore the murder that the town is all too eager to forget. As Li Du investigates, he begins to suspect that the murderer intends to kill again. The eclipse is coming. Li Du must solve the murder before the sun disappears. If he does not, then someone, perhaps Li Du himself, will never again see its light.

    Chinese students spend all their waking hours in political meetings—when they’re not hauling feces from the latrines to the manure fields. Jump to 2015. Chinese endure endless meetings at the hands of bosses and are required to keep their cellphones on around the clock and pick up at once—or be fined. They live in a technological utopia while enslaved by the same structures of psychological control of over half a century earlier. Underlying the myth of a “New China” are the contemporary Middle Kingdom's numerous continuities with its past. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Cook reaffirms the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

    Methodologically innovative, it represents a major contribution to the history of books, publishing, reading, and society.By examining how gazetteers were read, Joseph R. Dennis illustrates their significance in local societies and national discourses. His analysis of how gazetteers were initiated and produced reconceptualizes the geography of imperial Chinese publishing. Whereas previous studies argued that publishing, and thus cultural and intellectual power, were concentrated in the southeast, Dennis shows that publishing and book ownership were widely dispersed throughout China and books were found even in isolated locales. Adding a dynamic element to our earlier understanding of the publishing industry, Dennis tracks the movements of manuscripts to printers and print labor to production sites. By reconstructing printer business zones, he demonstrates that publishers operated across long distances in trans-regional markets. He also creates the first substantial data set on publishing costs in early modern China--a foundational breakthrough in understanding the world of Chinese books. Dennis's work reveals areas for future research on newly-identified regional publishing centers and the economics of book production.

    Tracing the lion's early use in Mesopotamian art and its cultural symbolism in Greece and Rome, this study includes stylized foxes, tigers, badgers and cats, as well as fanciful creatures like dragons, humanoid birds, water imps, demons and other chimerical beasts. Stories and descriptions are provided along with numerous photographs and drawings, making this work an invaluable resource for art collectors and anyone interested in East Asian culture and history.Walther G. von Krenner has worked as an artist, art dealer and curator since 1960, specializing in Chinese and Japanese works. He lives in Kalispell, Montana. Ken Jeremiah has written extensively about spiritual and religious phenomena. He lives in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and runs tour groups to Japan, Italy and other countries.

    In May 1942, the Japanese 15th Army conquered Burma and southwest China. Only a desperate defense by disorganized and defeated Chinese troops and the war-weary remains of Claire Chennault s mercenary Flying Tigers stopped the advance at the Salween River. For two years, the people of southwest China lived under an oppressive Japanese occupation while Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, President Franklin Roosevelt, General Joseph Stilwell, and Major General Claire Chennault bickered over what to do next. Finally, in May 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force, with American supplies and advisors, supported from above by the legendary 14th Air Force, crossed the Salween to take back what they had lost."

    The two countries established diplomatic relations for the first time, forged close economic ties and reached political agreements that still guide and constrain relations today. This book delivers a history of this foundational period in Sino-Japanese relations. It presents an up-to-date diplomatic history of the relationship but also goes beyond this to argue that Japan's relations with China must be understood in the context of a larger “China problem” that was inseparable from a domestic contest to define Japanese national identity.The China Problem in Postwar Japan challenges some common assertions or assumptions about the role of Japanese national identity in postwar Sino-Japanese relations, showing how the history of Japanese relations with China in the 1970s is shaped by the strength of Japanese national identity, not its weakness.

    For them, the commemoration of the 221 BC poet Qu Yuan, who threw himself into a river to protest official corruption, held particular resonance.Guangzhou's drive to become a 'National Model City' ahead of the 2010 Asia Games accelerated a voracious demand for land, turning the ground beneath the villagers' feet into a commodity as valuable as diamonds, a treasure too rich for local officials to ignore.Dragons in Diamond Village is about the courage of individuals: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned self-taught rights defender; He Jieling, a suburban housewife who just wanted to open a hair salon; Xian villagers like Lu Zhaohui who refuse to give up the land their families have cultivated for generations. Theirs is a community bound by shared history and a belief in the necessity of change, a band of unlikely activists fighting for their place in China's new cities.'A beautifully written account of how China's traditional rural past is meeting – and struggling with – its urbanising present . . . Via deftly told tales of China's little-known urban villages, Bandurski expertly guides readers through a mostly overlooked landscape and modern history.' Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet'David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into the heart of new China.' Kevin Sites, author of Swimming with Warlords and In the Hot Zone'Vivid depictions of how villagers and migrants, living through the lawless and violent storms of Chinese urban land development, turn into political resistors. An important book of social reportage in the traditions of Liu Binyan and Studs Terkel.' Susan Shirk, author of China: Fragile Superpower and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton administration'Bandurski combines his deep knowledge of China's history and culture with graceful writing to produce a thoroughly enjoyable book, and an important one for understanding the tension at the heart of China's breakneck pace of change.' Keith B. Richburg, author of Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa and former China correspondent for the Washington Post

    In recent decades Western fascination with Tibet has soared, from the rise of Tibetan studies in academia to the rock concerts aimed at supporting its independence to the simple fact that most of us—far from any base camp—know exactly what a sherpa is. And yet any sustained look into Tibet as a place, any attempt to find one’s way around its high plateaus and through its deep history, will yield this surprising fact: we have barely mapped it. With this atlas, Karl E. Ryavec rights that wrong, sweeping aside the image of Tibet as Shangri-La and putting in its place a comprehensive vision of the region as it really is, a civilization in its own right. And the results are absolutely stunning. The product of twelve years of research and eight more of mapmaking, A Historical Atlas of Tibet documents cultural and religious sites across the Tibetan Plateau and its bordering regions from the Paleolithic and Neolithic times all the way up to today. It ranges through the five main periods in Tibetan history, offering introductory maps of each followed by details of western, central, and eastern regions. It beautifully visualizes the history of Tibetan Buddhism, tracing its spread throughout Asia, with thousands of temples mapped, both within Tibet and across North China and Mongolia, all the way to Beijing. There are maps of major polities and their territorial administrations, as well as of the kingdoms of Guge and Purang in western Tibet, and of Derge and Nangchen in Kham. There are town plans of Lhasa and maps that focus on history and language, on population, natural resources, and contemporary politics. Extraordinarily comprehensive and absolutely gorgeous, this overdue volume will be a cornerstone in cartography, Asian studies, Buddhist studies, and in the libraries or on the coffee tables of anyone who has ever felt the draw of the landscapes, people, and cultures of the highest place on Earth.

    To many experienced PLA watchers, however, the PLA remains a "party-army" that is responsive to orders from the CCP.PLA Influence on China's National Security Policymaking seeks to assess the "real" relationship between the PLA and its civilian masters by moving beyond media and pundit speculation to mount an in-depth examination and explanation of the PLA's role in national security policymaking. After examining the structural factors that shape PLA interactions with the Party-State, the book uses case studies to explore the PLA's role in foreign policy crises. It then assesses the PLA's role in China's territorial disputes and in military interactions with civilian government and business, exploring the military's role in China's civil–military integration development strategy. The evidence reveals that today's PLA does appear to have more influence on purely military issues than in the past—but much less influence on political issues—and to be more actively engaged in policy debates on mixed civil-military issues where military equities are at stake.

    A must-have reference for anyone interested in Chinese culture, travel and business

    Under four generations of leaders over six decades, the Zheng had come to dominate trade across the China Seas. Their average annual earnings matched, and at times exceeded, those of their fiercest rivals: the Dutch East India Company. Although nominally loyal to the Ming in its doomed struggle against the Manchus, the Zheng eventually forged an autonomous territorial state based on Taiwan with the potential to encompass the family's entire economic sphere of influence. Through the story of the Zheng, Xing Hang provides a fresh perspective on the economic divergence of early modern China from western Europe, its twenty-first-century resurgence, and the meaning of a Chinese identity outside China.

    

    What have been the overall scope and scale of People's Liberation Army (PLA) modernization since the mid-1990s, and what is its likely trajectory through 2025? What are the missions Beijing has assigned to the PLA? What are the weaknesses in the PLA's organization and human capital? What are the weaknesses in the PLA's combat capabilities in the land, air, maritime, space, and electromagnetic domains? What are the weaknesses in China's defense industry (research and development and production)? The authors found that the PLA is keenly aware of its many weaknesses and is vigorously striving to correct them. Chinese military publications recognize that this is a tall order. Indeed, the PLA leaders and official media frequently state that the force seeks to harness the capabilities of the information age to conduct complex joint operations, even though it is not yet fully mechanized or structured to command and control the campaigns it aspires to conduct. Although it is only natural to focus on the PLA's growing capabilities, the authors found that understanding the PLA's weaknesses — and its self-assessments of the shortcomings — is no less important. Doing so can help provide a sense of the PLA's priorities for future modernization efforts, support U.S. military engagement with the PLA, and inform the development of strategies to deter or defeat Chinese coercion or use of force.

    Dismissed by high-minded ideologues of the late 1910s and largely overlooked in subsequent scholarship, this commercial culture has only recently begun to be rehabilitated in mainland China. Judge uses one of its most striking, innovative—and continually mischaracterized—products, the journal Funü shibao (The women’s eastern times), as a lens onto the early years of China’s first Republic. Redeeming both the value of the medium and the significance of the era, she demonstrates the extent to which the commercial press channeled and helped constitute key epistemic and gender trends in China’s revolutionary twentieth century. The book develops a cross-genre and inter-media method for reading the periodical press and gaining access to the complexities of the past. Drawing on the full materiality of the medium, Judge reads cover art, photographs, advertisements, and poetry, editorials, essays, and readers’ columns in conjunction with and against one another, as well as in their broader print, historical and global contexts. This yields insights into fundamental tensions that governed both the journal and the early Republic. It also highlights processes central to the arc of twentieth-century knowledge culture and social change: the valorization and scientization of the notion of “experience,” the public actualization of “Republican Ladies,” and the amalgamation of “Chinese medicine” and scientific biomedicine. It further revives the journal’s editors, authors, medical experts, artists, and, most notably, its little known female contributors. Republican Lens captures the ingenuity of a journal that captures the chaotic potentialities within China’s early Republic and its global twentieth century.

    By examining burial structure, grave goods, and religious documents unearthed from groups of well-preserved tombs in southern China, Lai shows that new attitudes toward the dead, resulting from the trauma of violent political struggle and warfare, permanently altered the early Chinese conceptions of this world and the afterlife. The book grounds the important changes in religious beliefs and ritual practices firmly in the sociopolitical transition from the Warring States (ca. 453-221 BCE) to the early empires (3rd century-1st century BCE).A methodologically sophisticated synthesis of archaeological, art historical, and textual sources, Excavating the Afterlife will be of interest to art historians, archaeologists, and textual scholars of China, as well as to students of comparative religions.Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http: //arthistorypi.org/books/excavating-the...

    This book looks at how the very success of these economies has bred new challenges, novel problems, and fresh tensions, including the fact that particular individuals, sectors and regions have been marginalised by these processes.Contributing to discussions of policy implications, the book melds endogenous and exogenous approaches to thinking about development paths, re-frames Asia's model(s) of growth and draws out the social, environmental, political and economic side-effects that have arisen from growth. An interesting analysis of the problems that come alongside development's achievements, this book is an important contribution to Southeast Asian Studies, Development Studies and Environmental Studies.

    The tensions between ethnic Muslim Uyghurs and the growing number of Han Chinese in Xinjiang have recently increased, occasionally breaking out into violence. At the same time as being a potential troublespot for China, the province is of increasing strategic significance as China's gateway to Central Asia whose natural resources are of increasing importance to China. This book focuses in particular on what life is like in Xinjiang for the diverse population that lives there. It offers important insights into the social, economic and political terrains of Xinjiang, concentrating especially on how current trends in Xinjiang are likely to develop in the future. In doing so it provides a broader understanding of the region and its peoples.

    The work integrates Chinese, Japanese and Western sources to examine the details of the structure and weapons of the period. Recent scholarship has contributed greatly to our understanding of China's role in the war, but this is the first book to deal with the bottom-level underpinnings of this massive army, crucial to an understanding of its tactical and operational utility.An introductory chapter discusses the military operations in China, often given short shrift in World War II histories. The work then traces the evolution of the national army's organizational structure from the end of the Northern Expedition to the conclusion of World War II. Included are tables of organization and strength reports for the wartime period.The armament section illustrates and details not only the characteristics of the many and varied weapons used in China, many seen nowhere else, but also their acquisition and such local production as was undertaken. This is complemented by a chapter on the arsenals and their evolution and production programs.The Chinese army was one of the largest of the war and it, and Japan's, fought longer than any other. It faced unique challenges, including fragmented loyalties, huge expanses of territory, poor logistics networks, inadequate arms supplies, and, often, incompetence and corruption. Nevertheless, they fought bravely in major battles through 1941 and were able to counterpunch effectively in important regions through the rest of the war. Aimed at both military historians and wargamers, this work fills an important gap in our understanding of this, the most under-appreciated army of the war."

    Each is accompanied by an English translation and an illustration, with some of the more obscure expressions further annotated in both Chinese and English.

    The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned several generations, depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius’s legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu) is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. The Luxuriant Gems follows the interpretations of the Gongyang Commentary, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the Spring and Autumn. The Gongyang masters believed that the Spring and Autumn had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The Luxuriant Gems augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving Gongyang approach.

    

    A high-profile, joint-venture deal between two U.S. and Chinese cyber technology companies has unforeseen consequences as Will Donovan, an exNavy engineer and free-spirited cyber technology entrepreneur meets Lu Li, the straight arrow, successful Wall Street investment banker and life as they know it is never the same again.Despite of their night and day personality and background differences, the attraction is intense and undeniable as they first meet. They meet as the cyber technology companies merge. They meet and realize the high stake deal is a game of corruption and deceit. Together they have to face moral and ethical dilemmas, make life choices and come to terms with their past. Can their love survive all this?

    Destination China is a story about a transition from working on Wall Street in New York selling on eBay part time turned into quitting the day job a trip to China that was supposed to be 1 month and turned into seven years and counting!This book was written to the "Mike in his early China days", the entrepreneur venturing over to China to start his or her own venture and make it big. To strike gold in China. I wish this book existed when I was first coming to China - it is written by a young entrepreneur for a young entrepreneur. Each chapter I share the story and adventure, then to close up each chapter I write a few tips and recaps for takeaways you can plug into your toolbox when coming to China for your business.Not an entrepreneur wanting to come to China? It’s still a fun read where I hold nothing back and share the the challenges, highs, lows, and horrible mistakes I made when coming to China. Keep you on the edge of your seat and ready to laugh at my ignorance, hope it is entertaining!Also I hope professors and teachers of business and entrepreneurship can take a good read at this to understand their younger generation students. We learn by doing, but listening to stories and case studies. Theory only gets you so far from the classroom, but actually going out there into the wild, a student of entrepreneurship & business can blossom.A parent and your child has decided to move to the other side of the world to grow their business? This may be helpful for you to come to grips on why. I remember my mom crying in confusion when I told her I was moving to China, this helped her understand better. What’s Covered In Destination China Chapter 1 Leading Up To China Wall Street Get An MBA? Find a New Job? Do My E-Commerce Business Full-time? Start a Franchise Saw China as the Future New Opportunity Sourcing from China Chapter 2 Take a Trip to China Arriving in Hong Kong Cross Borders - Going to Mainland China Day in Shenzhen Confirming Which Cities In China To Visit Which Cities Did I Cut? First Taste of Internet Filtering Head to Shanghai South vs North factories Finding Chinese E-Commerce Sellers Learning About Agents and Factories Halloween in Shanghai Wall Street Connection Culture in Beijing Chapter 3 Where to Live in China? All About Getting Things Done Faster Departing Flight to China Where to Live First 6 Months Living in China One Night with Mr Wang My First Hire How To Incorporate my China Business? Chinese New Year Caving Kick Off New Lunar Year With Shanghai Trip Start Building Internet Marketing Team Chinese E-commerce Creative Warehousing

    Based on ethnographic fieldwork by Tiantian Zheng, the book reveals an array of coping mechanisms developed by tongzhi men in response to rapid social, cultural, and political transformations in postsocialist China. According to Zheng, unlike gay men in the West over the past three decades, tongzhi men in China have adopted the prevailing moral ideal of heterosexuality and pursued membership in the dominant culture at the same time they have endeavored to establish a tongzhi culture. They are, therefore, caught in a constant tension of embracing and contesting normality as they try to create a new and legitimate space for themselves.Tongzhi men’s attempts to practice both conformity and rebellion paradoxically undercut the goals they aspire to reach, Zheng shows, perpetuating social prejudice against them and thwarting the activism they believe they are advocating.

    It is about the places I have been and the experiences I have had. For instance, I have been hosted in first-class establishments in Shanghai, been drunk with miners in Inner Mongolia, wandered out in the Gobi desert, and nearly been sick on the embalmed body of Chairman Mao.This book is about being a Western expat adjusting to life in Asia, first in Hong Kong and then in Shanghai. It is about negotiating with local people on whether prostitutes are required after dinner, singing Chinese songs in the middle of meetings, and finding the only quiet spot in the country when one billion people go on holiday in the same week.I wish to share travel and living stories from Hong Kong and every province in China, through the eyes of one fascinated, curious, worried, reckless, adventurous, queasy, stunned, and quite tired English expat.

    1500 CE), and compares the different philosophical imperatives that have driven Chinese and Western thought. Challenging the hyperspecialized epistemology of modern philosophy in the West, Barry Allen urges his readers toward an ethical appreciation of why knowledge is worth pursuing.Western philosophers have long maintained that true knowledge is the best knowledge. Chinese thinkers, by contrast, have emphasized not the essence of knowing but the purpose. Ideas of truth play no part in their understanding of what the best knowledge is: knowledge is not deduced from principles or reducible to a theory. Rather, in Chinese tradition knowledge is expressed through wu wei, literally "not doing"--a response to circumstances that is at once effortless and effective. This type of knowledge perceives the evolution of circumstances from an early point, when its course can still be changed, provided one has the wisdom to grasp the opportunity.Allen guides readers through the major Confucian and Daoist thinkers including Kongzi, Mengzi, Xunzi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, examining their influence on medieval Neoconfucianism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, as well as the theme of knowledge in China's art of war literature. The sophisticated and consistent concept of knowledge elucidated here will be of relevance to contemporary Western and Eastern philosophers alike.

    Highlighting the city’s most authentic and delicious foods, Glutton Guide leads travelers to local treasures that are easy to miss and often hard to find – unless you know exactly where to look and what to order. In addition to an overview of Shanghai’s best street foods and regional cuisines of China, reader will find a guide to the city’s best international restaurants and bars as well as handy safety tips and a getting around guide. Glutton Guide Shanghai helps readers hurdle the language barrier with ease, providing ordering instructions in English, pinyin and Chinese characters for each local restaurant, as well as bilingual addresses and subway information for all listings in the guide. All you have to worry about is working up an appetite! Inside Glutton Guide Shanghai: • Shanghai’s Must-Do Culinary Experiences • Top 10 Street Foods • Street Food Safety • Regional Chinese Food Overview & Recommendations • Best International Restaurants • Top Hotels for Foodies • Nightlife Guide • Food Shopping • Mandarin Language Guide • Maps of Shanghai • And so much more! About the Authors: Jamie Barys & Kyle Long founded UnTour Shanghai, the city’s leading food tour company in 2010. Together, they have over 13 years of experience eating their way through the city, from Shanghai’s best street food stalls to the high-end degustation menus from Michelin star wannabes. They live to eat, and want to make sure every visitor to Shanghai eats like a local, every meal. About Glutton Guides: Don't read these guidebooks on an empty stomach! Glutton Guides is stepping out as the first and only global, locally written guidebook series to focus solely on the dining scene of its destinations. Each e-guidebook in the Glutton Guides series is written by culinary experts based locally in each target city they – there’s no crowdsourced information in the well-curated content. Glutton Guide writers condense the city’s dining scene into one easily digestible resource that is regularly updated so readers don’t have to worry about outdated listings. Coming soon are Melbourne, Prague & Buenos Aires!

    Born to Japanese parents, raised in Manchuria, and educated in Beijing, the young Yamaguchi learned to speak impeccable Mandarin Chinese and received professional training in operatic singing. When recruited by the Manchurian Film Association in 1939 to act in "national policy" films in the service of Japanese imperialism in China, she allowed herself to be presented as a Chinese, effectively masking her Japanese identity in both her professional and private lives. Yamaguchi soon became an unprecedented transnational phenomenon in Manchuria, Shanghai, and Japan itself as the glamorous female lead in such well-known films as Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940), Pledge in the Desert (1940), and Glory to Eternity (1943). Her signature songs, including "When Will You Return?" and "The Evening Primrose," swept East Asia in the waning years of the war and remained popular well into the postwar decades.Ironically, although her celebrated international stardom was without parallel in wartime East Asia, she remained a puppet within a puppet state, choreographed at every turn by Japanese film studios in accordance with the expediencies of Japan's continental policy. In a dramatic turn of events after Japan's defeat, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Chinese Nationalist forces and barely escaped execution as a traitor to China. Her complex and intriguing life story as a convenient pawn, willing instrument, and tormented victim of Japan's imperialist ideology is told in her bestselling autobiography, translated here in full for the first time in English. An addendum reveals her postwar career in Hollywood and Broadway in the 1950s, her friendship with Charlie Chaplin, her first marriage to Isamu Noguchi, and her postwar life as singer, actress, political figure, television celebrity, and private citizen. A substantial introduction by Chia-ning Chang contextualizes Yamaguchi's life and career within the historical and cultural zeitgeist of wartime Manchuria, Japan, and China and the postwar controversies surrounding her life in East Asia.

    The Chinese authorities identified the driver as a Uyghur - one of an Islamic ethnic monority, 10 million strong, who live in China’s north-west province of Xinjiang. Six months later, eight knife-wielding Uyghurs went on a rampage at a train station in Kunming, killing 29 people and wounding more than 140 others. These attacks , described as “China’s 9/11”, are on the rise and have shaken the Chinese leadership, which has cracked down hard on Xinjiang and its Uyghurs.One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, Nick Holdstock examines the reasons for these attacks in his new book, China’s Forgotten People, and reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression, hardship and helplessness in the face of a powerful and intolerant one party Chinese state. Decades of economic hardship and religious discrimination underlie the recent violence, only set to grow in the wake of the government crack-down and demonisation of dissent. As the issue increasingly hits our news headlines, Holdstock reflects on what this means for the future of China.

    Hanshan's poems gained a large readership in English-speaking countries following the publication of Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and Gary Snyder's translations (which began to appear that same year), and they have been translated into English more than any other body of Chinese verse.Rouzer investigates how Buddhism defined the way that believers may have read Hanshan in premodern times. He proposes a Buddhist poetics as a counter-model to the Confucian assumptions of Chinese literary thought and examines how texts by Kerouac, Snyder, and Jane Hirshfield respond to the East Asian Buddhist tradition.

    Headed initially by Song Chuandian, who became rich by exporting hairnets to Europe and America in the early twentieth century, the family built a thriving business against long odds of rural poverty and political chaos.A savvy political operator, Song Chuandian prospered and kept local warlords at bay, but his career ended badly when he fell afoul of the new Nationalist government. His son Song Feiqing--inspired by the reformist currents of the May Fourth Movement--developed a utopian capitalist vision that industry would redeem China from foreign imperialism and cultural backwardness. He founded the Dongya Corporation in 1932 to manufacture wool knitting yarn and for two decades steered the company through a constantly changing political landscape--the Nationalists, then Japanese occupiers, then the Nationalists again, and finally Chinese Communists. Increasingly hostile governments, combined with inflation, foreign competition, and a restless labor force, thwarted his ambition to create an "Industrial Eden."Brett Sheehan shows how the Song family engaged in eclectic business practices that bore the imprint of both foreign and traditional Chinese influences. Businesspeople came to expect much from increasingly intrusive states, but the position of private capitalists remained tenuous no matter which government was in control. Although private business in China was closely linked to the state, it was neither a handmaiden to authoritarianism nor a natural ally of democracy.

    Part of the vanguard of China's great rural-urban migration in the 1990s, these women were deprived of an education because their parents were unable to pay school fees for both sons and daughters. They also faced strong objections from parents, who feared for their daughters' safety and reputations.Gaetano kept in touch with several women for over a decade, and her longitudinal perspective and biographical focus provide a rich empirical basis for her analysis. Through sustained and close contact, she learned about the women's employment searches and interviews, first jobs, promotions and job changes, shopping and leisure activities, self-study efforts, illnesses, romantic relationships, and marriage and motherhood. By accompanying them to visit their rural families at festival time, and meeting their coworkers, friends, employers, and eventually even their in-laws, she obtained fascinating insights about their lives. Gaetano shows that the structural constraints the women experienced stem from ideological barriers and discriminatory practices associated with gender and rural-urban hierarchies. To some extent the women themselves accepted prevailing ideas about gendered obligations and propriety and internalized prevailing ideas about rurality's inferior status. However, they sought to transform themselves and realize their aspirations by cultivating social networks that connected them to more desirable jobs and marriage prospects; by careful selection of a future spouse who shared their vision of social mobility; and through smart economic and emotional investments in their spouses, children, and affines.This multifaceted exploration of migrant women's lives demonstrates how the intersection of gendered norms and rural-urban inequalities shaped the women's identities and desires and makes clear the palpable material consequences the decision to migrate made in their lives. Overall, the book convincingly shows that migration for work advances rural women's gender equality and increases their ability to exercise agency and thus their chances to achieve success and build better lives for themselves. But it also makes clear that the socioeconomic mobility they find is inadequate to completely dismantle the wider gender and rural-urban inequalities that have made these women's journeys so difficult.

    A larger-than-life photo of a smiling Liu Xiaobo hung in the background. This striking image is now known throughout the world. But who is Liu Xiaobo? For the first time, this biography by renowned Chinese author and close friend Yu Jie offers a first-hand look into the man behind the empty chair. Dissident, prisoner, poet, scholar, Liu was compelled by intolerable circumstances to embark on a campaign of intellectual dissent, becoming in the course of his journey a leading human rights activist and one of the most important political figures in modern history. In the quarter century since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Liu has been unable to lead a normal life. In this first authorized biography, Yu traces an extraordinary man's odyssey, from growing up in the northeast and Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, through his meteoric rise in Beijing's intellectual circles and his pivotal role in the Tiananmen protests and subsequent imprisonments, to the founding of the controversial Independent Chinese PEN and groundbreaking Charter 08, his poignant relationship with wife Liu Xia, and winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. It is also a love story between two poets who, though separated by three hundred miles and eleven years behind bars, are united in their persistence to speak truth to power, inspiring countless others.

    Taking a global yet comprehensive approach to this complex topic, A History of Science in World Cultures uses a broad range of case studies and examples to demonstrate that the scientific thought and method of the present day is deeply rooted in a pluricultural past.Covering ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece, China, Islam, and the New World, this volume discusses the scope of scientific and technological achievements in each civilization and how the knowledge it developed came to impact the European Renaissance. Themes covered include the influence these scientific cultures had upon one another, the power of writing and its technologies, visions of mathematical order in the universe and how it can be represented, and what elements of the distant scientific past we continue to depend upon today. Topics often left unexamined in histories of science are treated in fascinating detail, such as the chemistry of mummification and the Great Library in Alexandria in Egypt, jewellery and urban planning of the Indus Valley, hydraulic engineering and the compass in China, the sustainable agriculture and dental surgery of the Mayas, and algebra and optics in Islam.This book shows that scientific thought has never been confined to any one era, culture, or geographic region. Clearly presented and highly illustrated, A History of Science in World Cultures is the perfect text for all students and others interested in the development of science throughout history.

    Yet even as these phenomena have exposed the culturally specific character of the academic theories used to understand them, most responses to thisethnocentricity fall back on the same parochial vocabulary they critique. Against those who insist our thinking must return always to the dominant terms of Euro-American modernity, Leigh Jenco argues - and more importantly, demonstrates - that methods for understanding cultural others can taketheoretical guidance from those very bodies of thought typically excluded by political and social theory.Jenco examines a decades-long Chinese conversation over Western Learning, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, which subjected methods of learning from difference to unprecedented scrutiny and development. Just as Chinese elites argued for the possibility of their producing knowledge alongWestern lines rather than Chinese ones, so too, Jenco argues, might we come to see foreign knowledge as a theoretical resource - that is, as a body of knowledge which formulates methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence that may be generalizable to other places and times.The call of reformers such as Liang Qichao and Yan Fu to bianfa - literally change the institutions of Chinese society and politics in order to produce new kinds of Western knowledge-was simultaneously a call to change the referents those institutions sought to emulate, and from whichparticipants might draw their self-understanding. Their arguments show that the institutional and cultural contexts which support the production of knowledge are not prefigured givens that constrain cross-cultural understanding, but dynamic platforms for learning that are tractable to concertedefforts over time to transform them. In doing so, these thinkers point us beyond the mere acknowledgement of cultural difference toward reform of the social, institutional and disciplinary spaces in which the production of knowledge takes place.

    First introduced to China in 1906, he inspired intellectuals like Lu Xun, who considered him a role model for dedication and aesthetic taste, and aspiring musicians. As a man who refused to bow to royalty, Beethoven was celebrated by the Communist Party in the early days of the revolution before he was banned for composing bourgeois music in the cultural vacuum of the 60s and 70s. After the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, ‘Beethoven fever’ would sweep the country, presaging his present-day popularity. Melvin and Cai explore the vicissitudes of Beethoven’s legacy in China, and the changing politics of the 20th century and its oscillating affiliation with Western classical music.

    Sulmaan Wasif Khan tells the story of the PRC's response to that crisis and, in doing so, brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters: Chinese diplomats appalled by sky burials, Guomindang spies working with Tibetans in Nepal, traders carrying salt across the Himalayas, and Tibetan Muslims rioting in Lhasa. What Chinese policymakers confronted in Tibet, Khan argues, was not a third world but a fourth world problem: Beijing was dealing with peoples whose ways were defined by statelessness. As it sought to tighten control over the restive borderlands, Mao's China moved from a lighter hand to a harder, heavier imperial structure. That change triggered long-lasting shifts in Chinese foreign policy. Moving from capital cities to far-flung mountain villages, from top diplomats to nomads crossing disputed boundaries in search of pasture, this book shows Cold War China as it has never been seen before and reveals the deep influence of the Tibetan crisis on the political fabric of present-day China.

    Examining a wealth of multilingual primary sources, Birgit Tremml-Werner shows that cross-cultural encounters not only shaped Manila’s development as a “Eurasian” port city, but also had profound political, economic, and social ramifications for the three pre-modern states. Combining a systematic comparison with a focus on specific actors during this period, this book addresses many long-held misconceptions and offers a more balanced and multi-faceted view of these nations’ histories.

    DeMare traces the development of Mao's 'cultural army' from its genesis in Red Army propaganda teams to its full development as a largely civilian force composed of amateur and professional drama troupes in the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Drawing from memoirs, artistic handbooks, and rare archival sources, Mao's Cultural Army uncovers the arduous and complex process of creating revolutionary dramas that would appeal to China's all-important rural audiences. The Communists strived for a disciplined cultural army to promote party policies, but audiences often shunned modern and didactic shows, and instead clamoured for traditional works. DeMare illustrates how drama troupes, caught between the party and their audiences, did their best to resist the ever growing reach of the PRC state.

    Brindley provides an overview of current theories in archaeology and linguistics concerning the peoples of the ancient southern frontier of China, the closest relations on the mainland to certain later Southeast Asian and Polynesian peoples. Through analysis of warring states and early Han textual sources, she shows how representations of Chinese and Yue identity invariably fed upon, and often grew out of, a two-way process of centering the self while de-centering the other. Examining rebellions, pivotal ruling figures from various Yue states, and key moments of Yue agency, Brindley demonstrates the complexities involved in identity formation and cultural hybridization in the ancient world, and highlights the ancestry of cultures now associated with southern China and Vietnam.

    From paper tigers to praying mantis, to the music of nature and heavenly robes, these tales have not only shed light on the traditional Chinese way of thinking, but also illustrated many of its ancient customs.[Extracted from: https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Idioms...]

    Editor David Denoon and his internationally renowned set of contributors assess the different objectives and strategies the U.S. and China deploy in the region and examine how the two world powers are indirectly competitive with one another for influence in Central Asia. While the US is focused on maintaining and supporting its military forces in neighboring states, China has its sights on procuring natural resources for its fast-growing economy and preventing the expansion of fundamentalist Islam inside its borders.This book covers important issues such as the creation of international gas pipelines, the challenges of building crucial transcontinental roadways that must pass through countries facing insurgencies, the efforts of the US and China to encourage and provide better security in the region, and how the Central Asian countries themselves view their role in international politics and the global economy. The book also covers key outside powers with influence in the region; Russia, with its historical ties to the many Central Asian countries that used to belong to the USSR, is perhaps the biggest international presence in the area, and other countries on the region's periphery like Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and India have a stake in the fortunes and future of Central Asia as well. A comprehensive, original, and up-to-date collection, this book is a wide-ranging look from noted scholars at a vital part of the world which is likely to receive more attention and face greater instability as NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

    This book is a social history of cultural and political radicals based in China's most important hinterland city at this pivotal time, Wuhan.Current narratives of May Fourth focus on the ideological development of intellectuals in the seaboard metropoles of Beijing and Shanghai. And although scholars have pointed to the importance of the many cultural-political societies of the period, they have largely neglected to examine these associations, seeing them only as the seedbeds of Chinese communism and its leaders, the most prominent of these being Mao Zedong.This book, by contrast, portrays the everyday life of May Fourth activists in Wuhan's cultural-political societies founded by teacher and journalist Yun Daiying (1895-1931). Rahav examines how the radical politics in the hinterland urban centers developed into a nationwide movement that would provide the basis for the emergence of mass political parties, namely the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).