Written in 1598 by Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion is one of literature's most memorable love stories and a masterpiece of Ming drama. It's heroine, Bridal Du, is a cloistered girl who dreams of love, then dies pining for her dream suitor. Returning to earth in ghostly form, she is restored to life through the devotion of a young scholar. Cyril Birch has captured all the elegance, lyricism, and subtle, earthy humour of this panoramic tale of romance and Chinese society. When Indiana University Press first published the text in 1980, it seemed doubtful that the work would ever be performed in its entirety again, but several spectacular and controversial productions have toured the world in recent years. For this second edition, which contains a revised text of the translation, Cyril Birch and Catherine Swatek reflect upon contemporary performances of the play in light of a well-established tradition of stage interpretation in China and the sometimes heated politics of intercultural collaboration.

    In their long-time talks, the former eunuch told his young friend lots of inside stories about the "last emperor" and the royal family. Sun allowed Jia to record these stories with a tape-recorder and a video-tape-recorder.Jia had already published the Chinese edition of the eunuch's biography and a Japanese-language edition.So far, Jia has written six books on the royal family. Jia said he wanted to translate his books into major foreign languages to help foreign readers better understand the history of China.(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2009)http://www.china.org.cn/books&mag...Los Angeles Times Review - "Biography of last Chinese eunuch reveals a tumultuous life"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwor...New Phoenix Intl LlcForeign Language Teaching &Foreign Language Teaching and Research P

    Perched on the top of the world. changes in Tibet’s ecosystem affect the entire global climate. And, most importantly, Tibet is the spiritual and physical home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to which he can never return.But why does Tibet matter to you? Tibet is more than its mountains, its monks, and its martyrs. Robert Thurman, renowned Tibetan scholar, teacher, and activist, presents his provocative, five-point plan that will enable China to win the respect of the entire world by allowing Tibet to regain its cultural, economic, and political autonomy. Thurman shows how the Dalai Lama's tireless work is the harbinger of peace for the world yet to come and essential for human survival. The book outlines several key factors that will educate and empower readers to take action:- What is the history of Tibet, and how do the political, religious, ecological, and social factors affect each other?- Who is the Dalai Lama, and why does his work matter to the world?- What does the China-Tibet relationship represent for the global community?- What can individuals do to bring attention to this issue, and make a change where they are?- How can the five-point plan be used as a model of peaceful change in the world?

    A comprehensive collection by one of the most intensely musical and visionary poets writing today.

    He returned with stories of exotic people, tremendous riches, and the most powerful ruler in the world – Kublai Khan. The explorer told of inventions ranging from gunpowder to paper money. The intellectual ferment and cultural diversity he described helped move Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. In his lifetime, people scoffed at his stories. But as this book explains, he changed the world.

    With newly expanded material, personal documents, social records, laws, and documents that historians mistakenly ignore, the sixth edition is even more useful than its classic predecessor. A complete and thorough introduction to Chinese history and culture.

    George Kennedy of Yale, who called it “a small mass of confusion". The old theory as to the nature of the Chinese written character (which Pound & Fenollosa followed) is that the written character is ideogrammic—a stylized picture of the thing or concept it represents. The opposing theory (which prevails today among scholars) is that the character may have had pictorial origins in prehistoric times but that these origins have been obscured in all but a few very simple cases, & that in any case native writers don’t have the original pictorial meaning in mind as they write. Whether Pound proceeded on false premises remains an academic question. Let the pedants rave. An important extension of imagist technique in poetry was gained by Pound’s perception of the essentially poetic nature of the Chinese character as it's still written.

    Although there are hundreds of books on Hinduism, there are only a few which provide a lucid, accessible, yet deeply layered account of the religion’s numerous belief systems, schools of thought, sects, tenets, scriptures, deities, rituals, customs, festivals and philosophies. This book is one of them. In the tradition of classics of the genre like K. M. Sen’s Hinduism and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s The Hindu View of Life, this book captures the essence of Hinduism with brevity, insight and an enviable grasp of the myriad layers and intricacies of one of the world’s greatest religions. It is a book that is especially timely given the rather controversial role that religion has played in countries around the world. The author tells us why Hinduism is a religion that is well-suited to the needs of the world today: ‘In the twenty-first century, Hinduism has many of the attributes of a universal religion—a religion that is personal and individualistic, privileges the individual and does not subordinate one to a collectivity; a religion that grants and respects complete freedom to the believer to find his or her own answers to the true meaning of life; a religion that offers a wide range of choice in religious practice, even in regard to the nature and form of the formless God; a religion that places great emphasis on one’s mind, and values one’s capacity for reflection, intellectual enquiry, and self-study; a religion that distances itself from dogma and holy writ, that is minimally prescriptive and yet offers an abundance of options, spiritual and philosophical texts and social and cultural practices to choose from. In a world where resistance to authority is growing, Hinduism imposes no authorities; in a world of networked individuals, Hinduism proposes no institutional hierarchies; in a world of open-source information-sharing, Hinduism accepts all paths as equally valid; in a world of rapid transformations and accelerating change, Hinduism is adaptable and flexible, which is why it has survived for nearly 4,000 years.The text of The Hindu Way is embellished with over a hundred photographs and illustrations, many of them in colour, on various aspects of the religion. Based on Dr. Tharoor’s extensive writing on the subject, including the bestselling Why I Am a Hindu, this book gives the reader an unrivaled understanding of Hinduism.

    An insightful and thought-provoking analysis of daily life in China, China Wakes is an exemplary work of reportage. 16 pages of photos.

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

    Henderson was, from 1927 to 1929, the Assistant to the Curator of Far Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art. In 1930 he went to Japan, where he lived the following three years. On his return to this country he joined the faculty at Columbia University, where he taught Japanese and initiated a course in the history of Japanese art. He retired in 1955. His published works include The Bamboo Broom, Surviving Works of Sharaku (with Louis V. Ledoux), and A Handbook of Japanese Grammar. He has also translated H. Minamoto's Illustrated History of Japanese Art, etc. Mr. Henderson lives in New York City.

    Beginning in India, his examination takes him from the realities of Bollywood stardom, to the history of Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence politics. In Kashmir, he reports on the brutal massacre of thirty-five Sikhs, and its intriguing local aftermath. And in Tibet, he exquisitely parses the situation whereby the atheist Chinese government has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can be packaged and sold to tourists. Temptations of the West is essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region of the world.

    And Burton Watson's lucid and beautiful translation has been loved by generations of readers.Chuang Tzu (369?-286? B.C.) was a leading philosopher representing the Taoist strain in Chinese thought. Using parable and anecdote, allegory and paradox, he set forth, in the book that bears his name, the early ideas of what was to become the Taoist school. Central to these is the belief that only by understanding Tao (the Way of Nature) and dwelling in its unity can man achieve true happiness and freedom, in both life and death.Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings includes the seven "inner chapters," which form the heart of the book, three of the "outer chapters," and one of the "miscellaneous chapters." Watson also provides an introduction, placing the philosopher in relation to Chinese history and thought.Witty and imaginative, enriched by brilliant imagery, and making sportive use of both mythological and historical personages (including even Confucius), this timeless classic is sure to appeal to anyone interested in Chinese religion and culture.

    Since the turn of the century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, all fought to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China’s language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our ideas of what it means to speak Chinese.

    It has been translated into every major language on Earth and dozens of minor ones; it has spawned entire genres of animation, and had more books written about it than all but a handful of American Presidents. Even its minor characters have become iconic, and the titular family is recognizable in almost every corner of the planet. It is a definitive and truly global cultural phenomenon, perhaps the biggest of the television age. As of this writing, if you flip on FOX at 8pm on Sundays, you will see a program that bills itself as "The Simpsons". It is not "The Simpsons". That show, the landmark piece of American culture that debuted on 17 December 1989, went off the air more than a decade ago. The replacement is a hopelessly mediocre imitation that bears only a superficial resemblance to the original. It is the unwanted sequel, the stale spinoff, the creative dry hole that is kept pumping in the endless search for more money. It is Zombie Simpsons.