In the 1990s, as the tea's noble lineage and unique process of aging and fermentation were rediscovered, it achieved cult status both in China and internationally. The tea became a favorite among urban connoisseurs who analyzed it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices. In 2007, however, local events and the international economic crisis caused the Puer market to collapse.Puer Tea traces the rise, climax, and crash of this phenomenon. With ethnographic attention to the spaces in which Puer tea is harvested, processed, traded, and consumed, anthropologist Jinghong Zhang constructs a vivid account of the transformation of a cottage handicraft into a major industry--with predictable risks and unexpected consequences.Watch the associated videos at https: //archive.org/details/PUERTEADVD1.

    Since it is the prime raw material for constructing China's national identity, historical memory is the key to unlocking the inner mystery of the Chinese. From this vantage point, Wang tracks the CCP's use of history education to glorify the party, reestablish its legitimacy, consolidate national identity, and justify one-party rule in the post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War era. The institutionalization of this manipulated historical consciousness now directs political discourse and foreign policy, and Wang demonstrates its important role in China's rise.

    Surprisingly, these prehistoric people are not Asian but Caucasoid—tall, large-nosed and blond with thick beards and round eyes. What were these blond Caucasians doing in the heart of Asia? What language did they speak? Might they be related to a "lost tribe" known from later inscriptions? Few clues are offered by their pottery or tools, but their clothes—woolens that rarely survive more than a few centuries—have been preserved as brightly hued as the day they were woven. Elizabeth Wayland Barber describes these remarkable mummies and their clothing, and deduces their path to this remote, forbidding place. The result is a book like no other—a fascinating unveiling of an ancient, exotic, nearly forgotten world. A finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.

    While the attention of the West has been fixed on the USSR and Eastern Europe, a quieter, cumulative revolution has been taking place in Asia which may have even more profound consequences for world history.

    No one has depicted that world - the dazzlingly modern, obdurately traditional Crown Colony of Hong Kong - more faithfully, shrewdly, or affectionately than Jan Morris, who in this contemporary classic of travel writing celebrates the city's charm and squalor, unravels the tangle of its history, and gives us an informed glimpse into its future. Combining firsthand reportage with exemplary research, Morris takes us from Hong Kong's clamorous back alleys to the luxurious Happy Valley racecourse, where taipans place their bets between sips of champagne and bird's nest soup. Morris chronicles the exploits of opium traders and pirates, colonists and financiers, and shows how their descendants view the prospect of reunification with the Chinese mainland. What emerges is an epic tableau, vastly informed and pungently evocative.

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

    The winner of the coveted Harper Prize, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for seven months and was made into a popular motion picture that continues to be shown on television today.Set in China on the eve of revolution, the book tells the story of an old U.S. Navy gunboat, the San Pablo, and her dedicated crew of Sand Pebbles on patrol in the far reaches of the Yangtze River to show the flag and protect American missionaries and businessmen from bandits. The plot revolves around a newcomer to the boat, machinist's mate Jake Holman, a maverick and loner who dramatically alters the lives of the crew and the people they have come to save. A faithful engine-room coolie and a pretty young missionary help Holman gain an appreciation of China and its people and discover a world of humanity and promise he has never known. It is a story of old loyalties versus new values, of violence and tenderness, tragedy and humor, and it engages the reader from the first line to the last. This new paperback edition includes in informative introduction by Robert Shenk, written for the Naval Institute's Classics of Naval Literature edition in 1984.

    In the fourth century BC three conflicting points of view in Chinese philosophy received classic expression: the Taoist, the Confucianist, and the "Realist." This book underscores the interplay between these three philosophies, drawing on extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius, and Han Fei Tzu.

    Fingarette-who thinks the best way to discover Confucius's teaching is by taking him at his word-uses original text as his principal resource in an effort to try to see what it says, what it implies and what it does not say or need not imply.

    The structure of global politics is shifting rapidly. After decades of rising, China has entered a new and critical phase where it seeks to turn its economic heft into global power. In this deeply informed book, Geoff Dyer makes a lucid and convincing argument that China and the United States are now embarking on a great power–style competition that will dominate the century. This contest will take place in every arena: from control of the seas, where China’s new navy is trying to ease the United States out of Asia and reassert its traditional leadership, to rewriting the rules of the global economy, with attempts to turn the renminbi into the predominant international currency, toppling the dominance of the U.S. dollar. And by investing billions to send its media groups overseas, Beijing hopes to shift the global debate about democracy and individual rights. Eyeing the high ground of international politics, China is taking the first steps in an ambitious global agenda. Yet Dyer explains how China will struggle to unseat the United States. China’s new ambitions are provoking intense anxiety, especially in Asia, while America’s global influence has deep roots. If Washington can adjust to a world in which it is no longer dominant but still immensely powerful, it can withstand China’s challenge. With keen insight based on a deep local knowledge—offering the reader visions of coastal Chinese beauty pageants and secret submarine bases, lockstep Beijing military parades and the neon media screens of Xinhua exported to New York City’s Times Square—The Contest of the Century is essential reading at a time of great uncertainty about America’s future, a road map for retaining a central role in the world.

    The long Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbor and Western interests throughout the Pacific on December 7-8, 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China, and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars - the Chinese Civil War (1911-1949), the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945), and World War II (1939-1945) - together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century. While these events are history in the West, they live on in Japan and especially China.

    “If leaving me in the mental institution will further the gospel, then leave me there!” The first time Doris, an orthodox Buddhist, heard about Jesus, she whispered to Grace, “Don’t tell anyone that Jesus died for us. This will be our secret!” The police were interrogating 19-year-old Hope every few days—pressuring her to disclose Grace and Justin’s ministry to university students. With tears in her eyes, she told Grace and Justin, “I’ll never betray you two, no matter what they do to me!” Leah, an idol-worshipper, longed to become a Christian, but she was afraid. “If I believe in Jesus, the gods I worship are going to retaliate. They’ll hurt me really bad. Is Jesus powerful enough to protect me from them?” In the kick-off meeting of a discussion group Grace was leading for atheist university students, Carol burst out laughing. “Grace, you can’t be serious! You actually believe God exists?” In Dragon Ride, the beauty of the Lord is seen through the eyes of Buddhists, atheists, idol-worshippers, Muslims, and an animist as they encounter Jesus. Dragon Ride records the actual conversations Grace had with her friends, and many of them embraced Christ as the answer to their deepest longings. Grace writes about persecution, evading the police, saving lives, helping the homeless and disabled, and she even writes about the murder of a friend. But more importantly, she writes of a God who acts on behalf of His children, of a faith that grew in the crucible of China, and of learning how to effectively share the gospel. Grace’s stories are raw, personal, and humorous, and she openly shares about her own spiritual struggles and growth.

    Captive to household ritual, to the strategies and contempt of her sisters-in-law, and to the exacting dictates of her husband's mother, Yindi is pressed beneath the weight of an existence that offers no hope of change. Dramatic events in the outside world fail to make their way into this insular society. Chang's brilliant portrayal of the slow suffocation of passion, moral strength, and physical vitality—together with her masterful evocation of the sights, smells, and sounds of daily existence—make The Rouge of the North a remarkable chronicle of a vanished way of life.

    China's dragons, guardians of the throne, are unlike those of the West. They are benign and protective but can turn like terrible emperors on the people. If they do so, it is the fault of the people, not the dragons. They breathe fire and thrash their tail only if betrayed, a convenient concept for an emperor.

    Traveling from his rural home in Freshwind to the city of Xi’an, Happy brings only an eternally positive attitude, his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women’s shoes he hopes to fill with the love of his life.In Xi’an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the city’s filth, but Happy refuses to be deterred by inauspicious beginnings. In his eyes, dusty birds become phoenixes, the streets become rivers, and life is what you make of it. When he meets the beautiful Yichun, he imagines she is the one to fill the shoes and his Cinderella-esque dream. But when the harsh city conditions and the crush of societal inequalities take the life of his friend and shake Happy to his soul, he’ll need more than just his unrelenting optimism to hold on to the belief that something better is possible.