Download or read book A Short History of Paper in Imperial China written by Jean-Pierre Drège and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-08-19 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paper has become the most common writing material worldwide in the course of a two millennia history. This study provides a magisterial synthesis of recent scholarship and original insights into the origins of papermaking and its subsequent history in imperial China, including a wide range of archaeological evidence and literary sources. The volume introduces the materials and technologies of paper production and presents the cultural history of paper in traditional China. A comprehensive survey of literary sources on the production and use of paper is undertaken starting with the ongoing debate about the origin and genesis of paper, which was fuelled by recent archaeological discoveries of paper or proto-paper from the last two centuries BCE. In addition to its having become a popular writing material produced in many different qualities for both handwriting and printing, it also served as a material for wrapping or decorating, money and numerous uses in everyday life, such as umbrellas, windows, clothing, wallpapers, curtains and kites. Precious paper contributed to the aesthetics of calligraphy and painting, catering to the taste of the educated elite and artists.
Download or read book The Arts of Asia written by Meher McArthur and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an illustrated analysis and survey of Asian art forms as understood through the spiritual significance of artistic materials and techniques, tracing the historical and social applications of ten specific artistic materials, from jade and silk to bamboo and paper.
Download or read book The Chinese Invent Papermaking written by Sean Bergin and published by 'The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc'. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where would we be without paper? We’d have no books or magazines, no paper money, and no material on which to paint or draw. But fortunately, paper has been around for thousands of years—and we have ancient China to thank for that! This detailed volume explains the history of paper, from its likely origins with hemp fiber to its use for books and documents and its growing spread to other areas of the world. Photos of historical artifacts bring history to life, and further sources encourage readers to learn more.
Download or read book Paper and Printing in Ancient China written by Berthold Laufer and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Early Chinese Empires written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia. The Qin and Han constitute the "classical period" of Chinese history--a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity. The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism--events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.
Download or read book Paper Paging Through History written by Mark Kurlansky and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world. Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. By tracing paper’s evolution from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the contributions made in Asia and the Middle East, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology’s influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the commodity history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.
Download or read book Collecting China written by Vimalin Rujivacharakul and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting China is a unique collection of essays that brings together theories of materiality and what collecting has meant to various peoples over time. Collecting China grew out of a simple question: how does a thing become Chinese? Fifteen essays explore this question from different angles, ranging from close examination of world-renowned private collections to critical reinterpretations of historical writings.
Download or read book China s Examination Hell written by Ichisada Miyazaki and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of the foremost historians of Chinese institutions, this book focuses on China's civil service examination system in its final and most elaborate phase during the Ch'ing dynasty. All aspects of this labyrinthine system are explored: the types of questions, the style and form in which they were to be answered, the problem of cheating, and the psychological and financial burdens of the candidates, the rewards of the successful and the plight of those who failed. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including Chinese novels, short stories, and plays, this thought provoking and entertaining book brings to vivid life the testing structure that supplied China's government bureaucracy for almost fourteen hundred years. "Professor Miyazaki's informative work is concerned with a system. . . that was, in effect, . . . the basic institution of Chinese political life, the real pillar which supported the imperial monarchy, the effective vehicle for the aspirations and ambitions of the ruling class. Imperial China without the examination system for the past thousand years and more would have developed in an entirely different way and might not have endured as the continuing form of government over a huge empire."--Pacific Affairs "The most comprehensive narrative treatment in any language of [this] enduring achievement of Chinese civilization."--American Historical Review
Download or read book A History of Paper written by Fraser, Paper, ltd., New York and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Age of Confucian Rule written by Dieter Kuhn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favorably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed. With the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalized the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means. Their rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist’s eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China’s understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese. The Age of Confucian Rule is an essential introduction to this transformative era. “A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time” (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).
Download or read book China Between Empires written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the collapse of the Han dynasty in the third century CE, China divided along a north-south line. Mark Lewis traces the changes that both underlay and resulted from this split in a period that saw the geographic redefinition of China, more engagement with the outside world, significant changes to family life, developments in the literary and social arenas, and the introduction of new religions. The Yangzi River valley arose as the rice-producing center of the country. Literature moved beyond the court and capital to depict local culture, and newly emerging social spaces included the garden, temple, salon, and country villa. The growth of self-defined genteel families expanded the notion of the elite, moving it away from the traditional great Han families identified mostly by material wealth. Trailing the rebel movements that toppled the Han, the new faiths of Daoism and Buddhism altered every aspect of life, including the state, kinship structures, and the economy. By the time China was reunited by the Sui dynasty in 589 ce, the elite had been drawn into the state order, and imperial power had assumed a more transcendent nature. The Chinese were incorporated into a new world system in which they exchanged goods and ideas with states that shared a common Buddhist religion. The centuries between the Han and the Tang thus had a profound and permanent impact on the Chinese world.
Download or read book The Paper Trail written by Alexander Monro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping, richly detailed history that tells the fascinating story of how paper—the simple Chinese invention of two thousand years ago—wrapped itself around our world, humankind’s most momentous ideas imprinted on its surface. The emergence of paper in the imperial court of Han China brought about a revolution in the transmission of knowledge and ideas, allowing religions, philosophies and propaganda to spread with ever greater ease. The first writing surface sufficiently cheap, portable and printable for books, pamphlets and journals to be mass-produced and distributed widely, paper opened the way for an unprecedented, ongoing dialogue between individuals and between communities across continents, oceans and time. The Paper Trail explores how the new substance was used to solidify social and political systems that influenced China even into our own time. We see how paper made possible the spread of the then new religions of Buddhism and Manichaeism into Japan, Korea and Vietnam . . . how it enabled theologians, scientists and artists to build the vast and signally intellectual empire of the Abbasid Caliphate and embed the Koran in popular culture . . . how paper was carried along the Silk Road by merchants and missionaries, finally reaching Europe in the late thirteenth century . . . and how, once established in Europe, along with the printing press, paper played an essential role in the three great foundations of Western modernity: the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Here is a dramatic, comprehensively researched, vividly written story populated by holy men and scholars, warriors and poets, rulers and ordinary men and women—an essential story brilliantly told in this luminous work of history.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Imperial China written by Yuhua Wang and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth. Focusing on how short-lived emperors often ruled a strong state while long-lasting emperors governed a weak one, Yuhua Wang shows why lessons from China’s history can help us better understand state building. Wang argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off that he calls the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could collectively strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. This dilemma emerged because strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state, and vice versa, and he looks at how the ruler’s pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China’s fall. Drawing on more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development.
Download or read book The Silk Road A Very Short Introduction written by James A. Millward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction is a new look at an ancient subject: the silk road that linked China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean across the expanses of Central Asia. James A. Millward highlights unusual but important biological, technological and cultural exchanges over the silk roads that stimulated development across Eurasia and underpin civilization in our modern, globalized world.
Download or read book History of Papermaking in China written by Zhi Dao and published by DeepLogic. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides highlights on the key concepts and trends of evolution in History of Papermaking in China, as one of the series of books of “China Classified Histories”.
Download or read book Military Culture in Imperial China written by Nicola Di Cosmo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics. The book critically investigates the perception that, due to the influence of Confucianism, Chinese culture has systematically devalued military matters. There was nothing inherently pacifist about the Chinese governments’ views of war, and pragmatic approaches—even aggressive and expansionist projects—often prevailed. Though it has changed in form, a military elite has existed in China from the beginning of its history, and military service included a large proportion of the population at any given time. Popular literature praised the martial ethos of fighting men. Civil officials attended constantly to military matters on the administrative and financial ends. The seven military classics produced in antiquity continued to be read even into the modern period. These original essays explore the ways in which intellectual, civilian, and literary elements helped shape the nature of military institutions, theory, and the culture of war. This important contribution bridges two literatures, military and cultural, that seldom appear together in the study of China, and deepens our understanding of war and society in Chinese history.
Download or read book Forgery and Impersonation in Imperial China written by Mark McNicholas and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.
