Download or read book Emperor Huizong written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China was the most advanced country in the world when Huizong ascended the throne in 1100 CE. In his eventful twenty-six year reign, the artistically-gifted emperor guided the Song Dynasty toward cultural greatness. Yet Huizong would be known to posterity as a political failure who lost the throne to Jurchen invaders and died their prisoner. The first comprehensive English-language biography of this important monarch, Emperor Huizong is a nuanced portrait that corrects the prevailing view of Huizong as decadent and negligent. Patricia Ebrey recasts him as a ruler genuinely ambitious—if too much so—in pursuing glory for his flourishing realm. After a rocky start trying to overcome political animosities at court, Huizong turned his attention to the good he could do. He greatly expanded the court’s charitable ventures, founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, and paupers’ cemeteries. An accomplished artist, he surrounded himself with outstanding poets, painters, and musicians and built palaces, temples, and gardens of unsurpassed splendor. What is often overlooked, Ebrey points out, is the importance of religious Daoism in Huizong’s understanding of his role. He treated Daoist spiritual masters with great deference, wrote scriptural commentaries, and urged his subjects to adopt his beliefs and practices. This devotion to the Daoist vision of sacred kingship eventually alienated the Confucian mainstream and compromised his ability to govern. Readers will welcome this lively biography, which adds new dimensions to our understanding of a passionate and paradoxical ruler who, so many centuries later, continues to inspire both admiration and disapproval.
Download or read book Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huizong was an exceptional emperor who lived through momentous times. A man of many talents, he wrote poetry and created his own distinctive calligraphy style; collected paintings, calligraphies, and antiquities on a large scale; promoted Daoism; and involved himself in the training of court artists, the layout of gardens, and reforms of music and medicine. The quarter century when Huizong ruled is just as fascinating. The greatly enlarged scholar-official class had come into its own but was deeply divided by factional strife. The long struggle between the Chinese state and its northern neighbors entered a new phase when Song proved unable to defend itself against the newly emergent Jurchen state of Jin. Huizong and thousands of members of his family and court were taken captive, and the Song dynasty had to recreate itself in the South.
Download or read book What the Emperor Built written by Aurelia Campbell and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor Built is the first book-length study devoted to the architectural projects of a single Chinese emperor. Focusing on the imperial palaces in Beijing, a Daoist architectural complex on Mount Wudang, and a Buddhist temple on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, Aurelia Campbell demonstrates how the siting, design, and use of Yongle’s palaces and temples helped cement his authority and legitimize his usurpation of power. Campbell offers insight into Yongle’s sense of empire—from the far-flung locations in which he built, to the distant regions from which he extracted construction materials, and to the use of tens of thousands of craftsmen and other laborers. Through his constructions, Yongle connected himself to the divine, interacted with his subjects, and extended imperial influence across space and time. Spanning issues of architectural design and construction technologies, this deft analysis reveals remarkable advancements in timber-frame construction and implements an art-historical approach to examine patronage, audience, and reception, situating the buildings within their larger historical and religious contexts.
Download or read book Emperor Huizong written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China was the most advanced country in the world when Huizong ascended the throne in 1100 CE. Artistically gifted, he guided the Song Dynasty toward cultural greatness but is known to posterity as a political failure who lost the throne to Jurchen invaders and died their prisoner. In this comprehensive biography, Patricia Ebrey corrects the prevailing view of Huizong as decadent and negligent, recasting him as a ruler ambitious in pursuing glory for his flourishing realm. After a rocky start trying to overcome political animosities at court, Huizong turned his attention to the good he could do. He greatly expanded the court's charitable ventures, founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, and paupers' cemeteries. Surrounding himself with poets, painters, and musicians, he built palaces, temples, and gardens of unsurpassed splendor. Often overlooked, however, is the importance of Daoism in Huizong's life. He treated spiritual masters with great deference, wrote scriptural commentaries, and urged his subjects to adopt his beliefs and practices. This devotion to the Daoist vision of sacred kingship eventually alienated the Confucian mainstream and compromised Huizong's ability to govern. Ebrey's lively biography adds new dimensions of understanding to a passionate, paradoxical ruler who, many centuries later, inspires both admiration and disapproval.
Download or read book Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huizong was an exceptional emperor who lived through momentous times. A man of many talents, he wrote poetry and created his own distinctive calligraphy style; collected paintings, calligraphies, and antiquities on a large scale; promoted Daoism; and involved himself in the training of court artists, the layout of gardens, and reforms of music and medicine. The quarter century when Huizong ruled is just as fascinating. The greatly enlarged scholar-official class had come into its own but was deeply divided by factional strife. The long struggle between the Chinese state and its northern neighbors entered a new phase when Song proved unable to defend itself against the newly emergent Jurchen state of Jin. Huizong and thousands of members of his family and court were taken captive, and the Song dynasty had to recreate itself in the South.
Download or read book Empire of Style written by BuYun Chen and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. In Empire of Style, BuYun Chen reveals a vibrant fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing. Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production. This first book on fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources—paintings, figurines, and silk artifacts—and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws. Tang fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/empire-of-style
Download or read book She Who Became the Sun written by Shelley Parker-Chan and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner Astounding Award Winner Lambda Literary Award Finalist Hugo Award Finalist Locus Award Finalist Otherwise Award Finalist "Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything “I refuse to be nothing...” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Beyond Representation written by Wen Fong and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 1992 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Representation surveys Chinese painting and calligraphy from the eighth to the fourteenth century, a period during which Chinese society and artistic expression underwent profound changes. A fourteenth-century Yuan dynasty (1279 - 1368) literati landscape painting presents a world that is totally different from that portrayed in the monumental landscape images of the early Sung dynasty (960 - 1279). To chronicle and explain the evolution from formal representation to self-expression is the purpose of this book. Wen C. Fong, one of the world's most eminent scholars of Chinese art, takes the reader through this evolution, drawing on the outstanding collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Focusing on 118 works, each illustrated in full color, the book significantly augments the standard canon of images used to describe the period, enhancing our sense of the richness and complexity of artistic expression during this six-hundred-year era.
Download or read book East Asian Archaeoastronomy written by Zhenoao Xu and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2000-11-17 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical astronomical records can play an important role in modern research, especially in the case of ancient Chinese observational data: sunspot and aurora records are important for the study of solar variability; solar and lunar eclipse records for the study of the Earth's rotation; records of Comet Hally for the study of orbital evolution; "guest star" records for the study of supernova remnants; planetary conjunction records for research in astronomical chronology. In the past, Western scientists have not been able to exploit these valuable data fully because the original records were difficult to gather and interpret, and complete English translations have not been available. East-Asian Archaeoastronomy is the first comprehensive translation into English of such historical records for modern research. The book also features an introduction to East Asian astronomy and offers guidance on how to use the records effectively. It will not only be a valuable research tool for astronomers but should also be of great interest to historians of China and Chinese science.
Download or read book The Making of Song Dynasty History written by Charles Hartman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionist analysis of the major sources for Song history, explaining their master narrative as the product of political tension.
Download or read book Chinese Architecture and Metaphor written by Jiren Feng and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the historical tradition of Chinese architectural writing from antiquity to the twelfth century, Chinese Architecture and Metaphor reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao fashi’s unique literary value and explores the rich cultural implications in and behind its technical content. Utilizing a philological approach, the author pays particular attention to the traditional and contemporary architectural terminology presented in the Yingzao fashi. In examining the semantic meaning of the architectural terms used in the manual, he uncovers a systematic architectural metaphor wherein bracketing elements are likened to flowers, flowering branches, and foliage: Thus pillars with bracketing above are compared to blossoming trees. More importantly, this intriguing imagery was shared by different social groups, in particular craftsmen and literati, and craftsmen themselves employed literary knowledge in naming architectural elements. Relating these phenomena to the unprecedented flourishing of literature, the literati’s greater admiration of technical knowledge, and the higher intellectual capacity of craftsmen during the Song, Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates how the learned and “unlearned” cultures entangled in the construction of architectural knowledge in premodern China. It convincingly shows that technical language served as a faithful carrier of contemporary popular culture and aesthetic concepts. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates a high level of engagement with a broad spectrum of sophisticated Chinese sources. It will become a classic work for all students and scholars of East Asian architecture.
Download or read book A Sketch of Rare Birds written by Ji Zhao and published by Royal Collection of Imperi. This book was released on 2020-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handscroll; Ink and wash on paper; 404cm(width)*22cm(height) Emperor Huizong was a model bird and flower painter, his strokes simple yet elegant. Whether birds or flowers, his subjects are alike not only in appearance, but also spirit. "A good resemblance in appearance requires the artist to retain the spirit of the subject, and a good resemblance in spirit requires the artist to reflect on the nature of the subject." By presenting his subjects' precise form and lively spirit Zhao Ji strove to produce sketches that are true to life and to develop resemblance in spirit through resemblance in form. In his paintings, birds are outlined with light ink, then dark ink is used to add detail to the feathers on the head and tail. By painting in multiple layers, the fluffiness, thickness, and gorgeous colors of the bird's feathers are displayed. Similar techniques are applied in painting leaves to produce a lifelike, vivid effect.
Download or read book All Mine written by Stephen Owen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Song Dynasty, China experienced rapid commercial growth and monetization of the economy. In the same period, the austere ethical turn that led to neo-Confucianism was becoming increasingly prevalent in the imperial bureaucracy and literati culture. Tracing the influences of these trends in Chinese intellectual history, All Mine! explores the varied ways in which eleventh-century writers worked through the conflicting values of this new world. Stephen Owen contends that in the new money economy of the Song, writers became preoccupied with the question of whether material things can bring happiness. Key thinkers returned to this problem, weighing the conflicting influences of worldly possessions and material comfort against Confucian ideology, which locates true contentment in the Way and disdains attachment to things. In a series of essays, Owen examines the works of writers such as the prose master Ouyang Xiu, who asked whether tranquility could be found in the backwater to which he had been exiled; the poet and essayist Su Dongpo, who was put on trial for slandering the emperor; and the historian Sima Guang, whose private garden elicited reflections on private ownership. Through strikingly original readings of major eleventh-century figures, All Mine! inquires not only into the material conditions of happiness but also the broader conditions of knowledge.
Download or read book A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains written by Avril Lee and published by Artpower International Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: - Part of a series of 10 paintings from the last five dynasties of ancient China - presented in the traditional format of a handscroll The series of Collection of Ancient Calligraphy and Painting Handscrolls: Paintings has a large time span, rich themes and diverse styles. It selects 10 paintings from the last five dynasties of ancient China (Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties), including vivid portraits, exquisite landscape paintings, and meticulous paintings of flowers and birds. The artworks are presented in the traditional format of a handscroll which can be extended indefinitely, so that the postscripts and observations of later generations can be directly followed by the end of the works.
Download or read book Emperors Treasures written by Jay Xu and published by Asian Art Museum . This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emperors' Treasures features artworks from the renowned National Palace Museum, Taipei. It encompasses paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, lacquer ware, jades, and textiles exemplifying the finest craftsmanship and imperial taste. The Chinese art book book explores the identities of eight Chinese rulers—seven emperors and one empress—who reigned from the early 12th through early 20th centuries. They are portrayed in a story line that highlights artworks of their eras, from the dignified Song to the coarse yet subtle Yuan, and from the brilliant Ming until the final, dazzling Qing period. Emperors' Treasures examines each ruler's distinct contribution to the arts and how each developed his or her aesthetic and connoisseurship.
Download or read book Accumulating Culture written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an illustrated examination of a collection of Chinese calligraphy, paintings, bronzes, and many other objects amassed by the Song dynasty emperor Huizong (1082-1135). It contributes to a rethinking of the cultural side of Chinese imperial rule and of the court as a patron of scholars and the arts.
Download or read book Tangut Language and Manuscripts An Introduction written by Jinbo Shi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tangut Language and Manuscripts, Shi Jinbo offers by far the fullest introduction to the Tangut script, grammar and manuscripts, which lay the foundation of historical narratives of Western Xia.
