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EBookClubs

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Book Slapping the Table in Amazement

Download or read book Slapping the Table in Amazement written by Mengchu Ling and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-01-22 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slapping the Table in Amazement is the unabridged English translation of the famous story collection Pai�an jingqi by Ling Mengchu (1580�1644), originally published in 1628. The forty lively stories gathered here present a broad picture of traditional Chinese society and include characters from all social levels. We learn of their joys and sorrows, their views about life and death, and their visions of the underworld and the supernatural. Ling was a connoisseur of popular literature and a seminal figure in the development of Chinese literature in the vernacular, which paved the way for the late-imperial Chinese novel. Slapping the Table in Amazement includes translations of verse and prologue stories as well as marginal and interlinear comments.

Book Historian of the Strange

Download or read book Historian of the Strange written by Judith T. Zeitlin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book in English on the seventeenth-century Chinese masterpiece Liaozhai's Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred fantastic tales and anecdotes written in Classical Chinese.

Book Crossing Boundaries and Confounding Identity

Download or read book Crossing Boundaries and Confounding Identity written by Cheryl C. D. Hughes and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2023-02-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing Borders and Confounding Identity advances our understanding of the diversity of Chinese women's experiences and achievements, from the Han Dynasty to the present. With a particular emphasis on literature and the arts, the chapters offer insights into the work of current Chinese women artists as well as literary, historical, and cultural portrayals of women and women's issues. Taken together, they provide new perspectives on Chinese women, their lived experiences and fictional representations, across a broad spectrum of literature, theater, film, and the visual arts. Accessible to nonspecialists and general readers, this book will also be a valuable resource for faculty who teach Asian studies courses in history and in the humanities, as well as for students in interdisciplinary Asian studies courses.

Book Reading for the Moral

Download or read book Reading for the Moral written by Maria Franca Sibau and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reassesses didacticism in seventeenth-century Chinese vernacular fiction and challenges the view that the late Ming was a notoriously immoral time. Reading for the Moral offers an innovative reassessment of the nature of moral representation and exemplarity in Chinese vernacular fiction. Maria Franca Sibau focuses on two little-studied story collections published at the end of the Ming dynasty, Exemplary Words for the World (Xingshi yan, 1632) and Bell in the Still Night (Qingye zhong, c. 1645). Far from being tediously moralistic tales, these stories of loyal ministers, filial children, chaste widows, and selfless friends provide a deeper understanding of the five cardinal relationships central to Confucian ethics. They explore the inherent tension between what we might call textbook morality, on the one hand, and untidy everyday life, on the other. The stories often take a critical view of mechanical notions of retribution, countering it with the logic of virtue as its own reward. Conflict between passion and duty is typically resolved in favor of duty, a duty redefined with a palpable sense of urgency. In constructing vernacular representations of moral exemplars from the recent historical past rather than from remote or fictitious antiquity, the story compilers show how these virtues are not abstract or monolithic norms, but play out within the contingencies of time and space. Maria Franca Sibau is Assistant Professor of Chinese at Emory University.

Book The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty

Download or read book The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty written by Wenxin Chen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the relationship between imperial examinations and literature from the perspective of restoring the cultural ecology of imperial examinations in Ming China, breaking through the paradigm of pure literature research. This book presents an important practice in adjusting the pattern of literary research. The contents of this book include five mutually independent but supportive parts: 1) the living conditions and careers of the literary attendants; 2) the educational background and school’s consciousness of the Ming literati; 3) top candidates and Ming literature; 4) genres of imperial examination and the Ming society; 5) exam cheating cases from the perspective of politics and literature. This book will appeal to readers interested in Chinese literature and culture and the imperial examination system in ancient China.

Book A Brief History of the Chinese Language VIII

Download or read book A Brief History of the Chinese Language VIII written by Xi Xiang and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the final volume of a multi-volume set on the Chinese language, this book studies the Western and Japanese influence on the lexicon of Modern Chinese, lexical developments in synonyms, idioms and proverbs in modern times, and lexical developments in contemporary times. This volume first introduces the influence of foreign cultures on the modern Chinese lexicon with an emphasis on loanwords from Japanese and Indo-European languages. It then discusses the synonyms, idioms, and proverbs of Modern Chinese, elucidating their evolution, sources, and composition. The final part centers on the development of the Chinese lexicon after the May Fourth Movement in 1919, marking the beginning of the contemporary phase of the Chinese language. The author analyzes trends and types of neologisms and loanwords and analyzes the blend of Mandarin and dialect words and the necessity of lexical standardization. Illustrated with abundant examples, this comprehensive groundwork on Chinese lexical history will be a must-read for scholars and students studying Modern Chinese language, linguistics, and especially for beginning learners of modern and contemporary Chinese lexicon.

Book The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature  From 1375

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature From 1375 written by Kang-i Sun Chang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket.

Book Merchants and Society in Modern China

Download or read book Merchants and Society in Modern China written by Tang Lixing and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, merchants in China were incorporated into the bourgeoisie and constituted a vital part of the upstart capitalists. The lowermost class in ancient China’s social hierarchy has thus become a strong force of social transformation in the modern era. From the angle of the interaction between the merchant and modern society, this book examines the factors behind the rise of the merchant class in China, in terms of its cultural traits, inner structure, and business modes. First, it analyzes the features and historical standings of merchant culture which came into existence on the basis of reworking and integrating Neo-Confucianism. It argues that merchant culture pushed China’s early enlightenment movement to a new level. Then the rise of the bourgeoisie and their role in the evolution of modern Chinese society are studied thoroughly. More importantly, by examining the "golden age" of the merchant after the 1911 Revolution and its end brought by the Northern Expedition, this book studies the dilemmas faced by Chinese merchants. Finally, it probes into the reasons why it was hard for China to go beyond modern society, that is, completing the transition from commodity economy to capitalist economy. This book will deepen the understanding of China’s merchant class and modern Chinese society. Scholars and students in economics, history, sociology, and cultural studies will be attracted by it.

Book Ming Dynasty Tales

Download or read book Ming Dynasty Tales written by Victor H. Mair and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With commentary and annotations throughout, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader presents for the first time in English 10 key stories from China's Ming Dynasty era. Casting new light on this significant period in Chinese literary history, these tales bring Ming era China vividly to life, from its chaotic beginnings to its imperial heyday. As well as bearing witness to social change across the 100-year life of the Yuan Dynasty from 1260 to 1368, these tales tackle key themes of war and peace and Confucian values of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and righteousness.

Book The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges between East and West

Download or read book The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges between East and West written by Xinjiang Rong and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges Between East and West, originally written in Chinese by Rong Xinjiang and now translated into English, provides insights into previously unresolved issues concerning the interactions among the societies, economies, religions and cultures of the “Western Regions”, and beyond, during the first millennium.

Book The Chinese Virago

Download or read book The Chinese Virago written by Yenna Wu and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from a broad array of literary, historical, dramatic and anecdotal sources, Yenna Wu makes a rich exploration of an unusually prominent theme in premodern Chinese prose fiction and drama: that of jealous and belligerent wives, or viragos, who dominate their husbands and abuse other women. Focusing on Chinese literary works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she presents many colorful perspectives on this type of aggression, reviewing early literary and historical examples of the phenomenon. Wu argues that although the various portraits of the virago often reveal the writers' insecurities about strong-willed women in general, the authors also satirize the kind of man whose behavioral patterns have been catalysts for female aggression. She also shows that, while the women in these works are to some extent male constructs designed to affirm the patriarchal system, various elements of these portraits constitute a subversive form of parody that casts a revealing light on the patriarchal hierarchy of premodern China.

Book A Historical Research Of Chinese Folk Songs

Download or read book A Historical Research Of Chinese Folk Songs written by Shulu Chen and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2023-12-04 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advances the study of Chinese folk songs through theoretical innovation in literature-based folk songs and methodological innovation in multidisciplinary cross-interaction. It describes the historical development of folk songs, makes an in-depth study of the intersection and integration of folk songs with other literature and art, as well as the relationship with merchants, folk customs and regional culture, and analyses the literature of folk songs in previous dynasties. It is not only significant for the preservation of cultural heritage, but also to the promotion of folk song research and related fields. This book is applicable to scholars and researchers who have in-depth research on Chinese folk songs.

Book The Chinese Vernacular Story

Download or read book The Chinese Vernacular Story written by Patrick Hanan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Stories Old and New

Download or read book Stories Old and New written by and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories Old and New is the first complete translation of Feng Menglong’s Gujin xiaoshuo (also known as Yushi mingyan, Illustrious Words to Instruct the World), a collection of 40 short stories first published in 1620 in China. This is considered the best of Feng’s three such collections and was a pivotal work in the development of vernacular fiction. The stories are valuable as examples of early fiction and for their detailed depiction of daily life among a broad range of social classes. The stories are populated by scholars and courtesans, spirits and ghosts, Buddhist monks and nuns, pirates and emperors, and officials both virtuous and corrupt. The streets and abodes of late-Ming China come alive in Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang’s smooth and colorful translation of these entertaining tales. Stories Old and New has long been popular in China and has been published there in numerous editions. Although some of the stories have appeared in English translations in journals and anthologies, they have not previously been presented sequentially in thematic pairs as arranged by Feng Menglong. This unabridged translation, illustrated with a selection of woodcuts from the original Ming dynasty edition and including Feng’s interlinear notes and marginal comments, as well as all of the verse woven throughout the text, allows the modern reader to experience the text as did its first audience nearly four centuries ago. For other titles in the collection go to http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/ming.html

Book Appropriation and Representation

Download or read book Appropriation and Representation written by Shuhui Yang and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feng Menglong (1574–1646) was recognized as the most knowledgeable connoisseur of popular literature of his time. He is known today for compiling three famous collections of vernacular short stories, each containing forty stories, collectively known as Sanyan. Appropriation and Representation adapts concepts of ventriloquism and dialogism from Bakhtin and Holquist to explore Feng’s methods of selecting source materials. Shuhui Yang develops a model of development in which Feng’s approach to selecting and working with his source materials becomes clear. More broadly, Appropriation and Representation locates Feng Menglong’s Sanyan in the cultural milieu of the late Ming, including the archaist movement in literature, literati marginality and anxieties, the subversive use of folk works, and the meiren xiangcao tradition—appropriating a female identity to express male frustration. Against this background, a rationale emerges for Feng’s choice to elevate and promote the vernacular story while stepping back form an overt authorial role.

Book The Cultural Roots of Strategic Intelligence

Download or read book The Cultural Roots of Strategic Intelligence written by Gino LaPaglia and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-11-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategic Intelligence is a form of meaning that promises the possibility of strategic advantage, dignity, the achievement of objective, and the fulfillment of potential in hostile environments. In The Cultural Roots of Strategic Intelligence Gino LaPaglia demonstrates that the strategic aspect of reason—arising in human experience, encoded as value, and born by culture as a strategic resource—has been encoded as values that have been memorialized in culturally authoritative sources in various Eurasian cultures for thousands of years. These sources have validated a strategic orientation in the world, legitimized the strategist as a heroic identity, and transmitted a coherent world view that enables the practitioner of strategy to overcome asymmetric threat. By excavating the provenance of strategic thought expressed in the cultural identity of the strategist in the most culturally authoritative mythological, literary, philosophical and religious sources, and excavating the underlying strategic values expressed in cultural products, LaPaglia demonstrates that the strategic aspect of human rationality is one of the most basic structural dynamics of human meaning, and that the transmission of this strategic way of being and acting in the world offers hope for life’s underdogs.

Book Understanding Chinese Culture

Download or read book Understanding Chinese Culture written by Guobin Xu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promoting cultural understanding in a globalized world, this text is a key tool for students interested in further developing their understanding of Chinese society and culture. Written by a team of experts in their fields, this book provides a survey of Chinese culture, delving deeper into areas such as Chinese philosophy, religion, politics and education. It offers the reader a wide range of essential facts to better understand contemporary China through its history and cultural background, touching on key areas such as the development of science and technology in China, as well as the country’s economy and trade history, and is a key read for scholars and students in Chinese Culture, Sociology and Politics.