Download or read book The Taoists of Peking 1800 1949 written by Vincent Goossaert and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By looking at the activities of Taoist clerics in Peking, this book explores the workings of religion as a profession in one Chinese city during a period of dramatic modernization. The author focuses on ordinary religious professionals, most of whom remained obscure temple employees. Although almost forgotten, they were all major actors in urban religious and cultural life. The clerics at the heart of this study spent their time training disciples, practicing and teaching self-cultivation, performing rituals, and managing temples. Vincent Goossaert shows that these Taoists were neither the socially despised illiterates dismissed in so many studies, nor otherworldly ascetics, but active participants in the religious economy of the city. In exploring exactly what their crucial role was, he addresses the day-to-day life of modern Chinese religion from the perspective of ordinary religious specialists. This approach highlights the social processes, institutions, and networks that transmit religious knowledge and mediate between prestigious religious traditions and the people in the street. In modern Chinese religion, the Taoists are such key actors. Without them, ""Taoist ritual"" and ""Taoist self-cultivation"" are just empty words."
Download or read book Letter from Peking written by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck and published by Leicester, Eng. : Ulverscroft. This book was released on 1957 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an American-Chinese family separated by the communist revolution in China, as they struggle to overcome difficulties and the prejudices a family of mixed blood must face. The half-Chinese husband remains behind in China, while the mother and teenage son go back to the mother's original home state of Vermont. The anxious wife awaits word from her husband, as the young mixed-race son falls in love with an American girl. The mother breaks up this particular romance.
Download or read book Republican Beijing written by Madeleine Yue Dong and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-08-04 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of Republican Beijing, with a focus on social and cultural life in the city. This book examines how Republican Beijing, through the very processes of modernization and the material and cultural practices of reccycling, acquired its identity as a consummately "traditional" Chinese city.
Download or read book Peking Story written by David Kidd and published by Eland Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting and delicately observed description of the last days of Mandarin culture before the revolution, 'Peking Story' is a testimony to a way of life, a culture, an aesthetic and a civilisation which has since completely disappeared.
Download or read book Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing written by Liangyong Wu and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventy years of revolution and turmoil have had a severe impact on the miraculous ancient urban form of Beijing, but economic growth since the early 1990s has threatened to deal the coup de grace. In Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing, Wu Liangyong presents an impassioned plea to turn the tide of demolition and offers a new direction for the planning and development of China's capital. His project for the renewal of the Ju'er Hutong (Chrysanthemum Lane) neighbourhood in the heart of Beijing's Old City takes pride of place in this book. A thoughtful analysis of those aspects of the ancient capital's features, which the project aims to respect and conserve, is followed by a detailed account of the design and development process of the project itself.
Download or read book Deng Xiaoping s Long War written by Xiaoming Zhang and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war imposed heavy casualties, ruined urban and agricultural infrastructure, leveled three Vietnamese cities, and catalyzed a decadelong conflict. In this groundbreaking book, Xiaoming Zhang traces the roots of the conflict to the historic relationship between the peoples of China and Vietnam, the ongoing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's desire to modernize his country. Deng's perceptions of the Soviet Union, combined with his plans for economic and military reform, shaped China's strategic vision. Drawing on newly declassified Chinese documents and memoirs by senior military and civilian figures, Zhang takes readers into the heart of Beijing's decision-making process and illustrates the war's importance for understanding the modern Chinese military, as well as China's role in the Asian-Pacific world today.
Download or read book Chang an Avenue and the Modernization of Chinese Architecture written by Shuishan Yu and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outgrowth of the author's thesis (Ph.D.--University of Washington).
Download or read book Midnight in Peking written by Paul French and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger from the author of City of Devils Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.
Download or read book City of Lingering Splendor written by John Blofeld and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.
Download or read book A Comrade Lost and Found written by Jan Wong and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoping to make amends, Wong returns to Beijing to find the classmate she betrayed during the Cultural Revolution. As she traces her way from one former comrade to the next, Wong unearths not only the fate of the woman she is searching for but a web of fates that mirrors the dramatic journey of contemporary China.
Download or read book The House of Yan written by Lan Yan and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the sweeping cultural and historical transformations of China, entrepreneur Lan Yan traces her family’s history through early 20th Century to present day. The history of the Yan family is inseparable from the history of China over the last century. One of the most influential business leaders of China today, Lan Yan grew up in the company of the country’s powerful elite, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. Her grandfather, Yan Baohang, originally a nationalist and ally of Chiang Kai-shek, later joined the communists and worked as a spy during World War II, never falling out of favor with Soong May-ling, aka Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek. Lan’s parents were diplomats, and her father, Yan Mingfu, was Mao’s personal Russian translator. In spite of their elevated status, the Yan’s family life was turned upside down by the Cultural Revolution. One night in 1967, in front of a terrified ten-year-old Lan, Red Guards burst into the family home and arrested her grandfather. Days later, her father was arrested, accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Her mother, Wu Keilang, was branded a counter-revolutionary and forced to go with her daughter to a re-education camp for five years, where Lan came of age as a high school student. In recounting her family history, Lan Yan brings to life a century of Chinese history from the last emperor to present day, including the Cultural Revolution which tore her childhood apart. The reader obtains a rare glimpse into the mysteries of a system which went off the rails and would decimate a large swathe of the intellectual, economic and political elite country. The little girl who was crushed by the Cultural Revolution has become one of the most active businesswomen in her country. In telling her and her family’s story, Lan Yan serves up an intimate account of the history of contemporary China.
Download or read book Peking s Approach to Negotiation Selected Writings written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations. Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The People s Peking Man written by Sigrid Schmalzer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s an international team of scientists and miners unearthed the richest evidence of human evolution the world had ever seen: Peking Man. After the communist revolution of 1949, Peking Man became a prominent figure in the movement to bring science to the people. In a new state with twin goals of crushing “superstition” and establishing a socialist society, the story of human evolution was the first lesson in Marxist philosophy offered to the masses. At the same time, even Mao’s populist commitment to mass participation in science failed to account for the power of popular culture—represented most strikingly in legends about the Bigfoot-like Wild Man—to reshape ideas about human nature. The People’s Peking Man is a skilled social history of twentieth-century Chinese paleoanthropology and a compelling cultural—and at times comparative—history of assumptions and debates about what it means to be human. By focusing on issues that push against the boundaries of science and politics, The People’s Peking Man offers an innovative approach to modern Chinese history and the history of science.
Download or read book Staging Revolution written by Xing Fan and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Staging Revolution refutes the deep-rooted notion that art overtly in the service of politics is by definition devoid of artistic merits. As a prominent component shaping the culture of the Cultural Revolution, model Beijing Opera (jingju) is the epitome of art used for political ends. Arguing against commonly accepted interpretations, Xing Fan demonstrates that in a performance of model jingju, political messages could only be realized through the most rigorously formulated artistic choices and conveyed by performers possessing exceptional techniques. Fan contextualizes model jingju at the intersection of history, artistry, and aesthetics. Integral to jingju’s interactions with politics are the practitioners’ constant artistic experimentations to accommodate the modern stories and characters within the jingju framework and the eventual formation of a new sense of beauty. Therefore, a thorough understanding of model jingju demands close attention to how the artists resolved actual production problems, which is a critical perspective missing in earlier studies. This book provides exactly this much-needed dimension of analysis by scrutinizing the decisions made in the real, practical context of bringing dramatic characters to life on stage, and by examining how major artistic elements interacted with each other, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes antagonistically. Such an approach necessarily places jingju artists center stage. Making use of first person accounts of the creative process, including numerous interviews conducted by the author, Fan presents a new appreciation of a lived experience that, on a harrowing journey of coping with political interference, was also filled with inspiration and excitement. “This fascinating study is ground-breaking and timely. Xing Fan masterfully demonstrates how the creative choices made by playwrights, directors, musicians, actors, and designers intersected with one another in creating an aesthetics of the model theater during the Cultural Revolution. A must-read for anyone interested in Chinese literature and drama, theater studies, and comparative literature.” —Xiaomei Chen, University of California, Davis “Though no longer in fashion, the model revolutionary operas of the Cultural Revolution are still occasionally performed. Xing Fan has done us a great service by analyzing them in detail and reminding us of their merits. I thoroughly enjoyed this engaging book and learned a lot from it. I recommend it strongly.” —Colin Mackerras, Griffith University
Download or read book Peking s Approach to Negotiation Selected Writings written by United States. Congress. Senate. Government Operations and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Silk Road written by Frances Wood and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gorgeously illustrated oversized book brings the history and cultures of the Silk Road alive -- from its beginnings to the present day -- covering more than 5000 years.
Download or read book Confucius from the Heart written by Yu Dan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in the U.S. and already one of China's all-time bestsellers, "Confucius from the Heart" stands as an inspirational work that teaches readers how to apply Confucian wisdom to their everyday lives. Full-color illustrations throughout.
