Download or read book The Immortal Maiden Equal to Heaven and Other Precious Scrolls from Western Gansu written by Wilt L. Idema and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following thirty years of suppression as feudal superstition, Chinese popular religion has made a spectacular comeback since the 1980s. One aspect of this phenomenon has been the return of precious scrolls as ritual and entertainment in several regions of China, most notably the economically advanced Wu-dialect area and the poor countryside of Western Gansu. As these texts were performed once again, they have been collected, edited, and published as part of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage. These materials greatly broaden and deepen our knowledge of popular literature, ritual, and religion and open a new window into the values and customs of local society. The texts also offer unique insights into the history of the region as seen through the eyes of the local population who had to confront the harsh environment and frequent incursions of nomadic groups. Given the wealth of knowledge to be gained, it is not surprising that these materials are attracting the growing attention of scholars. The Immortal Maiden Equal to Heaven and Other Precious Scrolls from Western Gansu by eminent Sinologist Wilt Idema is thus a significant foray into the area. This unprecedented book provides complete and annotated translations of six precious scrolls that have never before been translated. An insightful and helpful introduction precedes each translation. The study includes a general survey of the development, origin, context, and popularity of the narrative and concludes with a discussion of available modern editions.
Download or read book The Immortal Maiden Equal to Heaven and Other Precious Scrolls from Western Gansu written by Wilt L. Idema and published by . This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translation of six "precious scrolls" from Chinese into English.
Download or read book The Pitfalls of Piety for Married Women written by and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pitfalls of Piety for Married Women shows how problematic the practice of Buddhist piety could be in late imperial China. Two thematically related "precious scrolls" (baojuan) from the Ming dynasty, The Precious Scroll of the Red Gauze and The Precious Scroll of the Handkerchief, illustrate the difficulties faced by women whose religious devotion conflicted with the demands of marriage and motherhood. These two previously untranslated texts tell the stories of married women whose piety causes them to be separated from their husbands and children. While these women labor far away, their children are cruelly abused by murderous stepmothers. Following many adventures, the families are reunited by divine intervention and the evil stepmothers get their just deserts. While the texts in The Pitfalls of Piety for Married Women praise Buddhist piety, they also reveal many problems concerning married women and mothers. Wilt L. Idema's translations are preceded by an introduction that places these scrolls in the context of Ming dynasty performative literature, vernacular literature, and popular religion. Set in a milieu of rich merchants, the texts provide a unique window to family life of the time, enriching our understanding of gender during the Ming dynasty. These popular baojuan offer rare insights into lay religion and family dynamics of the Ming dynasty, and their original theme and form enrich our understanding of the various methods of storytelling that were practiced at the time.
Download or read book Cinematic Guerrillas written by Jie Li and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-26 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How might cinema make revolution and mobilize the masses? In socialist China, the film exhibition network expanded from fewer than six hundred movie theaters to more than a hundred thousand mobile film projectionist teams. Holding screenings in improvised open-air spaces in rural areas lacking electricity, these roving projectionists brought not only films but also power generators, loudspeakers, slideshows, posters, live performances, and mass ritual participation, amplifying the era’s utopian dreams and violent upheavals. Cinematic Guerrillas is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda. Drawing on a wealth of archives, memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, Jie Li examines the media networks and environments, discourses and practices, experiences and memories of film projectionists and their grassroots audiences from the 1940s to the 1980s. She considers the ideology and practice of “cinematic guerrillas”—at once denoting onscreen militants, off-the-grid movie teams, and unruly moviegoers—bridging Maoist iconography, the experiences of projectionists, and popular participation and resistance. Li reconceptualizes socialist media practices as “revolutionary spirit mediumship” that aimed to turn audiences into congregations, contribute to the Mao cult, convert skeptics of revolutionary miracles, and exorcize class enemies. Cinematic Guerrillas considers cinema’s meanings for revolution and nation building; successive generations of projectionists; workers, peasants, and soldiers; women and ethnic minorities; and national leaders, local cadres, and cultural censors. By reading diverse, vivid, and often surprising accounts of moviegoing, Li excavates Chinese media theories that provide a critical new perspective on world cinema.
Download or read book Many Faces of Mulian written by Rostislav Berezkin and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Mulian rescuing his mother’s soul from hell has evolved as a narrative over several centuries in China, especially in the baojuan (precious scrolls) genre. This genre, a prosimetric narrative in vernacular language, first appeared around the fourteenth century and endures as a living tradition. In exploring the evolution of the Mulian story, Rostislav Berezkin illuminates changes in the literary and religious characteristics of the genre. He also examines material from other forms of Chinese literature and from modern performances of baojuan, tracing their transformation from tools of Buddhist proselytizing to sectarian propaganda to folk ritualized storytelling. Ultimately, he reveals the special features of baojuan as a type of performance literature that had its foundations in multiple literary traditions.
Download or read book Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture written by Margaret B. Wan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture provides a richly textured picture of cultural transmission in the Qing and early Republican eras. Drum ballad texts (guci) evoke one of the most popular performance traditions of their day, a practice that flourished in North China. Study of these narratives opens up surprising new perspectives on vital topics in Chinese literature and history: the creation of regional cultural identities and their relation to a central “Chinese culture”; the relationship between oral and written cultures; the transmission of legal knowledge and popular ideals of justice; and the impact of the changing technology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the reproduction and dissemination of popular texts. Margaret B. Wan maps the dissemination over time and space of two legends of wise judges; their journey through oral, written, and visual media reveals a fascinating but overlooked world of “popular” literature. While drum ballads form a distinctively regional literature, lithography in early twentieth-century Shanghai drew them into national markets. The new paradigm this book offers will interest scholars of cultural history, literature, book culture, legal history, and popular culture.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Chinese Literature written by Taiping Chang Knechtges and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Dictionary of Chinese Literature provides more than 250 entries on the lengthy and remarkable literary tradition of China, from its earliest literary genres such as the 6th century gongti wenxue (palace-style literature), to contemporary forms, such as wanglu wenxue (internet literature). Covering notable writers, works, terms, trends, schools, movements, styles, and literary collections, as well as including a useful list of further reading at the end of most entries, this dictionary is a key reference point for students of Asian literature and languages, and those studying world literature in general.
Download or read book Cosmopolitanism in China 1600 1950 written by Minghui Hu and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the Cultural Revolution and the Cold War in 1971, the historian Joseph Levenson made the astute observation that China used to be cosmopolitan on account of Confucianism. At that time, the notion of China, much less Confucianism, as somehow being cosmopolitan may have surprised many of his readers, especially because so many conventional ideas about China-ranging from its "kith and kin" social structure to its purportedly eternal and monolithic state structure-seem to reflect a society that was the very antithesis of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, even now, or perhaps even more so now on account of growing Chinese nationalism, Han chauvinism, and global fears of a rising China, the idea of Chinese cosmopolitanism may strike many as ill conceived.Levenson, as with so much of his scholarship, was clearly on to something important. In fact, in the current academic climate it seems almost irresponsible not to address this. This book is therefore a much-needed pioneering attempt to explore the implications and possibilities of Levenson's potent observation regarding China in relation to the growing scholarship on cosmopolitanism around the world. It is an important intervention in both the current scholarship on modern China and the scholarship on cosmopolitanism in its global articulations.
Download or read book Journal of Chinese Religions written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Legend of Prince Golden Calf in China and Korea written by Wilt L. Idema and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book examines the history of different versions of the legend of Prince Golden Calf and sheds light on important aspects of Chinese culture as manifested and interpreted in China and Korea. It highlights various cultural connotations of cows and how they hold a central place not only in Chinese agriculture but also in terms of China's ethnic composition, religious symbolism, landscape names, and other famous Chinese stories involving cows. The book also further position the story in a broader global framework. This study broadens the fields of translation of and research on East Asian religion, literature, and culture by expanding our knowledge in Asian studies, folklore studies, and the study of animal representations in literature. Its transcultural and transregional approach lays the foundation for a new, innovative, and inclusive perspective on the development of premodern East Asian literature and culture"--
Download or read book Insects in Chinese Literature A Study and Anthology written by Wilt L. Idema and published by Cambria Sinophone World. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study and translation into English of Chinese literary works dealing with insects.
Download or read book Dunhuang Art written by Wenjie Duan and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dunhuang Although Internationally Known Is Infrequently Visited. The Mogao Shrine At Dunhuang Is A Cluster Of 492 Caves, Containing 45,000 Square Metres Of Frescoes And 2,415 Stucco Statues. These Caves Were Created, Renovated And Maintained Continually With Devotion And Care From The 4Th Upto The 14Th Century. In This Volume We Have Provided An English Translation Of Selected Writings Of Prof. Duan Wenjie, Director Of The Dunhuang Academy Who Has Given A Chronological Study Of The Contents Inside The Mogao Caves With Several Decades Of Research Of The Dunhuang Academy Under His Command. Prof. Tan Chung, The Editor, Has Furnished An Illuminating Introduction, While Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, The Driving Spirit Behind This Volume, Has Made Succinct Comments In Her Foreword . A Valuable Information On All The Mogao Caves Has Been Added. Colour And Black And White Photographs And Fine Sketches By Vineet Kumar Supplement The Text. The Indira Gandhi National Centre For The Arts Is Committed To Exploring All Dimensions Of Art. It Feels Privileged To Place Before Art Historians And Art Lovers Of The English-Speaking World First-Hand Information About His Unique Art Gallery Going Back To One-And-A-Half Millennia.
Download or read book Theater of the Dead written by Jeehee Hong and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In eleventh-century China, both the living and the dead were treated to theatrical spectacles. Chambers designed for the deceased were ornamented with actors and theaters sculpted in stone, molded in clay, rendered in paint. Notably, the tombs were not commissioned for the scholars and officials who dominate the historical record of China but affluent farmers, merchants, clerics—people whose lives and deaths largely went unrecorded. Why did these elites furnish their burial chambers with vivid representations of actors and theatrical performances? Why did they pursue such distinctive tomb-making? In Theater of the Dead, Jeehee Hong maintains that the production and placement of these tomb images shed light on complex intersections of the visual, mortuary, and everyday worlds of China at the dawn of the second millennium. Assembling recent archaeological evidence and previously overlooked historical sources, Hong explores new elements in the cultural and religious lives of middle-period Chinese. Rather than treat theatrical tomb images as visual documents of early theater, she calls attention to two largely ignored and interlinked aspects: their complex visual forms and their symbolic roles in the mortuary context in which they were created and used. She introduces carefully selected examples that show visual and conceptual novelty in engendering and engaging dimensions of space within and beyond the tomb in specifically theatrical terms. These reveal surprising insights into the intricate relationship between the living and the dead. The overarching sense of theatricality conveys a densely socialized vision of death. Unlike earlier modes of representation in funerary art, which favored cosmological or ritual motifs and maintained a clear dichotomy between the two worlds, these visual practices show a growing interest in conceptualizing the sphere of the dead within the existing social framework. By materializing a “social turn,” this remarkable phenomenon constitutes a tangible symptom of middle-period Chinese attempting to socialize the sacred realm. Theater of the Dead is an original work that will contribute to bridging core issues in visual culture, history, religion, and drama and theater studies.
Download or read book The Red Brush written by Wilt L. Idema and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 958 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most exciting recent developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of an extremely rich and diverse tradition of women’s writing of the imperial period (221 B.C.E.–1911 C.E.). Many of these writings are of considerable literary quality. Others provide us with moving insights into the lives and feelings of a surprisingly diverse group of women living in Confucian China, a society that perhaps more than any other is known for its patriarchal tradition.Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, several scholarly books, articles, and even anthologies of women’s poetry have been published in the last two decades. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women’s writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.The authors have presented the selections within their respective biographical and historical contexts. This comprehensive approach helps to clarify traditional Chinese ideas on the nature and function of literature as well as on the role of the woman writer."
Download or read book Mouse Vs Cat in Chinese Literature written by and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wilt Idema presents Chinese tales about cats and mice, situating them in the Chinese literary tradition as a whole, and within Chinese imaginative depictions of animals. In the literatures of the ancient and modern Near East, South Asia, and medieval Europe, animal fables exhibited a range of anthropomorphic views, but Chinese literature is notable for its relative paucity of extended animal tales and rarity of talking animals. From ancient Egypt to China, rodents have long been vilified as thieves of grain in agrarian society, in perennial war with felines. Through varied depictions of the cat-mouse relationship, this set of tales allows to reader to consider the metaphorical roles of these animals in the Chinese literary imagination and to ponder their unusually prominent--and verbal--role in these stories. Of central focus is the legal case of the mouse against the cat in the underworld court of King Yama, a popular topic in the traditional ballad literature of late-imperial China and of present-day Chinese folk literature. Idema traces the development and variations of this theme of mice and cats in classical literature; to other stories of mice and cats in traditional vernacular literature; and to stories about the wedding of the mouse to the cat and the war between mice and cats. An epilogue traces the treatment of enmity between rodents and felines worldwide, and a foreword by Haiyan Lee explores the relevance of these tales to posthumanist consideration of human-animal relations. This entertaining volume will appeal to readers interested in Chinese literature and society, comparative literature, and animal studies in the humanities" --
Download or read book China s Cosmopolitan Empire written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.
Download or read book Daily Life for the Common People of China 1850 to 1950 written by Ronald Suleski and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting book, Ronald Suleski introduces daily life for the common people of China in the century from 1850 to 1950. They were semi-literate, yet they have left us written accounts of their hopes, fears, and values. They have left us the hand-written manuscripts (chaoben 抄本) now flooding the antiques markets in China. These documents represent a new and heretofore overlooked category of historical sources. Suleski gives a detailed explanation of the interaction of chaoben with the lives of the people. He offers examples of why they were so important to the poor laboring masses: people wanted horoscopes predicting their future, information about the ghosts causing them headaches, a few written words to help them trade in the rural markets, and many more examples are given. The book contains a special appendix giving the first complete translation into English of a chaoben describing the ghosts and goblins that bedeviled the poor working classes.
