Download or read book The Search for a Vanishing Beijing written by M.A. Aldrich and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Search for a Vanishing Beijing weaves the genres of travel essays and travel guides into a comprehensive narrative about the cultural mosaic of the capital of China.
Download or read book Search for a Vanishing Beijing A Guide to China s Capital Through the Ages written by M. A. Aldrich and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Days of Old Beijing written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist Michael Meyer has spent his adult life in China, first in a small village as a Peace Corps volunteer, the last decade in Beijing--where he has witnessed the extraordinary transformation the country has experienced in that time. For the past two years he has been completely immersed in the ancient city, living on one of its famed hutong in a century-old courtyard home he shares with several families, teaching English at a local elementary school--while all around him "progress" closes in as the neighborhood is methodically destroyed to make way for high-rise buildings, shopping malls, and other symbols of modern, urban life. The city, he shows, has been demolished many times before; however, he writes, "the epitaph for Beijing will read: born 1280, died 2008...what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn't eradicate, the market economy can." The Last Days of Old Beijing tells the story of this historic city from the inside out-through the eyes of those whose lives are in the balance: the Widow who takes care of Meyer; his students and fellow teachers, the first-ever description of what goes on in a Chinese public school; the local historian who rallies against the government. The tension of preservation vs. modernization--the question of what, in an ancient civilization, counts as heritage, and what happens when a billion people want to live the way Americans do--suffuse Meyer's story.
Download or read book Night Bus written by Zuo Ma and published by Drawn & Quarterly. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Night Bus, a young woman wearing round glasses finds herself on an adventurous late night bus ride that constantly makes detours through increasingly fantastical landscapes. Meanwhile a young cartoonist returns home after art school and tries his hand at becoming a working artist while watching over his aging grandmother whose memory is deteriorating. Nostalgic leaps take us to an elementary school gymnasium that slowly morphs into a swamp and is raided by a giant catfish. Beetles, salamanders, and bug-eyed fish intrude upon the bus ride of the round-glasses woman as the night stretches on. Night Bus blends autobiography, horror, and fantasy into a vibrantly detailed surreal world that shows a distinct talent surveying his past. Nature infringes upon the man-made world via gigantism and explosive abundance–the images in Night Bus are often unsettling, not aimed to horrify, but to upset the balance of modern life. Zuo Ma is part of a burgeoning Chinese art comics scene that pushes emotion to the forefront of the story while playing with action and dreams. Translated by Orion Martin.
Download or read book China s Vanishing Worlds written by Matthias Messmer and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photographs and text document disappearing cultural landscapes and lifestyles in rural China, capturing poignant scenes far from Beijing or Shanghai. Just a few kilometers from the glittering skylines of Shanghai and Beijing, we encounter a vast countryside, an often forgotten and seemingly limitless landscape stretching far beyond the outskirts of the cities. Following traces of old trade routes, once-flourishing marketplaces, abandoned country estates, decrepit model villages, and the sites of mystic rituals, the authors of this book spent seven years exploring, photographing, and observing the vast interior of China, where the majority of Chinese people live in ways virtually unchanged for centuries. China's Vanishing Worlds is an impressive documentation in images and text of modernization's effect on traditional ways of life, and a sympathetic portrait of lives burdened by hardship but blessed by simplicity and tranquility. The scars of China's recent history and the decay of centuries-old traditions are made visible in this volume, but so is the lure and promise of technology and another life for young people. In the next twenty years, an estimated 280 million Chinese villagers will become city dwellers, leaving their ancestral homes in search of urban jobs and opportunities. In striking and evocative color photographs, we see picturesque villages set against a background of rolling hills, planned centuries ago according to the principles of feng shui; a restaurant with bright pink resin chairs and a wide-screen television; traditional buildings preserved by the accident of poverty and isolation; ramshackle rooms decorated with portraits of Chairman Mao; backpack-wearing children walking to school; festivals with elaborately costumed performers; old men playing cards; buyers and sellers at open-air markets. China's Vanishing Worlds offers readers a rare opportunity to glimpse China as it once was, and as it will soon no longer be.
Download or read book Before the Deluge written by Deirdre Chetham and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-10-18 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chetham's elegiac book about the towns along the banks of the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River was written on the very eve of their destruction. After great controversy, the Chinese government has begun construction of the world's largest hydroelectric dam in the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze, a place renowned for its beauty. For over two thousand years, the Yangtze has been the great transport route linking the coast with the west and southwest and providing irrigation for the farms that fed China. Once the dam is completed in 2009, the water level will rise as much as 350 feet in a hundred-mile stretch of the river. The water will submerge over a dozen large cities, almost 1,500 villages and towns, and innumerable historical and cultural sites. Over a million people are being moved, voluntarily or otherwise, altering not only their lives, but the lives of a multitude of others whose existence is intertwined with the river. Before the Deluge captures a sense of the daily life, traditions and history of the people who live along the Upper Yangtze's Three Gorges area. It chronicles the region's past and present with an eye on the disruption of an existing way of life. Perhaps most importantly, it captures a world that is rapidly vanishing under the rushing waters of one of the world's largest rivers.
Download or read book The Last Days of Old Beijing written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury USA. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, intimate portrait of Beijing through the lens of its oldest neighborhood, facing destruction as the city, and China, relentlessly modernizes. Soon we will be able to say about old Beijing that what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn't eradicate, the market economy has. Weaving historical vignettes of Beijing and China over a thousand years Michael Meyer captures the city's deep past as he illuminates its present, and especially the destruction of its ancient neighborhoods and the eradication of a way of life that has epitomized China's capital. With an insider's insight, The Last Days of Old Beijing is an invaluable witness to history, bringing into shining focus the ebb and flow of life in old Beijing at this pivotal moment.
Download or read book Gateways to Beijing written by Misty Littlewood, Mark Littlewood and published by Armour Publishing Pte Ltd. This book was released on 2008 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Manchuria written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the change most of rural China is undergoing via the story of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed apartments for farmers in exchange for their land rights.
Download or read book Mr Selden s Map of China written by Timothy Brook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the award-winning Vermeer's Hat, a historical detective story decoding a long-forgotten link between seventeenth century Europe and China. Timothy Brook's award-winning Vermeer's Hat unfolded the early history of globalization, using Vermeer's paintings to show how objects like beaver hats and porcelain bowls began to circulate around the world. Now he plumbs the mystery of a single artifact that offers new insights into global connections centuries old. In 2009, an extraordinary map of China was discovered in Oxford's Bodleian Library-where it had first been deposited 350 years before, then stowed and forgotten for nearly a century. Neither historians of China nor cartography experts had ever seen anything like it. It was so odd that experts would have declared it a fake-yet records confirmed it had been delivered to Oxford in 1659. The “Selden Map,” as it is known, was a puzzle that needing solving. Brook, a historian of China, set out to explore the riddle. His investigation will lead readers around this elegant, enigmatic work of art, and from the heart of China, via the Southern Ocean, to the court of King James II. In the story of Selden's map, he reveals for us the surprising links between an English scholar and merchants half a world away, and offers novel insights into the power and meaning that a single map can hold. Brook delivers the same anecdote-rich narrative, intriguing characters, and unexpected historical connections that made Vermeer's Hat an instant classic.
Download or read book A Comrade Lost and Found written by Jan Wong and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “suspenseful, elegantly written” account of the author’s return to China after thirty years to search for the woman she betrayed to the authorities (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jan Wong traveled from Canada to Beijing University—where she would become one of only two Westerners permitted to study. One day a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked for her help getting to the United States. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist from Montreal, immediately reported her to the authorities, and shortly thereafter Yin disappeared. Thirty-three years later, hoping to make amends, Wong revisits the Chinese capital to search for the person who has haunted her conscience. At the very least, she wants to discover whether Yin survived. But Wong finds the new Beijing bewildering. Phone numbers, addresses, and even names change with startling frequency. In a society determined to bury the past, Yin Luoyi will be hard to find. As Wong traces her way from one former comrade to the next, she unearths not only the fate of the woman she betrayed but the strange and dramatic transformation of contemporary China. In this memoir, she tells how her journey rekindled all of her love for—and disillusionment with—her ancestral land. “Gone is the semirural capital where the author’s ‘revolutionary’ course of study included bouts of hard labor and ‘self criticism’ sessions. In its place are eight-lane expressways lit up ‘like Christmas trees,’ shiny skyscrapers and the largest shopping mall in the world. Wong is a gifted storyteller, and hers is a deeply personal and richly detailed eyewitness account of China’s journey to glossy modernity.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Download or read book Christians in the City of Shanghai written by Susangeline Y. Patrick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the stories of diverse Christians in Shanghai, this book uses the city as a model to highlight how a minority religion in a city has interacted with other religions as well as social, cultural, political, and economic changes. Susangeline Y. Patrick illustrates how the history of Shanghai Christians sheds light on why and how Christians have accommodated social and political changes, and gives valuable insights into multiculturalism, globalization, sinicization, and ecclesiology. The interreligious dialogues between Shanghai Christians and other traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Islam, and Judaism throughout history provide worthy reflections on the roles of Christians in a multi-religious space.
Download or read book The Road to Sleeping Dragon written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the highly praised author of The Last Days of Old Beijing, a brilliant portrait of China today and a memoir of coming of age in a country in transition. In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean's orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China's changes as he was. Thus began an impassioned immersion into Chinese life. With humor and insight, Meyer puts readers in his novice shoes, winding across the length and breadth of his adopted country --from a terrifying bus attack on arrival, to remote Xinjiang and Tibet, into Beijing's backstreets and his future wife's Manchurian family, and headlong into efforts to protect China's vanishing heritage at places like "Sleeping Dragon," the world's largest panda preserve. In the last book of his China trilogy, Meyer tells a story both deeply personal and universal, as he gains greater – if never complete – assurance, capturing what it feels like to learn a language, culture and history from the ground up. Both funny and relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is essential reading for anyone interested in China's history, and how daily life plays out there today.
Download or read book The Red Thread written by Eleanor Liu and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-03-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The red string of fate, or the red thread of destiny is an East Asian belief originating in Chinese legend. According to this myth, the gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles of those who are destined to marry each other. The deity in charge of gthe red threadh is believed to be Yue Xia Lao (V) the old lunar matchmaker god in charge of marriages. The two connected are destined lovers, regardless of time, place or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break. This book recounts events and circumstances that shaped and determined the course of Eleanorfs life. Her childhood in a loving family, church, schooling, scouting, camping and friendships were all important. Her marriage to a Chinese man in 1950 was unusual in the South. Their work, studies, family, trips with anecdotes of people and places are included. Descriptions of China since 1973 recount the many changes she has witnessed and give a unique perspective.
Download or read book The Story of China written by Michael Wood and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today. Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world’s oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years. After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world’s second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history. The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China’s prehistory—the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the age of Confucius. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians, such as the renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He paints a vibrant picture of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China’s rich and diverse culture was at its height. Then, Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century that pushed China along the path to modernity. Finally, he provides a clear up-to-date account of post-1949 China, including revelations about the 1989 crisis based on newly leaked inside documents, and fresh insights into the new order of President Xi Jinping. All woven together with landscape history and the author’s own travel journals, The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.
Download or read book A Short History of Beijing written by Jonathan Clements and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the history of China’s capital, from before its rise to prominence as the seat of empires to the 2022 Winter Olympics. Before China’s capital became a sprawling megacity and international center of business and culture, its fortunes fluctuated under a dozen dynasties. It has been a capital for several states, including those headed by Mongolian chiefs and the glorious Ming emperors, whose tombs can still be found on its outskirts. And before all that, it was a campsite for primitive hominids, known as the Peking Man. A Short History of Beijing tells the story of this remarkable city, from its more famous residents—Khubilai Khan, Marco Polo, and Chairman Mao—right up to the twenty-first century, as modern construction wiped out so much of the old city to make way for its twenty-million-strong population. Through his timely and intimate portrait of the world’s most populous capital city, Jonathan Clements reveals the history of China itself.
Download or read book Long Peace Street written by Jonathan Chatwin and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the centre of China’s historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China under Communist rule. To walk the street is to travel through the story of China’s recent past, wandering among its physical relics and hearing echoes of its dramas. Long Peace Street recounts a journey in modern China, a walk of twenty miles across Beijing offering a very personal encounter with the life of the capital’s streets. At the same time, it takes the reader on a journey through the city’s recent history, telling the story of how the present and future of the world’s rising superpower has been shaped by its tumultuous past, from the demise of the last imperial dynasty in 1912 through to the present day.
