Download or read book Dragons in Diamond Village And Other Tales from the Back Alleys of Urbanising China written by David Bandurski and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009, on the outskirts of the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, Xian villagers secretly prepared for the Dragon Boat Festival. For them, the commemoration of the 221 BC poet Qu Yuan, who threw himself into a river to protest official corruption, held particular resonance. Guangzhou's drive to become a 'National Model City' ahead of the 2010 Asia Games accelerated a voracious demand for land, turning the ground beneath the villagers' feet into a commodity as valuable as diamonds, a treasure too rich for local officials to ignore. Dragons in Diamond Village is about the courage of individuals: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned self-taught rights defender; He Jieling, a suburban housewife who just wanted to open a hair salon; Xian villagers like Lu Zhaohui who refuse to give up the land their families have cultivated for generations. Theirs is a community bound by shared history and a belief in the necessity of change, a band of unlikely activists fighting for their place in China's new cities. 'A beautifully written account of how China's traditional rural past is meeting – and struggling with – its urbanising present . . . Via deftly told tales of China's little-known urban villages, Bandurski expertly guides readers through a mostly overlooked landscape and modern history.' Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet 'David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into the heart of new China.' Kevin Sites, author of Swimming with Warlords and In the Hot Zone 'Vivid depictions of how villagers and migrants, living through the lawless and violent storms of Chinese urban land development, turn into political resistors. An important book of social reportage in the traditions of Liu Binyan and Studs Terkel.' Susan Shirk, author of China: Fragile Superpower and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton administration 'Bandurski combines his deep knowledge of China's history and culture with graceful writing to produce a thoroughly enjoyable book, and an important one for understanding the tension at the heart of China's breakneck pace of change.' Keith B. Richburg, author of Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa and former China correspondent for the Washington Post
Download or read book The Missionary s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village written by Henrietta Harrison and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Missionary’s Curse tells the story of a Chinese village that has been Catholic since the seventeenth century, drawing direct connections between its history, the globalizing church, and the nation. Harrison recounts the popular folk tales of merchants and peasants who once adopted Catholic rituals and teachings for their own purposes, only to find themselves in conflict with the orthodoxy of Franciscan missionaries arriving from Italy. The village’s long religious history, combined with the similarities between Chinese folk religion and Italian Catholicism, forces us to rethink the extreme violence committed in the area during the Boxer Uprising. The author also follows nineteenth century Chinese priests who campaigned against missionary control, up through the founding of the official church by the Communist Party in the 1950s. Harrison’s in-depth study provides a rare insight into villager experiences during the Socialist Education Movement and Cultural Revolution, as well as the growth of Christianity in China in recent years. She makes the compelling argument that Catholic practice in the village, rather than adopting Chinese forms in a gradual process of acculturation, has in fact become increasingly similar to those of Catholics in other parts of the world.
Download or read book Tales from a Village School written by Miss Read and published by . This book was released on 1995-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers together 25 early short stories by Miss Read, about life as a village schoolteacher. These stories led to her writing her first novel, Village School, and reveal the seeds of her later novels.
Download or read book Scenes from Village Life written by Amos Oz and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linked short stories set in a town in the midst of change: “One of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel.” —The Jewish Chronicle “‘Scenes from Village Life’ is like a symphony, its movements more impressive together than in isolation. There is, in each story, a particular chord or strain; but taken together, these chords rise and reverberate, evoking an unease so strong it’s almost a taste in the mouth . . . ‘Scenes from Village Life’ is a brief collection, but its brevity is a testament to its force. You will not soon forget it.” —The New York Times Book Review Strange things are happening in Tel Ilan, a century-old pioneer village. A disgruntled retired politician complains to his daughter that he hears the sounds of digging at night. Could it be their tenant, that young Arab? But then the young Arab hears the digging sounds too. And where has the mayor’s wife gone, vanished without a trace, her note saying “Don’t worry about me”? Around the village, the veneer of new wealth—gourmet restaurants, art galleries, a winery—barely conceals the scars of war and of past generations: disused air-raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and trucks left wherever they stopped. Scenes From Village Life is a memorable novel in stories by the inimitable Amos Oz: a brilliant, unsettling glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday life. Translated from Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange “Finely wrought . . . Oz writes characterizations that are subtle but surgically precise, rendering this work a powerfully understated treatment of an uneasy Israeli conscience.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Informed by everything, weighed down by nothing, this is an exquisite work of art.” —The Scotsman
Download or read book A Tale of Two Villages written by Alina Mungiu and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dramatic story of land and power from twentieth-century Eastern Europe is set in two extraordinary villages: a rebel village, where peasants fought the advent of Communism and became its first martyrs, and a model village turned forcibly into a town, Dictator Ceauşescu’s birthplace. The two villages capture among themselves nearly a century of dramatic transformation and social engineering, ending up with their charged heritage in the present European Union. "One of Romania’s foremost social critics, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi offers a valuable look at several decades of policy that marginalized that country’s rural population, from the 1918 land reform to the post-1989 property restitution. Illustrating her arguments with a close comparison of two contrasting villages, she describes the actions of a long series of “predatory elites,” from feudal landowners through the Communist Party through post-communist leaders, all of whom maintained the rural population’s dependency. A forceful concluding chapter shows that its prospects for improvement are scarcely better within the EU. Romania’s villagers have an eminent and spirited advocate in the author.”
Download or read book The Missionary s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village written by Henrietta Harrison and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The MissionaryÕs Curse tells the story of a Chinese village that has been Catholic since the seventeenth century, drawing direct connections between its history, the globalizing church, and the nation. Harrison recounts the popular folk tales of merchants and peasants who once adopted Catholic rituals and teachings for their own purposes, only to find themselves in conflict with the orthodoxy of Franciscan missionaries arriving from Italy. The villageÕs long religious history, combined with the similarities between Chinese folk religion and Italian Catholicism, forces us to rethink the extreme violence committed in the area during the Boxer Uprising. The author also follows nineteenth century Chinese priests who campaigned against missionary control, up through the founding of the official church by the Communist Party in the 1950s. HarrisonÕs in-depth study provides a rare insight into villager experiences during the Socialist Education Movement and Cultural Revolution, as well as the growth of Christianity in China in recent years. She makes the compelling argument that Catholic practice in the village, rather than adopting Chinese forms in a gradual process of acculturation, has in fact become increasingly similar to those of Catholics in other parts of the world.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Bessie Head’s short stories have an extraordinary simplicity and breadth of vision,” heralded a review in The Tribune after publication of Head’s first collection of short stories, The Collector of Treasures. Regarded today as one of Africa’s best-known woman writers in English, Head draws on the rich oral tradition of southern Africa and masterfully applies storytelling’s language and imagery. Carefully sequenced, the anthology gives special focus to village people from independence-era Botswana and the status, position, and plight of African women.
Download or read book Tales from a Stone Cottage written by Aly Wilks and published by Quiller. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book from the long running series in Country Living magazine (U.K. publication with an adult readership of 543,700)Fully illustrated with Celia Witchard's fantastic illustrationsA wonderful and witty look at rural life and a perfect humor Christmas present
Download or read book An Englishman s Tales of a Small Yorkshire Village written by Silas Ackroyd and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2006-01-13 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the details of village life came from my own personal experiences. When, at the beginning of the war, my parents moved to a suburb of Leeds, called Lower Wortley it had just been incorporated into the boundaries of the city but still retained a lot of the air of a village about it. We, my family and I, lived in a small leaky sandstone cottage, one of seven, halfway up a hill. Right behind us there was a smallholding, where the farmer raised chickens, ducks and pigs. On the opposite side of the road we lived on, there was a row of rather grand four story houses, at the head of rather long equally grand gardens. The owners of which looked with distain upon their neighbors across the way. At the top of the hill was another group of houses set in a circle with a Methodist Chapel in their midst and the whole area was referred to as the Bull Ring. At the bottom of the hill was the main road into Leeds. Here was the Tram terminus, (Public Transport) with a switch over line to facilitate change over to the inbound line. It was a seriously bleak time, when Britain was on the defensive, and looked as though it was about to be invaded by the Germans at any time. So we sang songs to cheer ourselves up. “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover.” “There’ll always be an England, and England shall be free.” And silly songs like “I’m going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line. (A line of fortifications on the German border) So when I wrote “Little Miracles,” and compiled “An Englishman’s tales of a small Yorkshire village,” to go with it and I incorporated many of my experiences from this time. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Download or read book The Literary Shop and Other Tales written by James L. Ford and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The Literary Shop and Other Tales by James L. Ford
Download or read book The Village of Youth and Other Fairy Tales written by Hatton Bessie and published by Hardpress Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
Download or read book Tales from my Welsh Village written by Ken Smith and published by Y Lolfa. This book was released on 2018-07-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel spinning warm and very amusing tall tales about larger-than-life characters in a small village in the South Wales Valleys in the 1960s.
Download or read book The Village of Youth and Other Fairy Tales written by Bessie Hatton and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Village of Youth, and Other Fairy Tales' is a collection of fantasy-themed short stories written by Bessie Hatton. A total of six stories are to be found inside this book, bearing the following titles: 'The Village of Youth', 'A Child of the Winds', 'The Flower That Reached the Sun-Lands', 'A Christmas Rose', 'The Windflower', and 'The Garden of Innocence.'
Download or read book The Golden Thought of Queen Beryl and Other Stories written by Marie Cameron and published by . This book was released on 1880 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cranford and other tales written by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Circus Folk and Village Freaks written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Village with My Name written by Scott Tong and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)
