The sixth edition of Chinese History: A New Manual, revised and expanded to two volumes, includes the latest developments in digital tools and the ancillary disciplines essential for work on Chinese history. Volume 1 covers topics ranging from Language to Technology. Volume 2 presents primary and secondary sources chronologically by period.
Written in an extended dictionary format, the Manual for Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language aims to cover all key terms related to teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Each section contains an introduction with language-specific information, and identifies students and teachers’ common questions, including the capacity of Chinese as a morphologically unmarked language to indicate categories such as tense and mood. Many entries listed in this manual come with an explanation, a commentary, and rich examples. The Manual for Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language appeals to both Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teachers and students, as well as being the ideal reference for researchers conducting comparative studies of the Chinese and English languages.
Investigating the historical tradition of Chinese architectural writing from antiquity to the twelfth century, Chinese Architecture and Metaphor reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao fashi’s unique literary value and explores the rich cultural implications in and behind its technical content. Utilizing a philological approach, the author pays particular attention to the traditional and contemporary architectural terminology presented in the Yingzao fashi. In examining the semantic meaning of the architectural terms used in the manual, he uncovers a systematic architectural metaphor wherein bracketing elements are likened to flowers, flowering branches, and foliage: Thus pillars with bracketing above are compared to blossoming trees. More importantly, this intriguing imagery was shared by different social groups, in particular craftsmen and literati, and craftsmen themselves employed literary knowledge in naming architectural elements. Relating these phenomena to the unprecedented flourishing of literature, the literati’s greater admiration of technical knowledge, and the higher intellectual capacity of craftsmen during the Song, Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates how the learned and “unlearned” cultures entangled in the construction of architectural knowledge in premodern China. It convincingly shows that technical language served as a faithful carrier of contemporary popular culture and aesthetic concepts. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates a high level of engagement with a broad spectrum of sophisticated Chinese sources. It will become a classic work for all students and scholars of East Asian architecture.
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.
