Outcasts and pariahs are known to exist in several Asian countries but have usually not been associated with traditional Chinese society. Chinese Outcasts shows that some Chinese were in fact treated as outcasts or semi-outcasts. They include the boat people of South China and certain less well-known groups in different regions, including the "musicians' households" and the "fallen people". The reasons for their inferior status and perceived impurity is examined, as well as the intent behind a series of imperial emancipation edicts in the 1720s and 30s. The edict provided an escape route from inferior legal status but failed to put a quick end to customary social discrimination.
The 1949 Communist Revolution marked a period of earthshaking change in China. Political, economic, ideological, and cultural movements galvanized the country, culminating in dramatic social transformations at all levels, including the persecution of hundreds of thousands of the country’s citizens. Based on normally inaccessible records of confessions, interrogations, trial transcripts, and depositions, Eight Outcasts tells the stories of eight victims of the Maoist dictatorship. It introduces readers to individuals accused of infractions such as corruption, political wrong thinking, homosexuality, illicit sexual activity, foreign ties, or “historical problems” (connections to the former Kuomintang regime) in the period between the revolution and Mao’s death in 1976. Each chapter brings stories of China’s voiceless citizens to light, broadening our knowledge of this important transitional period.
Introduction : empires and indigenous peoples, global transformation and the limits of international society -- From wet diplomacy to scorched earth : the Taiwan expedition, the Guardline and the Wushe rebellion -- The long durée and the short circuit : gender, language and territory in the making of indigenous Taiwan -- Tangled up in red : textiles, trading posts and ethnic bifurcation in Taiwan -- The geobodies within a geobody : the visual economy of race-making and indigeneity
Jamey Barlowe has been crippled since childhood, the result of being born on the Moon. He lives his life in a wheelchair, only truly free when he is in the water. But then Jamey's father sends him, along with five other kids, back to the Moon to escape a political coup d'etat that has occurred overnight in the United States. Moreover, one of the other five refugees is more than she appears. Their destination is the mining colony, Apollo. Jamey will have to learn a whole new way to live, one that entails walking for the first time in his life. It won't be easy and it won't be safe. But Jamey is determined to make it as a member of Lunar Search and Rescue, also known as the Rangers. This job is always risky, but could be even more dangerous if the new U.S. president makes good on her threat to launch a military invasion. Soon Jamey is front and center in a political and military struggle stretching from the Earth to the Moon. From the Hardcover edition.
Until the 1980s, a common narrative about women in China had been one of victimization: women had dutifully endured a patriarchal civilization for thousands of years, living cloistered, uneducated lives separate from the larger social and cultural world, until they were liberated by political upheavals in the twentieth century. Rich scholarship on gender in China has since complicated the picture of women in Chinese society, revealing the roles women have played as active agents in their families, businesses, and artistic communities. The essays in this collection go further by assessing the ways in which the study of gender has changed our understanding of Chinese history and showing how the study of gender in China challenges our assumptions about China, the past, and gender itself.
In this learned, yet readable, book, Joseph McDermott introduces the history of the book in China in the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800. He assumes little knowledge of Chinese history or culture and compares the Chinese experience with books with that of other civilizations, particularly the European. Yet he deals with a wide range of issues in the history of the book in China and presents novel analyses of the changes in Chinese woodblock bookmaking over these centuries. He presents a new view of when the printed book replaced the manuscript and what drove that substitution. He explores the distribution and marketing structure of books, and writes fascinatingly on the history of book collecting and about access to private and government book collections. In drawing on a great deal of Chinese, Japanese, and Western research this book provides a broad account of the way Chinese books were printed, distributed, and consumed by literati and scholars, mainly in the lower Yangzi delta, the cultural center of China during these centuries. It introduces interesting personalities, ranging from wily book collectors to an indigent shoe-repairman collector. And, it discusses the obstacles to the formation of a truly national printed culture for both the well-educated and the struggling reader in recent times. This broad and comprehensive account of the development of printed Chinese culture from 1000 to 1800 is written for anyone interested in the history of the book. It also offers important new insights into book culture and its place in society for the student of Chinese history and culture. 'A brilliant piece of synthetic research as well as a delightful read, it offers a history of the Chinese book to the eighteenth century that is without equal.' - Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia 'Writers, scribes, engravers, printers, binders, publishers, distributors, dealers, literati, scholars, librarians, collectors, voracious readers — the full gamut of a vibrant book culture in China over one thousand years — are examined with eloquence and perception by Joseph McDermott in The Social History of the Book. His lively exploration will be of consuming interest to bibliophiles of every persuasion.' - Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness, Patience and Fortitude, A Splendor of Letters, and Every Book Its Reader Joseph McDermott is presently Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Chinese at Cambridge University. He has published widely on Chinese social and economic history, most recently on the economy of the Song (or, Sung) dynasty for the Cambridge History of China. He has edited State and Court Ritual in China and Art and Power in East Asia.
In 1967 a body of Chinese texts was discovered in a tomb outside Shanghai. It contained a set of unique examples of an oral genre favoured by unlearned classes in the late imperial period (15th century), best called 'chantefables', appearing at the beginning of a profound historical shift which resulted in a broadening of the uses of writing and printing in China. These texts are now generally seen to occupy an important place in the development of Chinese literature as a whole, and of Chinese vernacular literature in particular. In the first monographic treatment of all the chantefable corpus in English the author, by examination from a more anthropological view, points out that these 'oral traditional texts' can only be appreciated in the festival, ritual and performative context of their derivation and reception. Topics dealt with in this important work include the popular interpretation of Confucian orthodoxies, the literary recycling of the oral tradition, and the influence of chantefables on the development of Chinese vernacular fiction. The author offers interesting comparative perspective on the different social consequences of print technology in China and the West. Illustrations of ten chantefable woodblocks are included.
In Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers, Yonghua Liu presents a detailed study of how a southeastern Chinese community experienced and responded to the process whereby Confucian rituals - previously thought unfit for practice by commoners - were adopted in the Chinese countryside and became an integral part of village culture, from the mid fourteenth to mid twentieth centuries. The book examines the important but understudied ritual specialists, masters of rites (lisheng), and their ritual handbooks while showing their crucial role in the ritual life of Chinese villagers. This discussion of lisheng and their rituals deepens our understanding of the ritual aspect of popular Confucianism and sheds new light on social and cultural transformations in late imperial China.
The extensive ritual and mythological lore of the Chinese Triads form the scope of this new paperback in Brill’s Scholar’s List. In it the reader will find a critical evaluation of the extant sources together with a true wealth of context. The core of the book is formed by a close reading of the initiation ritual, including the burning of incense, the altar, the enactment of a journey of life and death, and the blood covenant. Different narrative structures are also presented. These include the messianic demonological paradigm, political legitimation, and the foundation of myth. Triad lore is placed in its own religious and cultural context, allowing radically new conclusions about its origins, meanings and functions. This book is of special interest to social historians, anthropologists, and students of Chinese religious culture.
