The author interweaves his personal experiences in China with a discussion of the history, culture, and present situation of the Chinese people and the factors that have formed the Chinese character
For centuries China has fueled the creative imagination and inspired fashion. This stunning publication explores the influence of Chinese art, film, and aesthetics on international fashion designers, including Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent.
The convulsive history of foreign journalists in China starts with newspapers printed in the European factories of Canton in the 1820s. It also starts with a duel between two editors over the future of China and ends with a fistfight in Shanghai over therevolution. This book tells the story of China's foreign journalists.
This entertaining and endlessly surprising book takes us on an exploration into every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate. A series of meticulous investigations gradually uncovers the multi-faceted nature of a country and people who are even more extraordinary than they seem. Our journey encompasses religion, ritual, martial arts, manners, eating, drinking, hot baths, geishas, family, home, singing, wrestling, dancing, performing, clans, education, aspiration, sexes, generations, race, crime, gangs, terror, war, kindness, cruelty, money, art, imperialism, emperor, countryside, city, politics, government, law and a language that varies according to whom you are speaking. Clear-sighted, persistent, affectionate, unsentimental and honest - Alan Macfarlane shows us Japan as it has never been seen before.
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland, a compelling modern-day re-imagining of Alice's story by every girl's favourite author, Cathy Cassidy. Alice is thrilled when Savannah invites her to a Wonderland-themed sleepover; she's wanted to join this circle of friends for so long. Finally, she's fitting in. But an accident suddenly changes everything and Alice is rushed to hospital. As her friends and family rally round, a mystery begins to unravel. Was Alice pushed, and why - who would want to hurt her? Can her loved ones - and the gorgeous boy who doesn't want to leave her side - help Alice survive? Looking-Glass Girl is the stunning new book from Cathy Cassidy, an unforgettable tale of friendship and love from one of the UK's best-loved authors.
Picture, if you can, a world without glass. There would be no microscopes or telescopes, no sciences of microbiology or astronomy. People with poor vision would grope in the shadows, and planes, cars, and even electricity probably wouldn't exist. Artists would draw without the benefit of three-dimensional perspective, and ships would still be steered by what stars navigators could see through the naked eye. In Glass: A World History, Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin tell the fascinating story of how glass has revolutionized the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Starting ten thousand years ago with its invention in the Near East, Macfarlane and Martin trace the history of glass and its uses from the ancient civilizations of India, China, and Rome through western Europe during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution, and finally up to the present day. The authors argue that glass played a key role not just in transforming humanity's relationship with the natural world, but also in the divergent courses of Eastern and Western civilizations. While all the societies that used glass first focused on its beauty in jewelry and other ornaments, and some later made it into bottles and other containers, only western Europeans further developed the use of glass for precise optics, mirrors, and windows. These technological innovations in glass, in turn, provided the foundations for European domination of the world in the several centuries following the Scientific Revolution. Clear, compelling, and quite provocative, Glass is an amazing biography of an equally amazing subject, a subject that has been central to every aspect of human history, from art and science to technology and medicine.
Through a Glass Darkly was William Hinton’s last book. It draws on a lifetime of immersion in Chinese politics and society, beginning with the seven years he spent in China, working mainly in agriculture and land reform, until 1953. On his return to the United States in that year, Hinton first encountered the distortions and misrepresentations of the Chinese Revolution that he examines in this book. Hinton defends the achievements of the Chinese Revolution during the three decades from 1948 to 1979 from its detractors both in the United States and, since 1979, in China itself. His starting point is the work of John K. Fairbank, for many years a professor at Harvard and the “dean of China Studies” in the United States. But it is not limited to critique. Instead, Hinton’s critique of Fairbank leads into a wide-ranging examination of the nature of the transformation attempted in China, its social and political bases, and the causes and consequences of its policies in land reform, agriculture, combating famine, popular culture, industrialization, morality, and much else besides. Moving from large questions to concrete details, often drawn from his own experiences, Hinton brings everyday life in revolutionary China graphically to life. In a time when the distorted views first developed by U.S. critics of the Chinese Revolution are often propagated by the new Chinese elite themselves, Through a Glass Darkly has more than just historical relevance. For anyone wishing to understand present-day rivalries between the United States and China, Hinton shows how these began. This is a fitting completion of the work of a great scholar and revolutionary.
In these articles, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.
Machiavelli drew on 2000 years of history to develop theories on how to make war, how to win battles, and how to gain power and keep it. Using Machiavelli as a springboard, Dennis and Ching Ping Bloodworth boldly and adroitly map out 3000 years of Chinese political-military history--from Confucius to Mao Zedong--using Machiavell's discourse of power politics. They reveal a pageantry of Chinese historical figures, from wise strategists, heroic generals, crafty statesmen, and ruthless emperors to brave knights-errant, and from stately Confucian philosophers to shrewd, cunning Legalist thinkers, without the usual Confucian restraint.The Chinese Machiavelli intends to help Western readers, who may be puzzled by Chinese diplomatic and military strategy, understand the principles that have guided both past and present Chinese leaders. For instance, why have modern communist Chinese leaders often befriended right-wing European politicians who are out of office rather than left-wing leaders in power? Why did they entertain President Nixon while the United States was at war with North Vietnam? Within the framework of a chronological history concentrating on power politics and using the social and cultural scene as a backdrop, the Bloodworths use China's long history to find answers.Peter Li's preface for this new edition explains the structure of the book and offers a penetrating analysis of the authors' style and method. Although The Chinese Machiavelli is authored for the general public rather than for the specialist, the latter will also benefit from reading this history. The authors describe the continuity of Chinese history and reveal how knowledge of China's past sheds light on the political behavior of China's rulers today.