When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past.
The seventeen contributors to this interdisciplinary volume bring to the study of early China the analytical concerns of archeology, art history, botany, climatology, cultural and physical anthropology, ethnography, epigraphy, linguistics, metallurgy, and political and social history. Readers interested in such topics as the origin of rice or millet agriculture, the origin of writing, the nature of the trie, and the processes of state formation will find much value here. They will find, too, major hypotheses about teh cultural importance of ecogeographical zones in China, Neolithic interaction between the east coast and Central Plains, the remarkable homogeneity of early Chinese crania, and the links between the Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties. Relying on recently published archaeological evidence and the insights gained from carbon-14 and thermoluminescent datings, the authors provide original and significant interpretations of the nature of Chinese civilization in its formative stage and the processes by which civilizations form. Since there is little doubt that the complex of culture traits which defines Chinese civilization in the second and fist millennia B.C. developed from a Chinese Neolithic stage, the origin of the Chinese civilization is worth studying not only in its own right but as an instance of the indigenous development of civilizations in general. This volume will appeal to all who are intersted in the genesis of civilization and the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age; it summarizes that state of present knowledge about China and suggests research strategies and hypotheses for the future. Contributors:Noel BarnardK. C. ChangTe-Tzu ChangCheung Kwong-YueWayne H. FoggUrsula Martius FranklinMorton H. FriedW. W. HowellsLouisa G. Fitzgerald HuberKarl JettmarDavid N. KeightleyFang Kuei LiHui-Lin LiWilliam MeachamRichard PearsonE.G. PulleyblankRobert Orr Whyte This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.
Part I: THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 1. "China" In Antiquity. The Neolithic. The Origins of Chinese Writing. The Rise of the Bronze Age. The Shang. The Western Zhou Dynasty. The Book of Odes. 2. Turbulent Times and Classical Thought. The Spring and Autumn Period. The Rise of Hegemons. The Warring States Period. "The Hundred Schools." Confucius. Mozi. Mencius. Xunzi. Laozi and Zhuangzi. Han Feizi. 3. The Early Imperial Period. Qin. Sources and Historiographical Problems. Reappraisals. Han. The Formative Years. The Quality of Han Rule. The Xiongnu and Other Neighboring Peoples. Intellectual Movements. The Visual Art and Poetry. Changes in Political Economy during the Han period: Women. Fall of the Han. Part II: CHINA IN A BUDDHIST AGE. 4. China During The Period Of Disunity. The Fundamentals of Buddhism. A World in Disarray. China Divided. Buddhism in the North. Daoism The Religion. The South. Poetry. Calligraphy. Painting. Buddhism in the South. China on the Eve of Unification. 5. The Cosmopolitan Civilization Of The Sui And Tang: 581-907. The Sui (581-617). The Tang: Establishment & Consolidation. Gaozong & Empress Wu. High Tang. Chang'an. The Flourishing of Buddhism. Daoism. The Rebellion of An Lushan (755-763). Li Bai & Du Fu. Late Tang. Late Tang Poetry & Culture. Collapse of the Dynasty. Part III: LATE IMPERIAL/EARLY MODERN. 6. China During the Song: 960-1279. The Founding. A New Elite. The Examination System. The Northern Song. Government and Politics. Wang Anshi. The Economy. The Religious Scene. The Confucian Revival. Poetry and Painting. The Southern Song (1127-1279). Southern Song Cities and Commerce. Literary and Visual Arts. "Neo-Confucianism". Values and Gender . The End. 7. The Mongol Empire and the Yuan Dynasty. Chinggis Khan: Founding of the Mongol Empire. China under the Mongols: The Early Years (1211-1260). Khubilai Khan and the Early Yuan. The Yuan continued, 1294-1355. The Economy. Society. Religion. Cultural and Intellectual Life. "Northern" Drama. Painting. Rebellions and Disintegration. 8. The Ming Dynasty 1368-1644. The Early Ming (1368 -1424). Maritime Expeditions (1405-1433). The Early Middle Period (1425-1505). The Later Middle Period (1506-1590). Economy and Society. Literacy and Literature. The Novel. Drama. Painting. Ming Thought: Wang Yangming. Religion. Ming Thought after Wang Yangming. Dong Qichang and Late Ming Painting. Late Ming Government (1590-1644). 9. East Asia and Modern Europe: First Encounters. The Portuguese in East Asia. The Jesuits in Japan. The Impact of Other Europeans. The "Closing" of Japan. The Jesuits in China. The Rites Controversy. The Decline of Christianity in China. Trade with the West and the Canton System. 10. The Qing Dynasty. The Founding of the Qing. Early Qing Painters and Thinkers. The Reign of Kangxi. Yongzheng. Qianlong. Eighteenth Century Governance. Eighteenth-Century Literati Culture. Fiction. A Buoyant Economy. Social Change. Ecology. Dynastic Decline. Part IV: CHINA IN THE MODERN WORLD. 11. The Troubled Nineteenth Century, Part I The Opium War and Taiping Rebellion. The Opium War (18391841) and Its Causes, The Treaty of Nanjing and the Treaty System, Internal Crisis, The Taiping Rebellion (18501864), Zeng Guofan and the Defeat of the Taiping, China and the World from the Treaty of Nanjing to the End of the Taiping, PART II 1870-94. The Post-Taiping Revival, Self-Strengtheningthe First Phase, Self-Strengtheningthe Theory, The Empress Dowager and the Government Education Economic Self-Strengthening, The Traditional Economic Sector, Missionary Efforts and Christian Influences, Old Wine in New Bottles, Part III Foreign Relations. Continued Pressures, Vietnam and the Sino-French War of 1884-1885, Korea and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, The Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 1895). 12. Endings and Beginnings, 18951927, Part 1. The Last Years of the Last Dynasty. The New Reformers, The Scramble for Concessions, The Boxer Rising, Winds of Change, Stirrings
Written with precision and flair by a host of leading academics from Beijing and Hong Kong, this single volume is a welcome addition to the study of world civilizations, a broad yet detailed chronological sweep through time. Every aspect of Chinese civilization is explained, interpreted, contextualized and brought to life with well-balanced commentary and photographic documentation. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。
Chinese Civilization sets the standard for supplementary texts in Chinese history courses. With newly expanded material, personal documents, social records, laws, and documents that historians mistakenly ignore, the sixth edition is even more useful than its classic predecessor. A complete and thorough introduction to Chinese history and culture.
This enlightening book leads readers though the history of ancient China, up to and through its decline, including how power was centralized within the Zhou royal house and aristocratic families that ruled their individual territories. This resource explains the Spring and Autumn periods, as well as Confucius’s influence, and the positive and negative aspects of the Qin Dynasty. Readers will be captivated by the ebb and flow of rulers, the excitement of peasant revolts, and rebellions that ultimately resulted in the fall of ancient China.
The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Yü Ying-shih's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 1 of Chinese History and Culture explores how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by Chinese intellectuals up to the seventeenth century, guiding them through history's darkest turns. Essays incorporate the evolving conception of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the significance of eating practices and social etiquette, the move toward greater individualism, the rise of the Neo-Daoist movement, the spread of Confucian ethics, and the growth of merchant culture and capitalism. A true panorama of Chinese culture's continuities and transition, Yü Ying-shih's two-volume Chinese History and Culture gives readers of all backgrounds a unique education in the meaning of Chinese civilization.
The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Ying-shih Yü's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 2 of Chinese History and Culture completes Ying-shih Yü's systematic reconstruction and exploration of Chinese thought over two millennia and its impact on Chinese identity. Essays address the rise of Qing Confucianism, the development of the Dai Zhen and Zhu Xi traditions, and the response of the historian Zhang Xuecheng to the Dai Zhen approach. They take stock of the thematic importance of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century masterpiece Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) and the influence of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, as well as the radicalization of China in the twentieth century and the fundamental upheavals of modernization and revolution. Ying-shih Yü also discusses the decline of elite culture in modern China, the relationships among democracy, human rights, and Confucianism, and changing conceptions of national history. He reflects on the Chinese approach to history in general and the larger political and cultural function of chronological biographies. By situating China's modern encounter with the West in a wider historical frame, this second volume of Chinese History and Culture clarifies its more curious turns and contemplates the importance of a renewed interest in the traditional Chinese values recognizing common humanity and human dignity.
D. R. Howland explores China’s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan—the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of “brushtalk,” in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes—history and poetry—as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies. With Japan’s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China’s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change—one that resulted in its decisive separation from Chinese civilization and, according to Howland, a destabilization of China’s worldview. His examination of the ways in which Chinese perceptions of Japan altered in the 1880s reveals the crucial choice faced by the Chinese of whether to interact with Japan as “kin,” based on geographical proximity and the existence of common cultural threads, or as a “barbarian,” an alien force molded by European influence. By probing China’s poetic and expository modes of portraying Japan, Borders of Chinese Civilization exposes the changing world of the nineteenth century and China’s comprehension of it. This broadly appealing work will engage scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Chinese literature, history, and geography, as well as those interested in theoretical reflections on travel or modernism.
This book, based on the theory of Marxism-Leninism, aims to study the essence, content and features of various legal systems in China in different historical periods, as well as the rules of the development of Chinese legal systems. It effectively combines classic analysis and historical analysis to probe historical facts and elaborate the historical role of the legal system, revealing both the general and the specific rules of the development of China s legal system on the basis of the existing relevant research. The subject matter is of abundant theoretical and practical significance, as it enriches Marxist legal studies, deepens readers’ understanding of China s legal civilization and offers guiding principles for the creation of socialist legal systems with Chinese characteristics. It discusses the trends in thinking on the reconstruction of the legal system; changing laws; western legal culture; the legal system in the period of westernization, constitution and reform; preparation for constitutionalism; modification of the law during the late Qing Dynasty; criminal, civil and commercial legislation; and judicial reforms in the modern era as well as the various ups and downs and cases of malconduct after the founding of the People’s Republic of China