Read and Download eBook Full
Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 0195058364
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDuring the Cultural Revolution the piano, the musical embodiment of Western culture, became the object of intense hostility. This book examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and Western influences generally.
Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1989-07-13
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 0195363264
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn China, a nation where the worlds of politics and art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered during the cultural revolution to be an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in twentieth-century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates the steady westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, he traces the lives of four Chinese musicians and reflects on how their experiences are indicative of China's place at the furthest edge of an expanding Western international order.
Author: Richard Curt Kraus
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2004-04-02
Total Pages: 261
ISBN-13: 1417503564
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this original exploration of the dynamic and potent interface between Chinese culture and politics, Richard Kraus examines the impact of the market on the once-comprehensive system of state patronage of the arts in the PRC. The author uses all genres of art to explore the changing nature of politics, seen through such phenomena as ideology, propaganda, censorship, and the relationship of artists to the state. Kraus makes three provocative arguments: First, the commercialization of China's cultural life has been intellectually liberating, but also poses serious economic challenges that artists are sometimes slow to master. Second, despite conventional wisdom in the West that China's economic reforms have not been followed by serious political reform, he shows that the shift from state patronage to a mixed system of private and public sponsorship is in fact a fundamental political change. Third, Western recognition of the reformation in China's cultural life has been obscured by a combination of ignorance, ideological barriers, and foreign policy rivalry. Cogent, witty, and deeply informed, this comprehensive overview of the Chinese arts scene will be an essential text for all observers of contemporary China.
Author: Perry Link
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-04-25
Total Pages: 221
ISBN-13: 1000009777
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book presents a view of social life in China and discusses different methods for studying contemporary China as a tool for introducing students to the study of popular culture. Through a diverse set of case studies, it introduces readers to a wide range of issues facing Chinese society.
Author: William A. Joseph
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 457
ISBN-13: 0195335309
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSixty years ago, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, populated mostly by rural peasants, and still suffering from more than a century of internal turmoil and international humiliation. Today, China is a rapidly modernizing economic dynamo with growing global influence. Politics in China is an authoritative introduction to how this transformation occurred, and how China is governed today. Written by an international team of highly-regarded China scholars, each chapter offers an accessible overview of a key topic in Chinese politics. The opening section provides readers with a firm grounding in China's modern political history, from the fall of the last imperial dynasty through era of communist rule under Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and their successors. The next section covers the political system, with chapters on Communist Party ideology, the structure of the political system, and the policies behind the country's spectacular economic performance. The book then focuses on several major issues in China today: politics in the countryside and the cities; the arts; the environment; public health; and population policy. The final chapters cover politics in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Comprehensive and fully up to date in its coverage, Politics in China is essential not only for students studying contemporary China, but for any reader interested in learning how this rising power has evolved in recent times and the workings of its current political system.
Author: Sophy Roberts
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2020-08-04
Total Pages: 443
ISBN-13: 0802149308
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis “melodious” mix of music, history, and travelogue “reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself . . . These pages sing like a symphony.” —The Wall Street Journal Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snowbound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers, and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia follows Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos. “An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.” —Paul Theroux
Author: Robert Bickers
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2017-03-30
Total Pages: 675
ISBN-13: 1846146194
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE The extraordinary and essential story of how China became the powerful country it is today. Even at the high noon of Europe's empires China managed to be one of the handful of countries not to succumb. Invaded, humiliated and looted, China nonetheless kept its sovereignty. Robert Bickers' major new book is the first to describe fully what has proved to be one of the modern era's most important stories: the long, often agonising process by which the Chinese had by the end of the 20th century regained control of their own country. Out of China uses a brilliant array of unusual, strange and vivid sources to recreate a now fantastically remote world: the corrupt, lurid modernity of pre-War Shanghai, the often tiny patches of 'extra-territorial' land controlled by European powers (one of which, unnoticed, had mostly toppled into a river), the entrepôts of Hong Kong and Macao, and the myriad means, through armed threats, technology and legal chicanery, by which China was kept subservient. Today Chinese nationalism stays firmly rooted in memories of its degraded past - the quest for self-sufficiency, a determination both to assert China's standing in the world and its outstanding territorial claims, and never to be vulnerable to renewed attack. History matters deeply to Beijing's current rulers - and Out of China explains why.
Author: Kevin Latham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2007-07-27
Total Pages: 404
ISBN-13: 185109587X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis exciting title in ABC-CLIO's Popular Culture in the Contemporary World series offers the nonspecialist reader the only up-to-date introduction to all facets of popular culture in China. China's release from Maoist austerity has produced an explosion in popular culture. The Chinese have embraced such technologies as television and cell phones and shaped them to their own social context. Understanding modern China requires a thorough knowledge of daily life there. This book presents readers, from high-school and college students to the inquisitive tourist, with that knowledge. The author, a scholar of Chinese culture, draws on his own fieldwork, along with authoritative scholarship and reporting, to give the reader a comprehensive, lively, and accessible introduction to all aspects of Chinese popular culture. The book begins with an introduction to understanding popular culture in China and covers mass media; print media; cinema, film, and video; the Internet; and also discusses the rise of consumption and consumerism. From the modernization of traditional theater to the traditional uses of modern technology, this book presents a guide to the emerging culture of a country that will inevitably become increasingly influential in coming years.
Author: Nicole Talmacs
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-02-03
Total Pages: 203
ISBN-13: 1315393972
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures and tables -- List of abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Chinese audiences and the cinema of class -- 2 Class on screen and in reality: pre-conditioning audiences -- 3 Let the Bullets Fly: the socialisation of assumptions -- 4 Lost on Journey: prejudice in class relations -- 5 Go Lala Go!: secretaries, shopping and spinsterhood -- 6 House Mania: homeownership, marriageability and masculinity -- 7 The Piano in a Factory: suzhi, industrial heroes and the spectacle of poverty -- 8 Conclusion: class, the film and the filmmaker -- Films list -- Appendix: group discussants -- Let the Bullets Fly -- Lost on Journey -- Go Lala Go! -- House Mania -- The Piano in a Factory -- Index
Author: William A. Joseph
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-04-25
Total Pages: 657
ISBN-13: 0190870737
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn October 1, 2019, the People's Republic of China (PRC) will celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding. And what an eventful and tumultuous seven decades it has been! During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China has been transformed from one of world's poorest countries into one of its fastest growing economies, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global influence. But in the late 1950s, the PRC experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civil war and anarchy. And in 1989, the CCP unleashed the army to brutally crush demonstrations by students and others calling for political reform. China is now, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of harsh repression and popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapid economic growth. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, ethnic unrest, and a rising tide of social protest. Politics in China provides an accessible yet authoritative introduction to how the world's most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. The third edition has been extensively revised, thoroughly updated, and includes a new chapter on the internet and politics in China. The book's chapters provide overviews of major periods in China's modern political history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, examinations of key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and analyses of developments in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
