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China: Understanding Its Past aims to fill a conspicuous gap in conventional world history texts, which are often Eurocentric and give scant attention to Asia. Using role-playing, simulations, debates, primary documents, first person accounts, excerpts from literary works, and cooperative learning activities, this text will help students explore many key aspects of China's history and culture. The teacher's manual includes a synopsis of each chapter and section, learner outcomes, definitions of key concepts, directions for student activities, and possible responses to questions posed in the student text. The CD contains selections of Chinese music from different time periods and locales. Liner notes include English translations of lyrics as well as historical information about each selection.
Reproduction of the original: A Lute of Jade by L. Cranmer-Byng
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A vivid history of the relationship between Britain and China, from 1600 to the present The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time? From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full. Britain has always sought to dominate China economically and politically, while China's ideas and exports--from tea and Chinoiserie to porcelain and silk--have continued to fascinate in the west. But by the later twentieth century, the balance of power began to shift in China's favour, with global consequences. Brown shows how these interactions changed the world order--and argues that an understanding of Britain's relationship with China is now more vital than ever.
A “gripping, colorful” history of China’s Great Wall that explores the conquests and cataclysms of the empire from 1000 BC to the present day (Publishers Weekly). Over two thousand years old, the Great Wall of China is a symbolic and physical dividing line between the civilized Chinese and the “barbarians” at their borders. Historian Julia Lovell looks behind the intimidating fortification and its mythology to uncover a complex history far more fragmented and less illustrious that its crowds of visitors imagine today. Lovell’s story winds through the lives of the millions of individuals who built and attacked it, and recounts how succeeding dynasties built sections of the wall as defenses against the invading Huns, Mongols, and Turks, and how the Ming dynasty, in its quest to create an empire, joined the regional ramparts to make what the Chinese call the “10,000 Li” or the “long wall.” An epic that reveals the true history of a nation, The Great Wall is “a supremely inviting entrée to the country” and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand China’s past, present, and future (Booklist).
This book explores the historical interactions between Beijing and the West before the Opium War. It focuses on the experiences of Western travellers, missionaries, and envoys who visited Beijing during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. As the capital of Imperial China since the Yuan dynasty, Beijing has been central to communication between China and the West. The study uses first-hand historical materials such as travelogues, memoirs, letters, Ming and Qing archives, and scholarly works from both the West and China. It examines their journeys to Beijing, their lives in the city, and their interactions with imperial officials and ordinary people. The book reconstructs Western perceptions ...
How did the Chinese in the 19th century deal with the enormous influx of Western science? What were the patterns behind this watershed in Chinese intellectual history? This work deals with those responsible for the translation of science, the major issues they were confronted with, and their struggles; the Chinese translators’ views of its overpowering influence on, and interaction with their own great tradition, those of the missionary-translators who used natural theology to propagate the Gospel, and those of John Fryer, a ‘secular missionary’, who founded the Shanghai Polytechnic and edited the Chinese Scientific Magazine. With due attention for the techniques of translation, the formation of new terms, the mechanisms behind the ‘struggle for survival’ between the, in this case, chemical terms, all amply illustrated at the hand of original texts. The final chapter charts the intellectual influence of Western science, the role of the scientific metaphor in political discourse, and the translation of science from a collection of mere ‘techniques’ to a source of political inspiration.
Based on 41 years of Hong Kong Bird Watching Society records and surveys, including the first comprehensive breeding bird survey carried out in Hong Kong. A detailed analysis of the changing status and distribution of each species in Hong Kong, together with a review of 20 years of waterbird count data, an assessment of the effect of the wild bird trade on birds in Hong Kong and a summary of data collected as part of a long-term ringing programme make this an essential reference to the status and distribution of the birds of south China.
Lisa Hellman offers the first study of European everyday life in Canton and Macao. How foreigners could live, communicate, move around – even whom they could interaction with – were all things strictly regulated by the Chinese authorities. The Europeans sometimes adapted to, and sometimes subverted, these rules. Focusing on this conditional domesticity shows the importance of gender relations, especially the construction of masculinity. Using the Swedish East India Company, a minor European actor in an expanding Asian empire, as a point of entry highlights the multiplicity of actors taking part in local negotiations of power. The European attempts at making a home in China contributes to a global turn in everyday history, but also to an everyday turn in global history.