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A new translation of the 1894 chronicle by a high-ranking official from the Nan kingdom, a once-powerful principality whose territory encompassed all of what is now northwestern Laos and neighboring portions of China, in addition to the present province of Nan in Thailand. It details the history of the principality, the legendary origins of the Nan River Valley, the rituals and customs of the Nan, the moral duties of the ruler, and royal genealogy. A fascinating portrait of Thai history and culture.
Stochastic Optimization Algorithms have become essential tools in solving a wide range of difficult and critical optimization problems. Such methods are able to find the optimum solution of a problem with uncertain elements or to algorithmically incorporate uncertainty to solve a deterministic problem. They even succeed in fighting uncertainty with uncertainty. This book discusses theoretical aspects of many such algorithms and covers their application in various scientific fields.
Mi Fu was a prominent calligrapher in 11th-century China. This analysis of his work considers content and style, and examines his calligraphy within the framework of the artist's life, the Northern Song culture in which he lived and the literati theory of art he helped to formulate.
Key imperial and royal courts--in Han, Tang, and Song dynasty China; medieval and renaissance Europe; and Heian and Muromachi Japan--are examined in this comparative and interdisciplinary volume as loci of power and as entities that establish, influence, or counter the norms of a larger society. Contributions by twelve scholars are organized into sections on the rhetoric of persuasion, taste, communication, gender, and natural nobility. Writing from the perspectives of literature, history, and philosophy, the authors examine the use and purpose of rhetoric in their respective areas. In Rhetoric of Persuasion, we see that in both the third-century court of the last Han emperor and the fourtee...
Few ideas in Chinese discourse are as ubiquitous as ming, variously understood as “command,” “allotted lifespan,” “fate,” or “life.” In the earliest days of Chinese writing, ming was already present, invoked in divinations and etched into ancient bronzes; it has continued to inscribe itself down to the twenty-first century in literature and film. This volume assembles twelve essays by some of the most eminent scholars currently working in Chinese studies to produce the first comprehensive study in English of ming’s broad web of meanings. The essays span the history of Chinese civilization and represent disciplines as varied as religion, philosophy, anthropology, literary st...
This Handbook is the first to study comprehensively how the Southeast Asian calendar was constructed and how positions for the sun, moon and planets were determined. It examines the differences that distinguish Burma from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and those that distinguish Northern Thailand from the rest of that country. Explanation of such matters as ways of naming the years, differences between the types of lunar year, variations in methods used to mark times of day, constructing horoscopes, determining calendar dates, and many other technical matters are accompanied by worked examples from the literature. The intention of the study is to provide an apparatus whereby scholars will be able to analyse confidently for themselves the dates and other calendrical information to be found in abundance in their sources.
In this first truly cross-cultural study of opium, Keith McMahon considers the perspectives of both smokers and non-smokers from China and the Euro-West and from both sides of the issue of opium prohibition. The author stages a dramatic confrontation between the Chinese opium user and the Euro-Westerner who saw in opium the image of an uncanny Asiatic menace. The rise of the opium demon meant the fall of the god of money, that is, Chinese money, and the irreversible trend in which Confucianism gave way to Christianity. The book explores early Western observations of opium smoking, the formation of arguments for and against the legalization of opium, the portrayals of opium smoking in Chinese poetry and prose, and scenes of opium-smoking interactions among male and female smokers and smokers of all social levels in 19th-century China. Visit our website for sample chapters!
This three-volume set LNCS 12888, 12898, and 12890 constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Image and Graphics, ICIG 2021, held in Haikou, China, in August 2021.* The 198 full papers presented were selected from 421 submissions and focus on advances of theory, techniques and algorithms as well as innovative technologies of image, video and graphics processing and fostering innovation, entrepreneurship, and networking. *The conference was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This book presents cutting-edge archaeological materials from Xinjiang, from the Bronze Age to the early Iron Age. Through a systematic topological study of major archaeological cemeteries and sites, it establishes chronologies and cultural sequences for three main regions in Xinjiang, namely the circum-Eastern Tianshan region, the circum-Dzungarian Basin region and the circum-Tarim Basin region. It also discusses the origins and local variants of prehistoric archaeological cultures in these regions and the mutual relationships between them and neighboring cultures. By doing so, the book offers a panoramic view of the socio-cultural changes that took place in prehistoric Xinjiang from pastoral-agricultural societies to the mobile nomadic-pastoralist states in the steppe regions and the agricultural states of the oasis, making it a must-read for researchers and general readers who are interested in the archaeology of Xinjiang.