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The Chinese essay is arguably China’s most distinctive contribution to modern world literature, and the period of its greatest influence and popularity—the mid-1930s—is the central concern of this book. What Charles Laughlin terms "the literature of leisure" is a modern literary response to the cultural past that manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of short, informal essay writing (xiaopin wen). Laughlin examines the essay both as a widely practiced and influential genre of literary expression and as an important counter-discourse to the revolutionary tradition of New Literature (especially realistic fiction), often viewed as the dominant mode of literature at the time. Aft...
Feeling disconnected from the father whose work keeps him from home the rest of the year, Maomao enjoys a Chinese New Year visit marked by such activities as making sticky rice balls, watching a dragon dance, and searching for a hidden lucky coin.
This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms—especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers—to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.
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The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live—in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai—“in a sea of bitterness” as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province—Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast—where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war’s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear. As they traveled south into China’s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as th...
The Chinese Chan (jap. Zen) abbot Zhongfeng Mingben of the Yuan Dynasty forged a synthesis of buddhist sutra writing and draft-cursive (zhang cao) script in his calligraphy. This highly idiosyncratic, new style of calligraphy prompted innovative trends in Ming Dynasty China and transmitted current Chinese artistic developments to Japan where it had a major impact on Zen- and tea circles.
By the end of the nineteenth century, after a long period during which the weakness of China became ever more obvious, intellectuals began to go abroad for new ideas. What emerged was a musical genre that Liu Chingchih terms "New Music." With no direct ties to traditional Chinese music, New Music reflects the compositional techniques and musical idioms of eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth–century European styles. Liu traces the genesis and development of New Music throughout the twentieth century, deftly examining the cultural, social, and political forces that shaped New Music and its uses by politicians and the government.