The Scholar and the Tiger is at once a compelling family saga, thriller, social history, and spiritual journey. Written by a noted China scholar, assisted by a writer friend, the story brings to life a tumultuous period in Chinese history while providing surprising insights into China's emergence as a global power. Wen-wei Chang was born in 1929 as famine gripped northern China, taking the lives of countless peasants, including his father. Only his iron-willed mother kept the family alive. The eldest son, Wen-po, joined the army. Eighteen years Wen-wei's senior, Wen-po fought bandits, opium smugglers, the Japanese, and Mao's Communists, becoming known as "Tiger Chang." Meanwhile, Wen-wei—a brilliant scholar from childhood—seemed destined for a career in the age-old mandarin tradition of civil service. But civil war intervened, forcing him to evacuate his ill mother and two sisters-in-law and their children only days before the Communists reached Beijing. In Shanghai, they were reunited with Wen-po, now a leading Guomindang general who commanded the city's final defenses. Wen-wei refused evacuation to Taiwan, insisting on caring for his mother and making the best life he could under the Communists. But a day after the occupation of the city, a terrified friend told Wen-wei that Wen-po had been left behind and was hiding in the friend's apartment, putting all of their lives at risk. What follows has all the drama of a spy novel: narrow escapes and rescues, treachery and blackmail, and a final wrenching irony that would tear Wen-wei from his family and homeland. Only after thirty years in America, with a new life as university professor David Chang, is he allowed to return to China to learn the fate of his mother and loved ones—and perhaps to heal his broken heart.
The Scholar and the Tiger is at once a compelling family saga, thriller, social history, and spiritual journey. Written by a noted China scholar, assisted by a writer friend, the story brings to life a tumultuous period in Chinese history while providing surprising insights into China's emergence as a global power. Wen-wei Chang was born in 1929 as famine gripped northern China, taking the lives of countless peasants, including his father. Only his iron-willed mother kept the family alive. The eldest son, Wen-po, joined the army. Eighteen years Wen-wei's senior, Wen-po fought bandits, opium smugglers, the Japanese, and Mao's Communists, becoming known as "Tiger Chang." Meanwhile, Wen-wei—a brilliant scholar from childhood—seemed destined for a career in the age-old mandarin tradition of civil service. But civil war intervened, forcing him to evacuate his ill mother and two sisters-in-law and their children only days before the Communists reached Beijing. In Shanghai, they were reunited with Wen-po, now a leading Guomindang general who commanded the city's final defenses. Wen-wei refused evacuation to Taiwan, insisting on caring for his mother and making the best life he could under the Communists. But a day after the occupation of the city, a terrified friend told Wen-wei that Wen-po had been left behind and was hiding in the friend's apartment, putting all of their lives at risk. What follows has all the drama of a spy novel: narrow escapes and rescues, treachery and blackmail, and a final wrenching irony that would tear Wen-wei from his family and homeland. Only after thirty years in America, with a new life as university professor David Chang, is he allowed to return to China to learn the fate of his mother and loved ones—and perhaps to heal his broken heart.
Today, two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty, either officially or in practice, due mainly to the campaign to end state executions led by Western European nations. Will this success spread to Asia, where over 95 percent of executions now occur? Do Asian values and traditions support capital punishment, or will development and democratization end executions in the world's most rapidly developing region? David T. Johnson, an expert on law and society in Asia, and Franklin E. Zimring, a senior authority on capital punishment, combine detailed case studies of the death penalty in Asian nations with cross-national comparisons to identify the critical factors for the future of Asian death penalty policy. The clear trend is away from reliance on state execution and many nations with death penalties in their criminal codes rarely use it. Only the hard-line authoritarian regimes of China, Vietnam, Singapore, and North Korea execute with any frequency, and when authoritarian states experience democratic reforms, the rate of executions drops sharply, as in Taiwan and South Korea. Debunking the myth of "Asian values," Johnson and Zimring demonstrate that politics, rather than culture or tradition, is the major obstacle to the end of executions. Carefully researched and full of valuable lessons, The Next Frontier is the authoritative resource on the death penalty in Asia for scholars, policymakers, and advocates around the world.
Based on interviews, field trips to factories and rural communes, this is an attempt to assess the political history of China and project its future development. The book suggests that China will continue to reform and will move away from adherence to Mao Zedong thought.
A magisterial account of our time by a distinguished historian".--Walter LaFeber, author of "The Clash". This brilliant history vividly captures the great political events of the past 50 years while carefully avoiding an encyclopedia approach. of illustrations.
The title of this unique insider's look at a crucial decade of Sino-American interchange derives from a Chinese expression that describes a relationship of two people whose lives are intimately intertwined but who do not fundamentally communicate with each other. David M. Lampton, former president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, demonstrates that while the United States and China have enormous interests at stake in their bilateral relationship, neither has been particularly deft in dealing with the other. His fascinating account shows how the processes of globalization, along with the development of international regimes and multilateral organizations, have brought America and China increasingly close in the global bed. At the same time, their respective national institutions, interests, popular perceptions, and the very characters of their two peoples, assure that the nations continue to have substantially different dreams. Lampton explores the reasons why the Sino-American relationship is so difficult for both nations to manage and suggests ways it can be more effectively conducted in the future. His unique experience in China—nearly thirty years as a scholar, as the head of a policy-oriented exchange organization, and as director of Washington think-tank research programs—enabled him to spend extended periods with Chinese leaders and see them as they encountered America, as well as to observe U.S. leaders as they tried to come to grips with Chinese circumstances. Among many other key events, Lampton witnessed firsthand the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, successive congressional battles over most-favored-nation tariff treatment, the end of the Bush era and the rocky beginning of the Clinton administration, the death of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin's transition to power, the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, and the Asian financial crisis that unfolded from mid-1997 to the end of the decade. Lampton's careful documentary research is supplemented by interviews and accounts of his personal interaction throughout the period with leaders and key players in Washington, Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong. The book thus represents a singular combination of historical research, policy analysis, and personal observation, and offers guidance for those in both America and China who must shape this critical relationship in the twenty-first century.
This book summarizes twenty years of the author's work in historical anthropology and documents his argument that in China, ritual provided the social glue that law provided in the West. The book offers a readable history of the special lineage institutions for which south China has been noted and argues that these institutions fostered the mechanisms that enabled south China to be absorbed into the imperial Chinese state—first, by introducing rituals that were acceptable to the state, and second, by providing mechanisms that made group ownership of property feasible and hence made it possible to pool capital for land reclamation projects important to the state. Just as taxation, defense, and recognition came together with the emergence of powerful lineages in the sixteenth century, their disintegration in the late nineteenth century signaled the beginnings of a new Chinese state.
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