For decades, anthropologist Hill Gates had waited for an opportunity to get to know the citizens of China as she had done in Taiwan—face to face, over an extended period of time. At last in the late 1980s she set out on an excursion to Sichuan Province. That visit was the first of many she would make there on a remarkable double adventure: to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese women and to complete a difficult passage in her own life. Looking for Chengdu is her memoir of these trips. By turns analytic, witty, and bittersweet, Gates's observations on contemporary China are enlivened by a keen eye for the oddities of human behavior, including her own.The vast, inland province of Sichuan was the birthplace of the Chinese economic reforms of the 1970s, and is now speeding from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Was its economic boom transforming women's lives, Gates wondered? After a generation of socialist rule, would women risk the challenge of entrepreneurship? A feminist, she was especially curious to learn what Chinese of both sexes defined as women's rights.Gates traveled—by boat, train, bus, car, bicycle, and foot (her preference)—across the spectacular countryside, gleaning insight into China's massive bureaucracies from her experiences on an obligatory vacation, in a Tibetan dance-hall, and at a shouting match in her Chengdu home. She met dozens of hard-working, stylish women running family firms, and crossed paths with scholars and sailors. Her book is rich in anecdotes and compelling moments, from her journey through mountain villages in search of five thousand women with bound feet to low-voiced conversations about the Chengdu equivalent of the events at Tiananmen Square.A fascinating glimpse into the deeply personal vocation of anthropology, Gates's memoir will change the way readers think about the Chinese people.
Sylvia Garland’s impulsive brother brings home a bride from college, shocking the whole family. The bride doesn’t appear to be a good fit for the family, still Sylvia determines to befriend her. But Florimel is out for her young husband’s inheritance, pitting mother and son against each other and throwing the Garland family in so much turmoil that Sylvia may miss her own chance at love.
This monumental work reveals the continuities that underlie the changing surface of Chinese life from late imperial days to modern times. With a perspective that encompasses a thousand years of Chinese history, China's Motor provides a view of the social, economic, and political principles that have prompted people in widely varying circumstances to act, believe, and behave in ways that are labeled as Chinese. This original reinterpretation of Chinese culture, as meticulous in detail as it is vast in scope, will revise not only the study of China but also the very terms of social analysis.
Footbinding was common in China until the early twentieth century, when most Chinese were family farmers. Why did these families bind young girls' feet? And why did footbinding stop? In this groundbreaking work, Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates upend the popular view of footbinding as a status, or even sexual, symbol by showing that it was an undeniably effective way to get even very young girls to sit still and work with their hands. Interviews with 1,800 elderly women, many with bound feet, reveal the reality of girls' hand labor across the North China Plain, Northwest China, and Southwest China. As binding reshaped their feet, mothers disciplined girls to spin, weave, and do other handwork because many village families depended on selling such goods. When factories eliminated the economic value of handwork, footbinding died out. As the last generation of footbound women passes away, Bound Feet, Young Hands presents a data-driven examination of the social and economic aspects of this misunderstood custom.
When Chinese women bound their daughters’ feet, many consequences ensued, some beyond the imagination of the binders and the bound. The most obvious of these consequences was to impress upon a small child’s body and mind that girls differed from boys, thus reproducing gender hierarchy. What is not obvious is why Chinese society should have evolved such a radical method of gender-marking. Gendering is not simply preparation for reproduction, rather its primary significance lies in preparing children for their places in the division of labor of a particular political economy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with almost 5,000 women, this book examines footbinding as Sichuan women remember it from the final years of the empire and the troubled times before the 1949 revolution. It focuses on two key questions: what motivated parents to maintain this custom, and how significant was girls’ work in China’s final pre-industrial century? In answering these questions, Hill Gates shows how footbinding was a form of labor discipline in the first half of the twentieth century in China, when it was a key institution in a now much-altered political economy. Countering the widely held views surrounding the sexual attractiveness of bound feet to Chinese men, footbinding as an ethnic boundary marker, its role in female hypergamy, and its connection to state imperatives, this book instead presents a compelling argument that footbinding was in fact a crucial means of disciplining of little girls to lives of early and unremitting labor. This vivid and fascinating study will be of huge interest to students and scholars working across a wide range of fields including Chinese history, oral history, anthropology and gender studies.
With an inexplicable love for poetry, Birdie's Book of Poems captures dreams, illustrious thoughts, and experiences that one has known or wishes to know. Without effort, we ... all of us know how to love, how to think or suffer. It is said that anyone who wishes to live life fully, needs to seek poetry. Birdie's Book of Poetry is an experience, once absorbed, you will continue to feel and to be stirred to a new understanding of crucial and lovely relationships of people and of life. The suspense in Birdie's Book of Poetry will build up an almost unbearable tension or tenderness so profound it will make your heart skip a beat.
Description'Lewton's Affinity With The Pearly Gates.' is an autobiographical account of the first hand mental health experiences of its Author, Matthew Hill, who is played in fiction by the Book's main character Lewton Krill. The story is based upon several key themes, the main being the diagnosis and misdiagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and the potential diagnosis of depression. Other themes include fighting against the oppression in mental health suffering, sufferer's experiences in fighting for a dream, fighting to keep alive and safe and also sufferers, in this case Lewton, trying to find out what comfort there is in love existing. The book follows Lewton through university, relationship breakdowns, battles with drugs and medication, losing jobs, Lewton's experiences of losing and fighting to keep friends, family and loved ones, and finally it gives insight into how Lewton deals with his own mental health and the mental health of others in his role as counsellor, detailed in the second part of the book. About the Author"Its pressure that carries the burden of promise." Matthew Hill was born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1984. As an orphaned child his life began with a grasp of misfortune losing his biological parents. He knew his life would hold challenges for him many would struggle to comprehend. Adopted by English parents he was fortunate that he would never go without love and would always have a home to go to. He spent his formative years in Uganda, until he moved to England at age 11. He began his path to success in academics and sport at this young age. He represented Staffordshire county as their school championship's winner, and played semi professional youth football. He was a hard working academic and in 2002 to 2005 he attended Keele university where he gained an upper second class honours degree in LLB Law and Criminology. With a promising legal career before him his world was set up for success. However, his life took a turn for the worst as a loving relationship began to collapse and its final severance from his heart completely shattered his world. He became depressed and his world caved in. In 2006, at age 22, he was admitted into a mental health hospital, the first of two occasions, where after a series of events he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Four years later, in 2010, after suffering from a rollercoaster of oppression and mistreatment, he was informed this was a misdiagnosis. Unfortunately for Matthew, the misdiagnosis not only intensified the pressure on his shoulders, he also endured medicines which were wrongly prescribed, and received treatment which did not get to the root causes of his feelings of intense loss. His medical health in 2010 and at the time of writing 'Lewton's Affiliation with the pearly gates' feel he had suffered a form depression. Now his psychiatrist, reserves a current diagnosis as it visible to him that Matthew experienced an intense melancholic tragedy which passed and Matthew is now in full health. Matthew Hill is now about to commence a Masters qualification in Counselling Psychology, to practice as a Counsellor in future.
Joe Hill's New York Times bestselling novel, NOS4A2, introduced readers to the terrifying funhouse world of Christmasland and the mad man who rules there: Charlie Talent Manx III. Now, in an original new comic miniseries, Hill throws wide the candy cane gates to tell a standalone story that is at once both accessible to new readers and sure to delight fans of the book.
Napoleon Hill summed up his philosophy of success in Think and Grow Rich!, one of the bestselling inspirational business books ever. A recent USA Today survey of business leaders named it one of the five most influential books in its field, more than 40 years after it was first published. Now, in Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success, his broadly outlined principles are expanded in detail for the first time, with concrete advice on their use and implementation. Compiled from Hill's teaching materials, lectures, and articles, Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success provides mental exercises, self-analysis techniques, powerful encouragement, and straightforward advice to anyone seeking personal and financial improvement. In addition to Hill's many personal true-life examples of the principles in action, there are also contemporary illustrations featuring dynamos like Bill Gates, Peter Lynch, and Donna Karan. No other Napoleon Hill book has addressed these 17 principles so completely and in such precise detail. For the millions of loyal Napoleon Hill fans and for those who discover him each year, Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success promises to be a valuable and important guide on the road to riches.
Sylvia Garland’s impulsive brother brings home a bride from college, shocking the whole family. The bride doesn’t appear to be a good fit for the family, still Sylvia determines to befriend her. But Florimel is out for her young husband’s inheritance, pitting mother and son against each other and throwing the Garland family in so much turmoil that Sylvia may miss her own chance at love.
The lifelong friendship has lasted almost one-hundred years. One black, one white; both born and raised on Hickory Hill in the shadows of slavery, in Illinois, where slavery was illegal. Their end plan was to live out their last remaining days together, after their husbands had passed. So far, it's been thirty-six years of remembering the romance of life, and memories shared. Since it was built, many people have come and gone through the gates of Hickory Hill, but if they were people of color they usually left in chains to be sold into slavery in Kentucky, or traded out as payment of debts. A well trained slave was as good as cash, sometimes better. It was a way of life that didn't die easily. Today, Lilly hoped the trip to their childhood home would help put all of Celeste's jumbled memories back in order, but moments after they arrived Celeste had a massive stroke. The chaos of her mind quickly taking her back to the story days, where she and Lilly learned the history Hickory Hill, their history and the history of the people who made Hickory Hill what it had become. Hickory Hill tells stories of the 1840 salt plantation in Southeastern Illinois, officially named Hickory Hill when the cornerstone was first set. It is now owned by the State of Illinois, but is more commonly known as The Old Slave House.
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