From 1868–1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s, European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove integral to the struggle for political control of China. Geology served both as the handmaiden to European imperialism and the rallying point of Chinese resistance to Western encroachment. In the late nineteenth century both foreign powers and the Chinese viewed control over mineral resources as the key to modernization and industrialization. When the first China Geological Survey began work in the 1910s, conceptions of natural resources had already shifted, and the Qing state expanded its control over mining rights, setting the precedent for the subsequent Republican and People's Republic of China regimes. In Empires of Coal, Shellen Xiao Wu argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of science and industrialization destabilized global systems and caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around the world.
Drawing from a broad array of literary, historical, dramatic and anecdotal sources, Yenna Wu makes a rich exploration of an unusually prominent theme in premodern Chinese prose fiction and drama: that of jealous and belligerent wives, or viragos, who dominate their husbands and abuse other women. Focusing on Chinese literary works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she presents many colorful perspectives on this type of aggression, reviewing early literary and historical examples of the phenomenon. Wu argues that although the various portraits of the virago often reveal the writers' insecurities about strong-willed women in general, the authors also satirize the kind of man whose behavioral patterns have been catalysts for female aggression. She also shows that, while the women in these works are to some extent male constructs designed to affirm the patriarchal system, various elements of these portraits constitute a subversive form of parody that casts a revealing light on the patriarchal hierarchy of premodern China.
From the 1850s until the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by global conflicts and anxiety about dwindling resources and closing opportunities after decades of expansion, the frontier became a mirror for historically and geographically specific hopes and fears. From Asia to Europe and the Americas, countries around the world engaged with new interpretations of empire and the deployment of science and technology to aid frontier development in extreme environments. Through a century of political turmoil and war, China nevertheless is the only nation to successfully navigate the twentieth century with its imperial territorial expanse largely intact. In Birth of the Geopolitical Age, Shellen Xiao Wu demonstrates how global examples of frontier settlements refracted through China's unique history and informed the making of the modern Chinese state. Wu weaves a narrative that moves through time and space, the lives of individuals, and empires' rise and fall and rebirth, to show how the subsequent reshaping of Chinese geopolitical ambitions in the twentieth century, and the global transformation of frontiers into colonial laboratories, continues to reorder global power dynamics in East Asia and the wider world to this day.
An examination of how Chinese family and business networks have been closely interlocked with economic and social structures, around which government and states developed.
The Chinese diaspora, consisting of both Chinese living overseas who are citizens of China (huaqiao), and people of Chinese descent who are citizens of foreign countries (huaren), have significantly shaped the making of modern China. China’s policy towards its diaspora is primarily governed by its national interests and foreign policy imperatives. However, the Chinese government has been careful to ensure that the huaqiao and the huaren fall into different policy domains: Chinese citizens living overseas are subject to China’s domestic policies, while Chinese descendants who are citizens of other countries come under China’s foreign affairs. Nevertheless, from the beginning, the latter continue to be regarded as kinsfolk distinct from other foreign nationals. The huaqiao-huaren distinction is often blurred in ordinary discourse and this has been a source of much misunderstanding. However, it has not been the policy of the Chinese government to blur this distinction, and it is acutely aware of the complexity of the issue and is therefore very cautious about implying any change. As such, when terms such as huaqiao-huaren are introduced in the official lexicon, they are meant to acknowledge certain historical and contemporary realities, and not to deliberately obfuscate the two categories. The use of the combined term is in fact a recognition of the clear-cut distinction between the two groups, and is meant to convey a semantic balance in which neither category is emphasized at the expense of the other. In general, since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government has treated the diaspora as an asset, rather than a liability. The sole exception was during the Cultural Revolution when returnees, or the guiqiao, were condemned as reactionary and bourgeois elements. There is therefore a fundamental continuity in China’s diaspora policy: namely, that China embraces both groups as part of a global Chinese community. Some policy shifts can be expected in future as China becomes more proactive in reaching out to its diaspora while balancing the needs and interests of Chinese abroad with the needs and interests of the Mainland.
Essential reading for serious students of Chinese practical arts, including medicine, martial arts and FengShui, Master Zhongxian Wu and Dr Karin Taylor Wu provide a detailed explanation of the 22 GanZhi symbols in this book, outlining the characteristics of each, and their interactions and relationships. TianGan (Heavenly Stems) and DiZhi (Earthly Branches), commonly abbreviated to GanZhi, originated in the ancient Chinese cosmological sciences and is a complex calendrical system which was created to codify the patterns of life and of the universe itself. The ten symbols of Gan express the Yin or Yang perspective of Five Elements and embody the Way of Heaven. The 12 symbols of Zhi, made manifest in the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, hold the root of each Element and embrace the Way of Earth. Poetic summaries from the Song dynasty give the reader a deep understanding of the nature of each Stem and their relationship to each other. Offering an unprecedented insight into the subtleties and far-reaching influence of this ancient system, this book will be invaluable for the study or practice of Chinese medicine, FengShui, Chinese astrology, traditional Chinese cosmology, Qigong, Taiji, and other inner cultivation practices. A set of study cards (9781848191501), also published by Singing Dragon, are available to accompany this book.
China is so big and so diverse that, as in the proverbial blind man touching an elephant, contemporary descriptions that vary dramatically can all be true. Few visitors to glittering Shanghai of Shenzhen, for example, will get any impression of the gaping gray maw of the government's prison camp system that Philip Williams and Yenna Wu, basing themselves on a vast range of Chinese sources, illuminate in erudite detail. The authors look at every facet of the camps, place them within China's historical tradition, and compare them with modern analogues. Throughout, literary and autobiographical sources give the 'feel' for the deadening world of the camps."—Perry Link, author of The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System "The Great Wall of Confinement deals with issues ranging from the legal grounding—or the lack of any—of the Chinese concentration camp system, to its technical implementation, its discursive manifestation, and its physical as well as psychological impact. A book like this is long overdue. With this work, Williams and Wu have made an important contribution to the fields of Chinese legal and literary studies."—David Der-wei Wang, author of The Monster That Is History "The Great Wall of Confinement is an excellent book. It synthesizes an already significant corpus of writings on Chinese prisons and labor camps, marshals an array of literary sources as essential historical source materials, and compares the literature of Chinese incarceration with its Soviet and European counterparts. The value of this important study stems equally from its tone—a rare combination of a level-headed quality with a very fine sensitivity to the human tragedy recounted in this literature."—Jean-Luc Domenach, author of Où va la Chine? (Where does China Go?) "The Great Wall of Confinement has attempted to lift part of the veil on China's long lasting tragedy: the use of imprisonment, torture, forced labor against its citizens, whether criminals, feeble minded or simply political opponents. The angle is new; the question is to find out how Chinese have written on this subject, whether in fiction or reportage, the way they went about telling their stories, how much they said, or withheld. Through Philip Willams and Yenna Wu's thought-provoking analysis of such writings, of the cultural origins of forced labor and imprisonment in imperial and Communist China, one comes closer to this sinister reality, which remains to this day one of the best kept secrets of our planet."—Marie Holzman, President of the Association Solidarité Chine
Since the birth of the Yinyang Continent, the two races of Yin and Yang had been born and bred. The Yang Race possessed the attribute of 'goodness', and possessed all sorts of superpowers to defend their 'goodness'. The attribute of the Yin Clan was' evil '. Demons, demons, ghosts, and other creatures belonged to it. They wanted to enslave the Yang Clan and control the entire continent. A youth who had comprehended 'creating from nothing' from the 'Classic of Virtue' was not tolerated by the current Heavenly Dao and had his body destroyed. His soul, by chance and coincidence, was taken in by the Yinyang Continent and reborn into the body of an ordinary Yang Clan youth. None: "The Yang race is good, forsaken by the Evil God; the Yin race is evil, born of the Good God. Tell me what is evil and what is good? " Close]
Since the birth of the Yinyang Continent, the two races of Yin and Yang had been born and bred. The Yang Race possessed the attribute of 'goodness', and possessed all sorts of superpowers to defend their 'goodness'. The attribute of the Yin Clan was' evil '. Demons, demons, ghosts, and other creatures belonged to it. They wanted to enslave the Yang Clan and control the entire continent. A youth who had comprehended 'creating from nothing' from the 'Classic of Virtue' was not tolerated by the current Heavenly Dao and had his body destroyed. His soul, by chance and coincidence, was taken in by the Yinyang Continent and reborn into the body of an ordinary Yang Clan youth. None: "The Yang race is good, forsaken by the Evil God; the Yin race is evil, born of the Good God. Tell me what is evil and what is good? " Close]
Since the birth of the Yinyang Continent, the two races of Yin and Yang had been born and bred. The Yang Race possessed the attribute of 'goodness', and possessed all sorts of superpowers to defend their 'goodness'. The attribute of the Yin Clan was' evil '. Demons, demons, ghosts, and other creatures belonged to it. They wanted to enslave the Yang Clan and control the entire continent. A youth who had comprehended 'creating from nothing' from the 'Classic of Virtue' was not tolerated by the current Heavenly Dao and had his body destroyed. His soul, by chance and coincidence, was taken in by the Yinyang Continent and reborn into the body of an ordinary Yang Clan youth. None: "The Yang race is good, forsaken by the Evil God; the Yin race is evil, born of the Good God. Tell me what is evil and what is good? " Close]
A reconsideration of Chinese decadent (tuifei) poetry which argues that this poetry is not a marginal trend but rather a vital part of the Chinese literary tradition.
This innovative book uses the lens of cultural history to examine the development of medicine in Qing dynasty China. Focusing on the specialty of "medicine for women"(fuke), Yi-Li Wu explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. She draws on a rich array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases. These points of contention touched on fundamental issues: How different were women's bodies from men's? What drugs were best for promoting conception and preventing miscarriage? Was childbirth inherently dangerous? And who was best qualified to judge? Wu shows that late imperial medicine approached these questions with a new, positive perspective.
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