City of Lingering Splendour

City of Lingering Splendour PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Beijing (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
The author spent many years in China, particularly Peking, where he came to know the language and people well. He became intimate with all sorts of colourful people - silk-clad scholars, Buddhist monks, Taoist sages, actors, countless other strange and delectable dishes.

City of Lingering Splendor

City of Lingering Splendor PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1570626375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.

Bodhisattva of Compassion

Bodhisattva of Compassion PDF Author: John Blofeld
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1590307356
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
She is the embodiment of selfless love, the supreme symbol of radical compassion, and, for more than a millennium throughout Asia, she has been revered as “The One Who Hearkens to the Cries of the World.” Kuan Yin is both a Buddhist symbol and a beloved deity of Chinese folk religion. John Blofeld’s classic study traces the history of this most famous of all the bodhisattvas from her origins in India (as the male figure Avalokiteshvara) to Tibet, China, and beyond, along the way highlighting her close connection to other figures such as Tara and Amitabha. The account is full of charming stories of Blofeld’s encounters with Kuan Yin’s devotees during his journeys in China. The book also contains meditation and visualization techniques associated with the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and translations of poems and yogic texts devoted to her.

Sunflower Splendor

Sunflower Splendor PDF Author: Wuji Liu
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253355805
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 708

Book Description
A comprehensive anthology of Chinese poetry from the 12th century B.C. to the present. "This magnificent collection has the effect of a complete library rather than of an anthology of poetry.... A lyric quality comes through into our own language... Every page is alive with striking and wonderful things, immediately accessible." -- Publishers Weekly "Sunflower Splendor is the largest and, on the whole, best anthology of translated Chinese poems to have appeared in a Western language." -- The New York Times Book Review "This remarkably fine anthology should remain standard for a long time." -- Library Journal ..". excellent translations by divers hands. Open to any page and listen to the still, sad music... " -- Washington Post Bookworld

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing PDF Author: M.A. Aldrich
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9789622097773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
"The Search for a Vanishing Beijing weaves the genres of travel essays and travel guides into a comprehensive narrative about the cultural mosaic of the capital of China.

Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers PDF Author: Nicholas Jose
Publisher: Wakefield Press
ISBN: 1743051522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Book Description
This is a literary journey of an Australian writer's encounter with the culture and people of China, particularly its young writers and artists, and of the evolving influence of China on the writer's own work and life. Nicholas Jose is the author of four novels and two collections of short stories. He was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy, Beijing, between 1987 and 1990, and has taught Australian Studies in China.

Britain in China

Britain in China PDF Author: Robert Bickers
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526119609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

The Fall of the God of Money

The Fall of the God of Money PDF Author: Keith McMahon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742518032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
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!

Dancing with the Void

Dancing with the Void PDF Author: Sunyata
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
ISBN: 8178221349
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Dancing with the Void is the story of an unconventional man whose existence was "mind-free, go-free, form-free, effort-free, time-free." In his own joyful prose, Sunyata chronicles his life-journey from contemplative farm boy and gardener, Emmanuel Sorensen, to humble Himalayan cave dweller, "Mr.Nobody". A lover of silence and solitude, Sunyata remained untouched by the common worldly conditioning that entraps so many. His fateful journeys, inspiring friendship, and the spiritual wisdom shared in these collected writings, all reflect the soul of an authentic seer.

Western Queers in China

Western Queers in China PDF Author: D. E. Mungello
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442215585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
This unique work examines the role played by sexuality in the historical encounter between China and the West. Distinguished historian D. E. Mungello focuses especially on Western homosexuals who saw China as a place of escape from the homophobia of Europe and North America. His groundbreaking study traces the lives of two dozen men, many previously unknown to have same-sex desire, who fled to China and in the process influenced perceptions of Chinese culture to this day. Their individual stories encompass flight from homophobia in their home countries, the erotic attraction of Chinese boy-actors, friendships with Chinese men, intellectual connections with the Chinese, and the reorientation of Western aesthetics toward China. Mungello explores historical attitudes and the atmosphere of oppression toward men with same-sex desire as he recounts the intensification of repression of queers in Europe and North America in the late nineteenth-century. He shows how China became a place of escape, a homosexual “land of Oz” where men could flee from the closets of their minds. Some traveled to China and lived there; others immersed themselves in Chinese culture at a distance. Most established long-term friendships and acted as cultural intermediaries who opened the aesthetic range of Western culture to a new sense of beauty and a fresh source of inspiration for poets, artists, and dramatists. Their “boys”—Chinese males whose services were available at low cost as messengers, rickshaw pullers, guides, cooks, entertainers, escorts, and prostitutes—were transformed into a universal metaphor of Chinese culture that lingers to this day. Indeed, outside men’s range of relationships, intellectual and physical, have had a profound impact in shaping the modern Western conception of China.
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