Six Records of a Floating Life

Author: Shen Fu
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141920343
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic and romantic joys of his marriage to Yün, the beautiful and artistic girl he fell in love with as a child. He also describes other incidents of his life, including how his beloved wife obtained a courtesan for him and reflects on his travels through China. Shen Fu's exquisite memoir shows six parallel 'layers' of one man's life, loves and career, with revealing glimpses into Chinese society of the Ch'ing Dynasty.

Border Town

Author: Congwen Shen
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061959235
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
New in the Harper Perennial Modern Chinese Classics series, Border Town is a classic Chinese novel—banned by Mao’s regime—that captures the ideals of rural China through the moving story of a young woman and her grandfather. Originally published in 1934 by author Shen Congwen, this beautifully written novel tells the story of Cuicui, a young country girl who is coming of age in rural China in the tumultuous time before the communist revolution.

The Sea of Regret

Author: Wu Jianren
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824817091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Published within a few months of each other in 1906, "Stones in the Sea" by Fu Lin and "The Sea of Regret" by Wu Jianren take opposite sides in the heated turn-of-the-century debate over the place of romantic and sexual love and passion in Chinese life. "The Sea of Regret", which came to be the most popular short novel of this period, is a response to the less well-known but equally significant "Stones in the Sea". Taken together, this pair of novels provides a fascinating portrait of early twentieth-century China's struggle with its own cultural, ethical, and sexual redefinition. Patrick Hanan's masterful translation brings together these novels -- neither of which has before been available in any foreign language -- in a single volume, with a valuable introduction and notes. | "A tour de force in the art of translation. 'The Sea of Regret' is not only accurate, but, in the typical Hanan fashion, it is succinct and elegant as well. Impeccable work from an eminent scholar of Chinese fiction and a master of prose." --Lee Ou-fan Lee, UCLA | "These two short novels are especially interesting for their insights into the debate in educated circles concerning marriage, family, and the status of women. The chaos in China caused by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 is also vividly rendered in both works. Readers will find not only intrinsic interest but also historical relevance in these early modern novels." --Michael S. Duke, University of British Columbia | Patrick Hanan is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of "The Chinese Vernacular Story" and "The Invention of Li Yu" and the translator of "The Carnal Prayer Mat" and "A Tower for the Summer Heat".

A Cadre School Life

Author: Jiang Yang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description

Oranges

Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708703
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

Under Confucian Eyes

Author: Susan Mann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520222768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
"This important volume adds a significant number of new and unique materials for teachers at all levels of higher education to use in classroom and seminar discussion about the issues of gender, society, and religion in imperial China."—Benjamin Elman, author of A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China "The eighteen primary documents in this anthology, all of them translated for the first time, provide a rich array of sources on the lives of women in China's past. The anthology is important not only for the selection of documents but for the ways it suggests we can think about, and find sources about, women in China. It is must reading for scholars and students alike."—Ann Waltner, author of The World of a Late Ming Visionary: T'an-Yang-Tzu and Her Followers

Soldiers Alive

Author: Ishikawa Tatsuzo
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824827540
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
When the editors of Chûô kôron, Japan's leading liberal magazine, sent the prizewinning young novelist Ishikawa Tatsuzô to war-ravaged China in early 1938, they knew the independent-minded writer would produce a work wholly different from the lyrical and sanitized war reports then in circulation. They could not predict, however, that Ishikawa would write an unsettling novella so grimly realistic it would promptly be banned and lead to the author’s conviction on charges of "disturbing peace and order." Decades later, Soldiers Alive remains a deeply disturbing and eye-opening account of the Japanese march on Nanking and its aftermath. In its unforgettable depiction of an ostensibly altruistic war’s devastating effects on the soldiers who fought it and the civilians they presumed to "liberate," Ishikawa’s work retains its power to shock, inform, and provoke.

Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 162466525X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
The saga of the Three Kingdoms—which recounts the dramatic story of the civil wars (ca. 180–220 CE) that divided the old Han Empire into the Shu, Wei, and Wu states—remains as popular as ever in China, having served as the basis of not only traditional operas and ballads, but also, in more recent years, of movies, television dramas, and video games. Translated into English for the first time here, the Sanguozhi pinghua (thirteenth century CE) provides a complete and fast-paced narrative account of the events of the period, from the beginning of the civil wars to the demise of the Three Kingdoms and the short-lived reunification of the realm by the Jin dynasty. Shorter, clearer, and more accessible to Western audiences than Luo Guanzhong’s later, greatly expanded Romance (Sanguo yanyi)—and beautifully rendered in this edition by two modern-day masters of the art of Chinese literary translation—the Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language provides an ideal introduction to one of the foundational Chinese epic traditions. Tables of major Chinese dynasties and reigns, a guide to understanding formal Chinese naming conventions, a glossary of Chinese names and terms, and reproductions of some woodcuts from the original edition of the text are included.

The Chinese Ginger Jars

Author: Myra Scovel
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786257912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
The Chinese Ginger Jars is a bright and intimate portrait of the adventures, trials, and achievements of an American housewife who lived through dangerous days in modern China. When Myra Scovel arrived in Peking in 1930 with her medical missionary husband and infant son, China was a land steeped in an ancient culture, mellow as the smooth cream ivory of its curio shops, relaxed as the curves of a temple roof against the sky. Twenty-one years later—as the Scovels were forced to leave China by the Communists—it was a country of fear, of terror, of hatred toward the foreigner. The dramatic events that transformed China are recounted here from the fresh and poignant viewpoint of an extraordinary American wife and mother.

The Confusions of Pleasure

Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052092407X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook eloquently narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of the Ming (1368-1644), when China was transformed from a closely administered agrarian realm into a place of commercial profits and intense competition for status. The Confusions of Pleasure marks a significant departure from the conventional ways in which Chinese history has been written. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, it narrates this longue durée in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life. Peppered with stories of real people and their negotiations of a rapidly changing world, this book provides a new way of seeing the Ming dynasty that not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of the period but also provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to Chinese history for anyone.