Search results for ""Author Liu""

Something is rotten in the heart of the capital The Ming dynasty is at its zenith. All under heaven bow towards the Forbidden City, where the Celestial Emperor and his servants grace the earth. Yet rot festers deep in the palace...Emperor Jiajing has sealed himself away, more interested in Taoist magics than the Dragon Throne. In his absence, the corruption of ambitious men grows unchecked. Among such shameless villains stride the Yan, a ruthless clan whose lustful grasp on the state ever tightens. Few dare stand against them, but heaven's mandate calls for balance, and a humble clerk named Hai Rui rises to answer. Across land and over water, forces awaken, stirred by the shadows emanating from the halls of power. No one knows if or when the peace of the Great Ming will collapse. Perhaps the cracks can be healed. Perhaps fate can be appeased. Or perhaps the old saying holds true: a realm long united, must divide...

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This book is at once a guided introduction to Chinese nonfictional prose and an innovative textbook for the study of classical Chinese. It is a companion volume to How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology, designed for Chinese-language learners.How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese presents more than forty prose works, either excerpts or in full, from antiquity through the Qing dynasty. While teaching readers how to appreciate the rich tradition of Chinese prose in its original form, the book uses these texts to introduce classical Chinese to advanced learners, helping them develop reading comprehension and vocabulary. It offers a systematic guide to classical Chinese grammar and abundant notes on vocabulary, and features an extensive network of notes, exercises, and cross-references. The book includes modern translations of the forty prose works in simplified Chinese, presented alongside the original texts in traditional Chinese. It also includes expert commentaries on each text’s distinctive aesthetic qualities as well as historical and cultural contexts.The book comprises thirty-eight lessons within eight units, organized chronologically to reflect the emergence of major prose genres. It is a major contribution to the teaching and study of classical Chinese language and literature.Audio recordings of all forty texts are available online free of charge.

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Liu Zongyuan's remarkable poetry reflects the complex experience of political exile and observes the natural world of his new home in South China with a caring eye. The Poetic Garden of Liu Zongyuan presents poems by the Tang Dynasty cofounder of the Classical Prose Movement written on the Chinese empire’s southern margins. In these remarkable pieces, Liu intertwines South China’s landscapes and plants—such as scarlet canna, banyan, and white myoga ginger—with reflections on honor, duty, banishment, and belonging in ways unique in the history of Chinese poetry. The two translators, Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton and Yu Yuanyuan, one American and one Chinese, preserve and showcase the singular beauty of Liu's poetic garden for the English-speaking world.

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Learn to build and fly your own authentic traditional chinese kites with this user-friendly crafts book.Kites and China are practically synonymous, since these childhood toys were originally invented there before becoming popular around the world. For over 2000 years, kites have been a common sight in China, from the imperial court to the common people, and over that time period the craftsmanship of the kite has been perfected—and includes a diversity and richness of styles.In Chinese Kites, you'll learn not only the history and varied forms of the Chinese kite, but also how to produce, step-by-step, a beautiful Chinese kite of your own! Learn how to: Create the kite's framework Paint colorful designs Master the techniques of putting the painted cover on the framework Fly your creation! With Chinese Kites, you will be able to experience firsthand the joy of seeing a kite you made soaring across the sky.

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The fate of the Ming hangs on a knife edge. In the south, defence against relentless pirate raids is escalating into all-out war. The beleaguered Chinese forces must rally for a desperate last stand fought across salt and sand. Nearby, fearless magistrate Hai Rui is tasked with investigating a major corruption scandal. In Beijing, a chance to trump the embezzling viper Yan Song and his influential clan presents itself. There to snatch it is the Crown Prince, and his coalition of the righteous. At a time when the appearance of a mysterious 'blood scripture' could either turn the tide or unleash chaos untold, chief eunuch Lu Fang, a loyal and yet crafty kingmaker, is forced to choose sides. In war as in the Forbidden City, the game is sudden death. Now, China's heroes make their move: a perilous gambit to salvage centuries of progress. If they fail everything burns.

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A complex and contradictory graffiti culture has been brewing over the last few decades in one of the least expected settings—China’s capital. Through an unparalleled collection of one local photographer’s images, as well as interviews with 25 prolific artists, see how Beijing has developed its graffiti movement against the backdrop of the once-secluded nation’s rise to global economic might. While Beijing graffiti artists take their cue from the subculture’s Western origins, the local scene has also been highly influenced by both foreign visitors and traditional Chinese art and culture. Profiles of significant artists explore the dynamics of creative self-expression in such a perceivedly authoritarian setting, including the surprising amount of freedom they have to make their art undisturbed compared to Western counterparts. A must for graffiti enthusiasts, Sinophiles, and anyone interested in how this colorful subculture is still growing half a century after it emerged.

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A favorite icon for cigarette manufacturers across China since the mid-twentieth century has been the panda, with factories from Shanghai to Sichuan using cuddly cliché to market tobacco products. The proliferation of panda-branded cigarettes coincides with profound, yet poorly appreciated, shifts in the worldwide tobacco trade. Over the last fifty years, transnational tobacco companies and their allies have fueled a tripling of the world's annual consumption of cigarettes. At the forefront is the China National Tobacco Corporation, now producing forty percent of cigarettes sold globally. What's enabled the manufacturing of cigarettes in China to flourish since the time of Mao and to prosper even amidst public health condemnation of smoking? In Poisonous Pandas, an interdisciplinary group of scholars comes together to tell that story. They offer novel portraits of people within the Chinese polity—government leaders, scientists, tax officials, artists, museum curators, and soldiers—who have experimentally revamped the country's pre-Communist cigarette supply chain and fitfully expanded its political, economic, and cultural influence. These portraits cut against the grain of what contemporary tobacco-control experts typically study, opening a vital new window on tobacco—the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today.

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An indefatigable discoverer and preserver of lost traditions in the field of classical Chinese medicine, Liu Lihong has done it again — The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Transmission of Acupuncture features a passionate and clinically relevant synthesis of his discipleship with Yang Zhenhai, one of the last remaining master practitioners of Daoist acupuncture in mainland China.At the forefront of an international discourse on the definition and clinical significance of classical Chinese medicine, Yang and Liu promote yet another holistic medical system that radically contrasts the current penchant for symptom-oriented procedures. This English edition of their book lifts an important esoteric acupuncture lineage out of obscurity and presents it to us in complete and accessible form.The holistic approach has also defined Liu’s relentless search for the heart of Chinese medicine during the last three decades, driving his commitment to become the promoter of a diverse spectrum of healing traditions that exemplify the classical standards of Chinese medicine.

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The English edition of Liu Lihong’s work is a milestone for the profession of Chinese medicine in the 21st century. Classical Chinese Medicine delivers a straightforward critique of the politically motivated 'integration' of traditional Chinese wisdom with Western science during the last sixty years, and represents an ardent appeal for the recognition of Chinese medicine as a science in its own right. Professor Liu’s candid presentation has made this book a bestseller in China, treasured not only by medical students and doctors, but by vast numbers of non-professionals who long for a state of health and well-being that is founded in a deeper sense of cultural identity.Oriental medicine education has made great strides in the West since the 1970s, but clear guidelines regarding the 'traditional' nature of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) remain undefined. Classical Chinese Medicine not only delineates the educational and clinical problems faced by the profession in both East and West, but provides concrete guidance on how to effectively engage with ancient texts and designs in the postmodern age. Using the example of the Shanghanlun (Treatise on Cold Damage), one of the most important Chinese medicine classics, Liu Lihong develops a compelling roadmap for holistic medical thinking that links the human body to nature and the universe at large.

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The Chinese artist Liu Ye’s meticulous, colorful canvases convey his love of literature in the first publication dedicated to his paintings of books. The Beijing-based artist Liu Ye is known for his precise, deftly rendered representational paintings. Drawn equally from contemporary culture and old master painting, Liu’s wide-ranging visual touchstones include Piet Mondrian, Miffy the Bunny, and Prada advertisements. In this new publication devoted to his book paintings, the artist examines the book as both a physical object and cultural totem. Playing with geometry and perspective, Liu creates extraordinary and disorienting portraits of this most familiar subject. Liu’s Book Painting series, begun in 2013, depicts close-up views of books that are turned open to reveal empty pages, an approach that emphasizes the object’s form over its content. Rendering books’ material structure—endpapers, binding, spine—in sensual detail, these paintings indicate an obsession with the book as an object and a lifelong love of literature. Liu’s father was a children’s book author who introduced him to Western writers at a young age, fueling his curiosity and imagination. Many of the books in Liu’s father’s collection were banned in Cultural Revolution–era China and the artist read them secretly throughout his childhood. This formative experience figures in his popular Banned Books series and in his book paintings in general. Published on the occasion of a solo exhibition presented at David Zwirner, New York, in 2020, this catalogue includes new writing by the acclaimed poet Zhu Zhu, who traces the evolution of the book form in Liu’s work, as well as an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

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In the early eighth century, frustrated with the authorities but still hoping to gain immortality through his future oeuvre, the Tang court historian Liu Zhiji set out to write Shitong, in which he would rigorously explore the tradition of historical writing in China. Liu scrutinized hundreds of texts from antiquity to the early Tang dynasty (618–907) and evaluated their authors according to what he deemed the three essential qualities for historians: talent, knowledge, and insight. Shitong is now generally considered the greatest work of traditional Chinese historiography. It preserves precious information on a host of lost ancient and medieval titles while advancing a critical view on history writing. This first translation of the work into a Western language provides textual criticism and annotation for the historical figures, events, and allusions that are crucial to appreciating the work, making it a must-read for students of historiography East and West.

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This series introduces the most famous and well-known Chinese fables and folktales that have entertained children in China for generations. Now illustrated in beautiful color, these books will be a perfect bedtime companion for any young child.This volume includes: Xue Tan Learns What it Means to Sing The Parrot that Put Out a Fire Jiu Fanggao's eyes for Horses The Wrong Way Helped by an Expert

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This book is at once a guided introduction to Chinese nonfictional prose and an innovative textbook for the study of classical Chinese. It is a companion volume to How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology, designed for Chinese-language learners.How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese presents more than forty prose works, either excerpts or in full, from antiquity through the Qing dynasty. While teaching readers how to appreciate the rich tradition of Chinese prose in its original form, the book uses these texts to introduce classical Chinese to advanced learners, helping them develop reading comprehension and vocabulary. It offers a systematic guide to classical Chinese grammar and abundant notes on vocabulary, and features an extensive network of notes, exercises, and cross-references. The book includes modern translations of the forty prose works in simplified Chinese, presented alongside the original texts in traditional Chinese. It also includes expert commentaries on each text’s distinctive aesthetic qualities as well as historical and cultural contexts.The book comprises thirty-eight lessons within eight units, organized chronologically to reflect the emergence of major prose genres. It is a major contribution to the teaching and study of classical Chinese language and literature.Audio recordings of all forty texts are available online free of charge.

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Li Xuelian, married to Qin Yuhe, is pregnant with their second child. Happy news? Not in China. With its one-child policy, it’s a crime. What is she to do? Her only option is divorcing before the second child is born. “Once the baby has entered into the household registry, we’ll marry again. The baby will be born after the divorce, so we’ll each have one child when we marry again. No law says couples with one child can’t marry.” Perfect! Except that after the divorce, Qin marries . . . another woman who is expecting a baby. Mad with rage, Li runs to the judge begging him to declare the divorce a sham so she may remarry and truly divorce the fool!Mao Dun Prize–winning Liu Zhenyun’s politically charged plot reads like an absurd and hilarious comedy. But under the humor lies a harsh indictment of China’s one-child law that develops into a head-on critique of China’s endemic political apathy and corruption as Li Xuelian runs up against one uncaring bureaucrat after another. I Did Not Kill My Husband is storytelling and satire of the highest order, sharp-edged and ironic.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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A lame joke can be a crushing experience The people of Yanjin know to always have a few jokes on hand. For three thousand years, they have been terrorised by Hua Erniang, a forsaken spirit that rules over their dreams. Failing to amuse this supernatural guest means not waking up at all, crushed by her jilted heart which has calcified into a mountain. Growing up inside a town adapting to socialist ideals, Mingliang's life is beset with hardship and adversity that leaves his family in tatters. Seeking fortune elsewhere, he heads west across China's vast central plain, encountering nothing but restless souls mortgaged to debts from former lives, each unwilling to move on for their own reasons. No matter how many times you try to start afresh, you can only run so far from a broken home. Some wounds take more than a lifetime to heal, but in the meantime, a few wisecracks tucked into the back pocket won't hurt.

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"A riveting amalgam of history, family epic, anticolonial/antiwar treatise, cultural crossroads, and more, this latest from best-selling author Liu (Face) is a fascinating, irresistible marvel."—Terry Hong, STARRED Library Journal review "Liu's prose is masterful. A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."—*Starred Booklist Review* "With a mesmerizing setting and transporting detail, Glorious Boy balances tropical beauty with raw, physical risk, and dives deep into grim truths about parental love and the power and limitation of language. This is a page-turner, sometimes violent but always revelatory. Readers won’t easily forget the trials this young couple faces, or the landscape that changes them all."—Five Star Review from The Seattle Review of Books What will it take to save Ty? This is the question that haunts Claire and Shep Durant in the wake of their four-year-old’s disappearance. Until this moment, Port Blair’s British surgeon and his young wife, a promising anthropologist, have led a charmed life in the colonial backwaters of India’s Andaman Islands—thanks in part to Naila, a local girl who shares their mysteriously mute son’s silent language. But with the war closing in and mandatory evacuation underway, the Durants don’t realize until too late that Naila and Ty have vanished. While Claire sails for Calcutta, Shep stays to search for the children. Days later, the Japanese invade the Andamans, cutting off all communication. Fueled by guilt and anguish, Claire uses her unique knowledge of the islands’ tribes to make herself indispensable to an all-male reconnaissance team headed back behind enemy lines. Her secret plan: rescue Shep and Ty. Through the brutal odyssey that follows, she’ll discover truths about sacrifice that both shatter and transcend her understanding of devotion.

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