Search results for ""Author Ming"

'Smart, hilarious and deeply moving' Elliot Page, author Pageboy'Bellies announces Nicola Dinan as a genuine literary talent, a gimlet-eyed cartographer of the human heart' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti'Thoughtful, seductive, and entirely engrossing - Bellies is already a classic' Bryan Washington, author of Memorial and LotIt begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at a university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face shifts in their relationship in the wake of Ming's transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises - some personal, some professional, some life-altering - Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?

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Charles Mingus is one of the most important-and most mythologized-composers and performers in jazz history. Classically trained and of mixed race, he was an outspoken innovator as well as a bandleader, composer, producer, and record-label owner. His vivid autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, has done much to shape the image of Mingus as something of a wild man: idiosyncratic musical genius with a penchant for skirt-chasing and violent outbursts. But, as the autobiography reveals, he was also a hopeless romantic. After exploring the most important events in Mingus's life, Krin Gabbard takes a careful look at Mingus as a writer as well as a composer and musician. He digs into how and why Mingus chose to do so much self-analysis, how he worked to craft his racial identity in a world that saw him simply as "black," and how his mental and physical health problems shaped his career. Gabbard sets aside the myth-making and convincingly argues that Charles Mingus created a unique language of emotions-and not just in music. Capturing many essential moments in jazz history anew, Better Git It in Your Soul will fascinate anyone who cares about jazz, African American history, and the artist's life.

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Paper has been irreplaceable for centuries in the communication and transmission of knowledge. In spite of the digital revolution, paper remains an essential vehicle for the production of art, whether in drawings, painting, the creation of objects, or in the context of site-specific installations. In the urgent need to give material substance to our ideas and experiences, we capture them on paper. In the artistic treatment of this medium, our cultural practices are transcribed onto the paper along with the intended messages. Sur Papier. Su Carta explores paper as a unifying element in the encounter and confrontation of artistic practices with different cultural origins. It opens up a dialogue in which hybrid identities and the cultural spaces between East and West are negotiated, as illustrated by working processes and works on and with paper by Sivan Eldar (USA), Mingjun Luo (Switzerland/China), Francine Mury (Switzerland), and Jiang Zuqing (China).

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When they find the extra finger, forensic scientist Qin Ming and his team are stunned. How could there be eleven fingers but only one corpse? Though Qin Ming is no stranger to tough cases, he has never encountered one quite like this. With no answers and no leads, Qin Ming must turn his attention to the many other homicides waiting to be solved. His investigations take him to back-alley neighborhoods, the remote countryside, and even the expansive homes of the rich and elite. But now it seems that every case in Dragon City contains a misplaced body part. Is it a coincidence or a sick joke, or is the killer trying to send Qin Ming a message? As Qin Ming and the police force work to unravel each murder, a killer zeros in on him. Can Qin Ming track down the killer before he becomes the next victim?

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For 1,300 years, Chinese calligraphy was based on the elegant art of Wang Xizhi (A.D. 303–361). But the seventeenth-century emergence of a style modeled on the rough, broken epigraphs of ancient bronzes and stone artifacts brought a revolution in calligraphic taste. By the eighteenth century, this led to the formation of the stele school of calligraphy, which continues to shape Chinese calligraphy today.A dominant force in this school was the eminent calligrapher and art theorist Fu Shan (1607–1685). Because his work spans the late Ming–early Qing divide, it is an ideal prism through which to view the transformation in calligraphy.Rather than seek a single explanation for the change in calligraphic taste, the author demonstrates and analyzes the heterogeneity of the cultural, social, and political processes behind it. Among other subjects, the book covers the late Ming interaction between high and low culture; the role of publishing; the Ming loyalist response to the Qing; and early Qing changes in intellectual discourse. In addition to the usual approach of art historians, it adopts the theoretical perspectives of such fields as material culture, print culture, and social and intellectual history.

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The Ming–Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China was an epochal event that reverberated in Qing writings and beyond; political disorder was bound up with vibrant literary and cultural production. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature focuses on the discursive and imaginative space commanded by women. Encompassing writings by women and by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity, as well as writings that turn women into a signifier through which authors convey their lamentation, nostalgia, or moral questions for the fallen Ming, the book delves into the mentality of those who remembered or reflected on the dynastic transition, as well as those who reinvented its significance in later periods. It shows how history and literature intersect, how conceptions of gender mediate the experience and expression of political disorder.Why and how are variations on themes related to gender boundaries, female virtues, vices, agency, and ethical dilemmas used to allegorize national destiny? In pursuing answers to these questions, Wai-yee Li explores how this multivalent presence of women in different genres provides a window into the emotional and psychological turmoil of the Ming–Qing transition and of subsequent moments of national trauma.

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K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and an O. Henry Prize winner. She is the author of the novel Bestiary, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Gods of Want, which won the Lambda Literary Award.

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The book aims to describe the history of Chan (Japanese Zen) School thought from the standpoint of social history. Chan, a school of East Asian Buddhism, was influential on all levels of societies in the region because of its intellectual and aesthetic appeal. In China, Chan infiltrated all levels of society, mainly because it engaged with society and formed the mainstream of Buddhism from the tenth or eleventh centuries through to the twentieth century. This book, taking a critical stance, examines the entire history of Chan thought and practice from the viewpoint of a modern Chinese scholar, not a practitioner, but an intellectual historian who places ideological developments in social contexts. The author suggests that core elements of Chan have their origins in Daoist philosophers, especially Zhuangzi, and not in Indian Buddhist concepts. Covering the period from the sixth century into the twentieth century, it deals with Chan interactions with neo-Confucianism, Quanzhen Daoism, and Gongyang new text philology, as well as with literature and scholarship, its fusion with Pure Land Buddhism, and its syncretic tendencies. Chan’s exchanges with emperors from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasty, as well as the motives of some loyalists of the Ming Dynasty for joining Chan after the fall of the Ming, are described. The book concludes with an examination of the views of Chan of Hu Shi, D.T. Suzuki, and the scholar-monk Yinshun.

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Hello, little readers! Did you know that seashores are full of life and wonder? We can encounter fascinating discoveries unexpectedly, if we keep our eyes open as we walk along the beach.In this full-colour book, through an exciting combination of photography and illustration, Professor Emeritus Chou Loke Ming and co-author, preschool educator Diana Chou, will share marvellous facts about the amazing wonders of creation at the seashores. They will tell you why it is important to protect these precious organisms.So, are you ready to start? Let's Discover Our Seashores, Singapore!

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Gu Yanwu pioneered the late-Ming and early Qing-era practice of Han Learning, or Evidential Learning, favoring practical over theoretical approaches to knowledge. He strongly encouraged scholars to return to the simple, ethical precepts of early Confucianism, and in his best-known work, Rizhi lu (Record of Daily Knowledge), he applied this paradigm to literature, government, economics, history, education, and philology. This volume includes translations of selected essays from Rizhi lu and Gu Yanwu's Shiwen Ji (Collected Poems and Essays), along with an introduction explaining the personal and political dimensions of the scholar's work. Gu Yanwu wrote the essays and poems featured in this volume while traveling across China during the decades immediately after the fall of the Ming Dynasty. They merge personal observation with rich articulations of Confucian principles and are, as Gu said, "not old coin but copper dug from the hills." Like many of his contemporaries, Gu Yanwu believed the Ming Dynasty had suffered from an overconcentration of power in its central government and recommended decentralizing authority while strengthening provincial self-government. In his introduction, Ian Johnston recounts Gu Yanwu's personal history and reviews his published works, along with their scholarly reception. Annotations accompany his translations, and a special essay on feudalism by Tang Dynasty poet and scholar Liu Zongyuan (773-819) provides insight into Gu Yanwu's later work on the subject.

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Born in Yugan, near Jingdezhen, the birthplace of porcelain, Bai Ming has contributed to the revival of contemporary Chinese ceramics and introduced it to a new worldwide audience through numerous exhibitions. Today he is arguably China's greatest exponent of this most traditional art form. In this book, Bai Ming traces his career, revealing a sensitive yet creative and flamboyant style, built on the most rigorous traditional techniques. Focussing particularly on his blue and white ceramic work, this book, through a large selection of glorious images and the artist's own words, reveals Bai Ming's exquisite style and superb attention to detail.

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Hello, little readers! Did you know that seashores are full of life and wonder? We can encounter fascinating discoveries unexpectedly, if we keep our eyes open as we walk along the beach.In this full-colour book, through an exciting combination of photography and illustration, Professor Emeritus Chou Loke Ming and co-author, preschool educator Diana Chou, will share marvellous facts about the amazing wonders of creation at the seashores. They will tell you why it is important to protect these precious organisms.So, are you ready to start? Let's Discover Our Seashores, Singapore!

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When it comes to really knowing a person, is what you see really what you get? Is it ever all you get? In this first critical study and annotated translation of the dramatic masterpiece Four Cries of a Gibbon by the late-Ming dynasty Chinese playwright Xu Wei, author Shiamin Kwa considers the ways that people encounter and understand each other in extraordinary circumstances. With its tales of crimes redressed in the next world and girls masquerading as men to achieve everlasting fame, Four Cries of a Gibbon complicated issues of self and identity when it appeared in the late Ming dynasty, paving the way for increasingly nuanced reflections on such questions in late Ming and early Qing fiction and drama. Beyond their historical context, Xu Wei’s influential plays serve as testimony to what Kwa argues are universal strategies found within drama. The heroes and heroines in these plays glide back and forth across the borders of life and death, of male and female, as they seek to articulate who they truly are. As the actors sort out these truths onstage, the members of the audience are invited to consider the truths that they live with offstage.

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Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways the Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and remains a great work of world literature. The University of California Press is pleased to make the complete and unabridged translation available again.

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In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China’s rude northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia’s mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, which endured to 1912. From this event arises one of Chinese history’s great conundrums: How did a barely literate alien people manage to remain in power for nearly 300 years over a highly cultured population that was vastly superior in number? This problem has fascinated scholars for almost a century, but until now no one has approached the question from the Manchu point of view. This book, the first in any language to be based mainly on Manchu documents, supplies a radically new perspective on the formative period of the modern Chinese nation. Drawing on recent critical notions of ethnicity, the author explores the evolution of the “Eight Banners,” a unique Manchu system of social and military organization that was instrumental in the conquest of the Ming. The author argues that as rulers of China the Manchu conquerors had to behave like Confucian monarchs, but that as a non-Han minority they faced other, more complex considerations as well. Their power derived not only from the acceptance of orthodox Chinese notions of legitimacy, but also, the author suggests, from Manchu “ethnic sovereignty,” which depended on the sustained coherence of the conquerors. When, in the early 1700s, this coherence was threatened by rapid acculturation and the prospective loss of Manchu distinctiveness, the Qing court, always insecure, desperately urged its minions to uphold the traditions of an idealized “Manchu Way.” However, the author shows that it was not this appeal but rather the articulation of a broader identity grounded in the realities of Eight Banner life that succeeded in preserving Manchu ethnicity, and the Qing dynasty along with it, into the twentieth century.

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“A material epic with an astonishing fidelity to history."—New York Times Book ReviewThree Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. Writing some twelve hundred years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on histories, dramas, and poems portraying the crisis to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. This abridged edition captures the novel's intimate and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and remains a great work of world literature.

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While they travelled the world for their first book, Celebrity Vineyards,here authors Nick Wise and Linda Sunshine focus on California, the land of abundance, creativity, winemaking, and, of course, celebrities.This new volume is filled with details of their travels, the wines they tasted, and the incredible men and women they met, all recounted in loving and often humorous detail. Includes interviews with artist Molly Chappellet and retired basketball player Yao Ming, actor Kurt Russell, golfers Luke Donald and Jack Nicklaus and legendary football coach Mike Ditka. The authors also revisited filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.Written for fans of wine, travel, and the rich and famous, California Celebrity Vineyards is a fascinating journey that will delight, charm, and educate your palate and your knowledge of winemaking.

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What happens when a monotheistic, foreign religion needs a space in which to worship in China, a civilisation with a building tradition that has been largely unchanged for several millennia? The story of this extraordinary convergence begins in the 7th century and continues under the Chinese rule of Song and Ming, and the non-Chinese rule of the Mongols and Manchus, each with a different political and religious agenda. The author shows that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system, though often unchanging, is adaptable: it can accommodate the religious requirements of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Islam.

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FEATURED ON ESPN—the pain relief program used by professional athletes. No drugs. No surgery. No pain!“The Ming Method” for pain relief has worked wonders for New Jersey Nets star Jason Kidd, New York Yankees’ Jason Giambi, movie star Matt Dillon, and other celebrities. Now, licensed physical therapist Ming Chew shares his world-famous program in this illustrated home guide, filled with innovative stretching techniques, hydration and supplementation tips, and prevention strategies.

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Amid the turmoil of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China, some intellectuals sought refuge in romantic memories from what they perceived as cataclysmic events. This volume presents two memoirs by famous men of letters, Reminiscences of the Plum Shadows Convent by Mao Xiang (1611–93) and Miscellaneous Records of Plank Bridge by Yu Huai (1616–96), that recall times spent with courtesans. They evoke the courtesan world in the final decades of the Ming dynasty and the aftermath of its collapse.Mao Xiang chronicles his relationship with the courtesan Dong Bai, who became his concubine two years before the Ming dynasty fell. His mournful remembrance of their life together, written shortly after her early death, includes harrowing descriptions of their wartime sufferings as well as idyllic depictions of romantic bliss. Yu Huai offers a group portrait of Nanjing courtesans, mixing personal memories with reported anecdotes. Writing fifty years after the fall of the Ming, he expresses a deep nostalgia for courtesan culture that bears the toll of individual loss and national calamity. Together, they shed light on the sensibilities of late Ming intellectuals: their recollections of refined pleasures and ruminations on the vagaries of memory coexist with political engagement and a belief in bearing witness. With an introduction and extensive annotations, Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge is a valuable source for the literature of remembrance, the representation of women, and the social role of intellectuals during a tumultuous period in Chinese history.

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From Seb Doubinsky, author of The Song of Synth, The Babylonian Trilogy, White City, Absinth, Omega Gray and Suan Ming, comes his highly anticipated next installment in the City-States Cycle.Missing Signal—a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a government conspiracy? Agent Terrence Kovacs has worked for the New Petersburg Counter-Intel Department propagating fake UFO stories for so long that even he has a hard time separating fact from fiction. Especially when he’s approached by a beautiful woman named Vita, who claims she’s been sent from another planet to liberate Earth.

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In this study of desire in Late Imperial China, Martin W. Huang argues that the development of traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre was closely related to changes in conceptions of the fundamental nature of desire. He further suggests that the rise of vernacular fiction during the late Ming dynasty should be studied in the context of contemporary debates on desire, along with the new and complex views that emerged from those debates.Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China shows that the obsession of authors with individual desire is an essential quality that defines traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre. Thus the maturation of the genre can best be appreciated in terms of its increasingly sophisticated exploration of the phenomenon of desire.

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An innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the state How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) deal with the demands of the state? In The Art of Being Governed, Michael Szonyi explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed to manage their responsibilities suggest a new interpretation of an important period in China's history as well as a broader theory of politics. Using previously untapped sources, including lineage genealogies and internal family documents, Szonyi examines how soldiers and their families living on China's southeast coast minimized the costs and maximized the benefits of meeting government demands for manpower. Families that had to provide a soldier for the army set up elaborate rules to ensure their obligation was fulfilled, and to provide incentives for the soldier not to desert his post. People in the system found ways to gain advantages for themselves and their families. For example, naval officers used the military's protection to engage in the very piracy and smuggling they were supposed to suppress. Szonyi demonstrates through firsthand accounts how subjects of the Ming state operated in a space between defiance and compliance, and how paying attention to this middle ground can help us better understand not only Ming China but also other periods and places. Combining traditional scholarship with innovative fieldwork in the villages where descendants of Ming subjects still live, The Art of Being Governed illustrates the ways that arrangements between communities and the state hundreds of years ago have consequences and relevance for how we look at diverse cultures and societies, even today.

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"Three Kingdoms" tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways the Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and remains a great work of world literature. The University of California Press is pleased to make the complete and unabridged translation available again.

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Ladybird Readers is an ELT graded reader series for children aged 3­-11 learning English as a foreign or second language. The series includes traditional tales, favourite characters, modern stories and non-fiction. Written by experts, it uses proven methods to help children learn English and grasp key grammar and vocabulary points. Perfect for learning English in school or at home Develops reading, writing, speaking, listening and critical thinking skills Features much-loved characters and authors such as Peter Rabbit, Peppa Pig, Roald Dahl and Eric Carle Eight levels follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR) Language activities in every book provide preparation for the Cambridge English Pre-A1 to A2 (YLE) tests Features free online resources including audio, answer keys, lesson plans and tips for parents The Magic Paintbrush, a Level 2 Reader, is A1 in the CEFR framework and includes practice for the Cambridge English A1 Movers tests. Short sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the past tense and some simple adverbs.Sui-Ming wanted to draw, and one day he found a magic paintbrush. "My paintbrush must help people," said Sui-Ming.Visit the Ladybird Education website for more information.

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This book will take the reader on a unique journey across the globe: from the open spaces of rural Kenya to Nairobi's high-tech sporting grounds; from a stadium in LA to the green pastures of New Zealand; from old Europe with its sleepy palaces to the buzzing streets of Beijing. Fasten your reading seat-belts and be ready to be surprised by the incredible stories of the fast-running Kenyan pilot Mwangaza, the free-spirited Ming-Ming, the brave doctor Jasmina, the mysterious Lady X and many more.

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Tigre Blanco, Dragón Verde decribe la evolución espiritual, psicológica y erótica de Tu Ming, un monje taoísta de la antigua China.En su aprendizaje, Tu Ming visita consecutivamente a cinco maestras de la disciplina conocida como el cultivo dual, un tipo de yoga tántrico que, mediante técnicas sexuales, atraviesa diferentes etapas de desarrollo espiritual y culmina en la gestación de un embrión espiritual en el momento de la iluminación.Las cinco maestras que instruyen a Tu Ming cubren un amplio espectro de personajes, extraídos del folklore chino, como una dulce prostituta llamada Mei Cha, una ruda recolectora de plantas medicinales de nombre Su Ba o una acrobática princesa tibetana.De ese modo, al tiempo que cae bajo el hechizo de estas cinco mujeres, sin parangón en la literatura religiosa, el monje taoísta no sólo avanza en su práctica, sino también en su comprensión de la vida y el amor.Durante el apasionante final de su aventura, el monje Tu Ming experimenta una trans

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The Chinese title of this book reads “The Profound Reflection of Brushpots: A Collector’s Enlightenment” literally, citing reference to the book Imperial Profound & Reflective Encyclopedia commissioned by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, and The Collected Works of Long Ying, published during the reign of Emperor Wanli, Ming Dynasty. The word “Profound” was chosen meticulously to highlight the breadth and variety of the brush pots collected, and the proposition of their illustrations. The author’s intent to make this book an encyclopedia of brush pots was fairly explicit. On the other hand, “reflection” comes from a mirror, which shows how you look and who you are. It represented the collector’s experience in soul-searching and self-reflection during his journey of art appreciation. Text in English and Chinese.

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In the traditional Chinese symbolic vocabulary, the construction of gender was never far from debates about ritual propriety, desire, and even cosmic harmony. Competing Discourses maps the aesthetic and semantic meanings associated with gender in the Ming-Qing vernacular novel through close readings of five long narratives: Marriage Bonds to Awaken the World, Dream of the Red Chamber, A Country Codger's Words of Exposure, Flowers in the Mirror, and A Tale of Heroic Lovers. Epstein argues that the authors of these novels manipulated gendered terms to achieve structural coherence. These patterns are, however, frequently at odds with other gendered structures in the texts, and authors exploited these conflicts to discuss the problem of orthodox behavior versus the cult of feeling.

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The Sōushén hòujì 搜神後記 (Latter Notes on Collected Spirit Phenomena), attributed to the celebrated poet Táo Qián 陶潛 (365-427), is a compilation of anecdotes and stories known as zhìguài 志怪 ('records of the anomalous') that document strange and unusual phenomena the author observed in his lifetime. Intended to serve as a sequel to Gān Băo's 干寳 (d. 336) Sōushénjì 搜神記 (Collected Spirit Phenomena), the original text was lost but was reconstructed in the late Míng dynasty. This volume presents an annotated translation of the entire Míng version of the Sōushén hòujì as well as of an additional set of surviving stories that were identified and restored to the text by the modern scholar Lĭ Jiànguó 李劍國. The book also includes a history of the Sōushén hòujì text, an examination of its linguistic style and characteristics, a discussion of the historical nature of its contents and how it fits into the zhìguài genre, providing a window onto medieval Chinese society and culture, and a brief overview of recent zhìguài scholarship to guide readers who hope to continue their exploration of the genre.

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How can we account for the durability of subsistence farming in China despite six centuries of vigorous commercialization from 1350 to 1950 and three decades of collectivization between 1950 to 1980? Why did the Chinese rural economy not undergo the transformation predicted by the classical models of Adam Smith and Karl Marx? In attempting to answer this question, scholars have generally treated commercialization and collectivization as distinct from population increase, the other great rural change of the past six centuries. This book breaks new ground in arguing that in the Yangzi delta, China's most advanced agricultural region, population increase was what drove commercialization and collectivization, even as it was made possible by them. The processes at work, which the author terms involutionary commercialization and involutionary growth, entailed ever-increasing labor input per unit of land, resulting in expanded total output but diminishing marginal returns per workday. In the Ming-Qing period, involution usually meant a switch to more labor-intensive cash crops and low-return household sidelines. In post-revolutionary China, it typically meant greatly intensified crop production. Stagnant or declining returns per workday were absorbed first by the family production unit and then by the collective. The true significance of the 1980's reforms, the author argues, lies in the diversion of labour from farming to rural industries and profitable sidelines and the first increases for centuries in productivity and income per workday. With these changes have come a measure of rural prosperity and the genuine possibility of transformative rural development. By reconstructing Ming-Qing agricultural history and drawing on twentieth-century ethnographic data and his own field investigations, the author brings his large themes down to the level of individual peasant households. Like his acclaimed The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (1985), this study is noteworthy for both its empirical richness and its theoretical sweep, but it goes well beyond the earlier work in its inter-regional comparisons and its use of the pre- and post-1949 periods to illuminate each other.

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The last decades of the Ming dynasty, though plagued by chaos and destruction, saw a significant increase in publications that examined advances in knowledge and technology. Among the numerous guides and reference books that appeared during this period was a series of texts by Song Yingxing (1587-1666?), a minor local official living in southern China. His Tiangong kaiwu, the longest and most prominent of these works, documents the extraction and processing of raw materials and the manufacture of goods essential to everyday life, from yeast and wine to paper and ink to boats, carts, and firearms. In The Crafting of the 10,000 Things, Dagmar Schafer probes this fascinating text and the legacy of its author to shed new light on the development of scientific thinking in China, the purpose of technical writing, and its role in and effects on Chinese history.

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Eminent historian Patricia Crone defines the common features of a wide range of pre-industrial societies, from locations as seemingly disparate as the Mongol Empire and pre-Columbian America, to cultures as diverse as the Ming Dynasty and seventeenth-century France. In a lucid exploration of the characteristics shared by these societies, the author examines such key elements as economic organization, politics, culture, and the role of religion. An essential introductory text for all students of history, Pre-Industrial Societies provides readers with all the necessary tools for gaining a substantial understanding of life in pre-modern times. In addition, as a perceptive insight into a lost world, italso acts as a starting point for anyone interested in the present possibilities and future challenges faced by our own global society.

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Before Shanghai, there was Suzhou: a city of canals and commerce, gardens and scholars, the largest noncapital city on earth between 1400 and 1850. This book shows how, though Suzhou entered the Ming dynasty defeated and suspect, interactions between the imperial state and local elites gave rise to a network of markets that fostered high-quality local specialization. Population growth and economic expansion followed, as did the acceptance of conspicuous consumption, critical distance from the imperial state, and the dissolution of traditional barriers between scholar-officials and merchants. These developments shaped Suzhou’s artistic and literary creativity, and made possible the continued success of its sons in the imperial examinations. Thus political success, cultural creativity, and economic centrality, the author argues, enabled Suzhou not just to influence the region, but to reshape the empire.

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The work of the Japanese sculptor Toshimasa Kikuchi (born in 1979) is somehow bewilderingly obvious. Trained in the restoration of Buddhist statues, mastering to perfection the techniques of classical Japanese statuary, he carves pure forms in wood - geometric, hydrodynamic or figurative. His scientific repertory is of all time (mathematics, engineering, natural history), but his preferred materials and techniques are firmly grounded in tradition (Japanese hinoki cypress, urushi lacquer, kinpaku gold leaf). The installation he presents for his Carte Blanche at the musee Guimet in Paris, brings together a series of slender sculptures in lacquered wood of mathematical objects, in the tradition of the celebrated photographs that Man Ray took of them. These abstract forms, hanging from the ceiling like mobiles or laid on the floor like devotional objects, take shape through a virtuosity and craftsmanship seldom found in contemporary art. The book is lavishly illustrated by the Japanese photographer Tadayuki Minamoto, who was able to capture the magnificence of the mathematical abstraction of the works of Kikuchi; by photographs and paintings by Man Ray; and with fascinating mathematical objects from the Institut Henri Poincare, Paris, photographed by the French photographer Bertrand Michau. It is essential reading for lovers of surrealism and of the early years of twentieth-century abstraction as well as for all who are intrigued by the close relationship between art and mathematics.

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In this rare firsthand account of an individual's pursuit of sagehood, the early Ming dynasty scholar and teacher Wu Yubi chronicles his progress and his setbacks, as he strives to integrate the Neo-Confucian practices of self-examination and self-cultivation into everyday life. In more than three hundred entries, spanning much of his adult life, Wu paints a vivid picture, not only of the life of the mind, but also of the life of a teacher of modest means, struggling to make ends meet in a rural community.This volume features M. Theresa Kelleher's superb translation of Wu's journal, along with translations of more than a dozen letters from his personal correspondence. A general Introduction discusses Neo-Confucianism and the Ming dynasty, and includes biographical information that puts the main work in context. A substantial commentary on the journal discusses the obstacles and supports Wu encounters in pursuit of his goal, the conflict between discipline and restraint of the self and the nurturing and expanding of the self, Wu's successes and failures, and Wu’s role as a teacher.Also included are a map of the Ming dynasty, a pronunciation guide, a chronology of Chinese dynasties, a glossary of names, a glossary of book titles, and suggestions for further reading.

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In this rare firsthand account of an individual's pursuit of sagehood, the early Ming dynasty scholar and teacher Wu Yubi chronicles his progress and his setbacks, as he strives to integrate the Neo-Confucian practices of self-examination and self-cultivation into everyday life. In more than three hundred entries, spanning much of his adult life, Wu paints a vivid picture, not only of the life of the mind, but also of the life of a teacher of modest means, struggling to make ends meet in a rural community.This volume features M. Theresa Kelleher's superb translation of Wu's journal, along with translations of more than a dozen letters from his personal correspondence. A general Introduction discusses Neo-Confucianism and the Ming dynasty, and includes biographical information that puts the main work in context. A substantial commentary on the journal discusses the obstacles and supports Wu encounters in pursuit of his goal, the conflict between discipline and restraint of the self and the nurturing and expanding of the self, Wu's successes and failures, and Wu’s role as a teacher.Also included are a map of the Ming dynasty, a pronunciation guide, a chronology of Chinese dynasties, a glossary of names, a glossary of book titles, and suggestions for further reading.

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'A moving and extraordinary evocation of the 20th-century tragedy of China... Compelling' Guardian SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE In Canada in 1991, ten-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home. Ai- Ming has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests. As her relationship with Marie deepens, Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao's ascent to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. And she speaks of three musicians - the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, the violin prodigy Zhuli, and the enigmatic pianist Kai - who struggled during China's relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to. Their fates reverberate through the years, with deep and lasting consequences for Ai-Ming - and for Marie. Do Not Say We Have Nothing magnificently brings to life one of the most significant political regimes of the 20th century and its traumatic legacy. 'A magnificent epic of Chinese history, richly detailed and beautifully written' Kate Saunders, The Times

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'There is a theory that humans made lists before we invented writing. Adam Sharp's exquisitely arranged, addictively witty book of lists is the reasons why. He is the poet laureate of lists' John Mitchinson, Senior QI Elf'So much to disagree with in this book. And I mean that as a huge recommendation' Richard Osman'Very funny and highly addictive. Adam Sharp, you weird genius' Russell KaneA list of ways to start a conversation with a cat in different countries5. Pss-pss-pss (England)4. Kac-kac-kac (Lithuania)3. Pish-pish-pish (Iran)2. Ming-ming-ming (Philippines)1. Bellowing "What's new pussycat, whoa, oh whoa" (Wales)Are you feeling down in the dumps? Is the chaotic, disordered nature of modern existence freaking you out? Are you feeling...listless? Then this collection of fascinating, hilarious and brilliantly odd lists is the remedy you need. Packed full of incredible facts, from what people say instead of cheese when they're taking a photo in Bulgaria, to what a platypus is called in Mandarin, everything under the sun is here. In order.

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De massa call me and tell me, "Woman, I’s pay big money for you, and I’s done dat 'cause I wants you to raise me chillum. I’s put you to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn’t want whippin’ at de stake, you do what I wants." I thinks ‘bout Massa buyin’ me off de block and savin’ me from bein’ separated from my folks, and ‘bout bein’ whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I to do? So asks Rose Williams of Bell County, Texas, whose long-ago forced cohabitation remains as bitter at age 90 as when she was “just a ingnoramus chile” of 16. In all her years after freedom, she never had any desire to marry. Firsthand accounts of female slaves are few. The best-known narratives of slavery are those of Frederick Douglass and other men. Even the photos most people have seen are of male slaves chained and beaten. What we know of the lives of female slaves comes mainly from the fiction of authors like Toni Morrison and movies like Gone With the Wind. Far More Terrible for Women seeks to broaden the discussion by presenting 27 narratives of female ex-slaves. Editor Patrick Minges combed the WPA interviews of the 1930s for those of women, selecting a range of stories that give a taste of the unique challenges, complexities, and cruelties that were the lot of females under the “peculiar institution.” Patrick Minges worked for 17 years for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He teaches in Stokes County Schools and at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. He is also the author of Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867 and Black Indian Slave Narratives.

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The Tiandihui, also known as the Heaven and Earth Association or the Triads, was one of the earliest, largest, and most enduring of the Chinese secret societies that have played crucial roles at decisive junctures in modern Chinese history. These organizations were characterized by ceremonial rituals, often in the form of blood oaths, that brought people together for a common goal. Some were organized for clandestine, criminal, or even seditious purposes by people alienated from or at the margins of society. Others were organized for mutual protection or the administration of local activities by law-abiding members of a given community. The common perception in the twentieth century, both in China and in the West, was that the Tiandihui was founded by Chinese patriots in the seventeenth century for the purpose of overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty and restoring the Ming (Chinese). This view was put forward by Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries who claimed that, like the anti-Manchu founders of the Tiandihui, their goal was to strip the Manchus of their throne. The Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang) today claim the Tiandihui as part of their heritage. This book relates a very different history of the origins of the Tiandihui. Using Qing dynasty archives that were made available in both Beijing and Taipei during the last decades, the author shows that the Tiandihui was founded not as a political movement but as a mutual aid brotherhood in 1761, a century after the date given by traditional historiography. She contends that histories depicting Ming loyalism as the raison d'etre of the Tiandihui are based on internally generated sources and, in part, on the "Xi Lu Legend," a creation myth that tells of monks from the Shaolin Monastery aiding the emperor in fighting the Xi Lu barbarians. Because of its importance to the theories of Ming loyalist scholars and its impact on Tiandihui historiography as a whole, the author thoroughly investigates the legend, revealing it to be the product of later - not founding - generations of Tiandihui members and a tale with an evolution of its own. The seven extant versions of the legend itself appear in English translation as an appendix. This book thus accomplishes three things: it reviews and analyzes the extensive Tiandihui literature; it makes available to Western scholars information from archival materials heretofore seen only by a few Chinese specialists; and it firmly establishes an authoritative chronology of the Tiandihui's early history.

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The history of China, as any history, is a story of and in translation. Translating Early Modern China tells the story of translation in China to and from non-European languages and Latin between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and primarily in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Each chapter finds a particular translator resurrected from the past to tell the story of a text that helped shape the history of translation in China. In Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Latin, and more, these texts helped to make the Chinese language what it was at different points in its history. This volume explores what the form of an academic history book might look like by playing with fictioning as part of the historian's craft. The book's many stories—of glossaries and official Ming translation bureaus, of bilingual Ming Chinese-Mongolian language primers, of the first Latin grammar of Manchu, of a Qing Manchu conversation manual, of a collection of Manchu poems by a Qing translator—serve as case studies that open out into questions of language and translation in China's past, of the use of fiction as a historian's tool, and of the ways that translation creates language.

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*WINNER OF THE 2023 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR LESBIAN FICTION**A New York Times 100 Notable Book of 2022*'These stories glitter and pulse' Dantiel W. MontizIn her singular, electrifying style, K-Ming Chang peels back questions of body, power and identity, and the relationships of Asian American women, with vivid imagination.A stream of women adjust to American life by sneaking kisses from women at temple and buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests. Ghost-cousins cross space, seas and skies to haunt their living cousin. Two girls explore each other's bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark.Brimming with moths and mothers, nine-headed birds and storm-chasers, these queer, fabulist tales delve viscerally into myth and memory, corporeality and ghostliness, beauty and the grotesque.ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR in New York Times, NPR, Them and Book Riot, from the National Book Award '5 under 35' honoree and author of Bestiary.'Wild and lyrical, visionary and touching. Read her!' Sharlene Teo'A voracious, probing collection, proof of how exhilarating the short story can be' New York Times'Stunning and moving... One of our most brilliant authors' Bryan Washington

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This is the first anthology of Yuan-dynasty zaju (miscellaneous comedies) to introduce the genre to English-speaking readers exclusively through translations of the plays' fourteenth-century editions. Almost all previous translations of Yuan-dynasty zaju are based on late-Ming regularized editions that were heavily adapted for performance at the Ming imperial court and then extensively revised in the seventeenth century for the reading pleasure of Jiangnan literati. These early editions are based on leading actor scripts and contain arias, prose dialogue, and cue lines. They encompass a fascinating range of subject matter, from high political intrigue to commoner life and religious conversion. Crackling with raw emotion, violent imagery, and colorful language and wit, the zaju in this volume explore the consequences of loyalty and betrayal, ambition and enlightenment, and piety and drunkenness. The collection features seven of the twenty-six available untranslated zaju published in the fourteenth century, with a substantial introduction preceding each play and extensive annotations throughout. The editors also include translations of the Ming versions of four of the included plays and an essay that synthesizes recent Chinese and Japanese scholarship on the subject.

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Adapted into the Channel 4 documentary 'Sex: My British Job' by Nick Broomfield. Ming and Beata share neither the same language nor cultural background, yet their stories are remarkably similar. Both are single mothers in their thirties and both came to Britain in search of a new life: Ming from China and Beata from Poland. Neither imagined that their journey would end in a British brothel. In this chilling expose, investigative journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai works undercover as a housekeeper in a brothel and unveils the terrible reality of the British sex trade. Workers are trapped and controlled - the lack of freedoms this invisible strait of society suffers is both shocking and scandalous and at odds with the idea of a modern Britain in the twenty-first century.

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