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The multiple Chinese migrations from southeastern China to Southeast Asia have had important implications for both regions. In Southeast Asia this influence can be seen in the architecturally eclectic homes these migrants and their descendants built as they became successful; homes that combined Chinese, European and local influences, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia strives not only to be an informative but also an authoritative bo...

William M. Leary Jr.'s study combines history with personal drama to reconstruct an important chapter in the early years of aviation. He has conducted intensive research in American governmental archives, the Hoover Institution, and numerous libraries throughout the United States, in addition to obtaining access to the records of Pan American Airways (who bought out CNAC in 1933). His history of CNAC offers insights into the history of modern China and sheds light on several key aspects of Sino-...

"A wonderful job! So lucid, beautfully written, with great range and insight. This will set a new standard for short general histories of China." --Michael Gasster, professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University Newly updated and revised, China: Its History and Culture, Fourth Edition, incorporates the crucial social and economic changes that have taken place in China over the last decade. Through rich detail and engaging illustrations, the book traces China's history from Neolithic times t...

The May Fourth Movement, which began in 1919, was a time of nationalist and revolutionary activism and intellectual ferment in China which can be likened to the 1960s in the United States. Anarchism was the predominant revolutionary ideology; Marxism was virtually unknown. Yet by 1921 the Communist Party of China had emerged as the unchallenged leader of the Left. This book offers a new explanation of this development using documents previously unavailable in China but released since the death o...

The Xiaodao lun (Laughing at the Dao) is an important document of the debates among Buddhists and Daoists in sixth-century China. These debates contributed to the process of cultural adaptation of Buddhism, which had to accommodate itself to the worldview of the Confucian elite, the Chinese sense of ethnic superiority, and China's indigenous religion of Daoism. Written by the Daoist renegade Zhen Luan in the year 570, the text aims to expose inconsistencies in Daoist doctrine, cosmology, ritual,...

Published now for the first time, the controversial memoir of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, Decadence Mandchoue, provides a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality. Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1976 bestseller Hermit of Peking, which accused Backhouse of fraudulence and forgery. This work, written shortly before the author's death in 1943, was dismissed by Tre...

One Belt, One Road is China's bold plan to remake the global economy. It's an ambitious strategy with a $2 trillion - and rising - budget. The objective? To challenge the existing economic and political world order. One Road, Many Dreams reveals the true extent of China's ambition, analyses the impact of the One Belt, One Road initiative and assesses its chances of success and failure. This is the Asian century and China has a plan - to remake the world economy. Under its audacious One Belt...

Many of the millions of workers streaming in from rural China to jobs at urban factories soon find themselves in new kinds of poverty and oppression. Yet, their individual experiences are far more nuanced than popular narratives might suggest. Rural Origins, City Lives probes long-held assumptions about migrant workers in China. Drawing on fieldwork in Nanjing, Roberta Zavoretti argues that many rural-born urban-dwellers are—contrary to state policy and media portrayals—diverse in their employme...

Using a synthetic narrative approach, this ambitious work uses the lens of multipolarity to analyse Tang China's (618-907) relations with Turkestan; the Korean states of Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche; the state of Parhae in Manchuria; and the Nanzhao and Tibetan kingdoms. Without any one entity able to dominate Asia's geopolitical landscape, the author argues that relations among these countries were quite fluid and dynamic-an interpretation that departs markedly from the prevalent view of China f...

The figure of Dai Zhen (1724–1777) looms large in modern Chinese intellectual history. Dai was a mathematical astronomer and influential polymath who, along with like-minded scholars, sought to balance understandings of science, technology, and history within the framework of classical Chinese writings. Exploring ideas in fields as broad-ranging as astronomy, geography, governance, phonology, and etymology, Dai grappled with Western ideas and philosophies, including Jesuit conceptions of cosmolo...

Social network are nowadays inherent parts of our lives and highly developed communication technique helps us maintain our relationships. But how did it work in the early 19th century, in a time without cell phones and internet? A Chinese Hong Merchant in Canton Trade named Houqua (1769-1843), who lived in isolated Qing China, gives us an outstanding answer. Despite various barriers in cultures, languages, political situations and his identity as a Chinese merchant strictly under control of the...