Columbia University Oriental Studies

Download Columbia University Oriental Studies full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Columbia University Oriental Studies ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Oriental Languages and Civilizations

Author : Barbara Michalak-Pikulska
Publisher : Wydawnictwo UJ
ISBN 13 : 832337127X
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (233 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Oriental Languages and Civilizations by : Barbara Michalak-Pikulska

Download or read book Oriental Languages and Civilizations written by Barbara Michalak-Pikulska and published by Wydawnictwo UJ. This book was released on 2020-10-19 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume consists of six parts devoted to literature, languages, history, culture, science, religions and philosophy of the Eastern World. Its aim is to portray the present-day state of oriental studies, which are here understood predominantly as philologies of Asia and Africa, but also as a field of study including other, adjacent disciplines of the humanities, not neglecting the history of oriental research. The book’s multidisciplinary content reflects the multi- and often interdisciplinary nature of oriental studies today. Part 1 (Literature) offers new insights into belles-lettres written in Arabic, Hindi, Turkish, Urdu, Persian and Japanese. Part 2 (Linguistics) contains studies on Sanskrit texts (in a stylometric approach), Japanese nominals, Japanese poetry as a linguistic source, Arabic translations of the Bible, Arabic dialect of Morocco, Arabic culinary terms of Persian origin and Turkish vocabulary of the language reform era. Part 3 (History) investigates Napoleon’s campaign in the Middle East, Middle Eastern-Russian relations in the 18th century, the history of Seljuk Empire and the works of a Moroccan historian, Ǧaʿfar Ibn Aḥmad an-Nāṣīrī as-Salawī. Part 4 (Historyof Oriental Studies) deals with the history of oriental studies in Kraków and with the problems of a critical edition of the Quran. Part 5 (Culture and Science) examines the artistic achievements of Egyptian moviemaker Yūsuf Šahīn and possible influence of the Muslim science on medieval Polish scholars. Part 6 (Religion and Philosophy) explores some philosophical concepts of the Confucian ethics and the contribution of Karīma Bint Aḥmad Al-Marwaziyya to preservation and transmission of some religious traditions of Islam.

Photo Poetics

Author : Shengqing Wu
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231549717
Total Pages : 650 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Photo Poetics by : Shengqing Wu

Download or read book Photo Poetics written by Shengqing Wu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese poetry has a long history of interaction with the visual arts. Classical aesthetic thought held that painting, calligraphy, and poetry were cross-fertilizing and mutually enriching. What happened when the Chinese poetic tradition encountered photography, a transformative technology and presumably realistic medium that reshaped seeing and representing the world? Shengqing Wu explores how the new medium of photography was transformed by Chinese aesthetic culture. She details the complex negotiations between poetry and photography in the late Qing and early Republican eras, examining the ways traditional textual forms collaborated with the new visual culture. Drawing on extensive archival research into illustrated magazines, poetry collections, and vintage photographs, Photo Poetics analyzes a wide range of practices and genres, including self-representation in portrait photography; gifts of inscribed photographs; mass-media circulation of images of beautiful women; and photography of ghosts, immortals, and imagined landscapes. Wu argues that the Chinese lyrical tradition provided rich resources for artistic creativity, self-expression, and embodied experience in the face of an increasingly technological and image-oriented society. An interdisciplinary study spanning literary studies, visual culture, and media history, Photo Poetics is an original account of media culture in early twentieth-century China and the formation of Chinese literary and visual modernities.

Beyond the Book

Author : Jidong Yang
Publisher : Association for Asian Studies
ISBN 13 : 9780924304972
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (49 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Beyond the Book by : Jidong Yang

Download or read book Beyond the Book written by Jidong Yang and published by Association for Asian Studies. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Book is the first book dedicated to studies of rare East Asian materials collected by individuals and institutions in North America. It sheds new light on the two centuries of cultural exchanges between East Asia and North America and provides fresh clues for East Asian studies scholars in their hunt for raw research materials.

Columbia University Oriental Studies

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Columbia University Oriental Studies by :

Download or read book Columbia University Oriental Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Oriental Studies

Author : Columbia University. New York, NY.
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (31 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Oriental Studies by : Columbia University. New York, NY.

Download or read book Oriental Studies written by Columbia University. New York, NY. and published by . This book was released on 19?? with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

China

Author : Cho-yun Hsu
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231528183
Total Pages : 633 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis China by : Cho-yun Hsu

Download or read book China written by Cho-yun Hsu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An internationally recognized authority on Chinese history and a leading innovator in its telling, Cho-yun Hsu constructs an original portrait of Chinese culture. Unlike most historians, Hsu resists centering his narrative on China's political evolution, focusing instead on the country's cultural sphere and its encounters with successive waves of globalization. Beginning long before China's written history and extending through the twentieth century, Hsu follows the content and expansion of Chinese culture, describing the daily lives of commoners, their spiritual beliefs and practices, the changing character of their social and popular thought, and their advances in material culture and technology. In addition to listing the achievements of emperors, generals, ministers, and sages, Hsu builds detailed accounts of these events and their everyday implications. Dynastic change, the rise and fall of national ambitions, and the growth and decline of institutional systems take on new significance through Hsu's careful research, which captures the multiple strands that gave rise to China's pluralistic society. Paying particular attention to influential relationships occurring outside of Chinese cultural boundaries, he demonstrates the impact of foreign influences on Chinese culture and identity and identifies similarities between China's cultural developments and those of other nations.

Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture

Author : John S. Bowman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231500041
Total Pages : 774 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture by : John S. Bowman

Download or read book Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture written by John S. Bowman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-05 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing more information on Asian culture than any other English-language reference work, Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture is the first of its kind: a set of more than thirty chronologies for all the countries of Asia—East, South, Southeast, and Central—from the Paleolithic era through 1998. Each entry is clearly dated and, unlike most chronologies found in standard history texts, the entries are complete and detailed enough to provide virtually a sequential history of the vast and rich span of Asian cultures. The contributing writers and editors have ensured the book's usefulness to general readers by identifying individuals and groups, locating places and regions, explaining events and movements, and defining unfamiliar words and concepts. The thirty-two chronologies on individual countries, in conjunction with a detailed index, allow readers to find specific information quickly and efficiently, whether they seek the date for the invention of the iron plow or gunpowder, the fall of the Han Dynasty in China, or Ho Chi Minh's declarations of Vietnamese independence. This invaluable reference culminates with three appendices: "National/Independence Days," "Scientific-Technological Achievements in Asia," and "Asia: A Chronological Overview," which provides an accessible summary of key events and developments in various fields of activity throughout the continent. The Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture features: three discrete chronologies on (1) Politics/History, (2) Art/Culture/Religion, and (3) Science/Economics/Everyday Life for each of Asia's three major cultures—China, India, and Japan—as well as a combined chronology for each of the other nations; detailed entries of thousands of historical events as well as important milestones in religion, philosophy, literature, and the arts; entries on technological developments and natural events (famines, floods, etc.) affecting the lives of ordinary people; and authoritative and accessibly written entries by a team of Asian scholars from Columbia, Harvard, and other major research universities. Beyond its detailed accounting of Asia's political history, Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture also gives full recognition to religious, intellectual, artistic, and general cultural achievements, as well as to scientific, technological, industrial, agricultural, and economic developments. Concise yet complete, it will stand as an indispensable reference work in the field of Asian studies.

Teaching about Asia in a Time of Pandemic

Author : David Kenley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781952636196
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (361 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Teaching about Asia in a Time of Pandemic by : David Kenley

Download or read book Teaching about Asia in a Time of Pandemic written by David Kenley and published by . This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic presents many lessons learned by educators during the COVID-19 outbreak. The volume consists of two sections, one discussing how to teach using examples and case studies emerging from the pandemic and the other focusing on pedagogical tools and methods beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom.

Sinophone Studies

Author : Shu-mei Shih
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231527101
Total Pages : 473 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Sinophone Studies by : Shu-mei Shih

Download or read book Sinophone Studies written by Shu-mei Shih and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive anthology casts Sinophone studies as the study of Sinitic-language cultures born of colonial and postcolonial influences. Essays by such authors as Rey Chow, Ha Jin, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Ien Ang, Wei-ming Tu, and David Wang address debates concerning the nature of Chineseness while introducing readers to essential readings in Tibetan, Malaysian, Taiwanese, French, Caribbean, and American Sinophone literatures. By placing Sinophone cultures at the crossroads of multiple empires, this anthology richly demonstrates the transformative power of multiculturalism and multilingualism, and by examining the place-based cultural and social practices of Sinitic-language communities in their historical contexts beyond "China proper," it effectively refutes the diasporic framework. It is an invaluable companion for courses in Asian, postcolonial, empire, and ethnic studies, as well as world and comparative literature.

Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics

Author : Wm. Theodore De Bary
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231153961
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics by : Wm. Theodore De Bary

Download or read book Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics written by Wm. Theodore De Bary and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics is an essential, all-access guide to the core texts of East Asian civilization and culture. Essays address frequently read, foundational texts in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, as well as early modern fictional classics and nonfiction works of the seventeenth century. Building strong links between these writings and the critical traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, this volume shows the vital role of the classics in the shaping of Asian history and in the development of the humanities at large. Wm. Theodore de Bary focuses on texts that have survived for centuries, if not millennia, through avid questioning and contestation. Recognized as perennial reflections on life and society, these works represent diverse historical periods and cultures and include the Analects of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Xunxi, the Lotus Sutra, Tang poetry, the Pillow Book, The Tale of Genji, and the writings of Chikamatsu and Kaibara Ekken. Contributors explain the core and most commonly understood aspects of these works and how they operate within their traditions. They trace their reach and reinvention throughout history and their ongoing relevance in modern life. With fresh interpretations of familiar readings, these essays inspire renewed appreciation and examination. In the case of some classics open to multiple interpretations, de Bary chooses two complementary essays from different contributors. Expanding on debates concerning the challenges of teaching classics in the twenty-first century, several pieces speak to the value of Asia in the core curriculum. Indispensable for early scholarship on Asia and the evolution of global civilization, Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics helps one master the major texts of human thought.

The Columbia History of Chinese Literature

Author : Victor H. Mair
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231528515
Total Pages : 1369 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Columbia History of Chinese Literature by : Victor H. Mair

Download or read book The Columbia History of Chinese Literature written by Victor H. Mair and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 1369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Columbia History of Chinese Literature is a comprehensive yet portable guide to China's vast literary traditions. Stretching from earliest times to the present, the text features original contributions by leading specialists working in all genres and periods. Chapters cover poetry, prose, fiction, and drama, and consider such contextual subjects as popular culture, the impact of religion, the role of women, and China's relationship with non-Sinitic languages and peoples. Opening with a major section on the linguistic and intellectual foundations of Chinese literature, the anthology traces the development of forms and movements over time, along with critical trends, and pays particular attention to the premodern canon.

Internationalist Aesthetics

Author : Edward Tyerman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023155298X
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Internationalist Aesthetics by : Edward Tyerman

Download or read book Internationalist Aesthetics written by Edward Tyerman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2022 AATSEEL Best Book in Literary Studies, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and European Languages Honorable Mention, 2022 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association Following the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice. Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.

China's Hegemony

Author : Ji-young Lee
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231542178
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis China's Hegemony by : Ji-young Lee

Download or read book China's Hegemony written by Ji-young Lee and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many have viewed the tribute system as China's tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia's past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders' strategies for legitimacy among their populations. This book demonstrates that Chinese hegemony and hierarchy were not just an outcome of China's military power or Confucian culture but were constructed while interacting with other, less powerful actors' domestic political needs, especially in conjunction with internal power struggles. Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century. By exploring these questions, Lee's in-depth study speaks directly to general international relations literature and concludes that hegemony in Asia was a domestic, as well as an international phenomenon with profound implications for the contemporary era.

Restating Orientalism

Author : Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231547382
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Restating Orientalism by : Wael B. Hallaq

Download or read book Restating Orientalism written by Wael B. Hallaq and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Edward Said’s foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals’ collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines? In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.

C.T. Hsia on Chinese Literature

Author : Chih-tsing Hsia
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231129904
Total Pages : 551 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis C.T. Hsia on Chinese Literature by : Chih-tsing Hsia

Download or read book C.T. Hsia on Chinese Literature written by Chih-tsing Hsia and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for the groundbreaking works A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1961) and The Classic Chinese Novel (1968), C. T. Hsia has gathered sixteen essays and studies written during his Columbia years as a professor of Chinese literature. Wider in range and scope, C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature stands beside his two earlier books as part of his critical legacy to all readers seriously interested in the subject. C. T. Hsia's writings on Chinese literature express a candor rare among his Western colleagues. Thus the first section of the book contains three essays that place Chinese literature in critical perspective, examining its substance and significance and questioning some of the critical approaches and methods adopted by Western sinologists for its study and appreciation. The second section has two essays on traditional drama--one on the Yuan masterpiece The Romance of the Western Chamber and the other a sophisticated study of the plays of the foremost Ming dramatist T'ang Hsien-tsu. The third section is the richest and longest of the book, containing six essays on traditional and early modern fiction. At least four of these--on "The Military Romance" and the novels Flowers in the Mirror, The Travels of Lao Ts'an, and Jade Pear Spirit--are among the author's finest works. Finally, the fourth section of the book, covering modern fiction, includes one essay on the novel The Korchin Banner Plains, an essay on women in Chinese communist fiction, and three concise yet illuminating studies of the short story during the three republican decades before Mao, the first dozen years under Mao, and in Taiwan during the 1960s.

Reading The Tale of Genji

Author : Thomas Harper
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231537204
Total Pages : 633 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Reading The Tale of Genji by : Thomas Harper

Download or read book Reading The Tale of Genji written by Thomas Harper and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tale of Genji, written one thousand years ago, is a masterpiece of Japanese literature, is often regarded as the best prose fiction in the language. Read, commented on, and reimagined by poets, scholars, dramatists, artists, and novelists, the tale has left a legacy as rich and reflective as the work itself. This sourcebook is the most comprehensive record of the reception of The Tale of Genji to date. It presents a range of landmark texts relating to the work during its first millennium, almost all of which are translated into English for the first time. An introduction prefaces each set of documents, situating them within the tradition of Japanese literature and cultural history. These texts provide a fascinating glimpse into Japanese views of literature, poetry, imperial politics, and the place of art and women in society. Selections include an imagined conversation among court ladies gossiping about their favorite characters and scenes in Genji; learned exegetical commentary; a vigorous debate over the morality of Genji; and an impassioned defense of Genji's ability to enhance Japan's standing among the twentieth century's community of nations. Taken together, these documents reflect Japan's fraught history with vernacular texts, particularly those written by women.

The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature

Author : Victor H. Mair
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231153120
Total Pages : 662 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature by : Victor H. Mair

Download or read book The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature written by Victor H. Mair and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, two of the world's leading sinologists, Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender, capture the breadth of China's oral-based literary heritage. This collection presents works drawn from the large body of oral literature of many of China's recognized ethnic groups--including the Han, Yi, Miao, Tu, Daur, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Kazak--and the selections include a variety of genres. Chapters cover folk stories, songs, rituals, and drama, as well as epic traditions and professional storytelling, and feature both familiar and little-known texts, from the story of the woman warrior Hua Mulan to the love stories of urban storytellers in the Yangtze delta, the shaman rituals of the Manchu, and a trickster tale of the Daur people from the forests of the northeast. The Cannibal Grandmother of the Yi and other strange creatures and characters unsettle accepted notions of Chinese fable and literary form. Readers are introduced to antiphonal songs of the Zhuang and the Dong, who live among the fantastic limestone hills of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; work and matchmaking songs of the mountain-dwelling She of Fujian province; and saltwater songs of the Cantonese-speaking boat people of Hong Kong. The editors feature the Mongolian epic poems of Geser Khan and Jangar; the sad tale of the Qeo family girl, from the Tu people of Gansu and Qinghai provinces; and local plays known as "rice sprouts" from Hebei province. These fascinating juxtapositions invite comparisons among cultures, styles, and genres, and expert translations preserve the individual character of each thrillingly imaginative work.