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Old Peking
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Download or read book Peking Story written by David Kidd and published by Eland Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting and delicately observed description of the last days of Mandarin culture before the revolution, 'Peking Story' is a testimony to a way of life, a culture, an aesthetic and a civilisation which has since completely disappeared.
Book Synopsis A Photographer in Old Peking by : Hedda Morrison
Download or read book A Photographer in Old Peking written by Hedda Morrison and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1985 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peking is one of the great cities of the world and one of the most fascinating. It has changed so radically in the past thirty years that the city's fabulous past is in danger of being lost to memory. This memoir of Peking from 1933 to 1946, compiled by one of the finest photographers who has ever worked in Asia, is thus a significant document and will be of interest not only to longstanding China-watchers but also to the many tourists who have been privileged to visit Peking in the decade since the city has again been opened to the West. The photographs provide a unique insight into life in Peking in the years preceeding the Communist revolution of 1949. The photographer, Hedda Morrison, left Nazi Germany in 1933 to manage a German-owned photographic studio in Peking. Her sympathetic approach to her subject is manifested in the large number of photographs showing Chinese people from all walks of life at work and enjoying their leisure. Architectural studies provide valuable evidence of buildings and monuments that have since changed or disappeared, and photographs taken beyond Peking and in the Western Hills convey the beauty of the north China landscape.
Download or read book Midnight in Peking written by Paul French and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger from the author of City of Devils Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.
Download or read book Peking Story written by David Kidd and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two years before and after the 1948 Communist Revolution, David Kidd lived in Peking, where he married the daughter of an aristocratic Chinese family. "I used to hope," he writes, "that some bright young scholar on a research grant would write about us and our Chinese friends before it was too late and we were all dead and gone, folding into the darkness the wonder that had been our lives." Here Kidd himself brings that wonder to life.
Download or read book Old Madam Yin written by Ida Pruitt and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of the classic A Daughter of Han, this is an affectionate, revealing portrait of an old, wealthy widow and her family in the Peking of the 1920s and early 1930s. Through the daily life and the memories of shrewd, forthright Lao Tai-tai, we are given an intimate glimpse into centuries-old way of life that was fast coming to an end. We explore the inner workings of an upper-class urban family: the relations between husbands wives and between wives and concubines, the interactions among brothers, the activities and family concerns of a widowed matriarch, and more generally the role of women in such a family. We go behind the high walls surrounding the family compound, and see how the houses, gardens, and courtyards are constructed according to precise rules derived from religious and aesthetic beliefs, and how the layouts of the rooms are closely related to their occupants' status and role in the family. We learn the enormous importance to the Chinese of protocol, etiquette, and reciprocal obligation, and we learn also of Peking's pleasures--traveling in rickshaws, eating in restaurants, visiting parks. Above all, the book captures the essence of prewar Chinese cultural and social values in the busy life and strong, complex personality of the memorable Lao Tai-tai.
Book Synopsis In Search of Old Peking by : L. C. Arlington
Download or read book In Search of Old Peking written by L. C. Arlington and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Search of Old Peking isportrait of one of the world's great cities in the 1930's and a lament for the end of a unique era. First published in 1935, this book was regarded as the standard guide to Peking. It remains astonishingly evocative today, for residents and visitors alike.
Book Synopsis Tales of Old Peking by : Derek Sandhaus
Download or read book Tales of Old Peking written by Derek Sandhaus and published by Tales. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forbidden city for Westerners for hundreds of years, China's capital has always been viewed as one of the world's most mysterious cities. This book re-creates a sense of old Peking through a pastiche of historical snippets--stories, quotations, cartoons, postcards and drawings--and shares intriguing tidbits about the Imperial Court. Placing Peking in the context of the Boxer Rebellion, when two very different yet equally headstrong cultures clashed, this is a valuable source for those interested in Chinese history.
Book Synopsis City of Lingering Splendor by : John Blofeld
Download or read book City of Lingering Splendor written by John Blofeld and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.
Book Synopsis The Last Days of Old Beijing by : Michael Meyer
Download or read book The Last Days of Old Beijing written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist Michael Meyer has spent his adult life in China, first in a small village as a Peace Corps volunteer, the last decade in Beijing--where he has witnessed the extraordinary transformation the country has experienced in that time. For the past two years he has been completely immersed in the ancient city, living on one of its famed hutong in a century-old courtyard home he shares with several families, teaching English at a local elementary school--while all around him "progress" closes in as the neighborhood is methodically destroyed to make way for high-rise buildings, shopping malls, and other symbols of modern, urban life. The city, he shows, has been demolished many times before; however, he writes, "the epitaph for Beijing will read: born 1280, died 2008...what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn't eradicate, the market economy can." The Last Days of Old Beijing tells the story of this historic city from the inside out-through the eyes of those whose lives are in the balance: the Widow who takes care of Meyer; his students and fellow teachers, the first-ever description of what goes on in a Chinese public school; the local historian who rallies against the government. The tension of preservation vs. modernization--the question of what, in an ancient civilization, counts as heritage, and what happens when a billion people want to live the way Americans do--suffuse Meyer's story.
Download or read book Peking written by Susan Naquin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-01-15 with total page 862 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central character in Susan Naquin's extraordinary new book is the city of Peking during the Ming and Qing periods. Using the city's temples as her point of entry, Naquin carefully excavates Peking's varied public arenas, the city's transformation over five centuries, its human engagements, and its rich cultural imprint. This study shows how modern Beijing's glittering image as China's great and ancient capital came into being and reveals the shifting identities of a much more complex past, one whose rich social and cultural history Naquin splendidly evokes. Temples, by providing a place where diverse groups could gather without the imprimatur of family or state, made possible a surprising assortment of community-building and identity-defining activities. By revealing how religious establishments of all kinds were used for fairs, markets, charity, tourism, politics, and leisured sociability, Naquin shows their decisive impact on Peking and, at the same time, illuminates their little-appreciated role in Chinese cities generally. Lacking most of the conventional sources for urban history, she has relied particularly on a trove of commemorative inscriptions that express ideas about the relationship between human beings and gods, about community service and public responsibility, about remembering and being remembered. The result is a book that will be essential reading in the field of Chinese studies for years to come.
Book Synopsis City of Heavenly Tranquility by : Jasper Becker
Download or read book City of Heavenly Tranquility written by Jasper Becker and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling, eye-opening account of a fascinating and decisive moment in Chinese history, packed with evocative stories. Jasper Becker tells the story of why and how China's leaders set about to destroy and rebuild one of the world's greatest cities and how many of the residents tried to stop it and protect their great architectural legacy.
Book Synopsis Good-bye to Old Peking by : John Seymour Letcher
Download or read book Good-bye to Old Peking written by John Seymour Letcher and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: But Captain Letcher also witnessed the trauma of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. He saw Chinese troops who had been slaughtered by Japanese invaders and the imperial city occupied. And he relates the stirring story of the Chinese guerrillas rebounding from devastating defeat to a position of control over much of the countryside in North China.
Download or read book Moment in Peking written by Yutang Lin and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China by : Emily Mokros
Download or read book The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China written by Emily Mokros and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China experienced far greater access to political information than suggested by the blunt measures of control and censorship employed by modern Chinese regimes. A tenuous partnership between the court and the dynamic commercial publishing enterprises of late imperial China enabled the publication of gazettes in a wide range of print and manuscript formats. For both domestic and foreign readers these official gazettes offered vital information about the Qing state and its activities, transmitting state news across a vast empire and beyond. And the most essential window onto Qing politics was the Peking Gazette, a genre that circulated globally over the course of the dynasty. This illuminating study presents a comprehensive history of the Peking Gazette and frames it as the cornerstone of a Qing information policy that, paradoxically, prized both transparency and secrecy. Gazettes gave readers a glimpse into the state’s inner workings but also served as a carefully curated form of public relations. Historian Emily Mokros draws from international archives to reconstruct who read the gazette and how they used it to guide their interactions with the Chinese state. Her research into the Peking Gazette’s evolution over more than two centuries is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between media, information, and state power.
Download or read book The Badlands written by Paul French and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More tales of intrigue in Old Peking from bestselling author Paul French Through portraits of eight residents of Peking’s infamous Badlands district, Paul French brings the area and 1930s Peking vividly to life. A small warren of narrow hutongs, the Badlands sat just inside the eastern flank of the Tartar Wall, which at that time enclosed the old Imperial City of Peking. Its habitués were a mix of the good, the bad and the poor unfortunates, among them the fiery brothel madams Brana Shazker and Rosie Gerbert; the pimp Saxsen, who had no regard for the women he exploited; the young prostitutes Marie and Peggy, whose dreadful working lives drove them to madness and addiction. There was the cabaret dancer Tatiana Korovina, a White Russian girl who did not succumb to the vice of the district but instead married, had a family, and eventually left China to lead a long and happy life. There was the American Joe Knauf, who dealt violence and fear as well as drugs, and finally the enigmatic Shura Giraldi, of indeterminate sex, who was to some a charmer and to others a master criminal, but to everyone the uncrowned King of the Badlands. Paul French first discovered the Badlands while researching his bestselling Midnight in Peking. As the book was published in China, Australia, America, and the UK, the families and acquaintances of the people he had written about contacted him from around the globe, adding stories and recollections to his own research. The result is this short but potent portrait of a time and place now lost to history, here vividly brought to life.
Download or read book The Badlands written by Paul French and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Badlands by Paul French - a gripping criminal portrait of pre-communist Peking, from the interntional bestselling author of Midnight in Peking The Badlands, a warren of narrow hutongs in the eastern district of pre-communist Peking, had its heyday in the 1930s. Home to the city's drifters, misfits and the odd bohemian, it was a place of opium dens, divebars, brothels, flophouses and cabarets, and was infamous for its ability to satisfy every human desire from the exotically entertaining to the criminally depraved. These vignettes of eight non-Chinese residents of the precinct White Russians, Americans and Europeans bring the Badlands vividly back to life, providing a short but potent account of a place and a way of life until now largely forgotten, but here rendered unforgettable. Praise for Midnight in Peking: 'An instant true crime classic. Grips from the first page to the last' David Peace, author of Red Riding and The Damned United 'Fascinating and irresistible. I couldn't put it down' John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 'Written in the style of a gripping murder mystery, but all the facts are true' Kirsty Lang, BBC Radio 4 (Book of the Week) 'Engrossing true crime whodunnit... A terrific read' Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times Born in London, Paul French has lived in China for more than 10 years. He is a widely published analyst and commentator on China; his books include a history of North Korea, a biography of Shanghai adman and adventurer Carl Crow, and a history of foreign correspondents in China.
Book Synopsis A Death in Peking by : Graeme Sheppard
Download or read book A Death in Peking written by Graeme Sheppard and published by Earnshaw Books Limited. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brutal murder of 19-year-old Pamela Werner in the city of Peking one night in January 1937 shocked the world, but the police never found or named the murderer. A best-selling book, Midnight in Peking, declared the murderer to be an American dentist, but English policeman Graeme Sheppard, 30 years with Scotland Yard, decided that conclusion was flawed, spent years investigating all aspects of the case and came up with an entirely different conclusion. So who did it? Who killed Pamela? This book provides never-revealed evidence and a different perpetrator.
