Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
The Rise Of The Dragon Cluna
Download The Rise Of The Dragon Cluna full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Rise Of The Dragon Cluna ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis The Rise of the Dragon Cluna by : Daniel Wilks
Download or read book The Rise of the Dragon Cluna written by Daniel Wilks and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dying race of dragons makes a desperate overture to a human outcast to continue their kind; will the humans respect their ground or react in fear?
Download or read book Art in China written by Craig Clunas and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China can boast a history of art lasting 5,000 years and embracing a huge diversity of images and objects - jade tablets, painted silk handscrolls and fans, ink and lacquer painting, porcelain-ware, sculptures, and calligraphy. They range in scale from the vast 'terracotta army' with its 7,000or so life-size figures, to the exquisitely delicate writing of fourth-century masters such as Wang Xizhin and his teacher, 'Lady Wei'. But this rich tradition has not, until now, been fully appreciated in the West where scholars have focused their attention on sculpture, downplaying art more highlyprized by the Chinese themselves such as calligraphy. Art in China marks a breakthrough in the study of the subject. Drawing on recent innovative scholarship and on newly-accessible studies in China itself Craig Clunas surveys the full spectrum of the visual arts in China. He ranges from the Neolithic period to the art scene of the 1980s and 1990s,examining art in a variety of contexts as it has been designed for tombs, commissioned by rulers, displayed in temples, created for the men and women of the educated ilite, and bought and sold in the marketplace. Many of the objects illustrated in this book have previously been known only to a fewspecialists, and will be totally new to a general audience.
Book Synopsis The Rise of West Lake by : Xiaolin Duan
Download or read book The Rise of West Lake written by Xiaolin Duan and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lovely West Lake, near scenic Hangzhou on China’s east coast, has been celebrated as a major tourist site since the twelfth century. Now as then, visitors boat to its islands, stroll through its gardens, worship in its temples, and immortalize it in poetry and painting. Hangzhou and West Lake have long served as icons of Chinese landscape appreciation, literary and artistic expression, and tourism. In the first in-depth English-language study of this picturesque locale, Xiaolin Duan examines the interplay between human enterprise and the natural environment during the Song dynasty (960–1279). After the Song lost north China to the Jurchens and the imperial court fled south, a new capital was established at Hangzhou, making the area the national political and cultural center. West Lake became a model for idealized nature, fashioned by the diverse activities of its visitors. Duan shows how engagements in, on, and around West Lake influenced visitors’ conceptualization of nature and sparked the emergence of the lake as a tourist destination, highlighting how the natural landscape played a role in shaping social and cultural constructs. Incorporating evidence from miscellanies, local and temple gazetteers, paintings, maps, poems, and anecdotes, The Rise of West Lake explores the complexity of the lake as an interactive site where ecological and economic concerns contended and where spiritual pursuits overlapped with aesthetic ones.
Download or read book Knowing Manchuria written by Ruth Rogaski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making sense of nature in one of the world’s most contested borderlands. According to Chinese government reports, hundreds of plague-infected rodents fell from the skies over Gannan county on an April night in 1952. Chinese scientists determined that these flying voles were not native to the region, but were vectors of germ warfare, dispatched over the border by agents of imperialism. Mastery of biology had become a way to claim political mastery over a remote frontier. Beginning with this bizarre incident from the Korean War, Knowing Manchuria places the creation of knowledge about nature at the center of our understanding of a little-known but historically important Asian landscape. At the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia, Manchuria is known as a site of war and environmental extremes, where projects of political control intersected with projects designed to make sense of Manchuria’s multiple environments. Covering more than 500,000 square miles, Manchuria’s landscapes include temperate rainforests, deserts, prairies, cultivated plains, wetlands, and Siberian taiga. With analysis spanning the seventeenth century to the present day, Ruth Rogaski reveals how an array of historical actors—Chinese poets, Manchu shamans, Russian botanists, Korean mathematicians, Japanese bacteriologists, American paleontologists, and indigenous hunters—made sense of the Manchurian frontier. She uncovers how natural knowledge, and thus the nature of Manchuria itself, changed over time, from a sacred “land where the dragon arose” to a global epicenter of contagious disease; from a tragic “wasteland” to an abundant granary that nurtured the hope of a nation.
Download or read book China Imagined written by Gregory B. Lee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If 'China', as Lee argues, is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China. How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name 'China' was first used by 16th-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. 'China Imagined' is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state.
Book Synopsis What the Emperor Built by : Aurelia Campbell
Download or read book What the Emperor Built written by Aurelia Campbell and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor Built is the first book-length study devoted to the architectural projects of a single Chinese emperor. Focusing on the imperial palaces in Beijing, a Daoist architectural complex on Mount Wudang, and a Buddhist temple on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, Aurelia Campbell demonstrates how the siting, design, and use of Yongle’s palaces and temples helped cement his authority and legitimize his usurpation of power. Campbell offers insight into Yongle’s sense of empire—from the far-flung locations in which he built, to the distant regions from which he extracted construction materials, and to the use of tens of thousands of craftsmen and other laborers. Through his constructions, Yongle connected himself to the divine, interacted with his subjects, and extended imperial influence across space and time. Spanning issues of architectural design and construction technologies, this deft analysis reveals remarkable advancements in timber-frame construction and implements an art-historical approach to examine patronage, audience, and reception, situating the buildings within their larger historical and religious contexts.
Book Synopsis A History of the World in 100 Objects by : Neil MacGregor
Download or read book A History of the World in 100 Objects written by Neil MacGregor and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.
Book Synopsis Understanding the Chinese City by : Li Shiqiao
Download or read book Understanding the Chinese City written by Li Shiqiao and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book teaches us to read the contemporary Chinese city. Li Shiqiao deftly crafts a new theory of the Chinese city and the dynamics of urbanization by: exploring the rise of stories of labour, finance and their hierarchies examining how the Chinese city has been shaped by the figuration of the writing system analyzing the continuing importance of the family and its barriers of protection against real and imagined dangers demonstrating how actual structures bring into visual being the networks of safety in personal and family networks. Understanding the Chinese City elegantly traces a thread between ancient Chinese city formations and current urban organizations, revealing hidden continuities that show how instrumental the past has been in forming the present. Rather than becoming obstacles to change, ancient practices have become effective strategies of adaptation under radically new terms.
Book Synopsis Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Auction Market by : Anita Archer
Download or read book Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Auction Market written by Anita Archer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-04-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Auction Market charts the rapid emergence of a multi-million-dollar global market for Chinese Contemporary art by revealing the strategic activities of art world agents in promoting the work of ‘avant-garde’ Chinese artists to a Western audience.
Download or read book Chinese Style written by Sunamita Lim and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2006 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take the popular decorating concept of Feng Shui to a whole new level with authentic information on how to create a Chinese aesthetic. Learn how to alleviate clutter and increase the flow of chi, the universal life force; discover ways of integrating Chinese furniture and decorative arts to decorating styles; and stroll through a rich collection of images from homes, museums, and galleries.
Download or read book Ming China written by Craig Clunas and published by British Museum Research Public. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: his illustrated publication is the outcome of the conference 'Ming: Courts and Contacts 1400-1450' held October 9-October 11, 2014 and that accompanied the British Museum's major exhibition Ming: 50 years that changed China (September 2014-January 2015). The scope of the exhibition and conference focused on Ming dynasty China in the years 1400 to 1450.
Book Synopsis The Conservation of Cave 85 at the Mogao Grottoes, Dunhuang by : Neville Agnew
Download or read book The Conservation of Cave 85 at the Mogao Grottoes, Dunhuang written by Neville Agnew and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mogao Grottoes, a World Heritage Site in northwestern China, are located along the ancient caravan routes—collectively known as the Silk Road—that once linked China with the West. Founded by a Buddhist monk in the late fourth century, Mogao flourished over the following millennium, as monks, local rulers, and travelers commissioned hundreds of cave temples cut into a mile-long rock cliff and adorned them with vibrant murals. More than 490 decorated grottoes remain, containing thousands of sculptures and some 45,000 square meters of wall paintings, making Mogao one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. In 1997 the Getty Conservation Institute, which had been working with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989, began a case study using the Late–Tang dynasty Cave 85 to develop a methodology that would stabilize the deteriorating wall paintings. This abundantly illustrated volume is the definitive report on the project, which was completed in 2010.
Download or read book Modern China written by Xiaobing Li and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an indispensable resource for students, educators, businessmen, and officials investigating the transformative experience of modern China, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the culture, institutions, traditions, and international relations that have shaped today's China. In Modern China, author Xiaobing Li offers a resource far beyond a conventional encyclopedia, providing not only comprehensive coverage of Chinese civilization and traditions, but also addressing the values, issues, and critical views of China. As a result, readers will better understand the transformative experience of the most populous country in the world, and will grasp the complexity of the progress and problems behind the rise of China to a world superpower in less than 30 years. Written by an author who lived in China for three decades, this encyclopedia addresses 16 key topics regarding China, such as its geography, government, social classes and ethnicities, gender-based identities, arts, media, and food, each followed by roughly 250 short entries related to each topic. All the entries are placed within a broad sociopolitical and socioeconomic contextual framework. The format and writing consistency through the book reflects a Chinese perspective, and allows students to compare Chinese with Western and American views.
Book Synopsis The New Cultural Atlas of China by : Marshall Cavendish Corporation
Download or read book The New Cultural Atlas of China written by Marshall Cavendish Corporation and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2010 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and highly readable account of the world's oldest living civilization, exploring Chinese culture and society from the earliest times to the glories of the imperial age.
Book Synopsis Brush, Seal and Abacus by : Zhao Jie
Download or read book Brush, Seal and Abacus written by Zhao Jie and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the social and cultural change in Ming China's lower Yangzi delta region from about 1500 to 1644. It takes three social groups—literati, scholarofficials and merchants—as the framework for discussing the political, socioeconomic and cultural forces that coalesced and reinforced one another to influence and facilitate the region’s change. A still wider perspective reveals how the region’s political ties with the state and commercial links with external markets impacted the region for better and for worse. The book also discusses the literati's reflection and discourse, which their participation in the change generated, on the issues of morality, money, politics and disorder. The reader, when brought into the richly textured social and cultural life of Ming China's heartland, will foster an appreciation of what it was like for the region and its people to live in an age of commercial and cultural vigor, which then descended into distress and despair. For scholars and for others conversant with Chinese history, and Ming history in particular, the extensive use of literati sources and the references to contemporary scholarship will be of interest.
Book Synopsis The Gunpowder Age by : Tonio Andrade
Download or read book The Gunpowder Age written by Tonio Andrade and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A first look at gunpowder's revolutionary impact on China's role in global history The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers. By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.
Book Synopsis Changing Chinese Masculinities by : Kam Louie
Download or read book Changing Chinese Masculinities written by Kam Louie and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is now almost a cliché to claim that China and the Chinese people have changed. Yet inside the new clothing that is worn by the Chinese man today, Kam Louie contends, we still see much of the historical Chinese man. With contributions from a team of outstanding scholars, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesstudies a range of Chinese men in diverse and, most importantly, Chinese contexts. It explores the fundamental meaning of manhood in the Chinese setting and the very notion of an indigenous Chinese masculinity. In twelve chapters spanning the late imperial period to the present day, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesbrings a much needed historical dimension to the discussion. Key aspects defining the male identity such as family relationships and attitudes toward sex, class, and career are explored in depth. Familiar notions of Chinese manhood come in all shapes and sizes. Concubinage reemerges as the taking of “second wives” in recent decades. Male homoerotic love and male prostitution are shown to have long historical roots. The self-images of the literati and officials form an interesting contrast with those of the contemporary white-collar men. Masculinity and nationalism complement each other in troubling ways. China has indeed changed and is still changing, but most of these social transformations do not indicate a complete break with past beliefs or practices in gender relations. Changing Chinese Masculinities inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Transnational Asian Masculinities.” “Produced by a group of outstanding scholars, this volume offers important insights into little-known aspects of Chinese masculinity. An indispensable reference for those with an interest in Chinese sexuality, social history, and contemporary Chinese culture.” —Anne McLaren, professor of Chinese studies, University of Melbourne “In this book, scholars of late imperial and contemporary China gather to define and critique masculinity in both periods, explore its complexities, and map continuities and discontinuities. What are the traditional models and to what degree do they still maintain a grip today? Is there a ‘masculinity crisis’ in China, and what does it mean to be a Chinese man today? These are some of the daring topics the authors explore.” —Keith McMahon, professor of Chinese language and literature, University of Kansas
