Chinese Funerary Biographies

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780295746418
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (464 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Funerary Biographies by : Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Download or read book Chinese Funerary Biographies written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tens of thousands of epitaphs or funerary biographies survive from imperial China. Written to be engraved on stone and placed in a grave, they typically focus on the deceased's biographical information and exemplary words and deeds, expressing survivors' longing for the dead. Epitaphs provide glimpses of the lives of people who are not well-documented in such sources as the dynastic histories and local gazetteers: women, men who did not leave a mark politically, and children. This anthology makes available a set of funerary biographies covering nearly two thousand years of history, from the Han dynasty through the nineteenth century, selected for their potential as teaching material for courses on Chinese history, literature, and women's studies as well as world history. Funerary biographies, due to their inclusion of telling details about personal conduct, family life, local conditions, and social, cultural, and religious practices, can illustrate ways of thinking and the realities of daily life. Since most funerary biographies can be read and analyzed on multiple levels, they have the potential to stimulate discussion of topics such as the emotional tenor of family life, rituals associated with death, whether the values seen in these biographies should be called Confucian, ways to analyze women's lives from sources written by men, and how to use sources that can be assumed to be biased. These biographies will be especially effective when combined with more readily available primary sources such as official documents, religious and intellectual discourses, and anecdotal stories, promising to generate interesting discussion about literary genre, the ways historians use sources, and how writers shape their accounts"--

The Confucian's Progress

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ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Confucian's Progress by : Pei-yi Wu

Download or read book The Confucian's Progress written by Pei-yi Wu and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the widely held belief that autobiography is a unique product of the West, Pei-yi Wu demonstrates that writing about the self did thrive in one non-Western civilization. The pages of this first full-length treatment of Chinese autobiography teem with fascinating individuals each of whom has a story to tell--champions of lost causes explaining their impending martyrdom to posterity, earnest Buddhists and Confucians reporting on their spiritual quests, irrepressible and inventive egotists indulging in self-celebration, and distressed moralists confessing their sins. Affording the reader a view of some never before examined aspects of the Chinese psyche, The Confucian's Progress is also an accessible introduction to Chinese history and literature. "A highly intelligent--and thoroughly intelligible--book-length essay on autobiographical writings in China.... With its ample and readable translations of a dazzling array of scarce Chinese texts alone, this book will reward readers. Moreover, The Confucian's Progress will force readers to think about the relationship between turning points in literary expression and social change, and about how the constraints (or conventions) of established genres limit or shape biographical and autobiographical writings."--Joanna F. Handlin Smith, The Journal of Asian Studies

Jumping Through Hoops

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Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 13 : 9622095828
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Jumping Through Hoops by : Jing M. Wang

Download or read book Jumping Through Hoops written by Jing M. Wang and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jumping Through Hoops is a collection of nine intense and dramatic stories that sheds new light on the experiences of Chinese women during the Second World War. Originally published in Chinese in 1945, as part of Xie Bingying's classic anthology Nu zuojia zizhuan xuanji (Selected autobiographical writings by women writers), the extraordinary narratives reveal the writers' personal struggles during the years of turmoil between the Republican and Communist eras. Whether the contributors are internationally acclaimed or just rediscovered, most of these narratives are seldom found in other collections, either in Chinese or in translation.

To Die and Not Decay

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780924304583
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (45 download)

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Book Synopsis To Die and Not Decay by : Matthew V. Wells

Download or read book To Die and Not Decay written by Matthew V. Wells and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the autobiographical writing of Ge Hong (ca. 283-343) and compares it to other early texts of the genre. A minor official during the early Eastern Jin dynasty, 317-420, Ge Hong is best known for his interest in Daoism, alchemy, and techniques of longevity. But this book focuses on the two authorial postfaces appended to his most celebrated work, Baopuzi, translated as The Master Embracing Simplicity. Among his topics are the proscriptive power of genre, reading self-narrative and the self in early China, and transcending history through autobiography. Two other early texts concerning early autobiography are translated and appended in alternating paragraphs of Chinese and English.

Personal Matters

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804750059
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Personal Matters by : Lingzhen Wang

Download or read book Personal Matters written by Lingzhen Wang and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies identity formation and transformation in twentieth-century China by focusing on women's autobiographical writing.

Chinese Autobiographical Writing

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780295751238
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Autobiographical Writing by : Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Download or read book Chinese Autobiographical Writing written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by . This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal accounts help us understand notions of self, interpersonal relations, and historical events. Chinese Autobiographical Writing contains full translations of works by fifty individuals that illuminate the history and conventions of writing about oneself in the Chinese tradition. From poetry, letters, and diaries to statements in legal proceedings, these engaging and readable works draw us into the past and provide vivid details of life as it was lived from the pre-imperial period to the nineteenth century. Some focus on a person?s entire life, others on a specific moment. Some have an element of humor, others are entirely serious. Taken together, these selections offer an intimate view of how Chinese men and women, both famous and obscure, reflected on their experiences as well as their personal struggles and innermost thoughts. With an introduction and list of additional readings for each selection, this volume is ideal for undergraduate courses on Chinese history, literature, religion, and women and family. Read individually, each piece illuminates a person, place, and moment. Read in chronological order, they highlight cultural change over time by showing how people explored new ways to represent themselves in writing.

When "I" was Born

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Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN 13 : 9780299225100
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (251 download)

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Book Synopsis When "I" was Born by : Jing M. Wang

Download or read book When "I" was Born written by Jing M. Wang and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period between the 1920s and 1940s, a genre emerged in Chinese literature that would reveal crucial contradictions in Chinese culture that still exist today. At a time of intense political conflict, Chinese women began to write autobiography, a genre that focused on personal identity and self-exploration rather than the national, collective identity that the country was championing. When "I" Was Born: Women's Autobiography in Modern China reclaims the voices of these particular writers, voices that have been misinterpreted and overlooked for decades. Tracing women writers as they move from autobiographical fiction, often self-revelatory and personal, to explicit autobiographies that focused on women's roles in public life, Jing M. Wang reveals the factors that propelled this literary movement, the roles that liberal translators and their renditions of Western life stories played, and the way in which these women writers redefined writing and gender in the stories they told. But Wang reveals another story as well: the evolving history and identity of women in modern Chinese society. When "I" Was Born adds to a growing body of important work in Chinese history and culture, women's studies, and autobiography in a global context. Writers discussed include Xie Bingying, Zhang Ailing, Yu Yinzi, Fei Pu, Lu Meiyen, Feng Heyi, Ye Qian, Bai Wei, Shi Wen, Fan Xiulin, Su Xuelin, and Lu Yin.

Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography Volume 4

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Publisher : Berkshire Publishing Group
ISBN 13 : 161472900X
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography Volume 4 by : Kerry Brown

Download or read book Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography Volume 4 written by Kerry Brown and published by Berkshire Publishing Group. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography (1979-2015) provides a riveting new way to understand twenty-first-century China and a personal look at the changes that have taken place since the Reform and Opening Up era started in 1979. One hundred key individuals from this period were selected by an international group of experts, and the stories were written by more than 70 authors in 14 countries. The authors map the paths taken by these individuals-some rocky, some meandering, some fateful-and in telling their stories give contemporary Chinese history a human face. The editors have included-with the advice of myriad experts around the world-not only the life stories of politicians and government officials, who play a crucial role in the development of the country, but the stories of cultural figures including, film directors, activists, writers, and entrepreneurs from the mainland China, Hong Kong, and also from Taiwan. The "Greater China" that comes through in this volume has diverse ideas and identities. It is often contradictory, sometimes fractious, and always full of creative human complexity. Some of the lives rendered here are heroic. Some are tragic, and many are inspirational. Some figures come in for trenchant criticism, and others are celebrated with a sense of wonder and awe. Like previous volumes of the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, this volume includes a range of appendices, including a pronunciation guide, a bibliography, and a timeline of key events.

A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night

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Publisher : Tundra Books (NY)
ISBN 13 : 9780887763564
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (635 download)

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Book Synopsis A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night by : Song Nan Zhang

Download or read book A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night written by Song Nan Zhang and published by Tundra Books (NY). This book was released on 1995-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1944, when Song Nan Zhang was not yet three, he saw a baby tiger outside the hut in the mountains where he and his mother were living. The tiger returned twice before disappearing into the bamboo forest forever. For a child to see a tiger meant luck, but Song Nan Zhang wasn't sure if living in China was lucky or not. Life was so difficult that sometimes he felt like the lost tiger itself, hoping for a home only to be forced back into the dark. In this, his autobiography, Song Nan Zhang paints the dispersal of his family, his development as an artist, the humor that lightened some of the more difficult times, and finally, his journey to Canada.

Written on Water

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Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1681375761
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (813 download)

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Book Synopsis Written on Water by : Eileen Chang

Download or read book Written on Water written by Eileen Chang and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature. Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated and influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her own life as a writer and woman, set amid the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. In a style at once meditative and vibrant, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also reflects on Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, and the popularity of the Peking Opera. Chang engages the reader with her sly and sophisticated humor, conversational voice, and intense fascination with the subtleties of everyday life. In her examination of Shanghainese food, culture, and fashions, she not only reveals but also upends prevalent attitudes toward women, presenting a portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms.

China Hand

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812206312
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis China Hand by : John Paton Davies, Jr.

Download or read book China Hand written by John Paton Davies, Jr. and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the country—which they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars. The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial India's Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of America's policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years. China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor.

Writing Women in Modern China

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780231107013
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Women in Modern China by : Amy D. Dooling

Download or read book Writing Women in Modern China written by Amy D. Dooling and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few years have seen a burgeoning effort to rethink questions of women, writing, and gender in modern China. Here 22 works of fiction, drama, autobiography, essays, and poetry, each prefaced by the author's photograph and a short biographical sketch, introduce women whose literary careers coincided with an era of tremendous social, political, and cultural turbulence. 18 illustrations.

The Great Flowing River

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231547811
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great Flowing River by : Chi Pang-yuan

Download or read book The Great Flowing River written by Chi Pang-yuan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heralded as a literary masterpiece and a best-seller in the Chinese-speaking world, The Great Flowing River is a personal account of the history of modern China and Taiwan unlike any other. In this eloquent autobiography, the noted scholar, writer, and teacher Chi Pang-yuan recounts her youth in mainland China and adulthood in Taiwan. Chi’s remarkable life, told in rich and striking detail, humanizes the eventful and turbulent times in which she lived. The Great Flowing River begins as a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of China’s war with Japan. Chi depicts her childhood in pre-occupation Manchuria and gives an eyewitness account of life in China during the war with Japan. She tells the tale of her youthful romance with a dashing pilot that ends tragically when he is shot down in the last days of the war. The book describes the deepening political divide in China and her choice to take a job in Taiwan, where she would remain after the Communist victory. Chi details her growth as an educator, scholar, and promoter of Chinese literature in translation and her realization that despite her roots in China, she has found a home in Taiwan, giving an immersive account of the postwar history of Taiwan from a mainlander’s perspective. A novelistic, epoch-defining narrative, The Great Flowing River unites the personal and intimate with the grand sweep of history.

Fifth Chinese Daughter

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295745916
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis Fifth Chinese Daughter by : Jade Snow Wong

Download or read book Fifth Chinese Daughter written by Jade Snow Wong and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jade Snow Wong’s autobiography portrays her coming-of-age in San Francisco's Chinatown, offering a rich depiction of her immigrant family and her strict upbringing, as well as her rebellion against family and societal expectations for a Chinese woman. Originally published in 1950, Fifth Chinese Daughter was one of the most widely read works by an Asian American author in the twentieth century. The US State Department even sent its charismatic young author on a four-month speaking tour throughout Asia. Cited as an influence by prominent Chinese American writers such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, Fifth Chinese Daughter is a foundational work in Asian American literature. It was written at a time when few portraits of Asian American life were available, and no similar works were as popular and broadly appealing. This new edition includes the original illustrations by Kathryn Uhl and features an introduction by Leslie Bow, who critically examines the changing reception and enduring legacy of the book and offers insight into Wong’s life as an artist and an ambassador of Chinese American culture.

Where Reasons End

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1984817388
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Where Reasons End by : Yiyun Li

Download or read book Where Reasons End written by Yiyun Li and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fearless writer confronts grief and transforms it into art, in a book of surprising beauty and love, "a masterpiece by a master” (Elizabeth McCracken, Vanity Fair). "Li has converted the messy and devastating stuff of life into a remarkable work of art.”—The Wall Street Journal WINNER OF THE PEN/JEAN STEIN AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Seghal, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • The Paris Review The narrator of Where Reasons End writes, “I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words.” Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship. Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.

Beautiful Country

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Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062411926
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (624 download)

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Book Synopsis Beautiful Country by : J.R. Thornton

Download or read book Beautiful Country written by J.R. Thornton and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This unsettling book about the moral encounter between America and China is a study of privilege, innocence, and risk. It is a tragedy of manners and a portrait of Beijing -- amplified and torqued and unmistakable.”— Evan Osnos, autor of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award A coming-of-age story set in modern day China centering on the friendship between an American and a Chinese boy who meet while training with Beijing’s Junior National Tennis Team. Chase Robertson arrives in Beijing as a fourteen-year-old boy still troubled by the recent death of his older brother. He discovers a country in transition; a society in which the dual systems of Communist Era state control and an emerging entrepreneurial culture exist in paradox. A top ranked junior tennis player in the U.S., Chase joins the practices of the Beijing National Junior Tennis Team and is immersed in the brutal, cut-throat world of Chinese sport. It is a world in which gifted children are selected at the ages of six or seven for specialized sport schools where they devote their entire youth to the pursuit of athletic excellence and are paid as professionals by the state. Athletes find themselves compelled to do anything possible to succeed—right or wrong. Those who fail to reach the pinnacle are cast aside and are left facing a desperate future without hope. In China, Chase gains access to a culture rarely open to Westerners, and soon finds himself caught up in secrets. When his closest friend and teammate turns to him for help, Chase is faced with the dilemma of what to do when friendship, rules, and morals are in conflict. A big-hearted debut, Beautiful Country explores a friendship against the backdrop of a quickly changing country.

Autobiography at Fifty

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Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781511840934
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis Autobiography at Fifty by : Mou Zongsan

Download or read book Autobiography at Fifty written by Mou Zongsan and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-08-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China and the world entered a period of social, political, intellectual, and cultural crisis at the turn of the twentieth century, with China, being on the weak side of the China-world linkage, swept into calamitous turmoil. As this crisis intensified in the late 1920's, an innocent boy from rural China went to Beijing, where disruptive forces feeding the tumult converged, to attend pre-college classes at Peking University. In the ensuing thirty years, with wars torching the land around him, through personal suffering and struggles, he observed, learned, reflected, and lived to develop himself into a serious philosopher. This philosopher will later become arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the twentieth century. This autobiography recounts the philosopher's development against the social and political events and intellectual currents of the turbulent time. It weaves social-political commentaries and philosophical contemplations in a narration of personal experiences. While movingly recalling the bright side of life-the worry-free childhood in a tranquil farm village, the unconditional friendship in difficult times, the uplifting inspiration from a teacher with authentic character, the soul-soaking awakening by a remote chant heard in a quiet night-it also honestly reveals the less bright side of living a life-the pull of the world of the senses, the self-righteous rancor harbored against those who wronged him, the anger and irreverence directed at certain well known figures, the dejection that overtook him when the world around him crumbled. But above all it shares with readers a genuine, unending existential quest. The philosopher's vigilance for "being" leads him to exclaim: "Just let the feeling of nothingness ... float without any lingering resistance! ... Have nothing, only this suffering, only this fear, only this sadness!" Vigilance for "being" is vigilance in solitude. The deepening of nothingness turns into absolute commiseration-the commiserative enlightenment that unifies the subjective and the objective sides of reality into one. With his own religiosity engaged by this deep existential enlightenment, the philosopher in the final chapter leaves the account of his factual life behind and turns to philosophizing "commiseration" by way of evaluating Christianity and Buddhism, infusing the autobiography with a distinct philosophical flavor. In this philosophical evaluation, what he finds lacking in Christianity and Buddhism in terms of commiserative enlightenment, he finds in Confucianism. This autobiography thus marks the launch of the philosopher into thirty more years of philosophizing about Confucianism, and underscores the importance of existential experience in motivating his very original Confucian moral metaphysics.