In the 1920s and 1930s most Chinese people suffered from overwhelming health problems. Epidemic diseases killed tens of millions, drought, flood and famine killed many more, and unhygienic birthing led to serious maternal and child mortality. The Civil War between Nationalist and Communist forces, and the nationwide War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945), imposed a further tide of misery. Troubled by this extensive trauma, a small number of healthcare reformers were able to save tens of thousands of lives, promote hygiene and sanitation, and begin to bring battlefield casualties,...

Dealing with the central issue of style in literature, this groundbreaking study is a must for sinologists, but also for all students of comparative literature.
Michel Hockx takes as a point of departure the observation that most writers of the Republican period adhered to a distinctly traditional practice of gathering in literary societies, while at the same time displaying a marked preference for publishing their works through the modern medium of the literary journal.
The first part of the book analyses different types of societies and their journals. The case studies in part two...

In Muslim Sanzijing, Shifts and Continuities in the Definition of Islam in China (1710-2010) Roberta Tontini traces the development of Islam and Islamic law in the country, while responding to two enduring questions in China's intellectual history: How was the Muslim sharia reconciled with Confucianism? How was knowledge of Islamic social and ritual norms popularized to large segments of Chinese Muslim society even in periods of limited literacy? Through a comprehensive study that includes a rigorous analysis of popular Chinese Islamic primers belonging to the Sanzijing...

Through an innovative interdisciplinary reading and field research, Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profound transformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s. He investigates the complex path of opera over this course of history: exiting the temple festivals, becoming a public obsession on commercial stages, and finally being harnessed to partisan propaganda work. The book analyzes the process of cross-regional integration of Chinese culture and the emergence of the national...

Michael Loewe calls on literary and material evidence to examine three problems that arose in administering China's early empires. Religious rites due to an emperor's predecessors must both pay the correct services to his ancestors and demonstrate his right to succeed to the throne. In practical terms, tax collectors, merchants, farmers and townsmen required the establishment of a standard set of weights and measures that was universally operative and which they could trust. Those who saw reason to criticise the decisions taken by the emperor and his immediate advisors, whether on grounds of...

In Transcultural Lyricism: Translation, Intertextuality, and the Rise of Emotion in Modern Chinese Love Fiction, 1899-1925, Jane Qian Liu examines the profound transformation of emotional expression in Chinese fiction between the years 1899 and 1925. While modern Chinese literature is known to have absorbed narrative modes of Western literatures, it also learned radically new ways to convey emotions. Drawn from an interdisciplinary mixture of literary, cultural and translation studies, Jane Qian Liu brings fresh insights into the study of intercultural literary interpretation and...

In Struggle by the Pen, Ondřej Klimes explores the emergence of national consciousness and nationalist ideology of Uyghurs in Xinjiang from c. 1900-1949. Drawing from texts written by modern Uyghur intellectuals, politicians and propagandists throughout this period, he identifies diverse types of Uyghur discourse on the nation and national interest, and traces the emergence and construction of modern Uyghur national identity. The author also demonstrates that the modern Uyghur intelligentsia regarded political emancipation and social modernization as the two most important...

The Dragon Takes Flight: China's Aviation Policy, Achievements, and International Implications analyzes China's journey toward the development of its C-919 large passenger aircraft. Through the use of primary sources in English and Chinese, including interviews with important players in China's aviation industry, Levine builds on Michael Porter's Diamond Model to explore the underlying question of whether or not China will successfully develop a competitive large passenger aircraft. The model serves as a blueprint for determining what China is doing right and what areas need to...

Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series has been granted the EastAsiaNet 2014 Award In Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series, Florian Schneider analyses political discourses in Chinese TV dramas, the most popular entertainment format in China today. Schneider shows that despite their often nationalistic stories of glorious emperors and courageous officials, such programmes should not be mistaken for official propaganda. Instead, the highly didactical messages of such series are the outcome of complex cultural governance...

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another....