Kategoria BISAC: History >> Asia - China

Countless Chinese villages have been engulfed by modern cities. They no longer consist of picturesque farms and feng shui groves, but of high-rise buildings so close to each other that they create dark claustrophobic alleys--jammed with dripping air-conditioners, hanging clothes, caged balconies and bundles of buzzing electric wires, and crowned with a small strip of daylight, known as "thin line sky." At times, buildings stand so close to another they are dubbed "kissing buildings" or "handshake houses"--you can literally reach out from one building and shake hands with your...

Yinyuan claimed to have inherited the "Authentic Transmission of the Linji Sect." After arriving in Japan, he was able to persuade the Shogun to build a new Ming-style monastery for the...

As the Opium War unfolded in Guangdong Province, the painter Su Renshan (1814- c.1850) exploded onto the art scene with a bold, paradigm-turning new voice. A Defiant Brush takes a fresh look at this under appreciated artist in the context of a nascent Chinese modernism.

In 1839 Guangzhou shifted from a cosmopolitan trading center with a diverse art world into a place of violence. During the following decade, one voice of discontent and defiance rang outabove all others: Su Renshan's. His provocative, uncompromising, and sometimes ugly paintings berate Confucius for his hypocrisy. He...

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of warfare ethics in early China as well as its subsequent development.

Chinese attitudes toward war are rich and nuanced, ranging across amoral realism, defensive just war, humanitarian intervention, and mournful skepticism. Covering the five major intellectual traditions in the "golden age" of Chinese civilization: Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Legalist, and Military Strategy schools, the book's chapters immerse readers in the proper historical contexts, examine the moral concerns in the classical texts on their own terms, reframe...

Vanishing into Things explores the concept of knowledge in Chinese thought over two millennia, from Confucius to Wang Yangming (ca. 1500 CE), and compares the different philosophical imperatives that have driven Chinese and Western thought. Challenging the hyperspecialized epistemology of modern philosophy in the West, Barry Allen urges his readers toward an ethical appreciation of why knowledge is worth pursuing.

Western philosophers have long maintained that true knowledge is the best knowledge. Chinese thinkers, by contrast, have emphasized not the essence of knowing but...

Renowned for his coverage of China's elite politics and leadership transitions, veteran Sinologist Willy Lam has produced the first book-length study in English of the rise of Xi Jinping--General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since November 2012. With rare insight, Lam describes Xi's personal history and his fascination with quasi-Maoist values, the factional politics through which he ascended, the configuration of power of the Fifth-Generation leadership, and the country's likely future directions under the charismatic "princeling."

Despite an undistinguished...