Browse results

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 252 items for :

  • Upcoming Publications x
  • Just Published x
  • Search level: All x
Clear All
Spirit-Writing in Chinese History and Society
Few religious innovations have shaped Chinese history like the emergence of spirit-writing during the Song dynasty.
From a divinatory technique it evolved into a complex ritual practice used to transmit messages and revelations from the Gods. This resulted in the production of countless religious scriptures that now form an essential corpus, widely venerated and recited to this day, that is still largely untapped by research.
Using historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of the history of spirit-writing, examining its evolution over a millennium, the practices and technologies used, and the communities involved.
Author:
This book is a comparative exploration of the impact of a celebrated Chinese historical novel, the Sanguozhi yanyi (Three Kingdoms) on the popular culture of Korea since its dissemination in the sixteenth century.
It elucidates not only the reception of Chinese fiction in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910), but also the fascinating ways in which this particular story lives on in modern Korea. The author specifically explores the dissemination, adaptations, and translations of the work to elucidate how Three Kingdoms has spoken to Korean readers. In short, this book shows how a quintessentially Chinese work equally developed into a Korean work.
Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future
Volume Editors: , , and
China, Laos and Vietnam are three of a handful of late socialist countries where capitalist economics rubs up against party-state politics. In these countries, sweeping processes of change open up new vistas of opportunity and imaginaries of the future alongside much uncertainty and anxiety, especially for their large rural populations.

Contributors to this edited volume demonstrate the diverse ways in which rural people build futures in this unique policy landscape and how their aspirations and desires are articulated as projects involving both citizens and the state. This produces a politics of development that happens through and around the state as people navigate discourses of betterment to imagine and make new futures at individual and collective levels.
Administrative Documents Excavated at Zoumalou, Hunan
Authors: , , and
In 1996 archaeologists excavated over 70,000 inscribed pieces of wood from a well in Changsha, the largest such discovery ever made in China. They are local administrative records of the state of Wu in the 230s and provide remarkable detail on the society, governance, and economy of third century central China.
Although Wu was one of the famous Three Kingdoms, its administrative history was poorly known until these documents were found, so we have written this book to explain the context and content of these document to help researchers use these valuable texts to rewrite the history of South China.
Author:
In the early twentieth century, the first large batch of Chinese civil engineers had graduated from the USA, and together with their American senior colleagues returned to China. They were enthusiastic about reconstructing the young republic by building new railways, highways, and canals, but what the engineers experienced in China, including mismanaged railways, useless highways, and silted canals, did not always meet their expectations and ideals. In this book, Thorben Pelzer makes the stories of these Chinese and American engineers come to life through exploring previously unpublished letters, rare images, maps, and a rich biographical dataset. He argues that the experiences of these engineers include a myriad of contradictions, disillusionment, and discontent, keeping the engineering profession in a constant flux of searching for its meaning and its place in Republican China.
Theological Encounters from Hong Kong to Beijing
Volume Editors: and
In this volume, Lam and Thurston present a series of important theological debates between Jürgen Moltmann, the contemporary German Reformed theologian, and humanities scholars based in Chinese metropolises from Hong Kong to Beijing between 2014 and 2018. Featured, along with original essays and newly edited contributions by Moltmann, are the voices of such renowned Chinese scholars of religion as He Guanghu, Lai Pan-chiu, Zhuo Xinping and the contemporary comparativist Yang Huilin. These debates matter because they shed light on themes rarely explored in cross-cultural theological dialogue as it unfolds, showcasing the ongoing relevance of theological critique in and with the contemporary humanities. Contributors to the volume are: Hong Liang, Kwok Wai-luen, Lai Pan-chiu, Jason Lam, Jürgen Moltmann, Naomi Thurston, Yang Huaming, Yang Huilin.
The Song Dynasty Making of China’s Greatest Poet
Author:
Irreducible to conventional labels usually applied to him, the Tang poet Du Fu (712–770) both defined and was defined by the literary, intellectual, and socio-political cultures of the Song dynasty (960–1279).
Jue Chen not only argues in his work that Du Fu was constructed according to particular literary and intellectual agendas of Song literati but also that conventional labels applied to Du Fu do not accurately represent this construction campaign. He also discusses how Du Fu’s image as the greatest poet sheds unique light on issues that can deepen our understanding of the subtleties in the poetic culture of Song China.
The book investigates China’s relations to the outside world between ca. 100 BCE and 1800 AD. In contrast to most histories of the Silk Roads, the focus of this book clearly lies on the maritime Silk Road and on the period between Tang and high Qing, selecting aspects that have so far been neglected in research on the history of China’s relations with the outside world. The author examines, for example, the power alliance between the Tang and the Arabs during Tang times, the specific role of fanbing 蕃兵 (frontier tribal troops) during Song times, the interrelationship between maritime commerce, military expansion, and environmental factors during the Yuan, the question of whether or not early Ming China can be considered a (proto-)colonialist country, the role force and violence played during the Zheng He expeditions, and what role of the Asia-Pacific world played for late Ming and early Qing rulers.
The Buddhist Thought and Practice of Sheng’an Shixian (1686–1734) and Other Patriarchs
This vigorously-researched publication for advanced graduate students and fellow scholars of the Chinese Pure Land tradition (Jingtu famen) in the wider context of Chinese Buddhism extends the horizon opened up by recent leading scholars to reconstruct a more insightful understanding of the Jingtu famen and the notion of zong. Focusing on previously unstudied writings of Shixian and other patriarchs, the findings support the argument that the Jingtu famen is an advanced form of Mahāyānist meditation rooted in the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra traditions. The original English translation of Master Shixian’s writings provided also paves the way for other researchers to conduct new and extended studies.