Ancient China PDF Download

Author: Liz Sonneborn
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9780531259764
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Take a journey back in time to witness the development of history's greatest civilizations! Engaging text and eye-catching images teach you about the history, culture, and daily life of each civilization and show you how each civilization continues to affect our world today!

Author: Terry Kleeman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195171020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Pangu, a god asleep inside a giant black egg for 18,000 years, wakes up to create the world. Liu Bang, the founder of a Chinese dynasty, begins his life as a peasant. Sun Tzu, a fearless war strategist, writes one of the most popular books of all time. These are just a few of the captivating figures you'll meet in The Ancient Chinese World. Terry Kleeman and Tracy Barrett use a rich variety of intriguing primary sources-turtle shells, clay pots, an ancient wall, folk songs, poetry, and more-to construct a lively history of the politicians, farmers, warriors, and philosophers who created and shaped the ancient Chinese world. They also show us the fascinating process of constructing the historical jigsaw puzzle. Archaeologists discover a 400,000-year-old skull near modern-day Beijing and determine that it is one of our earliest human ancestors. A scholar who is prescribed "dragon bones" to cure an illness realizes that the bones-which are actually turtle shells-contain ancient Chinese writing used to send messages to the gods. The fantastic discovery of Lady Hao's tomb reveals that in ancient China a powerful woman led soldiers into battle. The letters exchanged by two military leaders show not only how the Chinese invented the sword, but also how they used the kite as a military weapon. Using these ancient artifacts and writings, Kleeman and Barrett weave the dramatic story of rulers, writers, soldiers, and citizens who made up the fascinating and unique world of ancient China.

Author: Paul Clarence Challen
Publisher: Crabtree Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780778720379
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Along China's Yellow River, a mighty and technologically advanced civilization grew and flourished for thousands of years without any contact from the rest of the world. Life in Ancient China explores the daily lives of early the Chinese people, profiles the great dynasties that ruled China over the centuries, and introduces important religious and philosophical contributions, such as Confucianism, Daosim, and Buddhism. Enduring Chinese innovations, such as writing, papermaking, and The Great Wall are also featured.

Author: Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465023347
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
The history of China is a history of warfare. Rarely in its 3,000-year existence has the country not been beset by war, rebellion, or raids. Warfare was a primary source of innovation, social evolution, and material progress in the Legendary Era, Hsia dynasty, and Shang dynasty -- indeed, war was the force that formed the first cohesive Chinese empire, setting China on a trajectory of state building and aggressive activity that continues to this day. In Ancient Chinese Warfare, a preeminent expert on Chinese military history uses recently recovered documents and archaeological findings to construct a comprehensive guide to the developing technologies, strategies, and logistics of ancient Chinese militarism. The result is a definitive look at the tools and methods that won wars and shaped culture in ancient China.

Author: Benjamin Isadore Schwartz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
The center of this prodigious work of scholarship is a fresh examination of the range of Chinese culture thought during the formative period of Chinese culture. Benjamin Schwartz looks at the surviving texts of this period with a particular focus on the range of diversity to be found in them. While emphasizing the problematic and complex nature of this thought he also considers views which stress the unity of Chinese culture. Attention is accorded to pre-Confucian texts, to the evolution of early Confucianism, to Mo-Tzu, to the Taoists the legalists, the Ying-Yang school, the five classics as well as to intellectual issues which cut across the conventional classification of schools. The main focus is on the high cultural texts, but Mr. Schwartz also explores the question of the relationship of these texts to the vast realm of popular culture.

Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 161531198X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive book about China's art, life, and culture. Using the latest discoveries by historians this book explores China's literature, music, religions, economy and cuisine.

Author: Jacques Gernet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521497817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 836

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Book Description
When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past.

Author: Yan Xuetong
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848954
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
From China's most influential foreign policy thinker, a vision for a "Beijing Consensus" for international relations The rise of China could be the most important political development of the twenty-first century. What will China look like in the future? What should it look like? And what will China's rise mean for the rest of world? This book, written by China's most influential foreign policy thinker, sets out a vision for the coming decades from China's point of view. In the West, Yan Xuetong is often regarded as a hawkish policy advisor and enemy of liberal internationalists. But a very different picture emerges from this book, as Yan examines the lessons of ancient Chinese political thought for the future of China and the development of a "Beijing consensus" in international relations. Yan, it becomes clear, is neither a communist who believes that economic might is the key to national power, nor a neoconservative who believes that China should rely on military might to get its way. Rather, Yan argues, political leadership is the key to national power, and morality is an essential part of political leadership. Economic and military might are important components of national power, but they are secondary to political leaders who act in accordance with moral norms, and the same holds true in determining the hierarchy of the global order. Providing new insights into the thinking of one of China's leading foreign policy figures, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in China's rise or in international relations.

Author: Frances Wood
Publisher: Apollo
ISBN: 9781837930210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover - or rediscover - the major achievements of Chinese culture and civilization.Great Books of China offers concise introductions - each of them accompanied by generous quotation (in English) from the book in question - to sixty-six works in the canon of Chinese literature.The books chosen reflect the chronological and thematic breadth of Chinese literary tradition, ranging from such classics as The Book of Songs and the Confucian Analects, through popular dramas and novels (The Romance of the Western Chamber; The Water Margin), twentieth-century political and biographical works (Quotations from Chairman Mao, the autobiography of the last emperor) and modern novels that are little known in the West (Memories of South Peking, Six Chapters from a Cadre School Life).Frances Wood presents a comprehensive, accessible and richly informative primer for the uninitiated; a box of delights that opens up an entire literary culture to the inquisitive reader.

Author: Constance Cook
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047410637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
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. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant’s life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices. A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.