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Author: Douglas Kerr Publisher: Hong Kong University Press ISBN: 9622098452 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
Writings of travelers have shaped ideas about an evolving China, while preconceived ideas about China also shaped the way they saw the country. A Century of Travels in China explores the impressions of these writers on various themes, from Chinese cities and landscapes to the work of Europeans abroad. From the time of the first Opium War to the declaration of the People's Republic, China's history has been one of extraordinary change and stubborn continuities. At the same time, the country has beguiled, scared and puzzled people in the West. The Victorian public admired and imitated Chinese fashions, in furniture and design, gardens and clothing, while maintaining a generally negative idea of the Chinese empire as pagan, backward and cruel. In the first half of the twentieth century, the fascination continued. Most foreigners were aware that revolutionary changes were taking place in Chinese politics and society, yet most still knew very little about the country. But what about those few people from the English-speaking world who had first-hand experience of the place? What did they have to say about the "real" China? To answer this question, we have to turn to the travel accounts and memoirs of people who went to see for themselves, during China's most traumatic century. While this book represents the work of expert scholars, it is also accessible to non-specialists with an interest in travel writing and China, and care has been taken to explain the critical terms and ideas deployed in the essays from recent scholarship of the travel genre.
Author: Douglas Kerr Publisher: Hong Kong University Press ISBN: 9622098452 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
Writings of travelers have shaped ideas about an evolving China, while preconceived ideas about China also shaped the way they saw the country. A Century of Travels in China explores the impressions of these writers on various themes, from Chinese cities and landscapes to the work of Europeans abroad. From the time of the first Opium War to the declaration of the People's Republic, China's history has been one of extraordinary change and stubborn continuities. At the same time, the country has beguiled, scared and puzzled people in the West. The Victorian public admired and imitated Chinese fashions, in furniture and design, gardens and clothing, while maintaining a generally negative idea of the Chinese empire as pagan, backward and cruel. In the first half of the twentieth century, the fascination continued. Most foreigners were aware that revolutionary changes were taking place in Chinese politics and society, yet most still knew very little about the country. But what about those few people from the English-speaking world who had first-hand experience of the place? What did they have to say about the "real" China? To answer this question, we have to turn to the travel accounts and memoirs of people who went to see for themselves, during China's most traumatic century. While this book represents the work of expert scholars, it is also accessible to non-specialists with an interest in travel writing and China, and care has been taken to explain the critical terms and ideas deployed in the essays from recent scholarship of the travel genre.
Author: Yajun Mo Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501760645 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
In Touring China, Yajun Mo explores how early twentieth century Chinese sightseers described the destinations that they visited, and how their travel accounts gave Chinese readers a means to imagine their vast country. The roots of China's tourism market stretch back over a hundred years, when railroad and steamship networks expanded into the coastal regions. Tourism-related businesses and publications flourished in urban centers while scientific exploration, investigative journalism, and wartime travel propelled many Chinese from the eastern seaboard to its peripheries. Mo considers not only accounts of overseas travel and voyages across borderlands, but also trips within China. On the one hand, via travel and travel writing, the unity of China's coastal regions, inland provinces, and western frontiers was experienced and reinforced. On the other, travel literature revealed a persistent tension between the aspiration for national unity and the anxiety that China might fall apart. Touring China tells a fascinating story about the physical and intellectual routes people took on various journeys, against the backdrop of the transition from Chinese empire to nation-state.
Author: Elaine Yee Lin Ho Publisher: Hong Kong University Press ISBN: 9622099459 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
The book seeks to address how movements across cultures shape the different ways in which China and Chineseness have been imagined and represented since the beginning of the last century. In so doing, it aims to offer an overview of the debate about Chineseness as it has emerged in different global locations.
Book Description
The bestselling Journey to the West comic book by artist Chang Boon Kiat is now back in a brand new fully coloured edition. Journey to the West is one of the greatest classics in Chinese literature. It tells the epic tale of the monk Xuanzang who journeys to the West in search of the Buddhist sutras with his disciples, Sun Wukong, Sandy and Pigsy. Along the way, Xuanzang's life was threatened by the diabolical White Bone Spirit, the menacing Red Child and his fearsome parents and, a host of evil spirits who sought to devour Xuanzang's flesh to attain immortality. Bear witness to the formidable Sun Wukong's (Monkey God) prowess as he takes them on, using his Fiery Eyes, Golden Cudgel, Somersault Cloud, and quick wits! Be prepared for a galloping read that will leave you breathless!
Author: David Eimer Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 140881322X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shanghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage 'the mountains are high and the Emperor far away', meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate. Travelling through China's most distant and unknown reaches, David Eimer explores the increasingly tense relationship between the Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities. Deconstructing the myths represented by Beijing, Eimer reveals a shocking and fascinating picture of a China that is more of an empire than a country.
Author: Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520914864 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 610
Book Description
Alongside the scores of travel books about China written by foreign visitors, Chinese travelers' impressions of their own country rarely appear in translation. This anthology is the only comprehensive collection in English of Chinese travel writing from the first century A.D. through the nineteenth. Early examples of the genre describe sites important for their geography, history, and role in cultural mythology, but by the T'ang dynasty in the mid-eighth century certain historiographical and poetic discourses converged to form the "travel account" (yu-chi) and later the "travel diary" (jih-chi) as vehicles of personal expression and autobiography. These first-person narratives provide rich material for understanding the attitudes of Chinese literati toward place, nature, politics, and the self. The anthology is abundantly illustrated with paintings, portraits, maps, and drawings. Each selection is meticulously translated, carefully annotated, and prefaced by a brief description of the writer's life and work. The entire collection is introduced by an in-depth survey of the rise of Chinese travel writing as a cultural phenomenon. Inscribed Landscapes provides a unique resource for travelers as well as for scholars of Chinese literature, art, and history.
Author: Diana Childress Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books ISBN: 1467703796 Category : Young Adult Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
Can one book really change the world? A handwritten manuscript by Marco Polo in 1288 did. Polo, son of a wealthy Italian merchant, wrote about his incredible experiences traveling to China with his father and uncle on a trade expedition, and also about his adventures as an envoy of Kublai Khan, the ruler of most of China. Polo’s book became a bestseller in Europe in the fourteenth century. It was copied over and over by hand, translated into fourteen languages, and became one of the first books to be printed after the invention of moveable type. The tales inspired others—including Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century—to seek new sea routes for trade. Polo’s adventures—and manuscript—are one of world history’s most pivotal moments.
Author: James Carter Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199367590 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
James Carter, accessing previously untapped sources, tells the story of Tanxu's life and gives first-person immediacy to one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.