Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China PDF Download

Author: Klaas Ruitenbeek
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004105294
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
This is a study of the world of carpenters and joiners, discussing both the technical and the ritual and religious aspects of building. The heart of the book is an annotated translation of the fifteenth-century carpenter's manual Lu Ban jing. Numerous illustrations further enhance the value of this book.

Author: Klaas Ruitenbeek
Publisher: Sinica Leidensia
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
This is a study of the world of carpenters and joiners, discussing both the technical and the ritual and religious aspects of building. The heart of the book is an annotated translation of the fifteenth-century carpenter's manual Lu Ban jing. Numerous illustrations further enhance the value of this book.

Author: Xuemei Li
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000877116
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Drawing on the author’s extensive fieldwork in the Dong areas in southwest China, this book presents a detailed picture of the Dong’s buildings and techniques, with new insights into the Dong’s cosmology and rituals of everyday life meshed with the architecture, and the symbolic meanings. It examines how the buildings and techniques of the Dong are ordered and influenced by the local culture and context. The timber bridges and drum towers are the Dong’s most prominent architectural monuments. Usually built elaborately with multiple roofs, these bridges and drum towers were designed and maintained by the local carpenters who also built the village suspended houses, in an oral tradition carried down from father to son or to apprentice. They were funded entirely by the local people, and the bridges tend to be built in places without great pressure of traffic or another bridge already existing close by. Why does such great expense go into the Dong’s buildings with elaboration? How were they built? And what do they mean to their users and builders? This book is an anthropological study on the Dong’s architecture and technique, and it aims to contribute a discourse on the interdisciplinary research area. It is suitable for graduate and postgraduate readers.

Author: Sarah Handler
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520353331
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 727

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Book Description
Chinese classical furniture is esteemed throughout the world for its beauty, functionalism, and influence on contemporary design aesthetics. Sarah Handler's stunningly illustrated volume traces Chinese hardwood furniture from its earliest origins in the Shang dynasty (c. 1500 to c. 1050 B.C.) to the present. She offers a fascinating and poetic view of Chinese furniture as functional sculpture, a fine art alongside the other Chinese arts of calligraphy, architecture, painting, and literature. Handler, a widely respected scholar of Chinese furniture, uses her knowledge of Chinese social, political, and economic history to provide a backdrop for understanding the many nuances of this art form. Drawing on literary and visual evidence from excavated materials, written texts, paintings, prints, and engravings, she discusses how people lived, their notions of hierarchy, and their perceptions of space. Her descriptions of historical developments, such as the shift from mats to chairs, evoke the psychological and sociological ramifications. The invention of a distinctive way to support and contain people and things within the household is one of China's singular contributions, says Handler. With more than three hundred exquisite illustrations, many in color, Handler's comprehensive study reveals "the magical totality of Chinese classical furniture, from its rich surfaces and shrewd proportions down to the austere soul of art that resides in the hardwood interiors." Austere Luminosity recognizes Chinese classical furniture as one of China's premier arts, unique in the furniture traditions of the world.

Author: B. J. ter Haar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004148442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This book analyzes the role of oral stories in Chinese witch-hunts. Of interest to historians of oral traditions, folklore and witch-hunts, but also to those working on anti-Christian movements and the intersection of popular fears and political history in China.

Author: Paolo Santangelo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004483063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 621

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Book Description
This is the long-awaited first book-form result of the author’s pioneering interdisciplinary research on a key problem for understanding Chinese texts, and, therewith, China: its ways of expression of emotions and states of mind. Relying on his immense database on (mostly) Ming and Qing sources, the author here presents the first truly solid, source-based survey on the subject. After analysing the methodological problems involved, the volume focuses on contradictions between official values on the one hand, and practical compromises between individual appetitive energies and personal tendencies for wealth and gratification of desires on the other hand. It analyses the negotiating process between the rigid ethical codes and dynamic social changes, as well as how social control influences the cognitive elements of emotions, both in restraining personal passions and promoting the "virtuous sentiments".

Author: Rune Svarverud
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004110106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
"Methods of the Way: Early Chinese Ethical Thought" gives a detailed account of the textual history as well as the early development of 112 ethical terms defined in the chapter "Methods ot the Way (Daoshu)" ascribed to Jia Yi (200-168 B.C.). An important contribution to our understanding of the roles of ethics in early China.

Author: Barend ter Haar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004489665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
The extensive ritual and mythological lore of the Chinese Triads form the scope of this new paperback in Brill’s Scholar’s List. In it the reader will find a critical evaluation of the extant sources together with a true wealth of context. The core of the book is formed by a close reading of the initiation ritual, including the burning of incense, the altar, the enactment of a journey of life and death, and the blood covenant. Different narrative structures are also presented. These include the messianic demonological paradigm, political legitimation, and the foundation of myth. Triad lore is placed in its own religious and cultural context, allowing radically new conclusions about its origins, meanings and functions. This book is of special interest to social historians, anthropologists, and students of Chinese religious culture.

Author: Chun-chieh Huang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004488286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
All cultures and times have their own notions of time and space. Being one of the fundamental ideas in every society they influence virtually every aspect of society. In this book the authors explain the notions of time and space in China, how culturally concrete and particularly Chinese they are and how significant such Chinese cultural-ness of these notions is. Seventeen scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds have treated topics within this general perspective in a comprehensive way.

Author: Edward . Farmer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004489150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This volume deals with the social legislation of Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), following the era of Mongol rule in China. It recounts the circumstances under which the laws were enacted and what the Emperor claimed he was trying to accomplish - a restoration of traditional Chinese social norms. The contents of several codes are discussed in terms of the groups to which they applied and the range of activities they purported to regulate. The early Ming codes formed one of the most comprehensive and cohesive bodies of law in all of Chinese history. Taken as a group, they constituted an autocrate's blueprint for the ideal society. The texts of three codifications - an imperial clan constitution, a general summary of the laws, and guidelines for village life - are translated as appendixes.