Peking Story

Peking Story
Author: David Kidd
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Download Peking Story Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A haunting and delicately observed description of the last days of Mandarin culture before the revolution, 'Peking Story' is a testimony to a way of life, a culture, an aesthetic and a civilisation which has since completely disappeared.

Midnight in Peking

Midnight in Peking
Author: Paul French
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1101580380

Download Midnight in Peking Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger from the author of City of Devils Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.

Peking Story

Peking Story
Author: David Kidd
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2003-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781590170403

Download Peking Story Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

For two years before and after the 1948 Communist Revolution, David Kidd lived in Peking, where he married the daughter of an aristocratic Chinese family. "I used to hope," he writes, "that some bright young scholar on a research grant would write about us and our Chinese friends before it was too late and we were all dead and gone, folding into the darkness the wonder that had been our lives." Here Kidd himself brings that wonder to life.

Peking

Peking
Author: Susan Naquin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 862
Release: 2001-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520923454

Download Peking Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The central character in Susan Naquin's extraordinary new book is the city of Peking during the Ming and Qing periods. Using the city's temples as her point of entry, Naquin carefully excavates Peking's varied public arenas, the city's transformation over five centuries, its human engagements, and its rich cultural imprint. This study shows how modern Beijing's glittering image as China's great and ancient capital came into being and reveals the shifting identities of a much more complex past, one whose rich social and cultural history Naquin splendidly evokes. Temples, by providing a place where diverse groups could gather without the imprimatur of family or state, made possible a surprising assortment of community-building and identity-defining activities. By revealing how religious establishments of all kinds were used for fairs, markets, charity, tourism, politics, and leisured sociability, Naquin shows their decisive impact on Peking and, at the same time, illuminates their little-appreciated role in Chinese cities generally. Lacking most of the conventional sources for urban history, she has relied particularly on a trove of commemorative inscriptions that express ideas about the relationship between human beings and gods, about community service and public responsibility, about remembering and being remembered. The result is a book that will be essential reading in the field of Chinese studies for years to come.

Moment in Peking

Moment in Peking
Author: Yutang Lin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 815
Release: 1942
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Download Moment in Peking Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Peking University

Peking University
Author: Xiaoqing Diana Lin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0791483916

Download Peking University Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Peking University, founded in 1898, was at the center of the major intellectual movements of twentieth-century China. In this institutional and intellectual history, author Xiaoqing Diana Lin shows how the university reflected and shaped Chinese intellectual culture in an era of great change, one that saw both a surge of nationalism and an interest in Western concepts such as democracy, science, and Marxism. Lin discusses Peking University's spirit of openness and how the school both encouraged the synthesis of Chinese and Western knowledge and promoted Western learning for the national good. The work covers the introduction of modern academic disciplines, the shift from integrative learning to specialized learning, and the reinterpretation of Confucianism for contemporary times.

The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China

The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China
Author: Emily Mokros
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 029574880X

Download The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China experienced far greater access to political information than suggested by the blunt measures of control and censorship employed by modern Chinese regimes. A tenuous partnership between the court and the dynamic commercial publishing enterprises of late imperial China enabled the publication of gazettes in a wide range of print and manuscript formats. For both domestic and foreign readers these official gazettes offered vital information about the Qing state and its activities, transmitting state news across a vast empire and beyond. And the most essential window onto Qing politics was the Peking Gazette, a genre that circulated globally over the course of the dynasty. This illuminating study presents a comprehensive history of the Peking Gazette and frames it as the cornerstone of a Qing information policy that, paradoxically, prized both transparency and secrecy. Gazettes gave readers a glimpse into the state’s inner workings but also served as a carefully curated form of public relations. Historian Emily Mokros draws from international archives to reconstruct who read the gazette and how they used it to guide their interactions with the Chinese state. Her research into the Peking Gazette’s evolution over more than two centuries is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between media, information, and state power.

China Watcher

China Watcher
Author: Richard Baum
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0295800216

Download China Watcher Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People’s Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author’s UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum’s professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching — the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what’s really going on behind China’s veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras. China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949

The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949
Author: Vincent Goossaert
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1684174546

Download The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949 Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"By looking at the activities of Taoist clerics in Peking, this book explores the workings of religion as a profession in one Chinese city during a period of dramatic modernization. The author focuses on ordinary religious professionals, most of whom remained obscure temple employees. Although almost forgotten, they were all major actors in urban religious and cultural life.The clerics at the heart of this study spent their time training disciples, practicing and teaching self-cultivation, performing rituals, and managing temples. Vincent Goossaert shows that these Taoists were neither the socially despised illiterates dismissed in so many studies, nor otherworldly ascetics, but active participants in the religious economy of the city. In exploring exactly what their crucial role was, he addresses the day-to-day life of modern Chinese religion from the perspective of ordinary religious specialists. This approach highlights the social processes, institutions, and networks that transmit religious knowledge and mediate between prestigious religious traditions and the people in the street. In modern Chinese religion, the Taoists are such key actors. Without them, ""Taoist ritual"" and ""Taoist self-cultivation"" are just empty words."

Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan

Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan
Author: Nancy Guy
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2005
Genre: Operas, Chinese
ISBN: 0252029739

Download Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan tells the peculiar story of an art caught in a sea of ideological ebbs and flows. Nancy Guy demonstrates the potential significance of the political environment for an art form's development, ranging from determining the smallest performative details (such as how a melody can or cannot be composed) to whether a tradition ultimately thrives or withers away.When Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and military retreated to Taiwan in 1949, they brought along numerous Peking opera performers. Expecting that this symbolically important art would strengthen regime legitimacy and authority, they generously supported Peking opera's perpetuation in exile. Valuing mainland Chinese culture above Taiwanese culture, the Nationalists generously supported Peking opera to the virtual exclusion of local performing traditions, despite their wider popularity. Later, as Taiwan turned toward democracy, the island's own "indigenous" products became more highly valued and Peking opera found itself on a tenuous footing. Finally, in 1995, all of its opera troupes and schools (formerly supported by the Ministry of Defense) were dismantled.Nancy Guy investigates the mechanisms through which Peking Opera was perpetuated, controlled, and ultimately disempowered, and explores the artistic and political consequences of the state's involvement as its primary patron. Her study provides a unique perspective on the interplay between ideology and power within Taiwan's dynamic society.Nancy Guy is an associate professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.