Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K'ang-Hsi

Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K'ang-Hsi PDF

Author: Jonathan D. Spence

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0307823067

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A remarkable re-creation of the life of K'ang-hsi, emperor of the Manchu dynasty from 1661-1772, assembled from documents that survived his reign. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

避暑山莊三十六景詩圖

避暑山莊三十六景詩圖 PDF

Author: Kangxi (Emperor of China)

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780884024095

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Thirty-Six Views comprises poems and descriptions published by the Kangxi emperor in 1712 commemorating his newly finished summer palace and reflecting on his life there. The text is accompanied by wood-block prints of its most scenic views created by several outstanding court artists and copperplate engravings by Italian artist Matteo Ripa.

Treason By The Book

Treason By The Book PDF

Author: Jonathan Spence

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-04-05

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0241959144

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In 1728 a stranger handed a letter to Governor Yue calling on him to lead a rebellion against the Manchu rulers of China. Feigning agreement, he learnt the details of the plot and immediately informed the Emperor, Yongzheng. The ringleaders were captured with ease, forced to recant and, to the confusion and outrage of the public, spared. Drawing on an enormous wealth of documentary evidence - over a hundred and fifty secret documents between the Emperor and his agents are stored in Chinese archives - Jonathan Spence has recreated this revolt of the scholars in fascinating and chilling detail. It is a story of unwordly dreams of a better world and the facts of bureaucratic power, of the mind of an Emperor and of the uses of his mercy.

Return to Dragon Mountain

Return to Dragon Mountain PDF

Author: Jonathan D. Spence

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-09-20

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 144062027X

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“Splendid . . . One could not imagine a better subject than Zhan Dai for Spence.” (The New Republic) Celebrated China scholar Jonathan Spence vividly brings to life seventeenth-century China through this biography of Zhang Dai, recognized as one of the finest historians and essayists of the Ming dynasty. Born in 1597, Zhang Dai was forty-seven when the Ming dynasty, after more than two hundred years of rule, was overthrown by the Manchu invasion of 1644. Having lost his fortune and way of life, Zhang Dai fled to the countryside and spent his final forty years recounting the time of creativity and renaissance during Ming rule before the violent upheaval of its collapse. This absorbing tale of Zhang Dai’s life illuminates the transformation of a culture and reveals how China’s history affects its place in the world today.

Gods Chinese Son

Gods Chinese Son PDF

Author: Jonathan D Spence

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780393315561

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A powerful account of the largest uprising in human history--the Taiping rebellion (1845-64)--in which 20 million Chinese were left dead, God's Chinese Son tells "a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time; a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity" (Washington Post Book World). Photos. Author lectures & tour.

The Death of Woman Wang

The Death of Woman Wang PDF

Author: Jonathan D. Spence

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1979-03-29

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 014005121X

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“Spence shows himself at once historian, detective, and artist. . . . He makes history howl.” (The New Republic) Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of T’an-ch’eng emerges here as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.

Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture

Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture PDF

Author: Hung Wu

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1684174031

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Traditionally the "Chinese body" was approached as a totality and explained by sweeping comparisons of the differences that distinguished Chinese examples from their Western counterparts. Recently, scholars have argued that we must look at particular examples of Chinese images of the body and explore their intrinsic conceptual complexity and historical specificity. The twelve contributors to this volume adopt a middle position. They agree that Chinese images are conditioned by indigenous traditions and dynamics of social interaction, but they seek to explain a general Chinese body and face by charting multiple, specific bodies and faces. All of the chapters are historical case studies and investigate particular images, such as Han dynasty tomb figurines; Buddhist texts and illustrations; pictures of deprivation, illness, deformity, and ghosts; clothing; formal portraiture; and modern photographs and films. From the diversity of art forms and historical periods studied, there emerges a more complex picture of ways that the visual culture of the body and face in China has served to depict the living, memorialize the dead, and present the unrepresentable in art.

Giving Up the Gun

Giving Up the Gun PDF

Author: Noel Perrin

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780879237738

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Lord Hideyoshi, the regent of Japan at the time, took the first step toward the control of firearms. It was a very small step, and it was not taken simply to protect feudal lords from being shot at by peasants but to get all weapons out of the hands of civilians. He said nothing about arms control. Instead, he announced that he was going to build a statue of Buddha that would make all existing statues look like midgets. It would be so enormous (the figure was about twice the scale of the Statue of Liberty), that many tons of iron would be needed just for the braces and bolts. Still more was required to erect the accompanying temple, which was to cover a piece of ground something over an eighth of a mile square. All farmers, ji-samurai, and monks were invited to contribute their swords and guns to the cause. They were, in fact, required to. -- from publisher description.

Emperor Qianlong

Emperor Qianlong PDF

Author: Mark C. Elliott

Publisher: Pearson

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13:

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"This accessible account describes the personal struggles and public drama surrounding one of the major political figures of the early modern age, with special consideration given to the emperor's efforts to rise above ethnic divisions and to encompass the political and religious traditions of Han Chinese, Mongols, Tibetans, Turks, and other peoples of his realm." From Amazon.