The Stonewares of Yixing

The Stonewares of Yixing PDF

Author: Kuei-hsiang Lo

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9789622091122

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Despite its beauty, individuality and variety of design, the red or brown unglazed stoneware produced at Yixing in Jiangsu Province has received less attention than other branches of Chinese ceramic art. The Yixing potters have always specialized in the making of teapots, whose use became widespread during the Ming period as a result of the innovation of making tea from rolled leaves, rather than using it in the fine-ground, powdered from in which it had previously been supplied.

The Urban Life of the Ming Dynasty

The Urban Life of the Ming Dynasty PDF

Author: Baoliang Chen

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781844643561

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This book examines the history of life in the big cities of China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), including Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Kaifeng. The coverage includes information on: the clothing of urban officials and residents * their diet * utensils * ceremonies * festivals * the words and deeds of the residents * commercial activities * the contrasts between life within the royal houses and life within an ordinary house in the city. This period of Chinese urban history is unique because, although it developed from traditions of the Han and Tang dynasties, it also heralded a strong break with tradition. As the world started to modernize, so did China, and this fascinating book shows how and where this first occurred. (Series: Insight on Ancient China) [Subject: History, Chinese Studies, Asian Studies, Urban Studies, Cultural Studies]

The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty

The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty PDF

Author: Shih-shan Henry Tsai

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780791426876

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This book is the first on Chinese eunuchs in English and presents a comprehensive picture of the role that they played in the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. Extracted from a wide range of primary and secondary source material, the author provides significant and interesting information about court politics, espionage and internal security, military and foreign affairs, tax and tribute collection, the operation of imperial monopolies, judiciary review, the layout of the palace complex, the Grand Canal, and much more. The eunuchs are shown to be not just a minor adjunct to a government of civil servants and military officers, but a fully developed third branch of the Ming administration that participated in all of the most essential matters of the dynasty. The veil of condemnation and jealousy imposed on eunuchs by the compilers of official history is pulled away to reveal a richly textured tapestry. Eunuchs are portrayed in a balanced manner that gives due consideration to able and faithful service along with the inept, the lurid, and the iniquitous.

Ming Pottery and Porcelain

Ming Pottery and Porcelain PDF

Author: Soame Jenyns

Publisher:

Published: 1953

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13:

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The study of Chinese porcelain has always been a difficult one in Europe, chiefly on account of the customary use of commemorative marks. With the growing western familiarity with Chinese script it seemed possible about 1900 to start the business of classification seriously. This was in the west chiefly a study of the apparently capricious forging of export porcelains which commonly bore not the reign-names bu the names of earlier famous emperors in whose reigns they might have been made but in fact were not.--foreword.

Ming China, 1368–1644

Ming China, 1368–1644 PDF

Author: John W. Dardess

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2011-09-16

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1442204923

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This engaging, deeply informed book provides the first concise history of one of China's most important eras. Leading scholar John W. Dardess offers a thematically organized political, social, and economic exploration of China from 1368 to 1644. He examines how the Ming dynasty was able to endure for 276 years, illuminating Ming foreign relations and border control, the lives and careers of its sixteen emperors, its system of governance and the kinds of people who served it, its great class of literati, and finally the mass outlawry that, in unhappy conjunction with the Manchu invasions from outside, ended the once-mighty dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The Ming witnessed the beginning of China's contact with the West, and its story will fascinate all readers interested in global as well as Asian history.