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Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China

Artistry and Technique

By Kin Sum Li

Examines mass production in antiquity

Highly decorated mirrors are widely sought by museums with collections of Chinese art and are the most actively exchanged items in the art market of ancient Chinese bronzes. Featuring intricate designs...

Three Impeachments

Guo Xiu and the Kangxi Court

By R. Kent Guy

A probe into corruption in late Imperial China

At the beginning of China's long eighteenth century or "High Qing" era, a time of peace and prosperity when the foundations of Manchu rule under the Qing dynasty...

China's Camel Country

Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier

By Thomas White. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How animal conservation became a defense against cultural erasure

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing...

The Xi Jinping Effect

By Ashley Esarey, Rongbin Han

Assesses the broad impact of China's influential leader

The Xi Jinping Effect explores the relationship between the People's Republic of China's current "paramount leader"—arguably the most powerful figure since Mao Zedong (1893–1976)—and multiple areas of political...

Games and Play in Chinese and Sinophone Cultures

By Li Guo, Douglas Eyman, Hongmei Sun

From ancient gameboards to Honor of Kings, games as cultural agents

Games as global and connected phenomena have been examined in the rising scholarly field of game studies, but relatively little has been published on the...

The Dong World and Imperial China’s Southwest Silk Road

Trade, Security, and State Formation

By James A. Anderson

Brings a borderlands perspective to the history of China

From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s...

From Forest Farm to Sawmill

Stories of Labor, Gender, and the Chinese State 

By Shuxuan Zhou

A worker-centered, woman-centered history of China's economic transformation

Socialist China’s state forestry and timber industries employed men as state workers and women as family dependents and collective workers who, beginning in the 1950s, turned rural land...

Glorious Qing

Decorative Arts in China, 1644-1911

By Claudia Brown

A guided tour through centuries of exquisitely crafted objects

With over 250 color illustrations, this companion volume to Claudia Brown's Great Qing: Painting in China, 1644–1911 covers an array of superbly crafted objects of art produced...

Taiwan Lives

A Social and Political History

By Niki J. P. Alsford

Stories of migration, displacement, democratization, and transformation

From a cradle of Austronesian expansion to the dynamic economic powerhouse and successful democracy it is today, Taiwan is layered in colonial histories. In Taiwan Lives, Niki J. P....

Fir and Empire

The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China

By Ian M. Miller. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE

Restores China’s place in forest history

The disappearance of China’s naturally occurring forests is one of the most significant environmental shifts in the country’s history, one often blamed on imperial demand for...

Life and Afterlife in Ancient China

By Jessica Rawson

The three millennia up to the establishment of the first imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC cemented many of the distinctive elements of Chinese civilization still in place today: an extraordinarily challenging geography and environment;...

Modified Bodies, Material Selves

Beauty Ideals in Post-Reform Shanghai

By Julie E. Starr

A comparative analysis of body politics, selfhood, and the pursuit of consumer-based agency

Thin body, white skin, and big eyes. Such beauty ideals are ubiquitous across Shanghai, where salons and weight-loss clinics offering an array of...

An Ecological History of Modern China

By Stevan Harrell

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of An Ecological History of...

Miscellany of the South Seas

A Chinese Scholar’s Chronicle of Shipwreck and Travel through 1830s Vietnam

By Cai Tinglan. Translated by Kathlene Baldanza and Zhao Lu

A riveting tale of danger, adventure, and connection

In 1835 young Chinese scholar Cai Tinglan was caught in a typhoon while sailing across the Taiwan Strait. He and his shipmates spent a harrowing week at sea...

China's Hidden Century

1796-1912

By Jessica Harrison-Hall, Julia Lovell

Cultural creativity in China between 1796 and 1912 demonstrated extraordinary resilience in a time of warfare, land shortages, famine, and uprisings. Innovation can be seen in material culture (including print, painting, calligraphy, textiles, jewelry, ceramics,...

A Thorough Exploration in Historiography / Shitong

By Liu Zhiji. Translated and Introduced by Victor Cunrui Xiong

The definitive translation of a masterpiece in ancient Chinese historiography

In the early eighth century, frustrated with the authorities but still hoping to gain immortality through his future oeuvre, the Tang court historian Liu Zhiji set...

Good Formulas

Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts

By Ruth Yun-Ju Chen

How early print culture reshaped strategies for presenting medical knowledge

Why and how did the strategy of documenting medical practices through personal experience rise to prominence in China? This question is at the heart of Good...

The Ghost in the City

Luo Ping and the Craft of Painting in Eighteenth-Century China

By Michele Matteini

A visual and social exploration of early modern Beijing's cultural milieu

In 1771 the artist Luo Ping (1733–99) left his native Yangzhou to relocate to the burgeoning hub of Beijing's Southern City. Over two decades, he...

A Century of Modern Chinese Poetry

An Anthology

By Michelle Yeh, Zhangbin Li, Frank Stewart

The most comprehensive collection of modern Chinese poetry in English translation available today

This volume—a completely overhauled and updated version of Michelle Yeh’s 1992 classic Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry—brings together modern poetry from the Chinese-speaking...

Porcelain for the Emperor

Manufacture and Technocracy in Qing China

By Kai Jun Chen

A new perspective for understanding the technology behind goods “made in China”

The exquisite ceramic ware produced at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory at Jingdezhen in southern China functioned as a kind of visual propaganda for the...