| Author | : David Kidd |
| Publisher | : Eland Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 180 |
| Release | : 2008 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : |
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.
| Author | : Emily Mokros |
| Publisher | : University of Washington Press |
| Total Pages | : 282 |
| Release | : 2021-05-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 029574880X |
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.
| Author | : Richard Baum |
| Publisher | : University of Washington Press |
| Total Pages | : 343 |
| Release | : 2011-03-01 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0295800216 |
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.
| Author | : Susan Naquin |
| Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
| Total Pages | : 862 |
| Release | : 2001-01-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780520923454 |
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.
| Author | : Sigrid Schmalzer |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 368 |
| Release | : 2009-05-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0226738612 |
In the 1920s an international team of scientists and miners unearthed the richest evidence of human evolution the world had ever seen: Peking Man. After the communist revolution of 1949, Peking Man became a prominent figure in the movement to bring science to the people. In a new state with twin goals of crushing “superstition” and establishing a socialist society, the story of human evolution was the first lesson in Marxist philosophy offered to the masses. At the same time, even Mao’s populist commitment to mass participation in science failed to account for the power of popular culture—represented most strikingly in legends about the Bigfoot-like Wild Man—to reshape ideas about human nature. The People’s Peking Man is a skilled social history of twentieth-century Chinese paleoanthropology and a compelling cultural—and at times comparative—history of assumptions and debates about what it means to be human. By focusing on issues that push against the boundaries of science and politics, The People’s Peking Man offers an innovative approach to modern Chinese history and the history of science.
| Author | : Xiaoqing Diana Lin |
| Publisher | : State University of New York Press |
| Total Pages | : 262 |
| Release | : 2012-02-01 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0791483916 |
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.
| Author | : Vincent Goossaert |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 426 |
| Release | : 2020-03-23 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 1684174546 |
"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."
| Author | : John Stewart Burgess |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 284 |
| Release | : 1928 |
| Genre | : Beijing (China) |
| ISBN | : |
| Author | : Hao Ping |
| Publisher | : Transaction Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 323 |
| Release | : 2013-03-31 |
| Genre | : Education |
| ISBN | : 1936940477 |
Renowned as one of the most distinguished universities in the world, Peking University (PKU or, colloquially, "Beida") has been at the forefront of higher education in China since its inception. Its roots arguably date to the origin of Chinese higher education. Hao Ping traces the intricate evolution of the university, beginning with the preceding institutions that contributed to its establishment, and stretching from the first Opium War of 1839 through the first of several eye-opening defeats for the then-isolated Middle Kingdom to the Xinhai Revolution and the early days of the Republic of China. Hao Ping chronicles the contentious debates between reform-minded leaders who championed Western models of learning and conservatives who favored the traditional schooling and examination system, providing readers with details about the workings of the imperial court as well as the individual officials and scholars involved in Chinese educational reform. This authoritative history of the founding of Peking University defends the university’s claim to be the first modern university in China and offers insight into the formation of higher education as it exists in China today.
