On the Edge

On the Edge PDF Author: Franck BillŽ
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674979486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book

Book Description
A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the RussiaÐChina border, one of the worldÕs least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. ItÕs a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the worldÕs political giants. Franck BillŽ and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the worldÕs most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as BillŽ and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to ÒreviveÓ their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to ÒEurope,Ó building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. BasilÕs Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.

On the Edge

On the Edge PDF Author: Franck BillŽ
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674979486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book

Book Description
A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the RussiaÐChina border, one of the worldÕs least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. ItÕs a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the worldÕs political giants. Franck BillŽ and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the worldÕs most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as BillŽ and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to ÒreviveÓ their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to ÒEurope,Ó building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. BasilÕs Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.

China on the Edge

China on the Edge PDF Author: Bochuan He
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book

Book Description
"It's impossible to understand the People's Republic of China under its contemporary circumstances without He Bochuan's CHINA ON THE EDGE - a remarkable analysis of the social, economical, technological, & environmental forces which will determine China's future in the next century."--Harrison Salisbury. "Futurist He Bochuan focuses on such issues as China's overpopulation, illiteracy, inefficiency, pollution, deforestation, & loss of natural habitat, problems not unlike those faced in parts of the U.S. & relevant to our concerns because, with China comprising one-quarter of the World's population, these problems have an important bearing on the world's health & well-being...Some readers will find Bochuan's view of progress in China rather bleak, & his crisp, straightforward presentation of cold, hard facts offputting. But one can't help but be impressed & well informed by the author's thoroughgoing chronicle of issues that touch on all our lives."--Mary Banas-Booklist. "He marshalls a plenitude of charts, graphs, maps, & statistics to document his findings. But his tone is not that of the dry objective-sounding scientist; He is, in fact, furious. We can only hope that He Bochuan's book will arouse world opinion..."--The Progressive.

City on the Edge

City on the Edge PDF Author: Ho-fung Hung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108840337
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
A timely study of Hong Kong's politics and society since the 1997 handover that explores the city's long history of resistance.

The Emperor Far Away

The Emperor Far Away PDF Author: David Eimer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408813904
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book

Book Description
'Engaging ... this absorbing book is a tantalizing introduction to China's diversity and the ethnic and political dynamics at the extremes of its empire' Publishers Weekly 'Eimer has forged genuinely new ground as he recounts his travels to China's furthest corners ... A fascinating picture of a part of the country rarely examined' Daily Telegraph Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shanghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage 'the mountains are high and the Emperor far away', meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate. Among these lands are Xinjiang and the Uyghur Muslims who have historically dwelled there, now the subject of a hugely controversial social campaign by a central Chinese government determined to impose control over every square mile of its territory. Travelling through China's most distant and unknown reaches, David Eimer explores the increasingly tense relationship between the Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities. Deconstructing the myths represented by Beijing, Eimer reveals a shocking and fascinating picture of a China that is more of an empire than a country.

Set Free in China

Set Free in China PDF Author: Peter Heller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description


The Edge of Knowing

The Edge of Knowing PDF Author: Roy Bing Chan
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295999004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book

Book Description
The Edge of Knowing explores the relationship between the rhetoric of dreams and realist literary practice in modern Chinese literature from the May Fourth Era in the early twentieth century through the period just following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The writers� attention to dreams demonstrates the multiple influences of Western psychology, utopian desire for revolutionary change, and the enduring legacy of traditional Chinese philosophy. At the same time, modern Chinese writers used their work to represent social reality for the purpose of nation-building. Recent political usage of dream rhetoric in the People�s Republic of China attests to the continuing influence of dreams on the imagination of Chinese modernity. By employing a number of critical perspectives, The Edge of Knowing will appeal to readers seeking to understand the complicated relationship between literary form and Chinese history and politics.�

China's Emerging Technological Edge

China's Emerging Technological Edge PDF Author: Denis Fred Simon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521885132
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 435

Get Book

Book Description
Addresses issues surrounding China's science and technology talent pool, and suggests significant policy implications for China and the international community.

The Mongols at China's Edge

The Mongols at China's Edge PDF Author: Uradyn Erden Bulag
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742511446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront Chinese nationalistic and political hegemony. Breaking new ground in the study of Chinese and Mongol history and ethnicity, the author offers a fresh interpretation of China viewed from the perspective of its peripheries, and of minority nationalities in relation to the study of Chinese representation and minority self-representation. The author interrogates received wisdom about Chinese and minority nationalism by unraveling the Chinese discourse and practice of 'national unity.' He shows how the discourse was constructed over time through political rituals and sexuality in relation to Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples that hark back to Chinese-Xiongnu confrontations two millennia ago and Manchu conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries. Titular rulers of an autonomous region in which they constitute a minority, Mongols face enormous barriers in building and maintaining a socialist Mongolian nationality and a Mongolian language and culture. Acknowledging these difficulties, Bulag discusses a range of sensitive issues including the imbrication of nation, class, and ethnicity in the context of Mongol-Chinese relations, tensions inherent in writing a postrevolutionary history for a socialist nationality, and the moral dilemma of building a socialist model with Mongol characteristics. Charting the interface between a state-centered multinational Chinese polity and a primordial nationalist multiculturalism that aims to manage minority nationalities as 'cultures,' he explores Mongol ethnopolitical strategies to preserve their heritage.

Sovereignty at the Edge

Sovereignty at the Edge PDF Author: Cathryn H. Clayton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 168417497X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book

Book Description
"How have conceptions and practices of sovereignty shaped how Chineseness is imagined? This ethnography addresses this question through the example of Macau, a southern Chinese city that was a Portuguese colony from the 1550s until 1999. As the Portuguese administration prepared to transfer Macau to Chinese control, it mounted a campaign to convince the city’s residents, 95 percent of whom identified as Chinese, that they possessed a “unique cultural identity” that made them different from other Chinese, and that resulted from the existence of a Portuguese state on Chinese soil. This attempt sparked reflections on the meaning of Portuguese governance that challenged not only conventional definitions of sovereignty but also conventional notions of Chineseness as a subjectivity common to all Chinese people around the world. Various stories about sovereignty and Chineseness and their interrelationship were told in Macau in the 1990s. This book is about those stories and how they informed the lives of Macau residents in ways that allowed different relationships among sovereignty, subjectivity, and culture to become thinkable, while also providing a sense of why, at times, it may not be desirable to think them."

On the Edge

On the Edge PDF Author: Franck Billé
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674269497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book

Book Description
A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the Russia–China border, one of the world’s least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. It’s a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the world’s political giants. Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the world’s most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as Billé and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to “revive” their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to “Europe,” building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. Basil’s Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.