Literati Lenses

Literati Lenses PDF Author: Mia Yinxing Liu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824859871
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China’s art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of inspiration. Literati Lenses explores this interplay during the Mao era, a time when cinema, at the forefront of ideological campaigns and purges, was held to strict political guidelines. Through four films—Li Shizhen (1956), Stage Sisters (1964), Early Spring in February (1963), and Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1979)—Mia Liu reveals how landscape offered an alternative text that could operate beyond political constraints and provide a portal for smuggling interesting discourses into the film. While allusions to pictorial traditions associated with a bygone era inevitably took on different meanings in the context of Mao-era cinema, cinematic engagement with literati landscape endowed films with creative and critical space as well as political poignancy. Liu not only identifies how the conventions and aesthetics of traditional literati landscape art were reinvented and mediated on multiple levels in cinema, but also explores how post-1949 Chinese filmmakers configured themselves as modern intellectuals in the spaces forged among the vestiges of the old. In the process, she deepens her analysis, suggesting that landscape be seen as an allegory of human life, a mirror of the age, and a commentary on national affairs.

Peach Blossom Paradise

Peach Blossom Paradise PDF Author: Ge Fei
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374706
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
An enthralling story of revolution, idealism, and a savage struggle for utopia by one of China's greatest living novelists. In 1898 reformist intellectuals in China persuaded the young emperor that it was time to transform his sclerotic empire into a prosperous modern state. The Hundred Days’ Reform that followed was a moment of unprecedented change and extraordinary hope—brought to an abrupt end by a bloody military coup. Dashed expectations would contribute to the revolutionary turn that Chinese history would soon take, leading in time to the deaths of millions. Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at his estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative. This mysterious man has a great vision of reforging China as an egalitarian utopia, and he will stop at nothing to make it real. It is his own plans, however, which come to nothing, and his “little sister” Xiumi is left to take up arms against a Confucian world in which women are chattel. Her campaign for change and her struggle to seize control over her own body are continually threatened by the violent whims of men who claim to be building paradise.

Everything Here is Beautiful

Everything Here is Beautiful PDF Author: Mira T. Lee
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735221960
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A story of "two sisters--Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister's protector, [and] Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and often life changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. But Lucia impetuously plows ahead, marrying a big-hearted, older man only to leave him suddenly to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant. She moves her new family from the States to Ecuador and back again, but the bitter constant is that she is, in fact, mentally ill"--

Peach Blossom Spring

Peach Blossom Spring PDF Author: Melissa Fu
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0316288691
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
A "beautifully rendered" novel about war, migration, and the power of telling our stories, Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home (Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author). A country at war. A family searching for home. China, 1938. Meilin and her four-year-old son, Renshu, flee their burning city as Japanese forces advance. On the perilous journey that follows, across a China transformed by war, they find comfort and wisdom in their most treasured possession, a beautifully illustrated hand scroll filled with ancient fables. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter, Lily, is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood in China. How can he tell his story when he's left so much behind? Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving story about the haunting power of our past, the sacrifices we make to protect our children, and one family's search for a place to call home. A BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB PICK AND NOMINEE FOR "BOOK OF THE YEAR" NOMINATED FOR THE GOODREADS CHOICE "BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR" "An accomplished first novel." —New York Times Book Review "A stunning achievement . . . I absolutely adored this novel about love and war, migration and belonging.” —Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo "I so enjoyed this book." —Alisa Chang, NPR's All Things Considered "Magical and powerful, Peach Blossom Spring brings to life the costs of wars and conflicts while illuminating the spirit of human survival.”―Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, author of The Mountains Sing “Expansive, atmospheric, and affecting.” —Susie Yang, author of White Ivy

Peach Blossom Spring

Peach Blossom Spring PDF Author: Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
ISBN: 9780671787103
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
When he accidentally discovers a beautiful hidden valley inhabited by contented people, a fisherman is asked to return but only if he tells no one where he's been.

Fragile Monsters

Fragile Monsters PDF Author: Catherine Menon
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780241988978
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Mary is a difficult grandmother for Durga to love. Sharp-tongued and ferocious, Durga hopes simply to endure her and the memories of her past when she visits rural Malaysia. But when a reckoning comes, both women find they must unravel generations of secrets. What happened to Durga's mother? Why did so many of their family members disappear during the war? And who is to blame for the childhood tragedy that haunts Durga to this day? Tracing one family's story from 1920 to the present, Fragile Monsters is a thrilling tale of love, family and betrayal set against the backdrop of natural disasters and fallen empires.

Literati Lenses

Literati Lenses PDF Author: Mia Yinxing Liu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824859871
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China’s art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of inspiration. Literati Lenses explores this interplay during the Mao era, a time when cinema, at the forefront of ideological campaigns and purges, was held to strict political guidelines. Through four films—Li Shizhen (1956), Stage Sisters (1964), Early Spring in February (1963), and Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1979)—Mia Liu reveals how landscape offered an alternative text that could operate beyond political constraints and provide a portal for smuggling interesting discourses into the film. While allusions to pictorial traditions associated with a bygone era inevitably took on different meanings in the context of Mao-era cinema, cinematic engagement with literati landscape endowed films with creative and critical space as well as political poignancy. Liu not only identifies how the conventions and aesthetics of traditional literati landscape art were reinvented and mediated on multiple levels in cinema, but also explores how post-1949 Chinese filmmakers configured themselves as modern intellectuals in the spaces forged among the vestiges of the old. In the process, she deepens her analysis, suggesting that landscape be seen as an allegory of human life, a mirror of the age, and a commentary on national affairs.

The Columbia History of Chinese Literature

The Columbia History of Chinese Literature PDF Author: Victor H. Mair
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231528515
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1369

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Book Description
The Columbia History of Chinese Literature is a comprehensive yet portable guide to China's vast literary traditions. Stretching from earliest times to the present, the text features original contributions by leading specialists working in all genres and periods. Chapters cover poetry, prose, fiction, and drama, and consider such contextual subjects as popular culture, the impact of religion, the role of women, and China's relationship with non-Sinitic languages and peoples. Opening with a major section on the linguistic and intellectual foundations of Chinese literature, the anthology traces the development of forms and movements over time, along with critical trends, and pays particular attention to the premodern canon.

From Skin to Heart

From Skin to Heart PDF Author: Paolo Santangelo
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447054584
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Just like the self, sensations and emotions expressed in literature are elusive issues. Necessarily separated from living reality and yet, in a sense, a mirror of it, linguistic coding of bodily feeling and emotional feeling became subject of avid interest among scholars of historical emotion research and the history of mentality in intra- and intercultural perspectives. This volume combines eleven essays with critical discussions concerning the bidirectional network of sense perception and emotion. Exploring the theme from different angles - psychological, medical, and literary - From Skin to Heart highlights the intimate interrelationship between bodily sensations, states of mind, and the emotions from pain, illness, and self-destruction to love-sickness and self-sacrifice in early Chinese poetry and ethics and late imperial lyrics and narrative. The partly descriptive, partly analytical essays are contributions of a new wave of Continental and American sinology that, inspired by cultural studies, discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis, offers fresh views on body and psyche as locked into and emerging from Chinese primary sources. An appendix provides additional examples of the rich linguistic material referring to phenomena of sense perception and the affective sphere and their interdependence.

The Change of Narrative Modes in Chinese Fiction (1898–1927)

The Change of Narrative Modes in Chinese Fiction (1898–1927) PDF Author: Pingyuan Chen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811662029
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This book examines the Chinese fictions (xiaoshuo) published between 1898 and 1927 – three pivotal decades, during which China underwent significant social changes. It applies Narratology and Sociology of the Novel methods to analyze both the texts themselves and the social-cultural factors that triggered the transformation of the narrative mode in Chinese fiction. Based on empirical data, the author argues that this transformation was not only inspired by translated Western fiction, but was also the result of a creative transformation in tradition Chinese literature.

A Story of Ruins

A Story of Ruins PDF Author: Wu Hung
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861899769
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This richly illustrated book examines the changing significance of ruins as vehicles for cultural memory in Chinese art and visual culture from ancient times to the present. The story of ruins in China is different from but connected to “ruin culture” in the West. This book explores indigenous Chinese concepts of ruins and their visual manifestations, as well as the complex historical interactions between China and the West since the eighteenth century. Wu Hung leads us through an array of traditional and contemporary visual materials, including painting, architecture, photography, prints, and cinema. A Story of Ruins shows how ruins are integral to traditional Chinese culture in both architecture and pictorial forms. It traces the changes in their representation over time, from indigenous methods of recording damage and decay in ancient China, to realistic images of architectural ruins in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the strong interest in urban ruins in contemporary China, as shown in the many artworks that depict demolished houses and decaying industrial sites. The result is an original interpretation of the development of Chinese art, as well as a unique contribution to global art history.