Author: Mingmei Yip
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1617739081
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
In a sunny California apartment, a young woman and her fiancé arrive to record her great-grandmother's story. The story that unfolds of Precious Orchid's life in China, where she rises from a childhood of shame to become one of the most successful courtesans in the land, is unlike any they've heard before. . . When Precious Orchid's father is falsely accused of a crime and found guilty, he is executed, leaving his family a legacy of dishonor. Her mother's only option is to enter a Buddhist nunnery, so she gives her daughter over to the care of her sister in Shanghai. At first, life at Peach Blossom Pavilion feels like a dream. Surrounded by exotic flowers, murmuring fountains, colorful fishponds, and bamboo groves, Precious Orchid sees herself thriving. She is schooled in music, literature, painting, calligraphy, and to her innocent surprise, the art of pleasuring men. For the beautiful Pavilion hides its darker purpose as an elite house of prostitution. And even as she commands the devotion of China's most powerful men, Precious Orchid never gives up on her dream to escape the Pavilion, be reunited with her mother, avenge her father's death, and find true love. And as the richest, most celebrated Ming Ji or "prestigious courtesan" in all of China, she just might have her way even if it comes with a devastating price. . . Sweeping in scope and stunning in its evocation of China, Peach Blossom Pavilion is a remarkable novel with an unforgettable heroine at the heart of its powerful story. . . "Riveting. . .a rare peek into an exotic culture that is thrilling, captivating, and moving." --Shobhan Bantwal, author of The Dowry Bride "In the sure voice of Precious Orchid, Mingmei Yip recounts thirteen tumultuous years of Chinese history: vicious politics, pristine piety and heartrending scandal, framed in the classical arts. She writes with a painter's fastidious eye and the irresistible energy of grand storytelling. The pages just turn themselves." --Neal Chandler, Director, Creative Writing Program of Cleveland State University. "Peach Blossom Pavilion, story of the last geisha in China, is told with amazing insight as if the author had lived in the tumultuous China of a century ago. Through her beautiful, lucid prose, Mingmei brings modern Western readers into the mysterious world of the cultivated courtesan." --Hannelore Hahn, Founder and Executive Director, International Women's Writing Guild. "Peach Blossom Pavilion is a vivid account of the forgotten past." --Chun Yu, author of Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Author: Tina Lu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804742023
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Focusing on two late-Ming or early-Qing plays central to the Chinese canon (Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan), this study explores crucial questions concerning personal identity.
Author: Mingmei Yip
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 075824181X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Ming Neng, entering a retreat to test her karma as a Buddhist nun, becomes trapped between her long-held spiritual quest and forbidden passion when she succumbs to temptation with the young American doctor who saved her life. Original.
Author: Mingmei Yip
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 0758268165
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
In this richly imaginative novel, Mingmei Yip--author of Peach Blossom Pavilion and Petals From the Sky--follows one woman's daunting journey along China's fabled Silk Road. As a girl growing up in Hong Kong, Lily Lin was captivated by photographs of the desert--its long, lonely vistas and shifting sand dunes. Now living in New York, Lily is struggling to finish her graduate degree when she receives an astonishing offer. An aunt she never knew existed will pay Lily a huge sum to travel across China's desolate Taklamakan Desert--and carry out a series of tasks along the way. Intrigued, Lily accepts. Her assignments range from the dangerous to the bizarre. Lily must seduce a monk. She must scrape a piece of clay from the famous Terracotta Warriors, and climb the Mountains of Heaven to gather a rare herb. At Xian, her first stop, Lily meets Alex, a young American with whom she forms a powerful connection. And soon, she faces revelations that will redefine her past, her destiny, and the shocking truth behind her aunt's motivations. . . Powerful and eloquent, Song of the Silk Road is a captivating story of self-discovery, resonant with the mysteries of its haunting, exotic landscape.
Author: Mingmei Yip
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921760
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 101
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Book Description
Chinese Children's Favorite Stories is a delightful selection of thirteen Chinese folktales as retold by author and illustrator Mingmei Yip. Inspired by her beloved father's nightly story-telling when she was a child, Yip hopes that by retelling some of these thousand-year-old Chinese stories she can pass along Chinese folklore and fables to international readers of all ages. These beautifully illustrated tales give children in other countries a glimpse into the traditions and culture of China, while emphasizing universal lessons about being kind and successfully overcoming obstacles. Readers will encounter many delightful characters--from an angry dragon to a wise cow--in stories such as: The Dream of the Butterfly--A sweet tale about accepting who you are and fully appreciating the world around you Carp Jumping Over the Dragon Gate--A popular story about the rewards of hard work Playing the Qin for the Water Buffalo--A musical tale that highlights empathy and understanding And many more! Recommended for children ages five to ten.
Author: K'ung Shang-jen
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590178777
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A tale of battling armies, political intrigue, star-crossed romance, and historical cataclysm, The Peach Blossom Fan is one of the masterpieces of Chinese literature, a vast dramatic composition that combines the range and depth of a great novel with the swift intensity of film. In the mid-1640s, famine sweeps through China. The Ming dynasty, almost 300 years old, lurches to a bloody end. Peking falls to the Manchus, the emperor hangs himself, and Ming loyalists take refuge in the southern capital of Nanking. Two valiant generals seek to defend the city, but nothing can overcome the corruption, decadence, and factionalism of the court in exile. The newly installed emperor cares for nothing but theater, leaving practical matters to the insidious Ma Shih-ying. Ma’s crony Juan Ta-ch’eng is as unscrupulous an operator as he is sophisticated a poet. He diverts resources from the starving troops in order to stage a spectacular production of his latest play. History, however, has little time for make-believe, though the earnest members of the Revival Club, centered on the handsome young scholar Hou Fang-yü and his lover Fragrant Princess, struggle to discover a happy ending.
Author: Sophie Volpp
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 168417435X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
"In seventeenth-century China, as formerly disparate social spheres grew closer, the theater began to occupy an important ideological niche among traditional cultural elites, and notions of performance and spectatorship came to animate diverse aspects of literati cultural production. In this study of late-imperial Chinese theater, Sophie Volpp offers fresh readings of major texts such as Tang Xianzu’s Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) and Kong Shangren’s Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan), and unveils lesser-known materials such as Wang Jide’s play The Male Queen (Nan wanghou). In doing so, Volpp sheds new light on the capacity of seventeenth-century drama to comment on the cultural politics of the age.Worldly Stage arrives at a conception of theatricality particular to the classical Chinese theater and informed by historical stage practices. The transience of worldly phenomena and the vanity of reputation had long informed the Chinese conception of theatricality. But in the seventeenth century, these notions acquired a new verbalization, as theatrical models of spectatorship were now applied to the contemporary urban social spectacle in which the theater itself was deeply implicated."
Author: Alma Alexander
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
A group of women, the jin-shei sisterhood, form a uniquely powerful circle that transcends class and social custom. They are bound together by a declaration of loyalty that transcends all other vows, even those with the gods, by their own secret language, passed from mother to daughter, by the knowledge that some of them will have to pay the ultimate sacrifice to enable others to fulfill their destiny. The sisterhood we meet run from the Emperor's sister to the street-beggar, from the trainee warrior in the Emperor's Guard to the apprentice healer, from the artist to the traveller-girl, herself an illegitimate daughter of an emperor and seen as a threat to the throne. And as one of them becomes Dragon Empress, her determination to hold power against the sages of the temple, against the marauding forces from other kingdoms, drags the sisterhood into a dangerous world of court intrigue, plot and counterplot, and brings them into conflict with each other from which only the one who remains true to all the vows she made at the very beginning to the dying Princess Empress can rescue them. An amazing and unusual book, based on some historical fact, full of drama, adventure and conflict like a Shakespearean history play, it's a novel about kinship and a society of women, of mysticism, jealousy, fate, destiny, all set in the wonderful, swirling background of Syai, a fantasy kingdom inspired by Imperial China.
Author: Bette Bao Lord
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060599758
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
At a time of mystery and cruelty ... in an ancient land of breathtaking beauty and exotic surprise ... a courageous woman triumphs over her world's ultimate tragedy. Behind the garden walls of the House of Chang, pampered daughter Spring Moon is born into luxury and privilege. But the tempests of change sweep her into a new world -- one of hardship, turmoil, and heartbreak, one that threatens to destroy her husband, her family, and her darkest secret love. Through a tumultuous lifetime, Spring Moon must cling to her honor, to the memory of a time gone by, and to a destiny, foretold at her birth, that has yet to be fulfilled.
Author: Susan Mann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780520222748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
"This important volume adds a significant number of new and unique materials for teachers at all levels of higher education to use in classroom and seminar discussion about the issues of gender, society, and religion in imperial China."--Benjamin Elman, author of A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China "The eighteen primary documents in this anthology, all of them translated for the first time, provide a rich array of sources on the lives of women in China's past. The anthology is important not only for the selection of documents but for the ways it suggests we can think about, and find sources about, women in China. It is must reading for scholars and students alike."--Ann Waltner, author of The World of a Late Ming Visionary: T'an-Yang-Tzu and Her Followers
