Strange Beasts of China

Strange Beasts of China PDF Author: Yan Ge
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199097
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book of 2021 "Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror of 2021"—The Washington Post From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast… In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self. Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.

Strange Beasts of China

Strange Beasts of China PDF Author: Yan Ge
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199097
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book of 2021 "Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror of 2021"—The Washington Post From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast… In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self. Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.

A Chinese Bestiary

A Chinese Bestiary PDF Author: Richard E. Strassberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520922786
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries b.c.e., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China. Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty. This beautiful volume, compiled by a well-known specialist in the field, provides a fascinating window on the thoughts and beliefs of an ancient people, and will delight specialists and general readers alike.

Mystery Creatures of China

Mystery Creatures of China PDF Author: David C. Xu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616464318
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
'Mystery Creatures of China' is one of the most exciting additions to the cryptozoological literature in years. Lake monsters, man-beasts, mystery cats, and other strange creatures reported throughout China are described for the mystery animal enthusiast. Those who enjoy reading about the folklore of other cultures will also find much to ponder.

Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas

Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas PDF Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1951627644
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The gorgeously illustrated contemporary edition of an ancient Chinese text—for fans of fantastic beasts everywhere Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas is a new translation for contemporary readers of a classic Chinese text that is at once the geography of an ancient world, a bestiary of mythical creatures, and a book of cultural and medicinal lore. Illustrated throughout with more than 180 two-color drawings that are so sinuous they move on the page, it is a work for lovers of fantasy and mythology, ancient knowledge, fabulous beasts, and inspired art. The beings catalogued within these pages come from the regions of the known world, from the mountains and seas, the Great Wastelands, and the Lands Within the Seas that became China. They include spirits and deities and all sorts of strange creatures—dragons and phoenixes, hybrid beasts, some with human features, some hideous or with a call like wood splitting, or that portend drought or flood or bounty; others whose flesh cures disease or fends off nightmares, or whose pelt guarantees many progeny. Drawn from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Fantastic Creatures is the work of two members of China's millennial generation, a young scholar and writer once known as the youngest "Genius of Chinese Cultural Studies" and an inspired illustrator trained in China and the United States, who together managed to communicate with the soul of a 4,000-year-old beast and have brought forth its strange beauty. Their work has been rendered into English by the foremost translator of modern Chinese literature in the West.

Animals Through Chinese History

Animals Through Chinese History PDF Author: Roel Sterckx
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This innovative collection opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. This title is also available as Open Access.

Bigfoot and Other Strange Beasts

Bigfoot and Other Strange Beasts PDF Author: Rob Shone
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 9781404208049
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
In graphic novel format, presents three stories involving yeti, Bigfoot, and yeren, also known as wild men of China.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas

The Classic of Mountains and Seas PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140447194
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This major source of Chinese mythology (third century BC to second century AD) contains a treasure trove of rare data and colorful fiction about the mythical figures, rituals, medicine, natural history, and ethnic peoples of the ancient world. The Classic of Mountains and Seas explores 204 mythical figures such as the gods Foremost, Fond Care, and Yellow, and goddesses Queen Mother of the West and Girl Lovely, as well as many other figures unknown outside this text. This eclectic Classic also contains crucial information on early medicine (with cures for impotence and infertility), omens to avert catastrophe, and rites of sacrifice, and familiar and unidentified plants and animals. It offers a guided tour of the known world in antiquity, moving outwards from the famous mountains of central China to the lands “beyond the seas.” Translated with an introduction and notes by Anne Birrell.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress PDF Author: Sijie Dai
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
ISBN: 037541309X
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
An enchanting literary debut—already an international best-seller. At the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor. But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed. From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.

Rouge Street

Rouge Street PDF Author: Shuang Xuetao
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1250835860
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
"Rouge Street gives voice to an intriguing cast of characters left behind by China’s economic miracle . . . Shuang pulls no punches . . . From start to finish, his scope is close to the ground, his language sparingly emotive and unobtrusive. He never flinches. As a result, we don’t look away either." —Jing Tsu, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) Introduced by Madeleine Thien, author of the Booker finalist novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing From one of the most highly celebrated young Chinese writers, three dazzling novellas of Northeast China, mixing realism, mysticism, and noir. An inventor dreams of escaping his drab surroundings in a flying machine. A criminal, trapped beneath a frozen lake, fights a giant fish. A strange girl pledges to ignite a field of sorghum stalks. Rouge Street presents three novellas by Shuang Xuetao, the lauded young Chinese writer whose frank, fantastical short fiction has already inspired comparisons to Ernest Hemingway and Haruki Murakami. Located in China’s frigid Northeast, Shenyang, the author’s birthplace, boasts an illustrious past—legend holds that the emperor’s makeup was manufactured here. But while the city enjoyed renewed importance as an industrial hub under Mao Zedong, China’s subsequent transition from communism to a market economy led to an array of social ills—unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce, suicide—that gritty Shenyang epitomizes. Orbiting the toughest neighborhood of a postindustrial city whose vast, inhospitable landscape makes every aspect of life a struggle, these many-voiced missives are united by Shuang Xuetao’s singular style—one that balances hardscrabble naturalism with the transcendent and faces the bleak environs with winning humor. Rouge Street illuminates not only the hidden pains of those left behind in an extraordinary economic boom but also the inspirations and grace they, nevertheless, manage to discover.

A Billion Voices

A Billion Voices PDF Author: David Moser
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
ISBN: 1760143308
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese. 'If you want to know what the language situation of China is on the ground and in the trenches, and you only have time to read one book, this is it. A veritable tour de force, in just a little over a hundred pages, David Moser has filled this brilliant volume with linguistic, political, historical, and cultural data that are both reliable and enlightening. Written with captivating wit and exacting expertise, A Billion Voices is a masterpiece of clear thinking and incisive exposition.' Victor H. Mair, American sinologist, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature 'David Moser explains the complex aspects of Putonghua against the backdrop of history, delivering the information with authority and simplicity in a style accessible both to speakers of Chinese and those who are simply fascinated by the language. All of the questions that people have asked me about Chinese over the years, and more, are answered in this book. The history of Putonghua and the vital importance of creating a common language is a story David Moser brings to life in an enjoyable way.' Laszlo Montgomery, The China History Podcast