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Author: Richard J. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442221941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560
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Book Description
The Qing dynasty (1636–1912)—a crucial bridge between “traditional” and “modern” China—was remarkable for its expansiveness and cultural sophistication. This engaging and insightful history of Qing political, social, and cultural life traces the complex interaction between the Inner Asian traditions of the Manchus, who conquered China in 1644, and indigenous Chinese cultural traditions. Noted historian Richard J. Smith argues that the pragmatic Qing emperors presented a “Chinese” face to their subjects who lived south of the Great Wall and other ethnic faces (particularly Manchu, Mongolian, Central Asian, and Tibetan) to subjects in other parts of their vast multicultural empire. They were attracted by many aspects of Chinese culture, but far from being completely “sinicized” as many scholars argue, they were also proud of their own cultural traditions and interested in other cultures as well. Setting Qing dynasty culture in historical and global perspective, Smith shows how the Chinese of the era viewed the world; how their outlook was expressed in their institutions, material culture, and customs; and how China’s preoccupation with order, unity, and harmony contributed to the civilization’s remarkable cohesiveness and continuity. Nuanced and wide-ranging, his authoritative book provides an essential introduction to late imperial Chinese culture and society.
Author: Richard J. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442221941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Get Book
Book Description
The Qing dynasty (1636–1912)—a crucial bridge between “traditional” and “modern” China—was remarkable for its expansiveness and cultural sophistication. This engaging and insightful history of Qing political, social, and cultural life traces the complex interaction between the Inner Asian traditions of the Manchus, who conquered China in 1644, and indigenous Chinese cultural traditions. Noted historian Richard J. Smith argues that the pragmatic Qing emperors presented a “Chinese” face to their subjects who lived south of the Great Wall and other ethnic faces (particularly Manchu, Mongolian, Central Asian, and Tibetan) to subjects in other parts of their vast multicultural empire. They were attracted by many aspects of Chinese culture, but far from being completely “sinicized” as many scholars argue, they were also proud of their own cultural traditions and interested in other cultures as well. Setting Qing dynasty culture in historical and global perspective, Smith shows how the Chinese of the era viewed the world; how their outlook was expressed in their institutions, material culture, and customs; and how China’s preoccupation with order, unity, and harmony contributed to the civilization’s remarkable cohesiveness and continuity. Nuanced and wide-ranging, his authoritative book provides an essential introduction to late imperial Chinese culture and society.
Author: Richard J Smith
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 9780813313474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)—a crucial bridge between “traditional” and “modern” China—was a period remarkable for its expansiveness and cultural sophistication. In this extensively revised and expanded edition of his highly regarded book, Richard J. Smith shows how the Chinese of the Qing Dynasty viewed the world; how their outlook was expressed in their institutions, material culture, and customs; and how China's preoccupation with order, unity, and harmony contributed to the remarkable cohesiveness and continuity of traditional Chinese civilization. In addition to offering a new and challenging interpretation of Chinese culture as a whole, he provides a fresh perspective on a wide variety of topics, from gender issues, philosophy, religion, and mythology, to language, aesthetics, and symbolism. He also examines a number of important but too-often neglected aspects of traditional Chinese daily life, including divination, food, music, sexual practices, festivals, child-rearing, and games.Based on the author's careful rethinking of certain themes and arguments presented in the first edition, this revised version of China's Cultural Heritage also draws heavily upon the enormous body of new scholarship on Chinese history and culture that has appeared in the last decade. Although focused primarily on the Qing Dynasty, the book not only sheds valuable light on the distant past but it helps us to understand China's contemporary problems of modernization. A concluding chapter systematically explores the legacy of traditional Chinese culture to the twentieth century.
Author: Richard J Smith
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 602
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Book Description
Based on the author's careful rethinking of certain themes and arguments presented in the first edition, this revised version of China's Cultural Heritage also draws heavily upon the enormous body of new scholarship on Chinese history and culture that has appeared in the last decade. Although focused primarily on the Qing Dynasty, the book not only sheds valuable light on the distant past but it also helps us to understand China's contemporary problems of modernization.
Author: Richard J Smith
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Concentrating on the literature, customs, ideas, and the arts, this is almost exclusively a cultural history of China during the Ching dynasty.
Author: Richard Joseph Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Concentrating on the literature, customs, ideas, and the arts, this is almost exclusively a cultural history of China during the Ching dynasty.
Author: Paula M. Varsano
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438463030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Book Description
Considers the role of hiddenness in the history of cultural production in premodern China. This volume brings together fourteen essays that explore the role of hiddennessas both an object and a mode of representationin the history of cultural production in China from the Warring States Period (403221 BCE) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1911) and beyond. The rhetorical use of various forms of hiddenness makes its appearance in literary, political, philosophical, and religious writings, as well as in the visual arts. Working in fields as disparate as traditional Chinese literature, religion, philosophy, history, medicine, and art, the contributors attempt to characterize one of the fundamental signifying practices in traditional Chinese cultural production. In the process, they not only reveal otherwise obscure patterns connecting longstanding social, political, aesthetic, and epistemological practices, but also contribute to ongoing discussionswell beyond the field of China studiesregarding the representation and communicability of knowledge, as well as the practices controlling its dissemination.
Author: Li Shi
Publisher: DeepLogic
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
The book is the volume of “History of Customs in the Qing Dynasty” among a series of books of “Deep into China Histories”. The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) and the Bamboo Annals (296 BC) describe a Xia dynasty (c. 2070–1600 BC) before the Shang, but no writing is known from the period The Shang ruled in the Yellow River valley, which is commonly held to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. However, Neolithic civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River. These Yellow River and Yangtze civilizations arose millennia before the Shang. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest civilizations, and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization.The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) supplanted the Shang and introduced the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule. The central Zhou government began to weaken due to external and internal pressures in the 8th century BC, and the country eventually splintered into smaller states during the Spring and Autumn period. These states became independent and warred with one another in the following Warring States period. Much of traditional Chinese culture, literature and philosophy first developed during those troubled times.In 221 BC Qin Shi Huang conquered the various warring states and created for himself the title of Huangdi or "emperor" of the Qin, marking the beginning of imperial China. However, the oppressive government fell soon after his death, and was supplanted by the longer-lived Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Successive dynasties developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the emperor to control vast territories directly. In the 21 centuries from 206 BC until AD 1912, routine administrative tasks were handled by a special elite of scholar-officials. Young men, well-versed in calligraphy, history, literature, and philosophy, were carefully selected through difficult government examinations. China's last dynasty was the Qing (1644–1912), which was replaced by the Republic of China in 1912, and in the mainland by the People's Republic of China in 1949.Chinese history has alternated between periods of political unity and peace, and periods of war and failed statehood – the most recent being the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949). China was occasionally dominated by steppe peoples, most of whom were eventually assimilated into the Han Chinese culture and population. Between eras of multiple kingdoms and warlordism, Chinese dynasties have ruled parts or all of China; in some eras control stretched as far as Xinjiang and Tibet, as at present. Traditional culture, and influences from other parts of Asia and the Western world (carried by waves of immigration, cultural assimilation, expansion, and foreign contact), form the basis of the modern culture of China.
Author: Andrew Phillips
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108484972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
In pre-publication, book had the subtitle Diversity and its discontents.
Author: Keekok Lee
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 1606932470
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
This book attempts to deconstruct certain key clusters of Chinese characters and words to make them yield fascinating tales about the country's culture and history.
Author: Peng-cheng Kung
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811239770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 549
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Book Description
This book is edited based on a series of lectures on Chinese cultural history delivered at the Peking University in 2004. It stands out with its distinctive methodology and unique stand, and is popular with readers, with 17 reprints for the Chinese edition since 2006.Before the 1980s, traditional culture was often the target of criticisms and put in a negative light in China. After the 1980s, due to the belief that traditional culture can contribute to modernization, people decided to 'take its essence and discard its dregs'. As of today, most books on this theme have been written in accordance with this principle.However, in this book, the author argues that many problems have emerged from the modernization of the Western society, and thus the need for reflection and re-examining. Traditional Chinese culture is a source for comparison and reflection. As such, when we discuss traditional culture nowadays, not only should we excavate its long-hidden meanings, but we should also develop contrastive resources to facilitate our collaborative development in future.The discussions in this book adopt a vertical structure that begins with how Chinese define a human, followed by topics on the human body, Qi, food, male and female, home and state, the relationship between heaven and human beings, ritual systems, historical consciousness, thinking patterns, the art of expressing sentiments, commitments to the politics of virtues and achievements, and cultural practices. In every chapter, there is also a horizontal method of comparison on Chinese, Western and Indian cultures, to foreground the particularities and advantages of the Chinese culture.Apart from elaborating on the major characteristics of traditional Chinese culture, there is also a discussion on how the modern disdain for and misunderstandings of the traditional culture originated from the West. The author also elaborates on Montesquieu's views of China and the various misconceptions and misunderstandings of the traditional Chinese legal systems. Finally, it ends with the author's thoughts on the revitalization of the Chinese civilization.
