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The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930

Philippe Peycam

This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it ... More

This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it established a space for public, political contestation that fundamentally changed Vietnamese attitudes and the outlook of Southeast Asia. It directly links Saigon's colonial urbanization to the creation of new modes of individual and collective political agency. To better justify their presence, French colonialists implemented a peculiar brand of republican imperialism to encourage the development of a highly controlled print capitalism. Yet the Vietnamese made clever use of this new form of political expression, subverting colonial discourse and putting French rulers on the defensive, while simultaneously stoking Vietnamese aspirations for autonomy. The book specifically considers the work of Western-educated Vietnamese journalists who, in their legal writings, called attention to the politics of French rule. It rejects the notion that communist and nationalist ideologies changed the minds of “alienated” Vietnamese during this period. Rather, it credits colonial urban modernity with shaping the Vietnamese activist-journalist and the role of the French, even at their most coercive, along with the modern public Vietnamese intellectual and his responsibility toward the group. Countering common research on anticolonial nationalism and its assumptions of ethno-cultural homogeneity, the book follows the merging of French republican and anarchist traditions with neo-Confucian Vietnamese behavior, giving rise to modern Vietnamese public activism, its autonomy, and its contradictory aspirations.Less

Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China

Hans van de Ven

This book describes the role of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, assesses the influence it had on Chinese history and society, and shows how it transformed China's relationship with the world. ... More

This book describes the role of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, assesses the influence it had on Chinese history and society, and shows how it transformed China's relationship with the world. It explains how, between its founding in 1854 and its collapse in 1952, the Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue collected by China's central authorities. The book shows that the service was much more than a tax collector—it also managed China's harbours, erected lighthouses, surveyed the Chinese coast, and pioneered China's modern postal system. The book also follows the activities of the Inspectors General, who were virtual autocrats within the Service and who communicated regularly with senior Chinese officials and foreign diplomats. The book assesses the Service's impact on historical events such as the Sino-French War, the Boxer Rebellion, the 1911 Revolution, and the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s. It shows how the Service was pivotal to China's post-Taiping integration into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance. It argues that the Service introduced the modern governance of trade to China, made Chinese legible to foreign audiences, and that it often kept China together when little else did.Less

The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

Hyun Ok Park

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. ... More

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants’ reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present’s past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.Less

Chinese History and Culture: Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century

Ying-shih Yü

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary ... More

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times?Less

Chinese History and Culture: Sixth Century B.C.E. to Seventeenth Century

Ying-shih Yü

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary ... More

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Yü Ying-shih’s perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals’ discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 1 of Chinese History and Culture explores how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by Chinese intellectuals up to the seventeenth century, guiding them through history’s darkest turns. Essays incorporate the evolving conception of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the significance of eating practices and social etiquette, the move toward greater individualism, the rise of the Neo-Daoist movement, the spread of Confucian ethics, and the growth of merchant culture and capitalism. A true panorama of Chinese culture’s continuities and transition, Yü Ying-shih’s two-volume Chinese History and Culture gives readers of all backgrounds a unique education in the meaning of Chinese civilization.Less

Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance

Nicholas Khoo

Although the Chinese and the Vietnamese were Cold War allies in wars against the French and the Americans, their alliance collapsed and they ultimately fought a war against each other in 1979. More ... More

Although the Chinese and the Vietnamese were Cold War allies in wars against the French and the Americans, their alliance collapsed and they ultimately fought a war against each other in 1979. More than thirty years later the fundamental cause of the alliance's termination remains contested among historians, international relations theorists, and Asian studies specialists. This book brings fresh perspective to this debate. Using Chinese-language materials released since the end of the Cold War, the book revises existing explanations for the termination of China's alliance with Vietnam, arguing that Vietnamese cooperation with China's Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was the necessary and sufficient cause for the alliance's termination. The book finds alternative explanations to be less persuasive. These emphasize nonmaterial causes, such as ideology and culture, or reference issues within the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, such as land and border disputes, Vietnam's treatment of its ethnic Chinese minority, and Vietnam's attempt to establish a sphere of influence over Cambodia and Laos. The book also adds to the debate over the relevance of realist theory in interpreting China's international behavior during both the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. While others see China as a social state driven by nonmaterial processes, the book makes the case for viewing China as a quintessential neorealist state. From this perspective, the focus of neorealist theory on security threats from materially stronger powers explains China's foreign policy not only toward the Soviet Union but also in relation to its Vietnamese allies.Less

The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan

Adam Clulow

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which ... More

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This book focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa, Japan, over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, it presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.Less

DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border

Suk-Young Kim

This book focuses on a diverse selection of people who have crossed the border between North and South Korea and also assesses the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than ... More

This book focuses on a diverse selection of people who have crossed the border between North and South Korea and also assesses the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than constitutional delineation. It details how these individuals use their physical bodies and emotions as “optimal frontiers,” and shows how they resist the state's right to draw geopolitical borders and define their national identities. It highlights the fact that, although the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) is one of the most heavily guarded places on earth, it also provides passage for thousands of defectors, spies, political emissaries, war prisoners, activists, tourists and others testing the limits of Korean division. The book draws on sources that range from North Korean documentary films, museum exhibitions, and theatre productions. It also uses protester perspectives and interviews with South Korean officials and activists. In this way, it recasts the history of Korean division and draws a nuanced portrait of the region's Cold War legacies. The book ultimately helps readers conceive of the DMZ as a dynamic summation of personalized experiences rather than as a fixed site of historical significance.Less

Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers

Norman Rothschild

This book looks at the reign of Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, the only woman to have ruled China over the course of its 5,000-year history. It asks how she rose to power ... More

This book looks at the reign of Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, the only woman to have ruled China over the course of its 5,000-year history. It asks how she rose to power and why she was never overthrown. The book explores a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries and suggests that Wu Zhao drew on China's rich pantheon of female divinities and eminent women to aid in her reign. The book explains that, although Wu Zhao could not obtain political authority through conventional channels, she could afford to ignore norms and traditions. It shows that she deployed language, symbols, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses, so establishing legitimacy within and beyond the confines of Confucian ideology. It describes how Wu Zhao tapped into deep, powerful, subterranean reservoirs of female power to build a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. The book details how the Empress' pageant was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions and inscribed on steles. It concludes that her strategy is a model of political brilliance and proof that medieval Chinese women enjoyed a more complex social status than previously known.Less

An Encouragement of Learning

Yukichi Fukuzawa

The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872–1876) as a series of pamphlets while completing his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of ... More

The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872–1876) as a series of pamphlets while completing his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875). These closely linked texts illustrate the core tenets of his philosophical outlook: freedom and equality as inherent to human nature, independence as the goal of any individual and nation, and the transformation of the Japanese mind as key to advancing in a rapidly evolving political and cultural world. In these essays, Fukuzawa advocated for the adoption of Western modes of education to help the Japanese people build a modern nation. He also believed that human beings’ treatment of one another extended to and was reflected in their government’s behavior, echoing the work of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and other Western thinkers in a classically structured Eastern text. This book translates the full text into English and includes a chronology of Japanese history as it relates to Fukuzawa and his work. An introduction provides additional background on the life and influence of this profound thinker, and a selection of representative writings and suggestions for further reading fully introduce readers to the rare brilliance of his thought.Less

Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang

Anne Behnke Kinney

In early China, was it correct for a woman to disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the public policy of a son who ruled over a dynasty or state? According to the Lienü zhuan, or ... More

In early China, was it correct for a woman to disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the public policy of a son who ruled over a dynasty or state? According to the Lienü zhuan, or Categorized Biographies of Women, it was not only appropriate but necessary for women to step in with wise counsel when fathers, husbands, or rulers strayed from the path of virtue. Compiled toward the end of the Former Han dynasty (202 bce–9 ce) by Liu Xiang (79–8 bce), the Lienü zhuan is the earliest extant book in the Chinese tradition solely devoted to women's education. Far from providing a unified vision of women's roles, the text promotes a diverse and sometimes contradictory range of practices. At one extreme are exemplars resorting to suicide and self-mutilation as a means to preserve chastity and ritual orthodoxy. At the other are bold and outspoken women whose rhetorical mastery helps correct erring rulers, sons, and husbands. The text provides a fascinating overview of the representation of women's roles in early legends, formal speeches on statecraft, and highly fictionalized historical accounts during this foundational period of Chinese history. Over time, the biographies of women became a regular feature of dynastic and local histories and a vehicle for expressing and transmitting concerns about women's social, political, and domestic roles. The Lienü zhuan is also rich in information about the daily life, rituals, and domestic concerns of early China.Less

Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics

Wm. Theodore de Bary (ed.)

This book is an essential, all-access guide to the core texts of East Asian civilization and culture. Chapters address frequently read, foundational texts in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and ... More

This book is an essential, all-access guide to the core texts of East Asian civilization and culture. Chapters address frequently read, foundational texts in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, as well as early modern fictional classics and nonfiction works of the seventeenth century. Building strong links between these writings and the critical traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, this book shows the vital role of the classics in the shaping of Asian history and in the development of the humanities at large. The book focuses on texts that have survived for centuries, if not millennia, through avid questioning and contestation. Recognized as perennial reflections on life and society, these works represent diverse historical periods and cultures and include the Analects of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Xunxi, Lotus Sutra, Tang poetry, Pillow Book, The Tale of Genji, and the writings of Chikamatsu and Kaibara Ekken. Chapters explain the core and most commonly understood aspects of these works and how they operate within their traditions. They trace their reach and reinvention throughout history and their ongoing relevance in modern life. With fresh interpretations of familiar readings, the book inspires renewed appreciation and examination.Less

The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party

Ishikawa Yoshihiro

Official Chinese narratives recounting the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tend to minimize the movement's international associations. Conducting careful readings and translations of ... More

Official Chinese narratives recounting the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tend to minimize the movement's international associations. Conducting careful readings and translations of recently released documents in Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, this book builds a portrait of the party's multifaceted character, revealing the provocative influences that shaped the movement and the ideologies of its competitors. The book begins the story in 1919 with Chinese intellectuals who wrote extensively under pen names and, in fact, plagiarized or translated many iconic texts of early Chinese Marxism. Chinese Marxists initially drew intellectual sustenance from their Japanese counterparts, until Japan clamped down on leftist activities. The Chinese then turned to American and British sources. The book traces these networks through an exhaustive survey of journals, newspapers, and other intellectual and popular publications. It reports on numerous early meetings involving a range of groups, only some of which were later funneled into CCP membership, and it follows the developments at Soviet Russian gatherings attended by a number of Chinese representatives who claimed to speak for a nascent CCP. Concluding in 1922, one year after the party's official founding, the book clarifies a traditionally opaque period in Chinese history and sheds new light on the subsequent behavior and attitude of the party.Less

Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People

Yoshimi Yoshiaki

This book profiles the Asia Pacific War (1937–1945)—the most important though least understood experience of Japan's modern history—through the lens of ordinary Japanese life. Moving deftly from the ... More

This book profiles the Asia Pacific War (1937–1945)—the most important though least understood experience of Japan's modern history—through the lens of ordinary Japanese life. Moving deftly from the struggles of the home front to the occupied territories to the ravages of the front line, the book offers rare insights into popular experiences from the war's troubled beginnings through Japan's disastrous defeat in 1945 and the new beginning it heralded. This book mobilizes diaries, letters, memoirs, and government documents to portray the ambivalent position of ordinary Japanese as both wartime victims and active participants. It also provides penetrating accounts of the war experiences of Japan's minorities and imperial subjects, including Koreans and Taiwanese. This book challenges the idea that the Japanese people operated as a mere conduit for the military during the war, passively accepting an imperial ideology imposed upon them by the political elite. Viewed from the bottom up, wartime Japan unfolds as a complex modern mass society, with a corresponding variety of popular roles and agendas. In chronicling the diversity of wartime Japanese social experience, this account elevates our understanding of “Japanese Fascism.” In its relation of World War II to the evolution—and destruction—of empire, it makes a contribution to the global history of the war.Less

The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation

JaHyun Kim Haboush

William J. Haboush and Jisoo Kim (eds)

The Imjin War (1592–1598) was a grueling conflict that wreaked havoc on the towns and villages of the Korean Peninsula. The involvement of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean forces, not to mention the ... More

The Imjin War (1592–1598) was a grueling conflict that wreaked havoc on the towns and villages of the Korean Peninsula. The involvement of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean forces, not to mention the regional scope of the war, was the largest the world had seen, and the memory dominated East Asian memory until World War II. Despite massive regional realignments, Korea’s Chosôn Dynasty endured, but within its polity a new, national discourse began to emerge. Meant to inspire civilians to rise up against the Japanese army, this potent rhetoric conjured a unified Korea and intensified after the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636. By documenting this phenomenon, JaHyun Kim Haboush offers a compelling counternarrative to Western historiography, which ties Korea’s idea of nation to the imported ideologies of modern colonialism. She instead elevates the formative role of the conflicts that defined the second half of the Chosôn Dynasty, which had transfigured the geopolitics of East Asia and introduced a national narrative key to Korea’s survival. Re-creating the cultural and political passions that bound Chosôn society together during this period, Haboush reclaims the root story of solidarity that helped Korea thrive well into the modern era.Less

The Great Kant? Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan

J. Charles Schencking

In September 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake devastated eastern Japan, killing more than 120,000 people and leaving two million homeless. This book tells the graphic tale of Tokyo's destruction and ... More

In September 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake devastated eastern Japan, killing more than 120,000 people and leaving two million homeless. This book tells the graphic tale of Tokyo's destruction and rebirth. It documents how the citizens of Tokyo experienced this unprecedented calamity and explores the ways in which it rattled people's deep-seated anxieties about modernity. While explaining how and why the disaster compelled people to reflect on Japanese society, it also examines how reconstruction encouraged the capital's inhabitants to entertain new types of urbanism as they rebuilt their world. Some residents hoped that a grandiose metropolis, reflecting new values, would rise from the ashes of disaster-ravaged Tokyo. Many, however, desired a quick return of the city they once called home. Opportunistic elites advocated innovative state infrastructure to better manage the daily lives of Tokyo residents. Others focused on rejuvenating society—morally, economically, and spiritually—to combat the perceived degeneration of Japan. The book explores the inspiration behind these dreams and the extent to which they were realized. It investigates why Japanese citizens from all walks of life responded to overtures for renewal with varying degrees of acceptance, ambivalence, and resistance. The book not only sheds light on Japan's experience with and interpretation of the earthquake but challenges widespread assumptions that disasters unite stricken societies, creating a“blank slate” for radical transformation. National reconstruction in the wake of the Great Kantō Earthquake proved to be illusive.Less

Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia, 1590-2010: Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Eastern Siberia

Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb

Four hundred years ago, indigenous peoples occupied the vast region that today encompasses Korea, Manchuria, the Mongolian Plateau, and Eastern Siberia. Over time, these populations struggled to ... More

Four hundred years ago, indigenous peoples occupied the vast region that today encompasses Korea, Manchuria, the Mongolian Plateau, and Eastern Siberia. Over time, these populations struggled to maintain autonomy as Russia, China, and Japan sought hegemony over the region. Especially from the turn of the twentieth century onward, indigenous peoples pursued self-determination in a number of ways, and new states, many of them now largely forgotten, rose and fell as great power imperialism, indigenous nationalism, and modern ideologies competed for dominance. This book tracks the political configuration of Northeast Asia in ten-year segments from 1590 to 1890, in five-year segments from 1890 to 1960, and in ten-year segments from 1960 to 2010, delineating the distinct history and importance of the region. The text follows the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty in China, founded by the semi-nomadic Manchus; the Russian colonization of Siberia; the growth of Japanese influence; the movements of peoples, armies, and borders; and political, social, and economic developments—reflecting the turbulence of the land that was once the world's “cradle of conflict.” Compiled from detailed research in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Mongolian, and Russian sources, this text incorporates information made public with the fall of the Soviet Union and includes fifty-five specially drawn maps, as well as twenty historical maps contrasting local and outsider perspectives. Four introductory maps survey the region's diverse topography, climate, vegetation, and ethnicity.Less

An Imperial Concubine's Tale: Scandal, Shipwreck, and Salvation in Seventeenth-Century Japan

G. Rowley

Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking saké and ... More

Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking saké and watching kabuki dancing in the presence of the emperor’s principal consort. Among these noblewomen was an imperial concubine named Nakanoin Nakako, who in 1609 became embroiled in a sex scandal involving both courtiers and young women in the emperor’s service. As punishment, Nakako was exiled to an island in the Pacific Ocean, but she never reached her destination. Instead, she was shipwrecked and spent fourteen years in a remote village on the Izu Peninsula before she was finally allowed to return to Kyoto. In 1641, Nakako began a new adventure: she entered a convent and became a Buddhist nun. The book follows the banished concubine as she endures rural exile, receives an unexpected reprieve, and rediscovers herself as the abbess of a nunnery. The book also reveals the little-known lives of Japan’s samurai women who sacrificed themselves on the fringes of the great battles that brought an end to more than a century of civil war.Less

A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597-1600: The Writings of Kang Hang

JaHyun Kim Haboush and Kenneth Robinson (eds)

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The Land of the Five Flavors: A Cultural History of Chinese Cuisine

Thomas Höllmann

This book tracks the growth of food culture in China from its earliest burial rituals to today’s Western fast food restaurants, mapping Chinese cuisine’s geographical variations and local customs, ... More

This book tracks the growth of food culture in China from its earliest burial rituals to today’s Western fast food restaurants, mapping Chinese cuisine’s geographical variations and local customs, indigenous factors and foreign influences, trade routes, and ethnic associations. It details the food practices of major Chinese religions and the significance of eating and drinking in rites of passage and popular culture. The text is enriched with a selection of favorite recipes and photographs, posters, paintings, sketches, and images of clay figurines and other objects excavated from tombs. This history revisits the invention of noodles, the role of butchers and cooks in Chinese politics, debates over the origin of grape wines, and the causes of modern-day food contamination. It discusses local crop production, the use of herbs and spices, the relationship between Chinese food and economics, the influence of Chinese philosophy, and traditional dietary concepts and superstitions. The book uncovers fascinating aspects of daily Chinese life, constructing a multifaceted compendium that inspires a rich appreciation of Chinese arts and culture.Less