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One of the most important and celebrated works of premodern Korean prose fiction, Kŭmo sinhwa (New Tales of the Golden Turtle) is a collection of five tales of the strange artfully written in literary Chinese by Kim Sisŭp (1435–1493). Kim was a major intellectual and poet of the early Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897), and this book is widely recognized as marking the beginning of classical fiction in Korea. The present volume features an extensive study of Kim and the Kŭmo sinhwa, followed by a copiously annotated, complete English translation of the tales from the oldest extant edition. The translation captures the vivaciousness of the original, while the annotations reveal the work’s c...
This anthology features translations of ten seminal plays written during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), a period considered the golden age of Chinese theater. By turns lyrical and earthy, sentimental and ironic, Yuan drama spans a broad emotional, linguistic, and stylistic range. Combining sung arias with declaimed verses and doggerels, dialogues and mime, and jokes and acrobatic feats, Yuan drama formed a vital part of China's culture of performance and entertainment in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To date, few Yuan-dynasty plays have been translated into English. Well-known translators and scholars have supervised the making of this collection and add a short description to each play. A general introduction situates all selections within their cultural and historical contexts.
The 1,165 entries of Handbooks and Anthologies for Officials in Imperial China by Pierre-Étienne Will and collaborators provide a descriptive list of extant manuscript and printed works—mainly from the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties—created with the aim to instruct officials and other administrators of imperial China about the technical and ethical aspects of government, and to provide tools and guides to help with the relevant procedures. Both generalist and specialized texts are considered. Among the latter, such disciplines as the administration of justice, famine relief, and the military receive particular attention. Each entry includes the publishing history of the work considered (including modern editions), an analysis of contents, and a biographical sketch of the author.
The early-twentieth-century essayist Zhu Ziqing once wrote that he had only to mention the name of his hometown of Yangzhou to someone in Beijing and the person would respond, "A fine place! A fine place!" Yangzhou was indeed one of the great cities of late imperial China, and its name carries rich historical and cultural resonances. Even today Yangzhou continues to evoke images of artists, men of letters, great merchant families, scenic waterways, an urban environment of considerable grace and charm, and a history imbued with color and romance. This book is in some ways a biography of a city that acquired a personality, even a gender, and became an actor in its own history. Yangzhou invites...
"What did it mean to run a large, commercialized agrarian polity according to the best Confucian principles? This book is intended as a contribution to both intellectual and political history. It is partly a study of how Confucian-trained officials thought about the grain trade and the state’s role in it, particularly the “ever-normal granaries,” the stockpiles of grain maintained by every county government as protection against shortages and high prices. The author investigates the scope and limits of belief in market forces among those critical of government intervention, establishing that rudimentary economic arguments for state withdrawal from the grain trade were available by 1750...
From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zhang Yimou. This searing novel, originally banned in China but later named one of that nation's most influential books, portrays one man's transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant. After squandering his family's fortune in gambling dens and brothels, the young, deeply penitent Fugui settles down to do the honest work of a farmer. Forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family, he witnesses the horrors and priva.
A personnel compilation of all leading officials in the governmental, economic, military and educational organisations in China. In order to maintain contacts and career plans, this cumulative guide includes major institutional changes.
This work covers Su Shi's intellectual life and how this affected his life as an official and as a private person. It discusses his view of the Way (dao) of the ancient sages of China and its transmission, the Confucian classics, and his views on Buddhism and Daoism.