This work offers comprehensive coverage at a time when Chinese cinema has won international acclaim through the work of directors like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou (mainland China), John Woo (Hong Kong), and Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan). Six incisive historical essays precede the main body of entries on film people, synopses, genres, studios, and subjects. The essays alone offer great assistance, but when they are coupled with the cross-referenced entries and the handsome photographs, the work's value crystallizes. A thorough bibliography, multiple indexes, and an annotated list of select websites further enhance the volume.
Here is a spectacular and informative guide to the history of the great Chinese empire and the customs and traditions of its people. Stunning real-life photographs and lifelike models offer an eyewitness view of life in imperial China, from its earliest beginnings in the Bronze Age to its final days in the early years of the 20th century. See the bronze work of the ancient Chinese and the beautiful implements used for Chinese calligraphy. Learn why the First Emperor created the terra-cotta army and what a civil servant's job entailed. Discover what kinds of weapons were used in early battles, how fishermen used bivas to catch fish, and much, much more.
The Opium Wars - The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another
In this tragic and powerful story, the two Opium Wars of 18391842 and 18561860 between Britain and China are recounted for the first time through the eyes of the Chinese as well as the Imperial West. Opium entered China during the Middle Ages when Arab traders brought it into China for medicinal purposes. As it took hold as a recreational drug, opium wrought havoc on Chinese society. By the early nineteenth century, 90 percent of the Emperor's court and the majority of the army were opium addicts.
Britain's Chinese Eye - Literature, Empire and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Britain
This book traces the intimate connections between Britain and China throughout the nineteenth century and argues for China's central impact on the British visual imagination. Chang brings together an unusual group of primary sources to investigate how nineteenth-century Britons looked at and represented Chinese people, places, and things, and how, in the process, ethnographic, geographic, and aesthetic representations of China shaped British writers' and artists' vision of their own lives and experiences.
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
The New York Times bestselling author of 1421 offers another stunning reappraisal of history, presenting compelling new evidence that traces the roots of the European Renaissance to Chinese exploration in the fifteenth century
