49 Myths about China


Book Description

Communism is dead in China. “China Inc.” is buying up the world. China has the United States over a barrel. The Chinese are just copycats. China is an environmental baddie, China is colonizing Africa. Mao was a monster. The end of the Communist regime is near. The 21st century belongs to China. Or does it? Marte Kjær Galtung and Stig Stenslie highlight 49 prevalent myths about China’s past, present, and future and weigh their truth or fiction. Leading an enlightening and entertaining tour, the authors debunk widespread “knowledge” about Chinese culture, society, politics, and economy. In some cases, Chinese themselves encourage mistaken impressions. But many of these myths are really about how we Westerners see ourselves, inasmuch as China or the Chinese people are depicted as what we are not. Western perceptions of the empire in the East have for centuries oscillated between sinophilia and sinophobia, influenced by historical changes in the West as much as by events in China. This timely and provocative book offers an engaging and compelling window on a rising power we often misunderstand.




Handbook of Chinese Mythology


Book Description

Compiled from ancient and scattered texts and based on groundbreaking new research, Handbook of Chinese Mythology is the most comprehensive English-language work on the subject ever written from an exclusively Chinese perspective. This work focuses on the Han Chinese people but ranges across the full spectrum of ancient and modern China, showing how key myths endured and evolved over time. A quick reference section covers all major deities, spirits, and demigods, as well as important places, mythical animals and plants, and related items.




Cracking the China Conundrum


Book Description

China's rise is altering global power relations, reshaping economic debates, and commanding tremendous public attention. Despite extensive media and academic scrutiny, the conventional wisdom about China's economy is often wrong. Cracking the China Conundrum provides a holistic and contrarian view of China's major economic, political, and foreign policy issues. Yukon Huang trenchantly addresses widely accepted yet misguided views in the analysis of China's economy. He examines arguments about the causes and effects of China's possible debt and property market bubbles, trade and investment relations with the Western world, the links between corruption and political liberalization in a growing economy and Beijing's more assertive foreign policies. Huang explains that such misconceptions arise in part because China's economic system is unprecedented in many ways-namely because it's driven by both the market and state- which complicates the task of designing accurate and adaptable analysis and research. Further, China's size, regional diversity, and uniquely decentralized administrative system poses difficulties for making generalizations and comparisons from micro to macro levels when trying to interpret China's economic state accurately. This book not only interprets the ideologies that experts continue building misguided theories upon, but also examines the contributing factors to this puzzle. Cracking the China Conundrum provides an enlightening and corrective viewpoint on several major economic and political foreign policy concerns currently shaping China's economic environment.




Tales from China


Book Description

This collection of Chinese stories begins with the great legends of how Earth and Heaven came into being. There are folk-tales too, about ghosts, rain-makers, students and magicians, and a man who is nearly made into fishpaste.




China Into Its Second Rise: Myths, Puzzles, Paradoxes, And Challenge To Theory


Book Description

This book seeks to demystify the re-ascendancy of China as a civilization state. China's politics and society are examined in the light of its living civilization, which is the only one of the ancient civilizations that has survived to this day. The book also contrasts China's development with that of the West and Japan. By combining the impact of internal political and socio-economic developments in China and its external relations (from the silk routes, the tribute system, to the modern day), it unravels the existing myths, puzzles, and paradoxes surrounding China and questions the adequacy of most of the Western political theories (such as realism in international relations) in an attempt to explicate China's re-emergence as a world power. It attempts to tackle squarely the question: Is China a threat to world order?The book traces the rationale for contemporary developments in China to the roots in the country's tradition as well as foreign influences and seeks to unravel the puzzle about the unique China Model that defies conventional thinking in political economy, with its sustained and incredibly rapid economic growth over the past three decades. This study on China's second rise provides a broad background that includes a meaningful scrutiny of the country's behavior during its first rise (713-1820) and beyond. In comparing China's ongoing second rise with its first ascent, the book not only refocuses on and reinterprets the example set during its first rise, but also takes into account the crucial lessons it learned during its century in eclipse in the interregnum, for the effects they have on the country's current orientation and behavior. The book follows an interdisciplinary approach, combining the cultural, intellectual-historical, normative-ideological, and social-scientific perspectives, to lend a more solid grasp of the present-day China. It ends with an educated speculation, based on the foregoing analyses, on the contours of a Pax Sinica that is likely to result from the impact of China's second rise as a world power.




Illustrated Myths & Legends of China


Book Description

Illustrated Myths & Legends of China is a profusely illustrated collection of 32 carefully chosen tales of Chinese myth and legend. With more than 100 illustrations drawn over two thousand years of all aspects of Chinese art—including painting, pottery and porcelain, jade, bronzes and tomb decoration—Illustrated Myths & Legends of China is a vividly written collection of tales of the universe's emergence from chaos, the creation of the world in which the first Chinese people appeared and a depiction of how the many strands of myth and legend have influenced Chinese culture. An impressive array of heroic figures and rich storytelling are at the center of these tales including: Pangu opening heaven to save the earth from chaos. Nuwa creating man and repairing the vault of heaven. Fuxi fixing the calendar by observing the heavens. Shennong creating agriculture. Cangjie inventing writing thus creating the basis for Chinese culture. Fragments of these myths and legends are found in Chinese paintings, wood artifacts, relief carvings, and lacquer art which are illustrated in this book along with informative text. Anyone interested in Chinese culture, mythology, history or art will find this collection a must-have volume for their bookshelf.




Chinese Mythology


Book Description

In Chinese Mythology, Anne Birrell provides English translations of some 300 representative myth narratives selected from over 100 classical texts, many of which have never before been translated into any Western language. Organizing the narratives according to themes and motifs common to world mythology, Birrell addresses issues of source, dating, attribution, textural variants, multiforms, and context. Drawing on exhaustive work in comparative mythology, she surveys the development of Chinese myth studies, summarizes the contribution of Chinese and Japanese scholars to the study of Chinese myth since the 1920s, and examines special aspects of traditional approaches to Chinese myth. The result is an unprecedented guide to the study of Chinese myth for specialists and nonspecialists alike.




Chinese Myths and Legends


Book Description

This colorfully illustrated multicultural children's book presents Chinese fairy tales and other folk stories--providing insight into a vibrant literary culture. Chinese Myths and Legends is a delightful collection of seven classic Chinese stories that make for great reading adventures. From the stories of Pan Gu and Nu Wo, creators of the world, to Bai Su-Tzin, a snake who took on human form and found true love, this mesmerizing book includes myths of creation, mortality, and love. More than just a Chinese children's storybook, Chinese Myths and Legends also explores the origins of each tale, as well as its impact on Chinese culture and history, inviting you and the children you love to enjoy the many layers of meaning. The included pronunciation guide, as well as information for further reading, makes this a perfect tool for educators, librarians, and parents.




The Flood Myths of Early China


Book Description

Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China. In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.




Myths of China and Japan with illustrations in colour & monochrome after paintings and photographs


Book Description

"Myths of China and Japan with illustrations in colour & monochrome after paintings and photographs" by Donald A. Mackenzie. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.