The Path to Sun Village


Book Description

This book is a product of over ten years of work. It addresses intermarriage circles, transformations of customs, the rise and fall supernatural forces, power relations among gods, ghosts and people in “synchronic communities,” and tongxiangtongye (same hometown, same industry) economies based on rural sociocultural networks in the author’s native Sun Village in Putian. The author explores the details of microhistory by examining changes and continuities in everyday life to show the grand through the minute. This exciting book possesses important theoretical significance, including reflections on binary frameworks such as state vs. society and tradition vs. modernity or revolution, along with new arguments about commonly used concepts such as “the cultural nexus of power” and “the hollowing-out of the rural.”




The Story of a Sun Village


Book Description

Güneş, Gök, Doğa, Su and Ay, a group of five young graduates fresh out of university, who have reunited in their out-of-the-way Anatolian village high in the Caucuses, set out on an adventure that will change not only their lives but that of their rural community, for ever. On a journey that takes them into the remote forests and mountains above their quiet Anatolian home, they confront many challenges and quite a few scary moments before finally arriving at the Mysterious Garden of the Sun. While there, they meet some extraordinary characters who teach them about all about a lost civilisation that enables people to live in harmony with nature and the ancient Anatolian philosophy of the sun… a way of life that their country has virtually forgotten…




Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings


Book Description

Union Pacific Railroad's Averell Harriman had a bold vision to restore rail passenger traffic decimated by the Great Depression: create ski tourism in Idaho's remote Wood River Valley. A $1.5 million investment opened Sun Valley in December 1936 with a lavish lodge, luxury shopping, Austrian ski instructors and extensive backcountry skiing. Prestigious tournaments featured the world's best skiers. Chairlifts invented by Union Pacific engineers serviced skiers quickly and comfortably. Ski instructor and filmmaker Otto Lang recalled that seemingly overnight, it became "a magnet for the 'beautiful people,' a meeting place for movie stars and moguls, chairmen and captains of industry, Greek shipping tycoons, and peripatetic playboys--and playgirls--of the international social set." After World War II and Harriman's departure, Union Pacific's willingness to pay the $500,000 yearly subsidy waned. Bill Janss purchased it in 1964 and reimagined it as a year-round resort but lacked the capital for growth. Sinclair Oil owners Earl and Carol Holding acquired it in 1977, revitalizing it into a premier resort with international status. Award-winning ski historian John W. Lundin celebrates America's first destination ski resort using unpublished Union Pacific documents, oral histories, contemporaneous accounts and more than 150 historic images.




Sun Valley Series


Book Description

Welcome to the SUN VALLEY SERIES where you’ll be transported to America’s original ski resort located in the mountains of Idaho. You’ll meet a cast of heartwarming characters, including three sisters and their enduring loyalty—women who serve as touchstones to one another through emotionally powerful storylines and happily-ever-after romances. Karyn Macadam is starting over after losing her husband to a skiing accident. A chance encounter with a backcountry pilot might be this young widow’s one shot at a new beginning, but only if she can let go of the past. Leigh Ann Blackburn is the perfect wife, until her husband grows more distant, and she believes the worst. An outrageous plan to save her marriage turns the situation on its head, and she soon learns not everything is as it seems. Joie Abbott, who always finds a way to mess up her life, has done it yet again. This time a bitter betrayal threatens to expose a heartache she desperately wants to keep secret, especially from her family. Through romance and heartbreak, laughter and tears . . . life is always better with your sisters at your side. Perfect for fans of Robyn Carr and Susan Wiggs.




Two-Dimensional People


Book Description

Based on almost eight years of fieldwork in a town and a village in South China, this book analyzes contradictions among various dimensions of the peasant economy, social relationships, popular religion, and local politics in rural China. Compared to many anthropological, sociological, and political studies of rural China, which regard Chinese peasants as one-dimensionally materialistic, politically conservative, egocentric (lacking public-mindedness, as in anthropologist Yan Yunxiang’s notion of the "uncivil individual"), with collapsed beliefs, and thinking only of the present (or the "today-ness of today" according to anthropologist Liu Xin), this book shows that people in contemporary rural China are actually "two-dimensional": trying to combine the calculation of self-interest with affective networks of reciprocity, but often falling into awkwardness or cynicism, in a paradoxical symbiosis between nihilism and transcendence. While Marcuse used the words of Benjamin to analyze "one-dimensional man," writing "Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope," this book writes of two-dimensional people, "Only when the vast majority of ordinary people can find hope in everyday life can we finally be given hope!" This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Sociology, Anthropology and East Asian Studies. It will also be a great read to those who are interested in contemporary China in general.




Journey to the Sun


Book Description

The narrative of the remarkable life of Junipero Serra, the intrepid priest who led Spain and the Catholic Church into California in the 1700s and became a key figure in the making of the American West. In the year 1749, at the age of thirty-six, Junipero Serra left his position as a highly regarded priest in Spain for the turbulent and dangerous New World, knowing he would never return. The Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church both sought expansion in Mexico--the former in search of gold, the latter seeking souls--as well as entry into the mysterious land to the north called "California." By his death at age seventy-one, Serra had traveled more than 14,000 miles on land and sea through the New World--much of that distance on a chronically infected and painful foot--baptized and confirmed 6,000 Indians, and founded nine of California's twenty-one missions, with his followers establishing the rest.




Greece: Northern Greece


Book Description

This new guide to Northern Greece, written by Greece expert and long-time travel writer Dana Facaros, is the only guide available to the region and includes the areas of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, complete with their five dramatically beautiful national parks, the country’s highest peaks and mountain lakes, rushing rivers and the world’s deepest gorge, and (this is Greece, after all) long sandy beaches. Sections on background and practical information are followed by an easy-to-follow breakdown of the area offering detailed coverage in 12 chapters, from Greece’s second city, Thessaloníki, to Chalkidikí, Central Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia, Thrace, Western Macedonia, Epirus (including Ioánnina), Thessaly and Magnesía, the Pelion Peninsula and the Islands, plus a short chapter on Athens, the gateway for many visitors to Greece. Greece is becoming more popular by the year and this area in particular offers the more natural, authentic experience that many travellers seek. Bradt’s Northern Greece focuses on just this relatively unknown but up-and-coming region and is an ideal companion for travellers of all ages, budgets and interests, from culture lovers to wildlife enthusiasts, history buffs to archaeologists, foodies to wine connoisseurs. Holidays in the great outdoors are covered, too, including mountain climbing, skiing, white water rafting, rock climbing, sailing, canyoning and sea kayaking, not to mention those who just want to sit on a sandy beach and dance the night away.










Austronesian Paths and Journeys


Book Description

This is the eighth volume in the Comparative Austronesian series. The papers in this volume examine metaphors of path and journey among specific Austronesian societies located on islands from Taiwan to Timor and from Madagascar to Micronesia. These diverse local expressions define common cultural conceptions found throughout the Austronesian-speaking world.