Author : Edward Friedman
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 29,92 MB
Release : 1991-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780300054286
This portrait of social change in the North China plain depicts how the world of the Chinese peasant evolved during an era of war and how it in turn shaped the revolutionary process. The book is based on evidence gathered from archives and interviews with villagers and rural officials.
Author : Dagfinn Gatu
Publisher : NIAS Press
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 35,51 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 8776940306
A study on the forging of Chinese communism in the furnace of the anti-Japanese war. It focuses on North China, where the Chinese Communist Party first took root and later expanded to conquer China.
Author : Scott Tong
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 50,70 MB
Release : 2017-11-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 022633905X
An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)
Author : Mobo C. F. Gao
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 34,38 MB
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780824821234
This book is about Gao Village, in Jiangxi province, where the author was born and brought up, leaving when he was twenty-one to study English at Xiamen University. Since emigrating to Australia in 1990, he has returned every year to Gao Village, where his brother still lives. Several accounts of village life in China have been published, but all have been by Western or urban Chinese scholars. Mobo Gao's account is in every sense one from the inside. Though written as an academic work, it does not eschew personal stories and experiences relevant to the themes addressed. These cover a forty-year period and fall into four distinct themes; the village before and after land reform; the commune system; the dismantling of the communes; and the unfolding impact of the market economy, including increased migration to urban areas, from the late 1980s onwards.
Author : Mobo C F Gao
Publisher : The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 24,12 MB
Release : 2019-01-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 962996578X
The personal stories of the Gao villagers demonstrate and are related to changes in China. This is a close study of Gao Village twenty years after the author, an anthropologist and native of Gao village, wrote his original ethnography Gao Village. It combines ethnographic analysis, personal vignettes, and a number of fascinating stories, which presents a convincing yet complex picture of how Gao villagers interact with the outside world. With his sympathetic and insider's approach, the author argues that rural Chinese display great entrepreneurship and inner strength of selfimprovement; they are active contributors to China's economic boom.
Author : Patrick Porter
Publisher : Georgetown University Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 43,52 MB
Release : 2015-01-27
Category : History
ISBN : 1626161925
Porter challenges the powerful ideology of "Globalism" that is widely subscribed to by the US national security community. Globalism entails visions of a perilous shrunken world in which security interests are interconnected almost without limit, exposing even powerful states to instant war. Globalism does not just describe the world, but prescribes expansive strategies to deal with it, portraying a fragile globe that the superpower must continually tame into order. Porter argues that this vision of the world has resulted in the US undertaking too many unnecessary military adventures and dangerous strategic overstretch. Distance and geography should be some of the factors that help the US separate the important from the unimportant in international relations. The US should also recognize that, despite the latest technologies, projecting power over great distances still incurs frictions and costs that set real limits on American power. Reviving an appreciation of distance and geography would lead to a more sensible and sustainable grand strategy.
Author : William Hinton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 836 pages
File Size : 39,52 MB
Release : 1984
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780394723785
Contains primary source material.
Author : Huaiyin Li
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 49,81 MB
Release : 2009-03-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0804771073
Village China Under Socialism and Reform offers a comprehensive account of rural life after the communist revolution, detailing villager involvement in political campaigns since the 1950s, agricultural production under the collective system, family farming and non-agricultural economy in the reform, and everyday life in the family and community. Li's rich examination draws on original documents from local agricultural collectives, newly accessible government archives, and his own fieldwork in Qin village of Jiangsu province to highlight the continuities in rural transformation. Firmly disagreeing with those who claim that recent developments in rural China represent a radical break with pre-reform sociopolitical practices and patterns of production, Li instead draws a clear history connecting the current situation to ecological, social, and institutional changes that have persisted from the collective era.
Author : Michael Meyer
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 455 pages
File Size : 25,95 MB
Release : 2015-02-17
Category : History
ISBN : 1620402874
In the tradition of In Patagonia and Great Plains, Michael Meyer's In Manchuria is a scintillating combination of memoir, contemporary reporting, and historical research, presenting a unique profile of China's legendary northeast territory. For three years, Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown to his wife's family. Their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing, in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights. Once a commune, Wasteland is now a company town, a phenomenon happening across China that Meyer documents for the first time; indeed, not since Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth has anyone brought rural China to life as Meyer has here. Amplifying the story of family and Wasteland, Meyer takes us on a journey across Manchuria's past, a history that explains much about contemporary China--from the fall of the last emperor to Japanese occupation and Communist victory. Through vivid local characters, Meyer illuminates the remnants of the imperial Willow Palisade, Russian and Japanese colonial cities and railways, and the POW camp into which a young American sergeant parachuted to free survivors of the Bataan Death March. In Manchuria is a rich and original chronicle of contemporary China and its people.
Author : Jianglin Li
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 39,41 MB
Release : 2022-01-18
Category : History
ISBN : 1503629791
An untold story that reshapes our understanding of Chinese and Tibetan history From 1956 to 1962, devastating military conflicts took place in China's southwestern and northwestern regions. Official record at the time scarcely made mention of the campaign, and in the years since only lukewarm acknowledgment of the violence has surfaced. When the Iron Bird Flies, by Jianglin Li, breaks this decades long silence to reveal for the first time a comprehensive and explosive picture of the six years that would prove definitive in modern Tibetan and Chinese history. The CCP referred to the campaign as "suppressing the Tibetan rebellion." It would lead to the 14th Dalai Lama's exile in India, as well as the Tibetan diaspora in 1959, though the battles lasted three additional years after these events. Featuring key figures in modern Chinese history, the battles waged in this period covered a vast geographical region. This book offers a portrait of chaos, deception, heroism, and massive loss. Beyond the significant death toll across the Tibetan regions, the war also destroyed most Tibetan monasteries in a concerted effort to eradicate local religion and scholarship. Despite being considered a military success, to this day, the operations in the agricultural regions remain unknown. As large numbers of Tibetans have self-immolated in recent years to protest Chinese occupation, Li shows that the largest number of cases occurred in the sites most heavily affected by this hidden war. She argues persuasively that the events described in this book will shed more light on our current moment, and will help us understand the unrelenting struggle of the Tibetan people for their freedom.
