Chinese Religiosities


Book Description

"Extraordinarily timely and useful. As China emerges as an economic and political world power that seems to have done away with religion, in fact it is witnessing a religious revival. The thoughtful essays in this book show both the historical conflicts between state authorities and religious movements and the contemporary encounters that are shaping China's future. I am aware of no other book that covers so much ground and can be used so well as an introduction to this important field." —Peter van der Veer, University of Utrecht




Cultural Advantage for China. Tale of Six Cities


Book Description

Nowadays, plenty of factories from Europe and other developed countries have been relocated to this country, considering its tremendous economic scale and rapid growth rate during the past three decades.But most of what happens inside the China nowadays is deeply hidden from the outside world (¿the foreigners¿ as China people would call). This fact is partly because most reports on China were written by the so-called fly-high experts who are busy completing their reports despite a busy schedule. Very few books or reports were written by people inside, or at least ¿foreigners¿ who spent a few years in China. Therefore in this book, we took a different approach, by inviting local scientists and other writers to describe what happens surround them.It is the purpose of this book to bring these cultural advantages into more focus, in order to bring into light some 'human¿ aspects of the country, and how these can be integrated into the broader context of economics development. At the end of the day, their achievements cannot be measured by economic progress alone, but also how the people can have the proper sense of meaning (i.e. 'feel¿ at home) in their own homeland, instead of being just another 'bolt¿ in the obsolete industrial engine of economics. As shown in history that China/Eastern cultures can shed some light into modern science (cf. Fritjof Capra etc.), it is of our belief that both cultures can learn from each other, rather than suppressing the Eastern cultures under the spell of modernization.As with other books on development economics, it is beyond the objective of this book to give the final word. We would rather see the purpose of this book is to invite further dialogue over a long-time issue on how the modernization can be given a more humanized interpretation. This perhaps will include rethinking on the meaning of modernization and development themselves, beyond classical debates between inward-outward looking development programs.




China Made


Book Description

"“Chinese people should consume Chinese products!” This slogan was the catchphrase of a movement in early twentieth-century China that sought to link consumption and nationalism by instilling a concept of China as a modern “nation” with its own “national products.” From fashions in clothing to food additives, from museums to department stores, from product fairs to advertising, this movement influenced all aspects of China’s burgeoning consumer culture. Anti-imperialist boycotts, commemorations of national humiliations, exhibitions of Chinese products, the vilification of treasonous consumers, and the promotion of Chinese captains of industry helped enforce nationalistic consumption and spread the message—patriotic Chinese bought goods made of Chinese materials by Chinese workers in factories owned and run by Chinese. In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world—nationalism and consumerism—developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either “Chinese” or “foreign,” and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations."







Factory Girls


Book Description

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.




Religion in Chinese Society


Book Description

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.










The Penguin History of Modern China


Book Description

In 1850, China was the 'sick man of Asia'. Now it is set to become the most powerful nation on earth.The Penguin History of Modern China shows how turbulent that journey has been. For 150 years China has endured as victim to brutality on an unmatched scale, to oppression, to war and to famine. This makes its current position as the newest and, arguably, most important global superpower all the more extraordinary. Jonathan Fenby's clear and comprehensive account of China's recent past is the definitive guide to this remarkable transformation.