Category: China

Latest in the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series

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ABC English-ChineseThe ABC English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary (ECCE), edited by John DeFrancis and Zhang Yanyin, is a student-oriented bilingual dictionary that, like other dictionaries in the ABC series, organizes Chinese words by their pronunciation as written in pinyin. This innovative, straightforward alphabetical organization allows the user to find most words more quickly and easily. It also facilitates the comparison of words that are pronounced similarly or identically, which is not possible in traditionally-ordered dictionaries. The series’ alphabetical ordering has been imitated in other dictionaries, but ECCE is still unique in that it offers detailed and authoritative coverage of grammar (parts of speech, constructions, and examples) and orthography (both simplified and complex characters as well as pinyin). The ECCE contains 67,633 entries: 29,670 in the English-Chinese section, 37,963 in the Chinese-English section.

The dictionary is a handy 4.5 x 7.5 inches with a plastic flexcover.

ABC Chinese Dictionary Series
October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3485-2 / $20.00 (PAPER)

Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China Now in Paperback

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Cinema, Space, and Polylocality
Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, by Yingjin Zhang, is now available in paperback. In this milestone work, Zhang, a prominent China film scholar, proposes “polylocality” as a new conceptual framework for investigating the shifting spaces of contemporary Chinese cinema in the age of globalization. Questioning the national cinema paradigm, Zhang calls for comparative studies of underdeveloped areas beyond the imperative of transnationalism.

Critical Interventions
October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3408-1 / $26.00 (CLOTH)

The Asian Development Bank, China, and Thailand

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Bounding the MekongTransnational economic integration has been described by globalization boosters as a rising tide that will lift all boats, an opportunity for all participants to achieve greater prosperity through a combination of political cooperation and capitalist economic competition. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has championed such rhetoric in promoting the integration of China, Southeast Asia’s formerly socialist states, and Thailand into a regional project called the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). But while the GMS project is in fact hastening regional economic integration, Bounding the Mekong: The Asian Development Bank, China, and Thailand, by Jim Glassman, shows that the approach belies the ADB’s idealized description of “win-win” outcomes. The process of “actually existing globalization” in the GMS does provide varied opportunities for different actors, but it is less a rising tide that lifts all boats than an uneven flood of transnational capitalist development whose outcomes are determined by intense class struggles, market competition, and regulatory battles.

“This book provides a powerful expose of the hollowness of much of the mainstream institutional discourse on free markets and region-making, as well as the ideological underpinnings of the agendas of the Asian Development Bank and the naturalizing discourse that sees states and regulation as somehow an aberration. Glassman’s analysis is highly original and brings a fresh approach to a region about which a lot has been written in recent years. The theoretical underpinning of the scholarship is more than just sound—it is a tour de force. The book fills an important niche in bringing well theorized analysis to a specifically contextualized region.” —Philip Hirsch, University of Sydney

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3444-9 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

The Decorative Object in Early Modern China

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Sensuous SurfacesSensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China, by Jonathan Hay, is a richly illustrated and in-depth introduction to the decorative arts in Ming- and Qing-dynasty China. Hay explores materials and techniques, as well as issues of patronage and taste, which together formed a loose system of informal rules that affected every level of decoration in early modern China, from an individual object to the arrangement of an entire residential interior. By engaging the actual and metaphoric potential of surface, Hay contends, this system guided the production and use of the decorative arts during a period of explosive growth, which started in the late sixteenth century and continued until the mid-nineteenth century. This understanding of decorative arts in China made a fundamental contribution to the sensory education of its early modern urban population, both as individuals and in their established social roles. Sensuous Surfaces is also an elegant meditation on the role of pleasure in decoration. Often intellectually dismissed as merely pleasurable, Hay argues that decoration is better understood as a necessary form of art that can fulfill its function only by engaging the human capacity for erotic response.

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3361-9 / $63.00 (CLOTH)

Making Transcendents Receives Award for Excellence

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Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China, by Robert Ford Campany, has been selected to receive the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (historical studies category). The award will be presented during the 2010 AAR Annual Meeting in Atlanta, on October 30–November 1, 2010.

“If one day we arrive at a more profound understanding of the hidden agendas behind so much of Chinese writing, hagiographical as well as historical, Making Transcendents will undoubtedly have played a significant role in that process.” —Journal of Asian Studies

“Invaluable for anyone who wishes to understand the phenomenon of sanctity in general and the Chinese cult of xian in particular.” —Religious Studies Review

Luo Guanzhong’s Comic Novel of the Ming Dynasty in Song Masquerade

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The Three SuiThe twenty-chapter novel The Three Sui Quash the Demons’ Revolt, is traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong (d. after 1364?), the alleged author of two of China’s most famous and beloved works of fiction, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin. The Three Sui tells the story of the uprising of adherents of the Maitreya Buddha led by Wang Ze in 1047–1048. Wang Ze was eventually executed and all future heterodox activity outlawed. Paradoxically, The Three Sui treats the rebellion as an occasion for slapstick, baggy-pants humor in which facts are distorted and wildly mixed with fiction.

“Lois Fusek’s annotated translation of this neglected work of traditional Chinese vernacular fiction makes a significant contribution to our understanding and appreciation of that important body of work. Her work is of the very highest order and in draft form has invariably met with an enthusiastic response from students in my courses on Chinese literature at the University of Chicago. There is a wonderful lighthearted insouciance about this text that makes it virtually unique in the history of Chinese fiction, and it should attract not only students of the subject but anyone interested in narratology, the history of fiction, or a good read.” —David T. Roy, professor emeritus of Chinese literature at the University of Chicago and translator of the Chin P’ing Mei (titled The Plum in the Golden Vase)

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3406-7 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow Now Available in Paperback

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Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3422-7 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Media in Reform-Era China

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Mainstream Culture RefocusedSerialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect “refocusing” mainstream Chinese culture.

“This is a very timely and original work that fills a significant gap in studies on contemporary Chinese culture. It does a compelling job in showing how and why these dramas on the small screen both dramatize and mediate the social and political transformations taking place in China today. The book will contribute significantly to Chinese media studies and cultural studies and, because many TV dramas are adapted from literary works, to debates on the changing status of Chinese literature and literary studies in an era infused with commercialism and visuality. This will be a path-breaking study.” —Zhen Zhang, New York University

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3469-2 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics

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Individualism in Early China
Conventional wisdom has it that the concept of individualism was absent in early China. In Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics, an uncommon study of the self and human agency in ancient China, Erica Fox Brindley provides an important corrective to this view and persuasively argues that an idea of individualism can be applied to the study of early Chinese thought and politics with intriguing results. She introduces the development of ideological and religious beliefs that link universal, cosmic authority to the individual in ways that may be referred to as individualistic and illustrates how these evolved alongside and potentially helped contribute to larger sociopolitical changes of the time, such as the centralization of political authority and the growth in the social mobility of the educated elite class.

“Contrary to common claims about the absence of individualism in early China and its supposed reification in ‘the West,’ both the Western and Chinese traditions have historically been characterized by diverse and constantly evolving attitudes toward the individual. This book serves as an important corrective to monolithic or essentializing accounts of early Chinese thought, and the narrative concerning the evolution of the concept of the individual in early China is an interesting and novel one. It will appeal widely to people working on early Chinese thought and comparative religion more broadly.” —Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia

June 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3386-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film

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Adapted for the ScreenContemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film, by Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, is the first to put these landmark films in the context of their literary origins and explore how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives and styles for film. She unites aesthetics with history in her argument that the rise of cinema in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the late 1980s was partly fueled by burgeoning literary movements. Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou’s highly acclaimed films Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live are built on the experimental works of Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Yu Hua, respectively. Hong Kong new wave’s Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan capitalized on the irresistible visual metaphors of Eileen Chang’s postrealism. Hou Xiaoxian’s new Taiwan cinema turned to fiction by Huang Chunming and Zhu Tianwen for fine-grained perspectives on class and gender relations. Delving equally into the individual approaches of directors and writers, Deppman initiates readers into the exciting possibilities emanating from the world of Chinese cinema.

“Hsiu-Chuang Deppman’s ambitious book investigates the complex associative and conceptual interaction between literature and film, arguing that in many cases, a structural connection underlies the relationship. Her work is a strong challenge to those who believe literature and film should always be regarded as completely separate and unrelated. Deppman’s fascinating chapter on the hip Wong Kar-wai and his debt to novelist Liu Yichang well illustrates the way in which directors can play with and play off of narrative structures, in the process setting up a provocative intersection.” –Wendy Larson, University of Oregon

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3454-8 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Chinese Writing and Calligraphy

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Chinese Writing and CalligraphySuitable for college and high school students and those learning on their own, Wendan Li’s Chinese Writing and Calligraphy is a fully illustrated coursebook that provides comprehensive instruction in the history and practical techniques of Chinese calligraphy. No previous knowledge of the language is required to follow the text or complete the lessons. The work covers three major areas: 1) descriptions of Chinese characters and their components, including stroke types, layout patterns, and indications of sound and meaning; 2) basic brush techniques; and 3) the social, cultural, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese calligraphy—all of which are crucial to understanding and appreciating this art form.

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3364-0 / $25.00 (PAPER)
A Latitude 20 Book

Understanding Chinese Tombs

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The Art of the Yellow SpringsNo other civilization in the premodern world was more obsessed with constructing underground burial structures than China, where for at least five thousand years people devoted a great amount of wealth and labor to build tombs and furnish them with exquisite objects and images. For the most part, tombs have been mainly appreciated as “treasure troves,” the contents of which has allowed art historians to rewrite histories of individual art forms such as bronze, jade, sculpture, and painting. However, new trends in Chinese art history place the entire burial (rather than its individual components) at the center of observation and interpretation. Wu Hung’s The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs takes this to the next level by focusing on interpretive methods. It argues that to achieve a genuine understanding of Chinese tombs we need to reconsider a host of art historical concepts (including visuality, viewership, space, formal analysis, function, and context) and derive an analytical framework from the three most essential aspects of any manufactured work: spatiality, materiality, and temporality.

“Most informative and innovative. . . written in a lucid style that should appeal to both engaged and general readers. Wu Hung has again proven himself to be a ground-breaker of Chinese art history.” —David D. W. Wang, Harvard University

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3426-5 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

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