Category: China

The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China Now Available in Paperback

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The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chanyuan qinggui, by Yifa, contains the first complete translation of China’s earliest and most influential monastic code. The twelfth-century text Chanyuan qinggui (Rules of Purity for the Chan Monastery) provides a wealth of detail on all aspects of life in public Buddhist monasteries during the Sung (960–1279).

“Absolutely essential for anyone who wishes to gain an accurate understanding of the actual day-to-day life of the Chan community. . . . [T]his book represents a real advance in our understanding of Chinese Chan and should be on the bookshelf of every scholar of Chinese Buddhism.” —Journal of Chinese Religions

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3425-8 / $28.00 (PAPER)>

Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China

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VoicesChina’s century of revolutionary change has been heard as much as seen, and nowhere is this more evident than in an auditory history of the modern Chinese poem. From Lu Xun’s seminal writings on literature to a recitation renaissance in urban centers today, poetics meets politics in the sounding voice of poetry. Supported throughout by vivid narration and accessible analysis, Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China, by John A. Crespi, offers a literary history of modern China that makes the case for the importance of the auditory dimension of poetry in national, revolutionary, and postsocialist culture.

“This is an important and exciting monograph for the field of modern Chinese literature. It sheds unprecedented light on poetic composition and does much more than previous studies to flesh out the living practice of poetry circulation and reception in modern China.” —Charles Laughlin, Tsinghua University, Beijing

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3365-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

MP3 Files Now Available for Gagana Samoa and Fundamental Written Chinese

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Accompanying MP3 audio files are now available for download:

Gagana Samoa: A Samoan Language Coursebook, Revised Edition, by Galumalemana Afeleti Hunkin at http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/mp3/gagana/;

Fundamental Written Chinese, by Nora Yao, Margaret Lee, and Robert Sanders, at http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/mp3/fwc/.

Streaming RealAudio files for both books will be available shortly.

The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion

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The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion, by Yucheng Qin, is a striking, original portrait of the Chinese Six Companies (Zhonghua huiguan), or Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the most prominent support organization for Chinese immigrants in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century. As a federation of “native-place associations” (huiguan) in California, the Six Companies responded to racist acts and legislation by organizing immigrant communities and employing effective diplomatic strategies against exclusion. Yucheng Qin substantiates recent arguments that Chinese immigrants were resourceful in fighting for their rights and, more importantly, he argues that through the Six Companies they created a political rhetoric and civic agenda that were then officially adopted by Qing court officials, who at first were unprepared for modern diplomacy.

July 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3274-2 / $51.00 (CLOTH)

Fundamental Written Chinese

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Fundamental Written Chinese, by Nora Yao, Margaret Lee, and Robert Sanders, teaches both mastery of individual characters and reading comprehension. It introduces characters gradually, moving from simple independent characters to more complex compound ones. How characters are organized and constructed is taught through the liberal use of charts that display the structural and organizational regularities of each character, that is, its radical, phonetic component, shared graphic components, stroke order, and principles of proportion. This knowledge is then reinforced by exercises at the end of each chapter that require students to draw on the compositional information presented in the charts.

“The course set out in Fundamental Spoken Chinese and Fundamental Written Chinese provides a thorough training in all the skills that a learner needs to reach a basic level of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese as well as a solid foundation for more advanced study. Fundamental Spoken Chinese is marvelously executed. The explanations of grammar and usage are exceptionally clear, the best I’ve ever seen in a textbook. The charts used to illustrate grammatical constructions are easy to follow, and the examples are well chosen for maximal clarity. The dialogues are naturalistic and well keyed to everyday situations, as is the vocabulary. Fundamental Written Chinese has many of the same virtues as its companion volume. Like Fundamental Spoken Chinese, Fundamental Written Chinese not only teaches the content of the lesson but also inculcates habits essential for further learning. The emphasis on explaining characters explicitly in terms of radicals and phonetics is an example of the kind of approach that makes for successful advanced learners. The two books are designed to be flexible so that teachers of various approaches can use them either to introduce the spoken and written skills simultaneously or to introduce writing after the spoken language has progressed to a certain level. Teachers and learners are provided with all the basic tools needed in one well-designed package.” —Mark Hansell, Carleton College

June 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3157-8 / $39.00 (PAPER)

Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face Now in Paperback

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Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China, by Christine Mollier, is now available in paperback. The book is a recent recipient of the Prix Stanislas Julien, a prestigious prize from the French academic society Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which recognizes Western-language scholarship on the Asian humanities.

“In Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face, Christine Mollier undertakes five detailed case studies, each one illuminating a different dimension of the ritual, iconographic, and scriptural interactions of Buddhists and Taoists in medieval China. Mollier does not simply assert that these traditions influenced one another; she reveals in breathtaking detail the wide array of techniques used by Buddhists and Taoists as they appropriated and transformed the texts and icons of their rivals. . . . Mollier’s work in this volume is brilliant. She deftly navigates through manuscripts, canonical texts, archaeological remains, and art-historical evidence. . . . Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face is an exhilarating display of Sinological erudition.” —H-Buddhism

May 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3411-1 / $20.00 (PAPER)

Beijing Opera Costumes Short-listed for Costume Society of America Award

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Beijing Opera Costumes: The Visual Communication of Character and Culture, by Alexandra B. Bonds, was short-listed for this year’s Milla Davenport Publication Award from the
Costume Society of America. The award is given “to a published book or exhibition catalog that makes a significant contribution to the study of costume, reflects original thought and exceptional creativity, and draws on appropriate research methods and techniques.”

The journal Theatre Design & Technology called Beijing Opera Costumes “one of the most useful costume books on Beijing (Jingju) opera in the English language. . . . Alexandra Bonds has done a huge service to those who strive to learn more about twentieth- and twenty-first-century Jingju style and how it came to be. It is a beautifully detailed book that historians and novices alike will find invaluable.”

A Companion to Grammata Serica Recensa

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“Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese: A Companion to Grammata Serica Recensa succeeds admirably in the goals the author has set for it. The introduction is the clearest and most useful document of its kind I have seen in recent years. It lays out in relatively few pages what others have heretofore taken reams to express. The body of the work gives the reader the entire syllable inventory of Old Chinese in a clear and useful format. The index and finding list are well organized and allow quick access to the material in the text. I predict that it will become a standard handbook for sinologists in general, just as Kalgren’s Grammata Serica and Grammata Serica Recensa have been during the past sixty years.” —W. South Coblin, University of Iowa

“The present work will fill the need for an updated and easy-to-use source for citing the various historically reconstructed stages of Chinese. It retains the basic structure of Karlgren’s early works with one big difference: the inclusion of an additional historical stage, Later Han Chinese. [Axel] Schuessler’s work will allow a much wider audience to access the most important result of Chinese historical phonology, especially those not interested in specializing in the study of historical phonology. It will also be a helpful resource for the linguist who, although familiar with the linguistic literature concerning Old Chinese, often needs a convenient way to look up reconstructions. Even those given to a more speculative turn of mind may well find that their work is greatly facilitated by Schuessler’s book. I believe that in a short time Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese will become a standard reference on the active sinologist’s bookshelf.” —Jerry Norman, University of Washington

April 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3264-3 / $58.00 (CLOTH)

Fundamental Spoken Chinese

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Fundamental Spoken Chinese, by Robert Sanders and Nora Yao, introduces most of the basic grammatical patterns of modern spoken Mandarin in a carefully planned, graduated fashion. Every chapter follows the same organizational format and includes: key grammar points, new vocabulary items arranged by part of speech, sentence patterns, and four or five short dialogues illustrating contextual use of each new grammar pattern and vocabulary item. Non-technical explanations of grammar are written from the perspective of the English-speaking learner and are illustrated with multiple sentences in simple chart form. When appropriate, vocabulary and culture notes are provided, together with numerous drills, exercises, and in-class activities. Finally, English-Chinese translation exercises help determine how well students have mastered the chapter’s grammar and vocabulary.

“The course set out in Fundamental Spoken Chinese and Fundamental Written Chinese provides a thorough training in all the skills that a learner needs to reach a basic level of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese as well as a solid foundation for more advanced study. Fundamental Spoken Chinese is marvelously executed. The explanations of grammar and usage are exceptionally clear, the best I’ve ever seen in a textbook. The charts used to illustrate grammatical constructions are easy to follow, and the examples are well chosen for maximal clarity. The dialogues are naturalistic and well keyed to everyday situations, as is the vocabulary. Fundamental Written Chinese has many of the same virtues as its companion volume. Like Fundamental Spoken Chinese, Fundamental Written Chinese not only teaches the content of the lesson but also inculcates habits essential for further learning. The emphasis on explaining characters explicitly in terms of radicals and phonetics is an example of the kind of approach that makes for successful advanced learners. The two books are designed to be flexible so that teachers of various approaches can use them either to introduce the spoken and written skills simultaneously or to introduce writing after the spoken language has progressed to a certain level. Teachers and learners are provided with all the basic tools needed in one well-designed package.” —Mark Hansell, Carleton College

April 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3156-1 / $39.00 (PAPER)

The Record of Linji Now Available in Paperback

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The Record of Linji, translation and commentary by Ruth Fuller Sasaki and edited by Thomas Y. Kirchner, is now available in paperback.

“A masterpiece of scholarship not only on Linji Chan, but also on Chinese Buddhist language and history—the annotations, which constitute almost two-thirds of the book, explain in astonishing detail the meanings, references, and grammar of each line of text. The edition preserves the excellent historical introduction, and includes a lengthy glossary, index, and table of names.” —Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly

Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture
March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3319-0 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China

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By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 C.E. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China, by Robert Ford Campany, offers a very different view of xian-seekers in late classical and early medieval China. It suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. Robert Campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. He contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences.

“This pioneering study overturns conventional wisdom about ancient Chinese religious traditions by vividly portraying the social processes by which adepts could achieve recognition and legitimacy as transcendents (immortals). Campany convincingly demonstrates that some forms of self-cultivation and asceticism were culturally scripted performances that could have a profound impact on the audiences who observed or read about them, and that both adepts and the individuals they encountered were involved in constructing narratives about transcendence. Making Transcendents succeeds in bringing these seemingly ephemeral beings down from the summits and the clouds by locating them where they have always belonged: in the hearts of their worshippers and acquaintances. This eloquently written book should prove an invaluable resource for both teaching and research.” —Paul R. Katz, Academia Sinica

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3333-6 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

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