China Only Yesterday 1850 1950

A fascinating journey through 100 years of Chinese history, beginning with the historic Treaty of Nanking and ending with Mao Tse-tung’s creation of the Chinese People’s Republic, by the the acclaimed New Yorker correspondent who lived in China from 1935 to 1941 For centuries, China’s code of behavior was incomprehensible to Westerners whom the Chinese viewed as irredeemable barbarians. Presenting historical events with an immediacy that makes you feel as if you were there, Hahn takes readers through isolationist China’s difficult and often costly adaptations to the invasions of Western “foreign devils”, —from the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which gave the West access to five 5 of China’s eastern ports, to the British colonization of Hong Kong, the rise of the tea trade, the Opium Wars, the arrival of Christian missionaries, and the Boxer Rebellion. Hahn also illuminates the revolutionary movement led by Sun Yat-sen, the overthrow of the Ch’ing Dynasty, the escalating tensions between the Communist and Nationalist parties, and the Japanese invasion on the eve of World War II—which Hahn witnessed firsthand. The final chapters cover the civil war, which ended with Chairman Mao’s formation of the People’s Republic of China and Chiang Kai-shek’s retreat to Taiwan. With an insider’s knowledge of Chinese culture and the politics, Hahn delivers a sharply observant book that illuminates an unforgettable era in China’s tumultuous past.

Chinese history is brought to vivid life by the “quintessential New Yorker narrator” and author of The Soong Sisters, who lived in China from 1935 to 1941 (The New York Times). Chiang Kai-Shek: As the head of the Nationalist Party, Chiang led the Republic of China for over two decades from 1927 through the Japanese invasion, World War II, and the civil war that ended with a Communist victory in 1949. After defeat, he retreated with his government to Taiwan, where he continued to lead as president of the exiled Republic of China. Published in 1955, this in-depth biography by legendary New Yorker writer Emily Hahn examines Chiang’s childhood in southern China, his relationship with revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen, his rise to power, and his battles with the Japanese Imperial Army and Communist forces led by Mao Zedong, as well as chronicling his marriage to the glamorous, American-educated Soong May-ling (the youngest of the influential siblings portrayed in Hahn’s The Soong Sisters), who converted her husband to Christianity and helped him enact social reforms. Casting a critical eye on Sino-American relations, Hahn sheds new light on a complex leader, who was one of the most important global political figures of the last century. “[Hahn] writes . . . with an impassioned warmth . . . colorful reading . . . An irreparable past is echoed in the forlorn note sounded here.” —Kirkus Reviews China Only Yesterday, 1850–1950: With an insider’s knowledge of Chinese culture and politics, Hahn delivers a sharply observant book that illuminates a century of China’s tumultuous history. Her “absorbing” history begins with the Treaty of Nanking, which gave Western powers access to five of China’s eastern ports, and covers the British colonization of Hong Kong, the rise of the tea trade, the Opium Wars, the arrival of Christian missionaries, the Boxer Rebellion, the revolutionary movement led by Sun Yat-Sen, the overthrow of the Ch’ing Dynasty, the escalating tensions between the Communist and Nationalist parties, and the Japanese invasion on the eve of World War II—which Hahn experienced firsthand (Kirkus Reviews). The final chapters cover the civil war, which ended with Chairman Mao’s formation of the People’s Republic of China and Chiang Kai-shek’s retreat to Taiwan. “[An] observant, satisfying book.” —Kirkus Reviews

Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn had no idea of what they would discover when they set out for Hong Kong, China, and Burma in 1941. The husband-and-wife team of celebrity literati intended to report on the China-Japan war while honeymooning in the romantic Far East. What they found was a maddening, intriguing, colorful world of dictators and drunks, scoundrels and socialites, heroes and halfwits. And their trip proved to be the beginning of the end of their marriage. When the U.S. Treasury Department hired Ernest Hemingway as a spy in China in 1941, it awakened a new obsession in America's most adventuresome author. The great literary man of action reveled in being a government operative, while his journalist wife championed the anti-Japanese resistance of Chiang Kai-shek. Hemingway on the China Front is the first book to track Hemingway's progress as a spy in Asia during the war, defining his duties as he saw fit. Author Peter Moreira follows Hemingway and Gellhorn as they seek stories to file--and try to adapt to each other's strong egos--in dangerous, uncomfortable, exotic places in the throes of war. Well-versed in Asian history and culture, Moreira also adeptly provides context of time and place. All fans of Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn will want this book.

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 1967.

This is a study of the long-run evolution of the relationship between China and the world economy. The book presents an original interpretation of the country's socio-economic processes in the past 150 years, focusing on China's interaction with the expanding capitalist world economy. The author argues that the general thrust of China's quest for development or 'modernization' has been to catch up with the wealthy nations of the West, and goes on to explain the changing paths and outcomes. The book proceeds chronologically from China's mid-nineteenth-century incorporation to the world economy, starting from a semi-colonial state to the Maoist state-led industrialization after 1949, and to the post-Mao liberalization and reintegration. By carefully examining the patterns of development in these three major periods of the nation's history, it addresses fundamental issues pertaining to the making of modern China. This rigorously argued book will be a timely and much debated contribution, as the `rise of China' in the twenty-first century has become an issue of our time.