Nine Continents

The acclaimed novelist’s award-winning memoir of growing up in a remote Chinese fishing village is “a rich and insightful coming-of-age story” (Kirkus). The acclaimed author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and I Am China, Xiaolu Guo grew up an unwanted child in a poor fishing village on the East China Sea. But a Taoist monk made a startling prediction to her grandmother: that Guo would prove herself to be a peasant warrior and grow up to travel the nine continents. In Nine Continents, Guo tells the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. From her family’s village to a rapidly changing Beijing, to a life beyond China, Nine Continents presents a fascinating portrait of how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country’s economic ambitions have given rise to great change. This “moving and often exhilarating” memoir confirms Xiaolu Guo as one of world literature’s most urgent voices (Financial Times, UK).

The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking, like the fourth, is subdivided into parts for ease of assimilation and presentation, each part bound and published separately. The volume as a whole covers the subjects of alchemy, early chemistry, and chemical technology (which includes military invention, especially gunpowder and rockets; paper and printing; textiles; mining and metallurgy; the salt industry; and ceramics).

Annotation A survey of Chinese religion from 1000 BC to the beginning of the 20th century, as well as a study of the ambiguitues of divine power in Chinese religion.

The old Taoist priest, who was exposed by people and was struck by lightning, smiled wryly, and his wrinkled old face showed a trace of sincerity: "Anan, I am doing this for your own good. Recently, I see that your face is a bit wrong, with a black cage and an ominous eyebrow. My mysterious people pay attention to getting lucky and avoiding evil. Even if I am a liar, I have never thought of cheating you. For the sake of a colleague, I am kind ... Speaking of faces, the old man nagged endlessly

In Here in 'China' I Dwell, Ge Zhaoguang sums up a wealth of research on the evolution of Chinese historical narratives, and suggests that viewing China from its borders is the most helpful and objective view moving forward.

Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced by but ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism.

I am just a monk. How can I get married? What? Such a beautiful female CEO, that poor monk could only reluctantly obey you. School belle, police flower, young lady, loli, don't come over. If it wasn't for the fact that you were beautiful, I would have already called the police!

The Huainanzi has in recent years been recognized by scholars as one of the seminal works of Chinese thought at the beginning of the imperial era, a summary of the full flowering of early Taoist philosophy. This book presents a study of three key chapters of the Huainanzi, "The Treatise on the Patterns of Heaven," "The Treatise on Topography," and "The Treatise on the Seasonal Rules," which collectively comprise the most comprehensive extant statement of cosmological thinking in the early Han period. Major presents, for the first time, full English translations of these treatises. He supplements the translations with detailed commentaries that clarify the sometimes arcane language of the text and presents a fascinating picture of the ancient Chinese view of how the world was formed and sustained, and of the role of humans in the cosmos.