Once Upon A Time In China

From Jackie Chan to Ang Lee, from "Supercop" to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Chinese cinema has truly arrived in the U.S. Filled with photos and tidbits, this is the definitive book for anyone who has already fallen in love with Chinese cinema--and all those who are looking to learn more about it.

Once Upon a China is an unconventional architectural story of great beauty, empathy, honour and sadness. The chapters are ingenious reimaginations of ‘Dream of the Red Mansion’, ‘Journey to the West ’, ‘The Water Margin’, and ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’, and are conceived as specific themes of Chinese identity: domesticity, consumerism, democracy and adaptability. These four seminal pre-modern fictions contain diverse voices and philosophical perspectives on history as well as satires that have defined past developments of Chinese societies, politics and the built environment. Comics is an unorthodox but extraordinary medium for architectural speculations. The eccentric characteristics of comic-inspired drawings in this book enrich the processes of conception and conceptualisation of design – their fragmented yet sequential nature proves versatile in the imagination of spatial experiences, enabling the complex stories of place, brief and building to materialise. At the same time, the politicisation of architecture through comics engenders a sense of optimism to reappraise Chinese design futures and critical thinking beyond the exuberance of non-contextual Western capitalist models.

*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award* *Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award* *Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize* *Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018* *A Sunday Times Book of the Year* Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her. When she is born in 1973, her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea. Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home. 'This generation's Wild Swans' Daily Telegraph

China is poised to become the world's largest film market, fed by an expansive state-supported movie and television industry. These photographs document the many larger-than-life outdoor film sets and the tourist industry that has developed around them.

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).

Detailing the genesis, production history and different versions of 'Once Upon a Time in America', this study considers the film within the context of Leone's evolution as a grand cinema stylist. It illuminates his themes, method and aesthetic, and judges his impact upon subsequent filmmakers.

The West’s current fascination with Asian cinema must be viewed in the context of a complex and often problematic relationship between Western scholars, students, viewers, and Asian films. This book examines a number of detailed case studies (such as the films of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Hong Kong and Turkish cinema, Hindi melodramas, Godzilla films, Taiwanese directors, and Fifth Generation Chinese cinema) and uses them to investigate the limitations of Anglo–U.S. theoretical models and critical paradigms. By engaging readers with familiar areas of critical discourse (such as postcolonial criticism, "national cinema," "genre," "authorship," and "stardom") the book aims to introduce within such contexts the "unfamiliar" case studies that will be explored in depth and detail.

Uncertainty about the post-handover era accelerated Hong Kong's race for economic growth, and found expression in cinema's depictions of a city on fire. This book reviews the directors and films that have established Hong Kong's cinema's reputation.