Picking Chrysanthemum

Winner of a 2006 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award As medieval Chinese manuscripts were copied and recopied through the centuries, both mistakes and deliberate editorial changes were introduced, thereby affecting readers' impressions of the author's intent. In Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture, Xiaofei Tian shows how readers not only experience authors but produce them by shaping texts to their interpretation. Tian examines the mechanics and history of textual transmission in China by focusing on the evolution over the centuries of the reclusive poet Tao Yuanming into a figure of epic stature. Considered emblematic of the national character, Tao Yuanming (also known as Tao Qian, 365?-427 c.e.) is admired for having turned his back on active government service and city life to live a simple rural life of voluntary poverty. The artlessness of his poetic style is held as the highest literary and moral ideal, and literary critics have taken great pains to demonstrate perfect consistency between Tao Yuanming's life and poetry. Earlier work on Tao Yuanming has tended to accept this image, interpreting the poems to confirm the image. Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture is a study of how this cultural icon was produced and of the elusive traces of another, historical Tao Yuanming behind the icon. By comparing four early biographies of the poet, Tian shows how these are in large measure constructed out of Tao Yuanming's self-image as projected in his poetry and prose. Drawing on work in European medieval literature, she demonstrates the fluidity of the Chinese medieval textual world and how its materials were historically reconfigured for later purposes. Tian finds in Tao's poetic corpus not one essentialized Tao Yuanming, but multiple texts continuously produced long after the author's physical demise. Her provocative look at the influence of manuscript culture on literary perceptions transcends its immediate subject and has special resonance today, when the transition from print to electronic media is shaking the literary world in a way not unlike the transition from handwritten to print media in medieval China.

Talk about Chinese culture and images of dragon boats, lion dances, red packets and mandarin oranges readily come to mind. Their common thread is that they are all considered auspicious symbols by the Chinese. This charmingly illustrated book takes you on a journey of discovery of many others: * Animals: Phoenix, tortoise, tiger, bat, toad, spider, deer, elephant, horse, crane, carp, goldfish and others. * Plants: Pine, bamboo, plum peony, peach, orchid, chrysanthemum, pomegranate, gourd and others. * Objects: Treasure bowl, money tree, copper coin, ruyi, mirror, seal, Chinese knot and 'tower of wisdom'. * Home items: New year couplets, dumpling, glutinous rice ball, fish, chopsticks, longevity noodles and others. * Words: Happiness, wealth, longevity, Eight Immortals, combined characters, auspicious numbers and greetings. Understanding the appeal of these symbols will help you to appreciate the arts and crafts displayed in Chinese homes and workplaces.

China has historically been a "land of poetry", and classical poetry is a marvel of traditional Chinese culture. As early as 3,000 years ago, our ancestors created excellent poems represented by the "300 Poems". Since then, every historical era has produced fruitful poetic creations, many of which have become popular and have been recited to this day. This series of "Appreciation of Chinese Classical Poetry" selects the best works of the most representative poets and lyricists in history and provides detailed and popular translations and commentaries in an attempt to introduce the most precious cultural treasures created by ancient Chinese people to contemporary readers at home and abroad. The Book of Songs, represented by the "National Winds", and the Chu Rhetoric, represented by the "Li Sao", have had a far-reaching influence on the poetry world of the later generations of Chinese poets, both in terms of their ideological contents and artistic techniques. Chinese poetry reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, presenting what later generations called the "Sheng Tang Meteorology" and "Youthful Spirit", and it is not difficult to see from poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu, and from the poems they left behind.

This volume ofPsychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China continues the tradition we began last year of featuring cultural issues that confront analysts and therapists as they apply psychoanalytic thinking to their work with Chinese patients and students. Therapy and work with institutions is embedded in the civilization in which we work, so the issues facing China and its people confront us every day that we conduct therapy,consultation, and training there.

This book is a summary of the presentations and discussions at the Workshop on Methods of Pesticide Exposure Assessment held in Ottawa, Canada, on October 5-8, 1993. The event was a joint effort of Health Canada and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and was officially supported by the United States Environmental Agency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The goal of the workshop was to examine current issues in the field of pesticide exposure assessment with the aim of reaching an internationally harmonized approach to methods of exposure assessment. With regulatory agencies of OECD Member countries moving towards the harmonization of data requirements, it was timely and beneficial to bring together international experts in the field of pesticide exposure assessment to discuss current issues. Approximately 60 delegates and 20 observers participated, including individuals from 15 different countries representing academia, government, industry and international organizations. A guidance document on methods of pesticide exposure assessment was presented as a means to achieving the goal of international for critique and discussion harmonization. After extensive discussion, the workshop delegates agreed in principle to procedures for revising the guidance document. Following revision and further review by a designated peer review group, the revised document will be submitted to the OECD for consideration as a draft OECD Guidance Document on pesticide exposure assessment methods. Both the revised and original documents are included in these proceedings.

The pursuit of antiquity was important for scholarly artists in constructing their knowledge of history and cultural identity in late imperial China. By examining versatile trends within paintings in modern China, this book questions the extent to which historical relics have been used to represent the ethnic identity of modern Chinese art. In doing so, this book asks: did the antiquarian movements ultimately serve as a deliberate tool for re-writing Chinese art history in modern China? In searching for the public meaning of inventive private collecting activity, Appropriating Antiquity in Modern Chinese Painting draws on various modes of artistic creation to address how the use of antiquities in early 20th-century Chinese art both produced and reinforced the imaginative links between ancient civilization and modern lives in the late Qing dynasty. Further exploring how these social and cultural transformations were related to the artistic exchanges happening at the time between China, Japan and the West, the book successfully analyses how modernity was translated and appropriated at the turn of the 20th century, throughout Asia and further afield.