China Books

Very good reading for those who love history which is told in a simple way, thrue a live story of an Europen - China couple and their children at the beginning of the 20th century ; and for those, who are always seeking the real truth and are never satisfied with just one point of view.

All the masses of people who loved "Wild Swans" will love this one too. It gives a slightly different perspective on the same situation. Gives less recent history, but more information on colonial exploitation in pre-communist times than Wild Swans does. This author has written a few other books too.

It got to me on time and in good shape! It is a very well written book, great for anyone who is interested in Asiatic history, or borderland disputes.

"Crossed Histories" is a collection of articles written by competent scholars about cultural and subconscious meaning of the term 'Manchuria' in modern Asia. The multi-angled perspective of presenting japanese propaganda movies, utopian city planning, manchurian spy-turned princess and the fate of polish engineers and settlers - builders of the transsiberian railroad provides and interesting journey into the 1930s asian continent and serves as a starting point for anyone interested in that time period. The book hardly fills out the entire subject - rather is like a glimpse into the forgotten world of interwar Manchukuo and an array of cultural meanings it has for several eurasian nations. Becouse of being an inhabitant of Poland, I have my own specific understanding of that exotic realm, complaisant to images existing in my own national memory (the rule of Tsars over polish people, the career of polish intelligentsia on Siberia and our contribution in colonial exploration of Eurasia - which was completely accidental by the way) so it was great to see what 'Manchuria' means for Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and what feelings and memories it awakens in them. When I was in school, I had a friend who was born in a family repatriated from Mukden in 1949, and he posessed completely different mentality, than people that descended from families which have lived in Europe for centuries. In a way, Manchuria links many distant peoples of Eurasia - now they can just explore their interrelations and differences to try build real pan-asian understanding. To be frank, I seriously miss articles covering White Russians, jewish immigrants in Manchuria and indigenious Manchurians of course, they still existed in times of Manchukuo. I have a reason to think, howewer, that thanks to this book such articles will emerge in some time. Great as an intellectual stimulation for more complex studies of interwar Asia, which was undoubtly an ultimate goal of madam Mariko Tamanoi and her colleagues.

Gail Hershatter in Dangerous Pleasures presents a picture of a multi-layered discursive terrain in her case in studying Shanghai prostitution. She focuses on the rapid industrialization transformation of the city at the turn of the century. From the beginning, she acknowledges the limitation and the impossibility in retrieving the voices of prostitutes and confronts the subjectivity of the sources: ¡§All historical records are products of a nexus of relationships that can be only dimly apprehended or guessed at across the enforced distance of time, by historians with their own localized preoccupations.¡¨ (4) Prostitution should be understood through the shifting and multiple meanings of categories and the discourses of different issues: The category views through which prostitution was understood were not fixed, and tracing them requires attention to questions of urban history, colonial and anti-colonial state making, and the intersection of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, with an emerging nationalist discourse. (4)

Poststructuralist theory seems to be a potential solution to the problem since it makes the historian more attentive to the process of contextualization of sources in producing the historical narrative and ¡§the trace of craft, as well as the crafty presentation or concealment.¡¨ (13) Using this method, Hershatter eschews the structuralist approach and creates room for broader themes and interpretations. Her approach can be analyzed through several themes that connect her narrative: the writings by male authors that constitute and symbolize masculinity discourse, the classification and naming that form the dominant ideology, and the representations of prostitutes as a human agents. Hershatter questions the male discourses on courtesans, and the process by which prostitution was used for nostalgic purposes to construct their class identity of the men. Her interpretations are mostly based on the writings which represent the imaginations and nostalgia of male authors. She argues that her sources are not only reflective of thinking of reality at the period, but are active in forming the discourse of urban masculinity. As historian Timothy Gilfoyle describes, her main sources, guidebooks of prostitutes and brothels, ¡§provided rules of etiquette for reasons of self-representation, offered cautionary tales on sexually transmitted disease, presented sentimental views of the past, and served as vehicles for men to remember, classify, and count prostitutes.¡¨ She attempts to deconstruct and demystify the nostalgic memory by analyzing the language of the male writers. She concludes that it symbolizes a form of power and status identification, which can be used to negotiate and communicate with each other. The language and text are gendered and form the notion of elite class culture. In the elite writings, only courtesans exist. Juxtaposed with those narratives are fictionalized accounts of the scams and sufferings of prostitutes and newspaper reporting on the ¡§pheasants.¡¨ They are ways in which ¡§elites constructed and sought to contain categories of subordinated ¡¥others¡¦.¡¨ These classifying strategies of orders have constituted a hierarchy of prostitutes and reinforced stereotypes and shaped public judgments on them. ¡§The narrativized traces that form the historical record courtesans and lower-class prostitutes are also a set of congealed relations of power¡¨ in which courtesans were never depicted of furtive or seamy. (11) Different from the earlier historians, Hershatter analyzes the construction of hierarchies of prostitution and the meanings of categories themselves rather than the inequality with the social history framework. Thus, instead of just observing the causes and the effects of regulations on prostitution, Hershatter looks for the meanings of concepts and studies the political and cultural process in which those meanings are created and how they affect prostitutes. In 1920s, the discourse has shifted from one of nostalgia to one of reform. There were reform campaigns to abolish or regulate prostitution. There was a conscious effort by a new middle-class to eliminate prostitution and create a negative image for prostitutes. In analyzing the process of creating the new conception of prostitution, Hershatter dissects and displays the problematic power relations and conscience underlying it, and how the middle-class tried to move away from the earlier elites through their new writings about venereal disease and public disorder. Prostitution once again became a metaphor but for different purposes. It sheds light on the elites and middle classes discussed their problems, fears, agendas and visions and represents social degeneration. Sex is used as a medium through which people talked about larger paradigms, such as political and cultural transformations, nationality etc. Despite the cacophonous sound made by competing discourses and the difficulty to find the elusive subaltern voice of prostitutes, Hershatter still believe that a single seamless account is possible and their voices can be heard. She contends that the dissonances between the discourses are ¡§arguably where the most interesting mapping can be done.¡¨ The way to reconstruct the past is to recognize that the some of the competing discourses can be seen only in relation to each other. (27) Related to it is the search of agency and resistance. Hershatter gives instances of resistance and agency within the system and the structure: A courtesan who left the brothel with an attractive but impoverished young man, or a courtesan who chose handsome actors and drivers as her companions rather than the free-spending merchants preferred by the madam¡KA street walker who represented herself in court as the victim of traffickers resisted being classified as a bad woman, a threat to social order, or a spreader of disease.(27)

For Hershatter, the search for prostitutes¡¦ voices is possible, even through reading the narratives of elites and males, but only if we read the texts carefully and analyze the contents as well as the language. The sources Hershatter uses are guidebooks, tabloid press, municipal regulations, police interrogations, medical reports, newspaper reports of court cases, and learned articles by elites (reformers, regulators and revolutionaries). She also uses many secondary sources both in Chinese and English.

Dangerous Pleasures is hands-down one of the best Shanghai history books available. It is also one of the most pleasurably readable "academic" books I've encountered. It takes the obviously sensational topic of prostitution in the "Wh*re of the Orient" and treats it with candor and humor, not stooping to either exploiting the sensationalism or stifling it under a heavy woolen blanket of academic deconstruction.

Hershatter - who enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost social historians of Chinese women and of Shanghai - depicts and dissects the prostitutes and the moralists alike, and without condescending moralism. She explains and then adopts the more relaxed Eastern attitude towards the sex trade, which is important in understanding the deeper culture of the courtesan in late Qing and Republican China.

The western world is already familiar with Japan's Geisha culture, but China's equally rich courtesan tradion - perhaps because it early attacks by missionaries and abolition by the Communists, those stodgiest of prudes - has less to capture the world's imagination.

Shanghai's historical prostitution ran the gamut, from the rarified courtesans to the White Russians to taxi dancers to the cheap bang for the buck street-walking "Ye Ji" ("wild chicken"!), and Hershatter touches on them all in this exhaustive project, but her primary interest lies with the courtesans.

A young girl would be "apprenticed" (essentially sold, as with all apprenticeships of the era) to a brothel, where she would grow up learning the arts of hospitality while developing talents in singing, musical instruments, dance, poetry, and painting - the pretensions of China's traditional scholar class. Once prepubescent, she would break into society, and compete for admirers personal and public with her culture as much as her appearance. Her repute would determine the price of her virginity, but afterwards she was relatively free to select her patron-lovers, provided she was in enough demand to have a choice.

Hershatter documents how courtesans were the pop stars of early cosmopolitan Shanghai before the occurence of film and pop music, their lives and style dissected in the popular press, which is why the movie and music stars that came later were painted with an aura of disrespectability.

Dangerous Pleasures also follows the backlashes against commercial sexuality, culminating in the total eradication of Shanghai's sex trade in the 1950s under the Communists. The tale continues to (almost) present day, with the emergence of prostitution in the early 1990s at foreign-targetted hotels and discos like Galaxy.

In Shanghai now as in then, there is much prostitution but no precise prostitutes; instead of courtesans and taxi dancers and tour guides and Wild Chickens, we now have Golden Birds and Fishing Girls and Little Country Sisters and Barbershop Misses. Along with "Beyond the Neon Lights", a history of Shanghai's lane culture, "Dangerous Pleasures" illustrates how little has really changed in Shanghai over the past 100 years, which is what makes the city delightful.

Despite its heft and specificity, I highly recommend Dangerous Pleasures as first reading for Shanghai novices as well as for Old Hands. It is far more engaging and interesting and readable than the general histories on the market. Don't let its academic credentials phase you, I took this as train reading and couldn't put down.

Since the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, the former British colony seems to be slowly slipping out of the world's attention. In Mr. Fenby's look at the year 1999 as Hong Kong lived it, we see not only why we need to watch Hong Kong closely, but we realize what stakes China is playing with as it slowly comes to terms with theis quasi-democratic city and its place in the world.

Mr. Fenby writes the book as essentially a journalist's diary that spans the entire course of 1999 - the final year that Mr. Fenby was editor of the South China Morning Post, arguably the premiere English-language newspaper in Hong Kong. He details not only the key figures in Hong Kong politics and the economy - at a very personal level - but also how China deals with Hong Kong and how the events of 1999 (everything from Falun Gong to the Taliban) shaped China's responses.

I think Mr. Fenby sees 1999 as not only the year that China stopped observing Hong Kong and began acting, but also the year that many of the fundamental agreememnts laid down between China and Hong Kong got tested. He shows the slow erosion of judicial and political autonomy caused, not through outright repression, but by behind-the-scenes deal-making and a desire of the political powers-that-be in Hong Kong not to ruffle mainland feathers.

His book is eminently readable and in many parts reads more like a political thriller than a diary or a report. If there is one criticism with the book, it is that when Mr. Fenby loses his job at the South China Morning Post in July of 1999, his personal hurt comes out quite clearly in the course of the narrative and possibly influences his objectivity throughout the rest of the year. However, were it me, I think that I would be hard-pressed to maintain even Mr. Fenby's level of detachment.

All in all, the book is not only fascinating and illuminating, but it is also quite enjoyable. I found myself caught up in the power play between China and Hong Kong as if it were a first-rate novel. However, the book is not a novel, and it does contain some rather chilling messages for the future of Hong Kong. If you have any interest in China - or interest in China's relationship with the Western world - I recommend not missing this book.

I read Mr Fenby's book on a plane ride from Rio to Hong Kong. It was the perfect antidote to spending hours on a plane. The first part of the book is a compendium of facts, views and background on Hong Kong particularly as they relate to the handover to China. So by the time I got to London I was an expert on the fascinating topic. I then started on the diary section where Jonathan picks out news items and events during his last year in Hong Kong. Now I was an expert on the "Handover" I could laugh at all his wonderful one-liners. (Such as his final sentence on a piece describing some particularly errant behaviour by the authorities in Hong Kong: "One country, three systems"). He also contrasts, with devastating effect, the ideological flag waving for the "love of motherland" with almost daily reports of corruption in China. A wonderful book that will educate and amuse in equal doses.

i had the honor and privelge to take Tibetan Reasoning and Debate. This book is so good, in the sense that its so good! Dr. Perdue does a great job explaining Western how to Debate, and how to think like a Buddhist... well in their reasoning. this class is a must if someone plans to be a Lawyer or for Grad School. :)
Bye Sir

This text is a fantastic work in helping to illuminate the use of debate in the context of Tibetan doctrinal work, specifically in the Proponents of Sutra Following Reasonsing (Sautrantika). While it does serve its purpose in doing so, Dan Perdue has also helped to explain some of the fundamental topics in Tibetan Buddhism, such as established bases and the different forms of reasoning. This book may be a little dense for beginners and those not familiar with Tibetan Buddhist terminology, but it is valuable nonetheless. Apart from the context of debate in Tibetan Buddhism, the books helps one to establish better forms of reasoning in everyday life, as well teaching one to deconstruct those false forms of reasoning one encounters all the time.

I absolutely love this book. The collections are wonderful and the author's ideas for displaying are very good. I think she only scratched the surface of collections, though. Maybe she'll do another one?? I hope so!

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's quite informative and there are a lot of marvelous photos of various types of china and glass in this book. They show diverse styles and patterns throughout the centuries and cultures. There is also a good section on how and where to store your china and glass. Such amazing things they can do with glass. I was impressed. I really liked the section on the art of the table. Can't get enough of the elegant table settings! Such beautiful kitchens in this book as well. It's a great book. I only wished it were longer.

As reviewed in May 2006 Foreign Service Journal:
"From time to time a book comes along that illustrates a truth familiar to the professional diplomat: domestic parameters within interacting countries often explain the goals and conduct of foreign policy. A classic in this genre, Dr. Stern's "Defense Relations" should be required reading for every advanced class in International Relations. Beyond a meticulous review of the policy process in both countries, Stern's analysis highlights the private and public actors who are part of the policy process, including American legislators who block initiatives and Vietnames generals and bureaucratics who are disparaging, feaful and unimaginative."

My boss made me buy this book.
My boss made me read this book.
Thank GOD for my boss! Only the author himself could possibly know more about the subject than my boss.

This book is required for a complete understanding of the dynamics of this once troubled relationship.

Bob Beatty's Democracy, Asian Values, and Hong Kong makes a clear and often counterintuitive argument. Seeking to discern the future of democracy in one of the newest parts of the People's Republic of China, Beatty shows quite clearly that many of the movers and shakers of Hong Kong envision direct election of the chief executive, expansion of direct elections for the Legislative Council, and greater openness on other fronts, which contradicts and perhaps explains Beijing's April 2004 decision to postpone these changes. In light of recent events, including massive public demonstrations, the primary contribution of this book is to show that only external constraints can impede Hong Kong from moving further along a democratic path, rejecting Asian Values and other anti-liberal theories along the way.

Beatty's method is exhausting. Whereas Richard Fenno made popular the "watching politicians" style of participant observation in the United States, the author completed a series of transpacific trips over several years. Beatty, who interviewed President Clinton for this book, has mastered the art of gaining access to politicians. Democracy, Asian Values, and Hong Kong should therefore appeal to other researchers who hope to crack open a particular subculture.

This book is also very well written. A particular strength is the use of eye-catching quotations, most from the author's own interviews, to introduce and foreshadow each chapter. One wishes that Beatty would have included a separate appendix comprised only of quotations, to better capture the spirit of the times during a critical era in Chinese history.

Dr. Beatty makes a timely contribution to Asian political studies with this book. The region's unique state of flux is captured through Beatty's incisive commentary and interview technique. Highly recommended.

If you want to know about the life and Zen teachings of Eihei Dogen, all of Steven Heine's books are a must. Did Dogen go to China? Of course he did, but there is more to the story--much more.

Steven Heine has once again dipped into the his massive reservoir of knowledge and come up with some very refreshing, insightful, and often surprising information on the life and teachings of Eihei Dogen.

Did Dogen Go To China? Get this book and resolve this and many more important questions.

Besides, just the pictures are worth the price of the book!

Zen master Eihei Dogen (1200-1253)has been widely acclaimed as Japan's finest religious writer. This is a major biographical study, cutting through the traditional hagiography that has clouded standard accounts of Dogen's life and writings. Heine does much to illuminate the rich and sometimes subtle contours of Dogen's intellectual and social context and the evolution of his mind. He also brings English-speaking readers up to date on the complexities of recent Japanese historical-critical scholarship on this pivotal figure in the Zen tradition. Dogen was a brilliant bridge builder who adapted the Chinese Ch'an Buddhist traditions to Japan to create what we now know as Zen. Heine highlights Dogen's many-sided literary genius, as well as the many-sided ways Dogen appealed to China as a way to craft his unique vision of Buddhist life. Lucid and insightful at a variety of levels.

There really is no reason to own any other book on the subject. I am very pleased that I bought this book and will be ordering the rest of the author's titles.


In my opinion, acquiring all of the author's cookbooks first before buying the other English language Chinese cookbooks makes an important foundation to understanding what you eat in America and how the food is cooked at home. Then proceed to the other cookbooks and hopefully to eating the more elaborate levels of Chinese cooking. I didn't pick up the author's cookbooks until very recently and only after learning that the author is from Sun Tak. I wish I had bought her books long ago.

Not only does this book include all the favorite Hong Kong style dim sum dishes, but it also includes step-by-step illustrations in beautiful and yet informative pen-and-ink drawings. You will use this book for every Chinese meal, so buy two, in case one of them gets tea spilt upon it.