China Books

Great for beginners! I want to learn to draw and look forward to expressing myself. I do not consider myself yet an "artist." However, I bought this book and found it excellent. The instructions are easy to follow and help one obtain very good results. What I need to do is practise. I highly recommend this book.

I love Asian and Oriental paintings, so this is a cool book to learn about art, and how to do it.

Regardless of your level of expertise, you will find this book useful.Its explanation of papers and brushes is very good. It simplifies brush techniques, use of inks, use of colors.etc. Though everything is concise and brief, all the needed information is there for landscape painting. If you want to do Chinese landscape painting, this is THE book. You will not find the classical approach of working through the "Four Gentlemen", but you will get everything you need to do Chinese-style landscapes without the frills.

Hands down
this is the BEST source of informationa and technique for chinese landscape painting. A must have for the serious painter Joel Smith MD

This is an outstanding scholarly record of Chinese culture
and aspects of its martial culture as it existed in pre Peoples Republic of China.
A 'gem' for researchers!

Dr. Hu has done a great service to the lion dancing community by compiling this book. He does a great job of documenting many aspects of this ancient Chinese art. It is interesting that it also includes a section on the how the lion dance is practiced in other countries such as Japan and Korea. This book is a definite must-have for anyone interested in the history and practice of lion dancing.

This is an excellent book for the person wanting to understand Chinese culture from an internal point of view. It helps explain why China's expirement with democracy didn't work and the country's attitude towards western culture. Although some of the information is outdated, it uses several thousand years of history to back up the author's assumption about Chinese attitudes and mores, including such controversial subjects as the Vietnam War and Japanese culture's debt to China. It covers such varied subjects as food, religion (or the lack of), clothing and technology and above all Chinese ideas about these subjects and the world around them.

I've been reading and rereading this book for thirty-five years. China from a personal yet objective point of view (British journalist married into an old Chinese family), this is quite simply the best introduction to the subject I know anything about. It is beautifully written, interesting and exciting from beginning to end, and certainly one of the most memorable books on China you will ever read. If you are only going to read one book on Chinese culture and civilization, this is the book to read. But, believe me, you will not want to stop with "The Chinese Looking Glass." Read Bloodsworth's book and you will be hooked on the subject for many years to come.

This is one of the best historical books I have ever read. The best door-opener to Chinese history and thought, written by two highly knowledgable authors. I thank them for it.

I have read the original edition of this book many times. It contains short histories of pivotal events in Chinese history to illustrate particular doctrines of Chinese political or military philosophy, such as warring on those states nearby but allying with states far away.

Not having seen this edition I do not know if it contains the original Wade-Giles transliterations of Chinese words and names or has been converted to the God-awful "pinyin" system in which letters are pronounced without any consideration of how they are spoken in any Western language. If this edition has pinyin, my advice is to to skip it and buy an old copy with Wade-Giles trabnsliteration, which is *intended* for English-speakers and in which most non-Communist histories of China have been published.

Chinese history can be very hard for the non-specialist to follow because of the unfamiliar words and names and the frequent re-use of a name throughout its five millennia of history. "The Chinese Machiavelli" contains all that the average reader needs to know to understand whatever Chinese theory the authors are trying to illustrate. The Chinese theory is explained clearly and it is illustrated by historical vignettes written in easy-to-understand English with relatively little use of unnecessary Chinese terms. The latter point is particularly helpful since Chinese words often have several meanings depending on their context. The Bloodworths are careful to explain all of the nuances of the words relevant to the concept which they are describing, and mercifully forego unnecessary jargon.

"The Chinese Machiavelli" is an outstanding entry-level introduction to Chinese history and politics and is very helpful to those trying to understand seemingly illogical decisions made by Chinese bureaucrats and politicians, both now and in the past.

I have had the privilege of studying traditional Chinese medicine in Mainland China. It was interesting that many of the Western practitioners who were with me were scandalized by what they saw as the destruction of traditional medicine by contemporary Chinese doctors. If I can generalize, the Chinese are great pragmatists and for them their medicine - including acupuncture and herbalism - is in a constant state of growth and development. By contrast the Westerners thought that traditional Chinese medicine was an ancient system stuck in amber.

This book highlights all of these points and many others.

The author is a medical anthropologist as well as a practitioner of Chinese medicine who reads Chinese.

What he does is to weave together traditional anthropological concepts with Chinese philosophy, social psychology, science and technology to create a revealing tapestry. Although there is evidence that acupuncture has been in use for millennia, its current form is no more than fifty years old, and owes as much to politics as it does to tradition.

This is the way that Chinese medicine has adapted and synthesized new discoveries and new influences over the centuries. It is now quite normal to find traditional Chinese practitioners who use both traditional diagnosis using the pulse and the tongue, together with X-rays and blood work. A treatment may include not only acupuncture and herbs, but also some conventional Western medicine. This book highlights the ways in which Chinese medicine is not so much a thing as a dynamic process.

The author uses case studies from his own fieldwork in China to examine traditional medicine from a variety of perspectives. Not only how it is practiced, but also how it is mandated and then regulated by the government, and how it is shaped by its environment.

If you have any interest in Chinese medicine, the history of ideas, or how the Chinese tend to think about medical, practical and even political issues, this is a terrific book that I recommend highly.

One of our biggest problems as Chinese Medicine practitioners in the U.S. is that we don't have access to all the Chinese literature, nor do we really know what it's like in China. This book, with a number of great vignettes, bursts a number of bubbles for American TCM practitioners. Scheid is not only an acupuncturist, but also an anthropologist, so to him these vignettes are case studies...

For example: a doctor integrates biomedicine and chinese medicine to treat meniere's disease, how politics can decide that liver qi xu doesn't exist, pattern differentiation's significance historically and politically, and the in's and out's of apprenticeship.

It not only gives you a broader view of chinese medicine past and present, but also provides herbal prescription ideas and case studies unlike what we've read in English before.

Les mythes chinois nous disaient pourquoi le monde etait cree, pourquoi il y avait tant de mal, et ce qui se passait apres la mort. Bien sur, il s'agissait aussi des dieux mythologiques, tels que Lei Gong, qui s'occupaient des orphelins et des veuves. Les legendes chinoises nous racontaient la vie des braves gens anciens. Par exemple, Yo et Shun etaient les derniers de 5 empereurs sages auxquels tous les souverains chinois devaient se ressembler. Il y avait des ministres des cieux et de la terre, tels que l'ingenieur Yu qui savaient soumettre la riviere Jaune tellement inapprivoisable. Alors l'auteur Keith Stevens nous donne un livre bien fait, bien ecrit sur un theme dont je ne savais rien. Bravo!

Like any myth, Chinese myths tell why the world began. They tell also the why of bad things, such as drought, flood and plague. They also guess about after death. In contrast, like any legend, Chinese legends tell about real people of long ago.

The first CHINESE MYTHOLOGICAL GODS were around before the world. For example, Daoists believed their great master Hongjun Laozu to be life-giving nature, from before the world was made. The actual worldmaker, either Pangu the giant or Yuanshi Tianzun, was in the next set of gods.

Some were gods of the ancestors of the Chinese people, in what's now southern Shanxi province, about 6,000-7,000 years ago. Others these ancestors got from the people they met in moving into what's now central and southern China. The latest gods were believed to have come down from heaven just 100 years ago. Ordinary Chinese people saw all of them as helpers drawing on the power of the highest god, the Jade Emperor Yu Huang Dadi. Favorite helpful gods have been Lei Gong, for kidnapped children, orphans, and widows; Tai Sui, whenever the ground's disturbed; and Yang Jian, during trouble.

Then came the heroes of legend. They showed up as demigods, sage emperors, and founding ministers of Chinese culture. For example, Yo and Shun were last of the 5 legendarily wise emperors. All Chinese rulers were supposed to be like them.

There were also supposed to be the same kinds of ministers on earth, as in heaven. Rule in both places needed ministers of agriculture, exorcisms, finance, fire, the 5 sacred mountains, medicine, public works, thunder, time, war, and water. A favorite was Yu the engineer. His canals and embankments tamed the "untameable" Yellow river.

A lot of this was written in two stories. One was the Fengshen Yanyi, or Identification of the gods, from the Ming dynasty of 1368-1644. Carvers made their images and statues from its descriptions. The other was the Xiyou Ji, or Journey to the West, from the 16th century. It was about a Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, bringing Buddhist books, icons and images to China about 1,200 years ago.

So Keith G Stevens did an excellent job of sorting out an unknown subject for me. I'd read other books by him. His book gives a good understanding of Chinese culture, ...

Loved this fun mystery. Judge Dee is a judge who encounters and solve three mysteries set in ancient China. In ancient China, the judge acts in a judicial capacity but also acts as the detective. The cast of characters that the author developed is also interesting. The writing is clear and without repetitive prose. The book is written so that the reader can try to solve the mystery as s/he reads along, and there's a lot of interesting tidbits about the ancient Chinese judicial/legal system. If you're looking for a fun and not too serious book with delightful mysteries, try this out. You don't have to read the Judge Dee books in order. I liked this one more than the Chinese Lake Murders. By the way, in this book (and in other Judge Dee books), there are multiple mysteries presented and the judge solves them all at the same time.

This Chinese mystery story is one of Judge Dee's best, although I like all of his books so far. The book was fun to read. I always try to figure out who is the murderer and how it was done before finishing the book; the author is very clever, and sometimes there is a surprise ending. I am delighted these books were reprinted. I read them 50 years ago; and now that they are again available, am rereading them. I like them even better now!

I like the book. Concise review of history of China from political, the economy and sprititual. A real eye-opener to whats happening in China.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LMV9RPPQSMSP

I've been very pleased with this book after purchasing it on impulse at a local bookstore.

The recipes are organized geographically, with a chapter devoted to each regional cuisine. Recipes are short, well-written and to-the-point. Ingredient lists are good, including some harder-to-find asian produce items. San Francisco makes that problem go away.

So far I've made about 4 dishes out of this book, and they've all been delicious. Hot and Sour soup, delicious Eggplant in Fish Sauce, Dry Fried String Bean, Shao Mai, etc.

This book is thankfully free of the tasteless recipe Americanization so frequently found in many modern "asian" cookbooks -- no recommendations to substitute Skippy for peanuts, etc.

Also: Many pretty pictures, somewhat interesting reading.

My only complaint is that it should be ten times as long :)

I think that nowadays is hard to find a good chinese cook book...most of the times you end up in the hands of somebody who just made the recipes up,or even worse,in the hands of impossible recipes...with ingredients that you would only find if you went to China!!This book is very helpful,not just as far as recipes are concerned,but also it gives you the opportunity to learn a lot about the history of this unique cuisine.You will find out things that you never knew and that are very curious.Plus,the recipes are very well explained and laid out;each dish is a success with this book...guaranteed!!!I tried making several recipes from this book and they always turned out wonderful!!!!!Finally,Chinese recipes that are not austere and strict anymore...but recipes with a new,yet old and charming touch.