Chen Hansheng was not only a pioneer of modern Chinese social science, remembered for the villagestudies he organized by teams of researchers in the 1930s. He was also a political operative whosecareer as an underground and aboveground Communist activist spanned the twentieth century andthe globe. This book draws on unique interviews, beginning in 1979, with Chen himself, his family andassociates, along with an exhaustive examination of documents, writings, and archives, to build arounded portrait of Chen, the man, and his world.‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐“Stephen MacKinnon’s lifetime study of eminent social scientist and Communist Chen Hanshengmakes for an absorbing, thrilling, and illuminating read. This product of decades of researching Chen,and of years of discussions with him, MacKinnon shows us how one enterprising and creative scholarbecame dedicated to the cause, worked for it, and then ended his life sad and angry about whatbecame of the Chinese Communist Party in power.”—Hans van de Ven,
China’s ascent to the ranks of the world’s second largest economic power has given its revolution a better image than that of its Russian counterpart. Yet the two have a great deal in common. Indeed,
The flag-bearers of the Chinese Contemporary ArtIn the late 1970s, at the close of the Cultural Revolution, a group ofyoung, largely auto-didact artists in China endeavored to create artworkthat would
A Cottager's Sketchbook is a collection of informal essays written by Liang Shih-chiu over a span of more than four decades. The earliest pieces originally appeared in a weekly in the wartime capital
The Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan), are the only pre-Imperial Chinese manuscripts on silk found to-date. Dating to the turn from the 4th to the 3rd centuries BC (Late Warring States p
This pocket-sized paperback is one of the thirty titles published for 2019 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2019 is “Speech and Silence”. From 19–24 November 2019, 30 invited p
ONE OF THE MOST SPOKEN DIALECTS in China, Southeast Asia, and globally, Cantonese was nevertheless deemed a local dialect enjoying little prestige among the intellectuals. Not much was recorded in official documents or gazetteers about the early history of Hong Kong. The Cantonese language and its origin remained much of a mystery until the mid-20th century when scholars started to accord it with increasing attention. Thanks to dedicated efforts of early missionaries, pedagogues, and linguists, we can now trace back the evolution of modern Cantonese since the 19th century— how differences in sounds, words, and grammar distinguish the old from contemporary speech today. In this book, Hung-nin Samuel Cheung, an acclaimed scholar on the study of Cantonese, offers profound insights to various firsthand century-old materials including language manuals, Bible translations, and maps of Hong Kong, with findings that will be useful for ongoing efforts to study the development of
The Guodian manuscripts are a cache of literary and philosophical texts from the fourth century BCE, discovered in a Warring States–period tomb in China’s Hubei Province. Through detailed decipherment and textual analysis, Kuan-yun Huang investigates the historical and philosophical contexts of these texts and convincingly proposes their association with Zisi, the grandson of Confucius. Huang not only offers an in-depth portrait of this famous scion from excavated texts and transmitted literary records, but also reveals the connection of the Guodian texts with early intellectual tradition in China, including the teachings of Xunzi, Mencius, Confucius, and the legendary Laozi, as well as the effort of rewriting that transformed Zisi’s original teachings into a conformist line of thinking, which defined and constituted the Confucian tradition of a later time.-------------- In Kuan-yun Huang’s The Lost Texts of Confucius’ Grandson, the shadowy figure of Zisi comes to life as an
China stands as a major “Red Swan” challenge to the social sciences. The resilience of the Communist party-state, in combination with a rapidly expanding and internationally competitive economy, chall
This pocket-sized paperback is one of the thirty titles published for 2019 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2019 is “Speech and Silence”. From 19–24 November 2019, 30 invited p