This graphic novel traces the development of the modern Chinese state while the author chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Chinese everyman as he embraces the new order in childhood, serves in the military and with agricultural labor, and becomes a member of the Communist Party.

Dr. Li Khai and Dr. Kong Heong, the author s parents, were just twenty-one years old when they set out from Canton to practice Western medicine among their people in a strange new land. Hawaii at the turn of the century had in store for them plague, fire, starvation, drug problems, mutual mistrust by different nationalities thrown together, jealousy, and slander. Against all this, Li s became a part of the new Hawaii, keeping their faith in the American promise of eventual fairness for all. They worked for the health of the people s hearts and minds as well as their bodies, encouraging others in difficult times while they introduced modern health measures. They established not only a hospital for all Hawaiians, but a school to teach Chinese children for philosophy of the sages, and a newspaper and political party to encourage Overseas Chinese to work for constitutional reforms in Manchu-ruled China.

The Unknown Cultural Revolution challenges the established narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, which assumes that this period of great social upheaval led to economic disaster, the persecution of intellectuals, and senseless violence. Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China’s rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, in Shandong Province, Han shows that the Cultural Revolution helped overthrow local hierarchies, establish participatory democracy and economic planning in the communes, and expand education and public services, especially for the elderly. Han lucidly illustrates how these changes fostered dramatic economic development in rural China. The Unknown Revolution documents a neglected side of China’s Cultural Revolution, demonstrating the potential of mass education and empowerment for radical political and economic transformation. It is a bold and provocative work, which demands the attention not only of students of contemporary Chinese history but of all who are concerned with poverty and inequality in the world today.

Offering an introduction to religion in contemporary China, the essays in this volume consider many diverse themes including religion in urban, rural and ethnic minority settings and the historical, sociological, economic and political aspects of religion on the country as a whole.

Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late nineteenth century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (1847–1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term “Chinese American,” Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights. A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China’s first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America’s first association of Chinese voters and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst. This evocative biography is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America’s most famous Chinese—and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality.

Born in 1941, Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and "class enemy." In this eloquent autobiography, Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupy Tibet, the facts of this era remain obscure, and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khétsun's story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.

Thurston has written the extraordinary life of Ni Yuxian, one of the founders of China's democracy movement. Born in 1945, Ni's first memories are of the Communists taking over his village. Although subjected to humiliation, imprisonment and torture, Ni bravely waged repeated battles against corruption and hypocrisy within the Chinese system.

Originally banned in China but later named one of that nation’s most influential books, a searing novel that portrays one man’s transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant. “A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zhang Yimou. After squandering his family’s fortune in gambling dens and brothels, the young, deeply penitent Fugui settles down to do the honest work of a farmer. Forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family, he witnesses the horrors and privations of the Civil War, only to return years later to face a string of hardships brought on by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. Left with an ox as the companion of his final years, Fugui stands as a model of gritty authenticity, buoyed by his appreciation for life in this narrative of humbling power.

“The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history.”—Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death twenty-two years later, Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician, which put him in daily—and increasingly intimate—contact with Mao and his inner circle. in The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Dr. Li vividly reconstructs his extraordinary experience at the center of Mao's decadent imperial court. Dr. Li clarifies numerous long-standing puzzles, such as the true nature of Mao's feelings toward the United States and the Soviet Union. He describes Mao's deliberate rudeness toward Khrushchev and reveals the actual catalyst of Nixon's historic visit. Here are also surprising details of Mao's personal depravity (we see him dependent on barbiturates and refusing to wash, dress, or brush his teeth) and the sexual politics of his court. To millions of Chinese, Mao was more god than man, but for Dr. Li, he was all too human. Dr. Li's intimate account of this lecherous, paranoid tyrant, callously indifferent to the suffering of his people, will forever alter our view of Chairman Mao and of China under his rule. Praise for The Private Life of Chairman Mao “From now one no one will be able to pretend to understand Chairman Mao's place in history without reference to this revealing account.”—Professor Lucian Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Dr. Li does for Mao what the physician Lord Moran's memoir did for Winston Churchill—turns him into a human being. Here is Mao unveiled: eccentric, demanding, suspicious, unregretful, lascivious, and unfailingly fascinating. Our view of Mao will never be the same again.”—Ross Terrill, author of China in Our Time “An extraordinarily intimate portrait of Mao. [Dr. Li] portrays [Mao's imperial court] as a place of boundless decadence, licentiousness, selfishness, relentless toadying and cutthroat political intrigue.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “One of the most provocative books on Mao to appear since the publication of Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.”—Paul G. Pickowicz, The Wall Street Journal

The Secret of Everlasting Life is the first translation from the Chinese of the second-century Can Tong Qi. This ancient work, the earliest known text on transformation and immortality, echoes the wisdom and poetry of both the Tao Te Ching and I Ching. The Can Tong Qi is also the ancestral text of all Qi Gong exercises in China. This translation reveals for the first time the meditation methods practised for thousands of years by Taoist sages. Presented here with its original Chinese commentaries, the Can Tong Qi is full of practical information and advice about the process of human transformation and how to nurture and develop the natural life-energy within us. Richard Bertschinger's additional commentary explains the intricacies of Chinese allegory and symbolism for the Western reader. This book is an insightful read for anyone interested in Taoist thought, Chinese philosophy and culture, or Chinese medicine.