Placing meanings of health and disease at the center of modern Chinese consciousness, Ruth Rogaski reveals how hygiene became a crucial element in the formulation of Chinese modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rogaski focuses on multiple manifestations across time of a single Chinese concept, weisheng—which has been rendered into English as "hygiene," "sanitary," "health," or "public health"—as it emerged in the complex treaty-port environment of Tianjin. Before the late nineteenth century, weisheng was associated with diverse regimens of diet, meditation, and self-medication. Hygienic Modernity reveals how meanings of weisheng, with the arrival of violent imperialism, shifted from Chinese cosmology to encompass such ideas as national sovereignty, laboratory knowledge, the cleanliness of bodies, and the fitness of races: categories in which the Chinese were often deemed lacking by foreign observers and Chinese elites alike.

Remains of the Everyday traces the changing material culture and industrial ecology of China through the lens of recycling. Over the last century, waste recovery and secondhand goods markets have been integral to Beijing’s economic functioning and cultural identity, and acts of recycling have figured centrally in the ideological imagination of modernity and citizenship. On the one hand, the Chinese state has repeatedly promoted acts of voluntary recycling as exemplary of conscientious citizenship. On the other, informal recycling networks—from the night soil carriers of the Republican era to the collectors of plastic and cardboard in Beijing’s neighborhoods today—have been represented as undisciplined, polluting, and technologically primitive due to the municipal government’s failure to control them. The result, Joshua Goldstein argues, is the repeatedly re-inscribed exclusion of waste workers from formations of modern urban citizenship as well as the intrinsic liminality of recycling itself as an economic process.

DIVDIVAn incredible assortment of stories from one of history’s masters of short fiction/divDIV On the morning of the merger, fog shrouds the offices of Jupiter Steel. On the twenty-first floor, the board of directors gathers to follow the commands of Billy Calm, an unequaled titan of finance. But a few minutes before the meeting, Calm jumps out a window. The chief of security rushes to the street, but where there should be a body, he sees only slush; Billy Calm has vanished into the fog./divDIV “The Long Way Down” is a classic Edward D. Hoch story—elegantly baffling, with prose that will please even the most hard-boiled fans. But this collection contains much more than puzzles. Here are the odds and ends of Hoch’s early work, covering espionage, boxing, and every shade of noir—as beautiful as the fog, and as chilling as the first step off the ledge. /divDIV/div/div

This novel by C.S. Hagen is both an unexpected love story in a time and place of great violence and prejudice and a stirring tale of a man running from his past who challenges the British opium monopoly in China known as the Combination. Saltwater Girl is set during the Boxer Rebellion (1900) - an anti-imperialist struggle waged by North China's commoners clinging to ancient mystic beliefs against a decadent Qing Dynasty and foreign aggression. Set in colorful strokes against a broad historical canvas including the Western nations vying for China's treasures, one man - James Innocent - disguised as a Lutheran reverend and AWOL from the US First Marine Corps, delves deeply into the opium trade in an attempt to destroy the Combination's powerful consortium. From inside the port city Tientsin (Tianjin) where foreigners and Celestials (locals) are divided into two parts, two wars emerge - the war against opium and the war against aggression. The Reverend not only finds his own life in danger , but struggles against falling for a Saltwater Girl - a river prostitute - who he believes may be his only friend. Filled with sensual imagery amidst breathtaking devastation and beauty, the Saltwater Girl is a rare look into colonial and Chinese history, the clash of cultures and the ravages the opium trade brought to the Asian masses.

Everything you have ever experienced has been just one reality. The prime reality. However, there exist many more realities within the infinite realms of the Drift, throughout which the dreams of every living creature in the universe are interwoven. For Poppy, a lonely young girl with severe narcolepsy, these myriad realities are a cherished escape from her own. But that all changes when she meets a mysterious black cat and discovers the nightmares that dwell within the Drift, infecting dreamers in the prime reality. Only those like Poppy who can travel from one dream to the next can hunt the nightmare down and slay it once and for all. These Drifters live by a simple mantra: Protect the Drift. Slay the Nightmare. Free the Mara. Do not go Dark.

This is the story of the workers of Tianjin (Tientsin) and how, in the first half of the 20th century, they helped shape Tianjin's identity as the major industrial centre of North China. This text should be of interest to students of the period covered, and also to those students of Communist China who wish to understand the antecedents of China's current urban society and trace the roots of powerful continuities. The book offers a wealth of detail on material life, forms of entertainment, local festivals and individual rites of passage and makes use of studies of the local economy carried out by contemporaries and in the People's Republic. The Workers of Tianjin is a contribution to both Chinese labour history and urban history.

The pioneering novel of physical disability, transatlantic travel, and black international politics. A vital document of black modernism and one of the earliest overtly queer fictions in the African American tradition. Published for the first time. A Penguin Classic A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice/Staff Pick Vulture's Ten Best Books of 2020 pick Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor. While stowing away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked in a frigid closet. Badly frostbitten by the time the boat docks, the once-nimble dancer loses both of his lower legs, emerging from life-saving surgery as what he terms "an amputated man." Thanks to an improbably successful lawsuit against the shipping line, however, Lafala scores big in the litigious United States. Feeling flush after his legal payout, Lafala doubles back to Marseille and resumes his trans-African affair with Aslima, a Moroccan courtesan. With its scenes of black bodies fighting for pleasure and liberty even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, McKay's novel explores the heritage of slavery amid an unforgiving modern economy. This first-ever edition of Romance in Marseille includes an introduction by McKay scholars Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell that places the novel within both the "stowaway era" of black cultural politics and McKay's challenging career as a star and skeptic of the Harlem Renaissance.

The whimsy of Nevermoor meets the mythical world-building of Neil Gaiman in this unlikely hero's quest to find his parents--and find the home he's always longed for. In a snow-covered land where monsters rule the icy tundra, only song weavers hold the power to control these vicious giants. But for centuries song weavers have been the subject of suspicion--how can those who hold so much power be trusted? Ever since his parents were lost on a pathfinding expedition, Ash has spent his life as an outcast. As a budding song weaver, his village marked him as a potential threat, even though all he wants to do is protect them. Eager to find his place in the world, he and his cantankerous yeti caretaker seek passage on the Frostheart: a ship-like sleigh whose mission is to explore faraway lands. There he meets a fast-talking, spunky navigator, a walrus captain with a peg leg who runs a tight sleigh, and a mysterious traveler who encourages him to hone his song. But can Ash's song weaving save the Frostheart from the monsters hiding under the ice? Or will his untamed powers put his newfound friends in jeopardy? Chockfull of heart and humor, as well as Jamie Littler's irresistable illustrations, the journey of the Frostheart will win over readers and gatekeepers looking for a rich, gateway fantasy read.

Winner of the 1997 Whiting Writers’ Award:Taut, persistent, and brilliantly cadenced, First, Body is a testament to the breathtaking virtuosity of Granta-acclaimed author Melanie Rae Thon Through nine searing works of fiction, Melanie Rae Thon looks to the people who live in the borderlands, turning a keen and compassionate eye to those marginalized by circumstance and transgression. Taking us from the cobblestone streets of Boston to a deserted Montana road, from dance halls to hospital morgues, these urgent tales careen between the faults of the body and those of the mind, exploring the irruption of the past through the present, the sudden accidents and misguided passions that make it impossible to return to the safe territory of a former life.