Sabrina Ardizzoni’s book is an in-depth analysis of Hakka women in tulou villages in Southeast China. Based on fieldwork, data acquired through local documents, diverse material and symbolic culture elements, this study adopts an original approach that includes historical-textual investigation and socio-anthropological enquiry. Having interviewed local Hakka women and participated in rural village events, public and private, in west Fujian’s Hakka tulou area, the author provides a comprehensive overview of the historical threads and cultural processes that lead to the construction of the ideal Hakka woman, as well as an insightful analysis of the multifaceted Hakka society in which rural women reinvent their social subjectivity and negotiate their position between traditional constructs and modern dynamics.

This book tells the story of a Chinese family owned shophouse in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, through the lens of petite capitalism. Neo-Marxist in spirit, literary in tone, it recounts the triumph and despair of a family in its struggles against the financial frailty and structural limitations of a pervasive economic form of the Chinese diaspora: the small family business. The daily realities of the Chinese shophouse are captured by the art of ethnography and the author’s own memories. The book examines Chinese petite capitalism afresh by bringing into focus issues not usually covered by writers on the subject—the concept of petite capitalism, the architecture of the Asian shophouse, the Hakka kinship, ‘tiger parenting’ and Chinese childrearing, the culture of debt, family legacy, and Chinese inheritance. The book reveals the business acumen for which the Chinese diaspora are renowned as part truth and part myth. Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ haunts the small Chinese family business where hard work and individual efforts are helpless against the ever-evolving nature of capitalism.

This book uses the concept of the region to introduce traditional Chinese villages in ten typical areas. Most of the villages have been included in the World Cultural Heritage List or the Tentative List and reflect the diversity of rural and traditional life. Richly illustrated with pictures of architectural decorations, dwellings, day-to-day country life and aerial views of settlements, it not only enhances readers’ knowledge of China’s traditional architectural culture but also provides inspiration for architectural creation. It is a valuable resource for graduate students, lecturers and researchers in the field of traditional villages, heritage conservation and Chinese architectural culture.

While most attention is given to the booming mega-cities in China and the associated problems of over-population, the rural areas in China are being largely ignored. Yet, a sustainable development of the rural areas is precisely that, which will be decisive for China’s future. Through its rapid development into an industrial country, China now needs to tackle far-reaching problems such as increasing population, growing income gap between the poor and the rich, rural exodus, decreased agricultural production, and environmental pollution. Rural Urban Framework is a work group at the University of Hong Kong that not only researches the far-reaching changes of the last thirty years in China’s rural areas, but has also realized concrete projects aimed at improving supply and infrastructure on site. In this publication, the authors present for the first time the results of their research as well as their built projects in the Chinese backlands, and question whether China’s only future model lies in cities.

The essays in this volume analyze and compare what it means to be Hakka in a variety of sociocultural, political, geographical, and historical contexts including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Taiwan, and contemporary China.

Chinese folklorists are well acquainted with the work of their English-language colleagues, but until recently the same could not be said about American scholars' knowledge of Chinese folkloristics. Chinese Folklore Studies Today aims to address this knowledge gap by illustrating the dynamics of contemporary folklore studies in China as seen through the eyes of the up-and-coming generation of scholars. Contributors to this volume focuses on topics that have long been the dominant areas of folklore studies in China, including myth, folk song, and cultural heritage, as well as topics that are new to the field, such as urban folklore and women's folklore. The ethnographic case studies presented here represent a broad range of geographic areas within mainland China and also introduce English-language readers to relevant Chinese literature on each topic, creating the foundation for further cross-cultural collaborations between English-language and Chinese folkloristics.

In Naturopathy in South India – Clinics between Professionalization and Empowerment, Eva Jansen offers a rich ethnographic account of current naturopathic thinking and practices, and examines its complex history, multiple interpretations, and antagonisms. This book presents two major forms of Naturopathy in contemporary South India: On one side, a scientific, professional branch models themselves after allopathic practitioners. On the other side, a group of ideologists uses an approach to patient treatment that is grounded in the principles of simplicity, transparency, a critique of globalization, and a focus on patient empowerment. Jansen discusses the current political and medical clash between Naturopaths in South India from the perspectives of practitioners, employees, the media and patients.

The Yearbook of China's Cultural Industries is a large comprehensive, authoritative and informative annual which accurately records and reflects the annual development of cultural industries in China. It is also a large reference book with abundant information on cultural industries in China and a complex index, which could be kept for a long time and read for many years. A must for libraries. It deals with Radio and TV, the film industry, Press and Publishing Industries, the Entertainment Industry, Online Game Industry, Audio Visual New Media Industry, Advertisement Industry, and the Cultural Tourism Industry. It examines the figures nationally and by region.

Sustainable housing is generally used to describe housing that is environmentally friendly and resource-efficient over the lifetime of the building. Homes are designed to have the least possible negative impact on the environment. This means energy efficiency, avoiding environmental toxins, and responsibly using materials and resources while having positive physical and psychological effects on inhabitants. This book presents a comprehensive overview of sustainable housing, starting from legislation and ending with the design and configuration of homes.

Yongding County in southeast China is famous for its large, multistory communal vernacular buildings known as tulou, translated "rammed earth building." These structures were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Living in Heritage introduces readers outside of China to this classic example of local Chinese architecture in the context of contemporary heritage preservation and tourism. Focusing on the Yongding Hakka Tulou Folk Culture Village, which is part of Hongkeng Village, author Lijun Zhang examines the on-the-ground processes and effects of heritage-making, UNESCO-inspired tourism, and how locals negotiate the dramatic transformation of their daily, social, and economic lives. Within an age of cultural change beginning at the start of the 21st century, Living in Heritage explores how the tulou phenomenon as heritage has and continues to be transformed into cultural, economic, or political capital. Through her careful study, Zhang reveals how the blurring of formerly distinct domains—private and public, local and global—gives rise to a living museum that now relies on insiders and outsiders to preserve their way of life. Living in Heritage offers an in-depth ethnographic account of the people dwelling and working within traditional tulou architecture in the 21st century.