Amanda Tay thinks she is losing her mind—or starring in a surreal film by Stanley Kubrick. You would be too if you’ve been knocked unconscious on your first date in 27 years only to awaken in a beautifully appointed apartment that looks like a page from Tatler Magazine. Last time she checked, the film student-turned-book researcher was renting a tiny room in a flat, so what was she doing sprawled on a king-sized bed with 600-thread count bed sheets and a ponkan-sized bump on her head? The Undercover Tai Tai is a hilarious journey of a young woman who, while pretending to be someone else, makes connections with her past and discovers parts of herself that she never thought existed.

A supernatural basketball superstar; An expert on interspecies dating and marriage counselor to the peculiar; A girl in a Muslim empire engineering a pair of mechanical wings. Meet these characters, and more, in this volume of Philippine Speculative Fiction, featuring stories from the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.

With a fabulous job, designer outfits, a posh flat, and glamorous trips abroad, fashionista and public relations executive Sabbie Chua seems to have it made/ And when she manages to snag a big client for her firm, it seems as though there’s nowhere else for her career to go but up. All she needs is the man of her dreams – and, well, she’s almost there, if she can get hunky architect Gil to finally commit to being her boyfriend. But the course of true love doesn’t run smooth and her high-flying life comes crashing to a halt after a crushing heartbreak and a major, humiliating office gaffe. When Sabbie has to bid goodbye to her thousand-dollar handbags and expensive high heels and say hello to thriftstore finds and a penny-pinching life, she discovers that going from high maintenance gal to low-budget babe is no easy struggle… And that’s before she got wind of how much she needed to pay off her credit card bill…

During the tumultuous 1970s, competing warlords are killing each other to gain control of the opium grown in the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region in Southeast Asia where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Burma join. The winner in the latest opium war, Tai Los, which means "dope boss," is now the "King of the Golden Triangle." Tai Los is the leader of a militia he calls the Shan Liberation Army-a group fighting for independence from the Burmese government and the creation of a separate Shan state. To raise money for guns and to gain respectability, he has offered to sell the opium crop now under his control to the United States. When President Carter's administration decides to turn down Tia Los's offer, the CIA brings in Mike Shannon, a young drug enforcement agent from South Boston, to broker a new deal. Shannon faces two major threats as he heads into the perilous assignment: knowing that he is expendable, and the Triads. An ancient Chinese gang operating out of Hong Kong, the Triads are dependent on the Golden Triangle for their supply of heroin. Once they learn that their supply is threatened, they will not hesitate to hunt Shannon down for the sole purpose of eliminating him.

Thanks to the successes of directors and actors like John Woo, Jackie Chan, and Chow Yun-Fat, the cinema of Hong Kong is wildly popular worldwide, and there is much more to this diverse film culture than most Western audiences realize. Beyond martial arts and comedy, Hong Kong films are a celebration of the grand diversity and pageantry of moviemaking--covering action, comedy, horror, eroticism, mythology, historical drama, modern romances, and experimental films. Information on 1,100 films produced in British Hong Kong from 1977 to 1997 is included here.

Literature, from the Chinese perspective, makes manifest the cosmic patterns that shape and complete the world—a process of “worlding” that is much more than mere representation. In that spirit, A New Literary History of Modern China looks beyond state-sanctioned works and official narratives to reveal China as it has seldom been seen before, through a rich spectrum of writings covering Chinese literature from the late-seventeenth century to the present. Featuring over 140 Chinese and non-Chinese contributors from throughout the world, this landmark volume explores unconventional forms as well as traditional genres—pop song lyrics and presidential speeches, political treatises and prison-house jottings, to name just a few. Major figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Eileen Chang, and Mo Yan appear in a new light, while lesser-known works illuminate turning points in recent history with unexpected clarity and force. Many essays emphasize Chinese authors’ influence on foreign writers as well as China’s receptivity to outside literary influences. Contemporary works that engage with ethnic minorities and environmental issues take their place in the critical discussion, alongside writers who embraced Chinese traditions and others who resisted. Writers’ assessments of the popularity of translated foreign-language classics and avant-garde subjects refute the notion of China as an insular and inward-looking culture. A vibrant collection of contrasting voices and points of view, A New Literary History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China’s literary and cultural legacy.

At the beginning of 1945, relations between America and the Chinese Communists couldn’t have been closer. Chinese leaders talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year’s end, Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust, a pattern which would continue for a quarter century, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences. In China 1945, Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of the sea change that took place during that year—brilliantly analyzing its far-reaching components and colorful characters, from diplomats John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service to Time journalist, Henry Luce; in addition to Mao and his intractable counterpart, Chiang Kai-shek, and the indispensable Zhou Enlai. A tour de force of narrative history, China 1945 examines American power coming face-to-face with a formidable Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations.

Including reviews of 200 films, plus information about U.S. theaters, video stores, and mail-order sources that specialize in this white-hot, new genre, this is the first guide to an exploding popular culture phenomenon. Includes 75 photos.

This book will show you ways of predicting things you never thought possible, ways that don't rely on the gods, don't rely on the occult, but rely on your intelligence. This book will also show you how to get a glimpse of what's really going on inside people's heads. By mastering these methods, you too can easily surpass Sherlock Holmes! This book will introduce methods of prediction that people in Western civilization have almost never heard of. These methods were invented by the best wise men of ancient China. Some used these methods to save their own lives or the lives of others, some used these methods to defeat their enemies without a single soldier, and some used these methods to establish themselves as wise men and become saints. As for you, what do you want to do with these methods? It is up to you. But if you don't realize that many things can be predicted, or even that some things can be handled in this way, then of course you will do what you have done in the past. Then of course, you will be like countless people in the past, and live a life of mediocrity. Many people have relied on religion and made a lot of money by lying about prophecies. Why is it that false prophecies based on religion are so easy to accept, while predictions based on one's own intelligence are not well known? Perhaps it is because in Western civilization, religion has a stronger restraining power that has constrained human development in prediction. Or maybe the answer doesn't matter. Especially once you have mastered the methods offered in this book, you probably won't care! Of course, some of the methods mentioned in this book are only applicable to ancient contexts, but there are many more examples that will allow you to expand your thinking! Let you know that there are many ways to approach a certain situation! If you don't want to be confined to your own civilized world, and you want to try to make intelligent predictions yourself, then this book is for you. Then this book will be a treasure for you, it will open a door to a new world for your mind. This book is about the secrets that the Chinese will not tell you. In ancient China, many wise men had already mastered some methods of predicting the future and successfully used their predictions to their advantage. Either to defeat enemies or to avoid disasters. The stories and wisdom here are bound to impact the awareness of Western readers. If you are interested in predicting the future using laws and wisdom, this book is a classic that you cannot miss. After reading this book, you may even imagine a situation where, for example, if a senior Chinese official had known about new pneumonia, would China have played a small game or a big strategy? And where would the international situation be headed in the future?