First published in 2010. This is a fascinating account of life in China in the 1920's and 1930's, as seen through the eyes of a young American doctor based in the ancient Szechuan city of Chunking on the Yangtse, one of China's richest, most powerful and romantic ports. Fascinated by Chinese medicine and anxious to learn more about it, Basil agrees to supervise a Chinese hospital and is plunged into an alien and exotic world both medieval and modern, where the old China of coolies and rickshaws mix with the rising militarism that would soon overtake the country. As he learns more about traditional Chinese remedies, Basil is drawn into the turbulent politics of the period, treating Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and witnessing conflict between the Communists and the Central Government as he goes on his medical rounds, treating patients while comparing Chinese methods including feng shui with his own. Basil enters fully into the life of the city, traveling the river by sampan, dallying in markets, watching fortune tellers, entering into strange friendships and, through medicine, gaining intimate glimpses into the heart of the Chinese character, and into the complexities of their internal politics that would shortly erupt into war. He also makes insightful comparisons between the health of Chinese and western people. Vivid prose brings the city and its people to life, complimented by delightful line drawings.

An account of the author's experiences as a doctor in Chungking.

First published in 2010. This is a fascinating account of life in China in the 1920's and 1930's, as seen through the eyes of a young American doctor based in the ancient Szechuan city of Chunking on the Yangtse, one of China's richest, most powerful and romantic ports. Fascinated by Chinese medicine and anxious to learn more about it, Basil agrees to supervise a Chinese hospital and is plunged into an alien and exotic world both medieval and modern, where the old China of coolies and rickshaws mix with the rising militarism that would soon overtake the country. As he learns more about traditional Chinese remedies, Basil is drawn into the turbulent politics of the period, treating Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and witnessing conflict between the Communists and the Central Government as he goes on his medical rounds, treating patients while comparing Chinese methods including feng shui with his own. Basil enters fully into the life of the city, traveling the river by sampan, dallying in markets, watching fortune tellers, entering into strange friendships and, through medicine, gaining intimate glimpses into the heart of the Chinese character, and into the complexities of their internal politics that would shortly erupt into war. He also makes insightful comparisons between the health of Chinese and western people. Vivid prose brings the city and its people to life, complimented by delightful line drawings.

Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profoundtransformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s.

Singing on the River by Igor Chabrowski, based on Sichuan boatmen’s work songs (haozi), explores the little known world of mentality and self-representation of Chinese workers from the late 19th century until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937). Chabrowski demonstrates how river workers constructed and interpreted their world, work, and gender in context of the dissolving social, cultural, and political orders. Boatmen asserted their own values, bemoaned exploitation, and imagined their sexuality largely in order to cope with their low social status. Through studying the Sichuan boatmen we gain an insight into the ways in which twentieth-century nonindustrial Chinese workers imagined their place in the society and appropriated, without challenging them, the traditional values.

Bringing together children’s literature scholars from China and the United States, this collection provides an introduction to the scope and goals of a field characterized by active but also distinctive scholarship in two countries with very different rhetorical traditions. The volume’s five sections highlight the differences between and overlapping concerns of Chinese and American scholars, as they examine children’s literature with respect to cultural metaphors and motifs, historical movements, authorship, didacticism, important themes, and the current status of and future directions for literature and criticism. Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious in its encouragement of communication between scholars from two major nations, Representing Children in Chinese and U.S. Children’s Literature serves as a model for examining how and why children’s literature, more than many literary forms, circulates internationally.

First published in 2007. The political history of late imperial/early modern China and the relationship between China's traditional political culture and the rapidly changing political environment of China today, are examined through this study of the iconic figure of Yang Jisheng. Born in 1516, Yang had a brief and traumatic career as a junior official in the middle Ming dynasty, before being executed in 1555 for criticising the politics of the imperial state. After his death, Yang was held up as a martyr to Confucian political morality. Over the ensuing 450 years, a variety of constituencies within China have appropriated and deployed Yang's memory in different ways to promote their own political agendas. In recent years, as China has sought to come to grips with the ideological decline of socialism and the need for a new foundation for public morality, there has been a revival of interest in figures like Yang Jisheng. A series of events including the rebuilding of his ancestral shrine, the rededication of a school he founded, and the republication of his writings, show how his legacy is once again being taken up by actors on the contemporary political scene. This is an important study of the power of political myth in China, past and present.

First published in 2007. An encyclopaedic account of traditional Chinese festivals, customs and beliefs, lavishly illustrated with line drawings and paintings, this remarkable work by an Englishman who spent twenty years in China from the Imperial aftermath through the establishment of Communism, gives fascinating insights into a complex culture poised between past and present. Burckhardt's beautifully written and detailed work includes the rites practiced by the Manchu royal court and the rituals permitted under the Communist and Nationalist regimes, the festivals of working people and villagers as well as the ceremonies of the mandarins of Peking and Hong Kong, in all seasons of the year. He was especially close to the renowned Boat People of the former colony, and gives a unique account of life abroad the harbour junks and their sea-borne celebrations. Among the subjects dealt with are Chinese cuisine, the meaning of presents, secret societies, the Chinese calendar, cats (the Chinese prefer cats with yellow eyes), Chinese dress, jade carving, feng shui, etiquette, the hundreds of gods of house and wayside, temples and their guardians, and all the great festivals - those of the Moon, the Dragon Boats, the Hungry Ghosts, the Magnolia, the New Year and many more. Chinese creeds and customs were Burkhardt's passion, and no better account of them will ever be written.