When the great fire of 1835 burns New York City's downtown, Archie Prescott thinks he's lost everything. In the midst of ancient magic and a crafty demon-god, Archie soon finds himself with the power to save the world--or drown it in sacrificial blood.

In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.

This book explores the aesthetic consciousness of the Shang Dynasty and its influence on Chinese aesthetic development and contemporary aesthetic creation. The Shang Dynasty is the first era in China with authentic historical documentation. Its artifacts and inscriptions have great aesthetic value and serve as vivid and rich records of aesthetic concepts. By examining the production and use of pottery, jade, bronze, and oracle bone inscriptions, the book sheds light on the functions of these creations as media for conveying emotions driven by human nature. By discussing how the Shang script was invented and used, the author explores the significant role it played in the development of the aesthetic consciousness of the Chinese ancients. Based on surviving documents, including the hexagrams in the Book of Changes, the Pan Geng in the Book of Documents, and the Shang Songs in the Book of Songs, he further examines the poetic characteristics of Shang literature, recognizing it as both historically and literarily significant. The title is essential reading for scholars, students, and general readers interested in Chinese aesthetics, ancient Chinese civilization, culture, and art.

Born for love, she was an emperor's favorite. A tyrant's concubine. And a prisoner of her own brazen desires . . .

FOREWORD RECUMBENT HORSE Chinese, Ming Dynasty. 1 Length: 3 /2 in (9 em). The formation of the head with its marked convexity of outline resembles that of one depicted on a mural painting in a Northern Song tomb, discovered at Pai-Sha in Honan. Despite its size, this horse has a strong sculptural quality. Worked from pale green jade with light brown markings. t has been said that a single daily issue of a newspaper effort to survey the jade scene worldwide. These volumes such as The New York Times, Neue Zurcher Zeitung or Le were bigger than was necessary considering the amount of Monde contains more information than someone text included (measuring 24 x 18 inches, 61 x 46 cm, and living in the 17th century would have faced in a lifetime. weighing 110 lb (50 kg) together), and Bishop was not Jade scholarship cannot escape the information explosion interested in wide dissemination of the subject. He printed of our century. Our knowledge on the subject of jade has only 106 copies, none of which was for sale, and then des been radically expanded in two directions, from the past troyed the plates. The copies were sent to important libra and in the present, and a definitive survey bringing together ries, museums and crowned heads around the world. As the latest research from around the world is long overdue.

The Western Han dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE) was a foundational period for the artistic culture of ancient China, a fact particularly visible in the era’s funerary art. Iconic forms of Chinese art such as dazzling suits of jade; cavernous, rock-cut mountain tombs; fancifully ornate wall paintings; and armies of miniature terracotta warriors were prepared for the tombs of the elite during this period. Many of the finest objects of the Western Han have been excavated from the tombs of kings, who administered local provinces on behalf of the emperors. Allison R. Miller paints a new picture of elite art production by revealing the contributions of the kings to Western Han artistic culture. She demonstrates that the kings were not mere imitators of the imperial court but rather innovators, employing local materials and workshops and experimenting with new techniques to challenge the artistic hegemony of the imperial house. Tombs and funerary art, Miller contends, functioned as an important vehicle of political expression as kings strove to persuade the population and other elites of their legitimacy. Through case studies of five genres of royal art, Miller argues that the political structure of the early Western Han, with the emperor as one ruler among peers, benefited artistic production and innovation. Kingly Splendor brings together close readings of funerary art and architecture with nuanced analyses of political and institutional dynamics to provide an interdisciplinary revisionist history of the early Western Han.

本书内容包括布达拉宮概述, 建筑外景, 东庭院, 白宮门廊等等.