How Asia Found Herself

How Asia Found Herself
Author: Nile Green
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 030025704X

A pioneering history of cross-cultural knowledge that exposes enduring fractures in unity across the world's largest continent "Mr. Green has written a book of rigorous--and refreshing--honesty."--Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2023 The nineteenth century saw European empires build vast transport networks to maximize their profits from trade, and it saw Christian missionaries spread printing across Asia to bring Bibles to the colonized. The unintended consequence was an Asian communications revolution: the maritime public sphere expanded from Istanbul to Yokohama. From all corners of the continent, curious individuals confronted the challenges of studying each other's cultures by using the infrastructure of empire for their own exploratory ends. Whether in Japanese or Persian, Bengali or Arabic, they wrote travelogues, histories, and phrasebooks to chart the vastly different regions that European geographers labeled "Asia." Yet comprehension does not always keep pace with connection. Far from flowing smoothly, inter-Asian understanding faced obstacles of many kinds, especially on a landmass with so many scripts and languages. Here is the dramatic story of cross-cultural knowledge on the world's largest continent, exposing the roots of enduring fractures in Asian unity.

Access to Asia

Access to Asia
Author: Sharon Schweitzer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2015-04-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118919017

Create meaningful relationships that translate to better business Access to Asia presents a deeply insightful framework for today's global business leaders and managers, whether traveling from Toronto to Taipei, Baltimore to Bangalore, or San Francisco to Shanghai. Drawing from her extensive experience and global connections, author Sharon Schweitzer suggests that irrespective of their industry, everyone is essentially in the relationship business. Within Asia, building trust and inspiring respect are vital steps in developing business relationships that transcend basic contractual obligations. Readers will find in-the-trenches advice and stories from 80 regional experts in 10 countries, including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Korea. Discover the unique eight-question framework that provides rich interview material and insight from respected cultural experts Track cultural progress over time and highlight areas in need of improvement with the Self-Awareness Profile Learn the little-known facts, reports, and resources that help establish and strengthen Asian business relationships Effective cross-cultural communication is mandatory for today's successful global business leaders. For companies and individuals looking to engage more successfully with their counterparts in Asia, Access to Asia showcases the critical people skills that drive global business success.

What about Asia?

What about Asia?
Author: Josine Stremmelaar
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9053569596

As Asia has become more prominent on the international scene in recent decades—economically, politically, and culturally—the scholarly discipline of Asian studies has grown commensurately. But major questions remain about the scope of the discipline and its goals. What about Asia? both surveys the current state of the debate on Asian studies and suggests several fruitful directions for future exploration, especially through the use of multiregional and interdisciplinary approaches.

One White Face

One White Face
Author: Hilary Corna
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2017-01-24
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1626343411

Suitcase? Check. Job? Nope. One way ticket to Singapore? Check! As the first in her family to graduate from college, Hilary Corna knew exactly what she was supposed to do with her business degree upon graduation: find a decent job, move to a big city, and settle down with the man she loved. But Hilary was not a typical twenty-two-year-old. Against everyone’s advice, including her single mom, she purchased a one-way ticket to Singapore in hopes of starting her career in Asia. Hilary left home with just one suitcase, a love for Asian culture, and the determination to succeed. What could have ended in failure turned into the greatest adventure of her life when she secured a position working with Toyota Motor Asia Pacific. As the only Caucasian in the Singapore office, one Toyota boss singled her out as the “one white face,” setting the tone for the experience she would undergo. Along with her first job came new dares: thrills of traveling to exotic destinations, the pain of living twelve time zones away from community, family, and friends back home, and the birth of new friendships across cultures. Over the next three years, Hilary implemented the famous Toyota philosophy of Kaizen, a Japanese business management style of continuous improvement, to dealerships she managed across fourteen Asian countries. She blossomed under the guidance and eastern philosophies of Japanese big bosses, who developed from mentors and friends into father figures that Hilary had never had before. Hilary invites you along on her journey of becoming a global citizen—a journey where she discovers the beauty of different cultures as a way to explore her own identity not as “one white face,” but as a global citizen. To help along your journey, Hilary includes an online self-reflection guide and access to the #DareYourself community. ​If you are being held back by your job, relationships, or even your parents’ opinions, you will be inspired with boldness and dared with courage to cultivate your own self-discovery, global life experiences, and continuous self-improvement. What could have ended in failure turns into the greatest adventure of her life, complete with the challenges of working as the “one white face” of Toyota Motor Asia Pacific. Along with her new career came the thrills of traveling to exotic destinations, the pain of living twelve time zones away from loved ones, and the birth of new friendships across cultures. Over the next three years, Hilary studies Kaizen, a Japanese business method and management style for problem solving, and applies it during her work with dealerships in the Philippines and India. She blossoms under the guidance of Japanese big bosses who develop from mentors into friends and father figures. With a conversational tone and brutal honesty, Hilary invites readers along on her journey of becoming a global citizen—a journey where she discovers the beauty of life and explores her own identity not as one white face, but as a member of a global humanity. Those stuck in their own dead-end jobs, relationships, or other situations will be inspired by her journey to take action and change for the better.

Written on Water

Written on Water
Author: Eileen Chang
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-05-02
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1681375761

Now back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature. Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated and influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her own life as a writer and woman, set amid the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. In a style at once meditative and vibrant, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also reflects on Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, and the popularity of the Peking Opera. Chang engages the reader with her sly and sophisticated humor, conversational voice, and intense fascination with the subtleties of everyday life. In her examination of Shanghainese food, culture, and fashions, she not only reveals but also upends prevalent attitudes toward women, presenting a portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms.

The Crown and the Capitalists

The Crown and the Capitalists
Author: Wasana Wongsurawat
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295746262

Despite competing with much larger imperialist neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Thailand—or Siam, as it was formerly known—has succeeded in transforming itself into a rival modern nation-state over the last two centuries. Recent historiography has placed progress—or lack thereof—toward Western-style liberal democracy at the center of Thailand’s narrative, but that view underestimates the importance of the colonial context. In particular, a long-standing relationship with China and the existence of a large and important Chinese diaspora within Thailand have shaped development at every stage. As the emerging nation struggled against colonial forces in Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs were neither a colonial force against whom Thainess was identified, nor had they been able to fully assimilate into Thai society. Wasana Wongsurawat demonstrates that the Kingdom of Thailand’s transformation into a modern nation-state required the creation of a national identity that justified not only the hegemonic rule of monarchy but also the involvement of the ethnic Chinese entrepreneurial class upon whom it depended. Her revisionist view traces the evolution of this codependent relationship through the twentieth century, as Thailand struggled against colonial forces in Southeast Asia, found itself an ally of Japan in World War II, and reconsidered its relationship with China in the postwar era.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 110160378X

"Mr. Hamid reaffirms his place as one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers." –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A globalized version of The Great Gatsby . . . [Hamid's] book is nearly that good." –Alan Cheuse, NPR "Marvelous and moving." –TIME Magazine From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy’s quest for wealth and love His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.

Standard Deviations

Standard Deviations
Author: Karl Taro Greenfeld
Publisher: Villard
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-05-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 158836206X

“I was twenty-three and I had set off for Asia to become a writer, intrigued by lurid tales of booms, busts, drugs, sex, violence, magic. There was a wicked sorcery in Asia, in the economic profligacy of the early nineties, in the way financiers and businessmen took a rapidly wiring and developing continent and looted billions, like a titanic parlor trick converting all that wealth into abandoned office complexes and half-completed shopping malls. . . . I wanted it all—the money, the sex, the drugs. And to this day I believe that if I am honest with myself, despite all I have learned the hard way over the past decade, I would still want it all again, the fucking and the getting loaded and the scheming to get enough money to pay for that life.” In the late 1980s, not long out of college, Karl Taro Greenfeld found himself stranded in New York, a failed writer before his career had even begun. His Jewish-American father angrily cut off support; his Japanese mother suggested he go to Japan to teach English. He did, accepting a job with no more promise than he’d had before. But he stayed in Asia for the next several years, working his way through a series of journalistic posts, watching a culture erupt before his eyes and facing his own demons. Through a series of vividly imagistic stories that range from the rigidly journalistic to the deeply intimate, Standard Deviations recounts Greenfeld’s experiences—both professional and personal—during Asia’s wild ride at the end of the twentieth century. Whether drinking Japanese cough syrup to get high with other Western expatriates, visiting a free-sex ashram in Bombay, or watching a former high school pal self-destruct as an equity analyst in Jakarta, Greenfeld evokes the spirit of a continent in flux at an explosive “bubble” economy’s end—and a man confronting his own identity and aspirations. Raunchy, insightful, eloquent and moving, Standard Deviations is an uncompromising work of cultural observation and self-exploration.

All You Can Ever Know

All You Can Ever Know
Author: Nicole Chung
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1936787989

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

Blockchain Chicken Farm

Blockchain Chicken Farm
Author: Xiaowei Wang
Publisher: FSG Originals
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0374721254

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.