Street Culture in Chengdu

Street Culture in Chengdu
Author: Di Wang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804747783

A study of the lively street culture in Chengdu from 1870 to 1930, this book explores the relationship between urban commoners and public space, the role of community and neighborhood in public life, and how the reform movement and Republican revolution transformed everyday life in this inland city.

The Teahouse

The Teahouse
Author: Di Wang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804758433

This study examines economic, social, political, and cultural changes as funneled through the teahouses of Chengdu during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Teahouse Under Socialism

The Teahouse Under Socialism
Author: Di Wang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501715550

This text explores urban public life through the microcosm of the Chengdu teahouse. Like most public spaces, the teahouse was and still is an enduring symbol of Chinese popular culture, stemming back centuries and prevailing through political transformations, modernization, and globalization. The time period covered begins basically with the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949-50, goes through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era.

Violence and Order on the Chengdu Plain

Violence and Order on the Chengdu Plain
Author: Di Wang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503605337

In 1939, residents of a rural village near Chengdu watched as Lei Mingyuan, a member of a violent secret society known as the Gowned Brothers, executed his teenage daughter. Six years later, Shen Baoyuan, a sociology student at Yenching University, arrived in the town to conduct fieldwork on the society that once held sway over local matters. She got to know Lei Mingyuan and his family, recording many rare insights about the murder and the Gowned Brothers' inner workings. Using the filicide as a starting point to examine the history, culture, and organization of the Gowned Brothers, Di Wang offers nuanced insights into the structures of local power in 1940s rural Sichuan. Moreover, he examines the influence of Western sociology and anthropology on the way intellectuals in the Republic of China perceived rural communities. By studying the complex relationship between the Gowned Brothers and the Chinese Communist Party, he offers a unique perspective on China's transition to socialism. In so doing, Wang persuasively connects a family in a rural community, with little overt influence on national destiny, to the movements and ideologies that helped shape contemporary China.

The Teahouse Under Socialism

The Teahouse Under Socialism
Author: Di Wang
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Chengdu (China)
ISBN: 9781501715495

To understand a city fully, writes Di Wang, we must observe its most basic units of social life. In The Teahouse under Socialism, Wang does just that, arguing that the teahouses of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, are some of the most important public spaces?perfect sites for examining the social and economic activities of everyday Chinese. Wang looks at the transformation of these teahouses from private businesses to collective ownership and how state policy and the proprietors? response to it changed the overall economic and social structure of the city. He uses this transformation to illuminate broader trends in China?s urban public life from 1950 through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era. In doing so, The Teahouse under Socialism charts the fluctuations in fortune of this ancient cultural institution and analyzes how it survived, and even thrived, under bleak conditions. Throughout, Wang asks such questions as: Why and how did state power intervene in the operation of small businesses? How was "socialist entertainment" established in a local society? How did the well-known waves of political contestation and struggle in China change Chengdu?s teahouses and public life? In the end, Wang argues, the answers to such questions enhance our understanding of public life and political culture in the Communist state.

Early Modern Streets

Early Modern Streets
Author: Danielle van den Heuvel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2022-12-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000815773

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.

Fact in Fiction

Fact in Fiction
Author: Kristin Stapleton
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2016-08-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804799733

Historical novels can be windows into other cultures and eras, but it's not always clear what's fact and what's fiction. Thousands have read Ba Jin's influential novel Family, but few realize how much he shaped his depiction of 1920s China to suit his story and his politics. In Fact in Fiction, Kristin Stapleton puts Ba Jin's bestseller into full historical context, both to illustrate how it successfully portrays human experiences during the 1920s and to reveal its historical distortions. Stapleton's attention to historical evidence and clear prose that directly addresses themes and characters from Family create a book that scholars, students, and general readers will enjoy. She focuses on Chengdu, China, Ba Jin's birthplace and the setting for Family, which was also a cultural and political center of western China. The city's richly preserved archives allow Stapleton to create an intimate portrait of a city that seemed far from the center of national politics of the day but clearly felt the forces of—and contributed to—the turbulent stream of Chinese history.

Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan

Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan
Author: Quinn Javers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429638760

Exploring local practices of dispute resolution and laying bare the routine role of violence in the late-Qing dynasty, Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan demonstrates the significance of everyday violence in ordering, disciplining, and building communities. The book examines over 350 legal cases that comprise the "cases of unnatural death" archival file from 1890 to 1900 in Ba County, Sichuan province. The archive presents an untidy array of death, including homicides, suicides, and found bodies. An analysis of the muddled and often petty disputes found in these records reveals the existence of a local system of authority that disciplined and maintained daily life. Often relying on violence, this local justice system occasionally intersected with the state’s justice system, but was not dependent on it. This study demonstrates the importance of informal, local authority to our understanding of justice in the late Qing era. Providing a non-elite perspective on Qing power, law, justice, and the role of the state, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian history, as well as legal history and comparative studies of violence.

The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China

The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China
Author: Xiaowei Zheng
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2018-01-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503601099

“A fascinating story . . . worth the attention of every student of modern China.” —The Journal of Asian Studies China’s 1911 Revolution was a momentous political transformation. Its leaders, however, were not rebellious troublemakers on the periphery of imperial order. On the contrary, they were a powerful political and economic elite deeply entrenched in local society and well-respected both for their imperially sanctioned cultural credentials and for their mastery of new ideas. The revolution they spearheaded produced a new, democratic political culture that enshrined national sovereignty, constitutionalism, and the rights of the people as indisputable principles. Based upon previously untapped Qing and Republican sources, The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China is a nuanced and colorful chronicle of the revolution as it occurred in local and regional areas. Xiaowei Zheng explores the ideas that motivated the revolution, the popularization of those ideas, and their animating impact on the Chinese people at large. The focus of the book is not on the success or failure of the revolution, but rather on the transformative effect that revolution has on people and what they learn from it.