A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence

A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence
Author: Liuhong Huang
Publisher:
Total Pages: 680
Release: 1984
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

"Huang Liu-hung was one of some 1,500 local magistrates in seventeenth-century China, and he wrote this book as a manual for other magistrates ... In it readers will find insight into everyday life and legal processes during the early Ch'ing period, as well as into the mentality of the ruling elite and its attitude toward the common people ... Also provides a basis for comparing China's present with its past, particularly in matters concerning the pursuit of ideological conformity and political control"--From publisher description.

The Ethics of Suicide

The Ethics of Suicide
Author: Margaret Pabst Battin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 753
Release: 2015-09-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199385815

Is suicide wrong, profoundly morally wrong? Almost always wrong, but excusable in a few cases? Sometimes morally permissible? Imprudent, but not wrong? Is it sick, a matter of mental illness? Is it a private matter or a largely social one? Could it sometimes be right, or a "noble duty," or even a fundamental human right? Whether it is called "suicide" or not, what role may a person play in the end of his or her own life? This collection of primary sources--the principal texts of ethical interest from major writers in western and nonwestern cultures, from the principal religious traditions, and from oral cultures where observer reports of traditional practices are available, spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, the Arctic, and North and South America--facilitates exploration of many controversial practical issues: physician-assisted suicide or aid-in-dying; suicide in social or political protest; self-sacrifice and martyrdom; suicides of honor or loyalty; religious and ritual practices that lead to death, including sati or widow-burning, hara-kiri, and sallekhana, or fasting unto death; and suicide bombings, kamikaze missions, jihad, and other tactical and military suicides. This collection has no interest in taking sides in controversies about the ethics of suicide; rather, rather, it serves to expand the character of these debates, by showing them to be multi-dimensional, a complex and vital part of human ethical thought.

Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers

Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers
Author: Yonghua Liu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2013-08-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900425725X

In Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers, Yonghua Liu presents a detailed study of how a southeastern Chinese community experienced and responded to the process whereby Confucian rituals - previously thought unfit for practice by commoners - were adopted in the Chinese countryside and became an integral part of village culture, from the mid fourteenth to mid twentieth centuries. The book examines the important but understudied ritual specialists, masters of rites (lisheng), and their ritual handbooks while showing their crucial role in the ritual life of Chinese villagers. This discussion of lisheng and their rituals deepens our understanding of the ritual aspect of popular Confucianism and sheds new light on social and cultural transformations in late imperial China.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Citizenship

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Citizenship
Author: Zhonghua Guo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2021-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000472299

Two assumptions prevail in the study of Chinese citizenship: one holds that citizenship is unique to the Western political culture, and China has historically lacked the necessary conditions for its development; the other implies that China is an authoritarian regime that has always been subject to autocratic power, in which citizens and citizenship play a limited role. This volume negates both assumptions. On the one hand, it shows that China has its own unique and rich experiences of the emergence, development, rights, obligations, acts, culture, education, and sites of citizenship, indicating the need to widen the scope of citizenship studies to include non-Western societies. On the other hand, it aims to show that citizenship has been a core issue running through China's political development since the modern period, urging scholars to bring ‘citizenship’ into consideration in the study of Chinese politics. This Handbook sets a new agenda for citizenship studies and Chinese politics. Its clear, accessible style makes it essential reading for students and scholars interested in citizenship and China studies.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1999-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521669917

A look at the over eight thousand year history and civilization of China.

Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China

Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China
Author: Matthew Harvey Sommer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 868
Release: 2000
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804745595

This study of the regulation of sexuality in the Qing dynasty explores the social context for sexual behavior criminalized by the state, showing how regulation shifted away from status to a new regime of gender that mandated a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability for all people, regardless of their social status.

The Chinese Virago

The Chinese Virago
Author: Yenna Wu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1684170206

Drawing from a broad array of literary, historical, dramatic and anecdotal sources, Yenna Wu makes a rich exploration of an unusually prominent theme in premodern Chinese prose fiction and drama: that of jealous and belligerent wives, or viragos, who dominate their husbands and abuse other women. Focusing on Chinese literary works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she presents many colorful perspectives on this type of aggression, reviewing early literary and historical examples of the phenomenon. Wu argues that although the various portraits of the virago often reveal the writers' insecurities about strong-willed women in general, the authors also satirize the kind of man whose behavioral patterns have been catalysts for female aggression. She also shows that, while the women in these works are to some extent male constructs designed to affirm the patriarchal system, various elements of these portraits constitute a subversive form of parody that casts a revealing light on the patriarchal hierarchy of premodern China.

Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage

Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage
Author: Qitao Guo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2005
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804750325

Focusing on the Confucian transformation of Mulian opera, and especially on the interplay between the "civilizing" effect of ritual performance and the rise of gentrified mercantile lineages in sixteenth-century Huizhou prefecture, this book develops a radically novel interpretation of both Chinese popular culture and the Confucian tradition in late imperial China.

“Useless to the State”

“Useless to the State”
Author: Zwia Lipkin
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684174260

"In 1911, Joseph Bailie, a professor at Nanjing University, often took his Chinese students to tour Nanjing’s shantytowns. One student, the son of a district magistrate, followed Bailie from hut to hut one rainy day, and was grateful that Bailie opened his eyes to the poverty in his own city. However, twenty years later, when M. R. Schafer, another Nanjing University professor, showed his students a film that included his own photographs of the poor quarters of Nanjing, his students were so upset that they demanded his expulsion from China. Zwia Lipkin explores the reasons for these starkly different reactions. Nanjing in the 1910s was a quiet city compared to 1930s Nanjing, which was by that time the national capital. Nanjing had become a symbol of national authority, aiming not only to become a model of modernization for the rest of China, but also to surpass Paris, London, and Washington. Underlying all of Nanjing’s policies was a concern for the capital’s image and looks—offensive people were allowed to exist as long as they remained invisible. Lipkin exposes both the process of social engineering and the ways in which the suppressed reacted to their abuse. Like Professor Schafer’s movie, this book puts the poor at the center of the picture, defying efforts to make them invisible."