China's Mongols at University

China's Mongols at University
Author: Zhenzhou Zhao
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010-04-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1461633117

Minority students in China often receive preferential treatment for access to universities. However, very little is known about minority student experiences and perceptions on campus after they are accorded what's called "meaningful access" to university. The Mongols emerged as a distinct ethnic group in China starting in the 11th century and, in the centuries that followed, conquered a large part of the world. However, in modern times this nomadic people's influence has declined, and even their survival in China has been threatened. This decline is evidenced by the fact that increasing numbers of Mongols have abandoned their native language and traditional customs, especially those who live in cities. How do Mongol university students, who form the backbone of the Mongol intellectual community, identify themselves in a modern Chinese context? How do they react as university students to the way in which their culture is recognized and represented? Do Mongol students suffer from injustice in the cultural dimension of campus life? China's Mongols at University: Contesting Cultural Recognition seeks to answer these questions. Zhenzhou Zhao addresses these issues by comparing the university discourse (on minority culture policy, institutional structure and daily life) and the Mongol student discourse (concerning their experiences, perceptions of recognition, and dedication to self-representation on campus) Additionally, Gao compares three universities in China. Located in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Beijing, and Hubei Province, respectively, each of these universities represents one of three types of higher education accessible to minority students in China: universities located in ethnic areas, standard universities, and universities for nationalities. China's Mongols at University explores and discusses an intrinsic connection between marketization and globalization and the disadvantages faced by minority groups. This book argues that China must move from a policy of preferential tre

The Mongols at China's Edge

The Mongols at China's Edge
Author: Uradyn Erden Bulag
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742511446

This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront Chinese nationalistic and political hegemony. Breaking new ground in the study of Chinese and Mongol history and ethnicity, the author offers a fresh interpretation of China viewed from the perspective of its peripheries, and of minority nationalities in relation to the study of Chinese representation and minority self-representation. The author interrogates received wisdom about Chinese and minority nationalism by unraveling the Chinese discourse and practice of 'national unity.' He shows how the discourse was constructed over time through political rituals and sexuality in relation to Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples that hark back to Chinese-Xiongnu confrontations two millennia ago and Manchu conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries. Titular rulers of an autonomous region in which they constitute a minority, Mongols face enormous barriers in building and maintaining a socialist Mongolian nationality and a Mongolian language and culture. Acknowledging these difficulties, Bulag discusses a range of sensitive issues including the imbrication of nation, class, and ethnicity in the context of Mongol-Chinese relations, tensions inherent in writing a postrevolutionary history for a socialist nationality, and the moral dilemma of building a socialist model with Mongol characteristics. Charting the interface between a state-centered multinational Chinese polity and a primordial nationalist multiculturalism that aims to manage minority nationalities as 'cultures,' he explores Mongol ethnopolitical strategies to preserve their heritage.

China Under Mongol Rule

China Under Mongol Rule
Author: John D. Langlois Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400854091

Encompassing history, politics, religion, and art, this collection of essays on Chinese civilization under the Mongols challenges the previously held views that Mongol rule had only negative consequences. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Mongol Century

The Mongol Century
Author: Shane McCausland
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780824851453

The Mongol Century explores the visual world of China's Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), the spectacular but relatively short-lived regime founded by Khubilai Khan, regarded as the pre-eminent khanate of the Mongol empire. This book illuminates the Yuan era – full of conflicts and complex interactions between Mongol power and Chinese heritage – by delving into the visual history of its culture, considering how Mongol governance and values imposed a new order on China's culture and how a sedentary, agrarian China posed specific challenges to the Mongols' militarist and nomadic lifestyle. Shane McCausland explores how an unusual range of expectations and pressures were placed on Yuan culture: the idea that visual culture could create cohesion across a diverse yet hierarchical society, while balancing Mongol desires for novelty and display with Chinese concerns about posterity. Although in recent years exhibitions have begun to open up the inherent paradoxes of Yuan culture, this is the first book in English to adopt a comprehensive approach. It incorporates a broad range of visual media of the East Asia region to reconsider the impact Mongol culture had in China, from urban architecture and design to tomb murals and porcelain, and from calligraphy and printed paper money to stone sculpture. Fresh and invigorating, The Mongol Century explores, in fascinating detail, the visual culture of this brief but captivating era of East Asian history.

Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols

Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols
Author: Paul Heng-chao Ch'en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2015-03-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 140086772X

The evolution of China's legal tradition was one of the most striking aspects of the transformation of Chinese civilization under Mongolian domination. Paul Ch'en's exploration of the legal system of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) and its first substantial legal code (the Chih-yuan hsin-ko, or Chih-yiian New Code) provides a key to our understanding of the impact of the Mongols on traditional Chinese law and society. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reins of Liberation

Reins of Liberation
Author: Xiaoyuan Liu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804754262

The author's purpose in writing this book is to use the Mongolian question to illuminate much larger issues of twentieth-century Asian history: how war, revolution, and great-power rivalries induced or restrained the formation of nationhood and territoriality. He thus continues the argument he made in Frontier Passages that on its way to building a communist state, the CCP was confronted by a series of fundamental issues pertinent to China's transition to nation-statehood. The book's focus is on the Mongolian question, which ran through Chinese politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Between the Revolution of 1911 and the Communists' triumph in 1949, the course of the Mongolian question best illustrates the genesis, clashes, and convergence of Chinese and Mongolian national identities and geopolitical visions.

Did Marco Polo Go To China?

Did Marco Polo Go To China?
Author: Frances Wood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2018-06-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429980620

We all ?know? that Marco Polo went to China, served Ghengis Khan for many years, and returned to Italy with the recipes for pasta and ice cream. But Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library, argues that Marco Polo not only never went to China, he probably never even made it past the Black Sea, where his family conducted business as merchants.Marco Polo's travels from Venice to the exotic and distant East, and his epic book describing his extraordinary adventures, A Description of the World, ranks among the most famous and influential books ever published. In this fascinating piece of historical detection, marking the 700th anniversary of Polo's journey, Frances Wood questions whether Marco Polo ever reached the country he so vividly described. Why, in his romantic and seemingly detailed account, is there no mention of such fundamentals of Chinese life as tea, foot-binding, or even the Great Wall? Did he really bring back pasta and ice cream to Italy? And why, given China's extensive and even obsessive record-keeping, is there no mention of Marco Polo anywhere in the archives?Sure to spark controversy, Did Marco Polo Go to China? tries to solve these and other inconsistencies by carefully examining the Polo family history, Marco Polo's activities as a merchant, the preparation of his book, and the imperial Chinese records. The result is a lucid and readable look at medieval European and Chinese history, and the characters and events that shaped this extraordinary and enduring myth.

Mongolian Rule in China

Mongolian Rule in China
Author: Elizabeth Endicott-West
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684170052

The Mongolian Yuan dynasty, 1272-1368, is a short but interesting chapter in the long history of Sino-Mongolian relations. Faced with the challenge of governing a huge sedentary empire, the traditionally nomadic Mongols acceded to some Chinese institutional precedents, but, in large part, adhered to their own Inner Asian practices of staffing and administering the government apparatus.Yuan administrative documents provide information that permits a fairly accurate reconstruction of the day-to-day functioning of the local government bureaucracy. From these materials, Elizabeth Endicott-West has put together a detailed picture of the Mongols' methods of selecting local officials, the ethnic backgrounds of officials, and policy formation and implementation at the local level.

In the Wake of the Mongols

In the Wake of the Mongols
Author: Jinping Wang
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684171008

"The Mongol conquest of north China between 1211 and 1234 inflicted terrible wartime destruction, wiping out more than one-third of the population and dismantling the existing social order. In the Wake of the Mongols recounts the riveting story of how northern Chinese men and women adapted to these trying circumstances and interacted with their alien Mongol conquerors to create a drastically new social order. To construct this story, the book uses a previously unknown source of inscriptions recorded on stone tablets.Jinping Wang explores a north China where Mongol patrons, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, and sometimes single women—rather than Confucian gentry—exercised power and shaped events, a portrait that upends the conventional view of imperial Chinese society. Setting the stage by portraying the late Jin and closing by tracing the Mongol period’s legacy during the Ming dynasty, she delineates the changing social dynamics over four centuries in the northern province of Shanxi, still a poorly understood region."