Time and Space in Chinese Culture

Time and Space in Chinese Culture
Author: Junjie Huang
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1995
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789004102873

The central theme of this volume is notions of time and space in Chinese culture. Seventeen scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds have treated topics within this general perspective.

Global Spaces of Chinese Culture

Global Spaces of Chinese Culture
Author: Sylvia Van Ziegert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135523444

This book is an exploration of how Chinese communites in the United States and Germany create and disseminate a sense of diasporic Chinese identity. It not only compares the local conditions of the Chinese communities in the two locations, but also moves to a global dimension to track the Chinese transnational imaginary. Van Ziegert analyzes three strategies that overseas Chinese use to articulate their identities as diasporic subjects: being more American/German being more Chinese hybridizing and commodifying Chinese culture through trans-cultural performances. These three strategies are not mutually exclusive and they often intersect and supplement each other in unexpected ways. The author also analyzes how the everyday lives of overseas Chinese connect with global and local factors, and how these experiences contribute to the formation of a global Chinese identity.

The Construction of Space in Early China

The Construction of Space in Early China
Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791482499

This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend.

Mapping China and Managing the World

Mapping China and Managing the World
Author: Richard J. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2013-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136209220

From the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE to the present, the Chinese have been preoccupied with the notion of ordering their world. Efforts to create and maintain order are expressed not only in China’s bureaucratic institutions and methods of social and economic organization but also in Chinese philosophy, religious and secular ritual, and comprehensive systems of classifying all natural and supernatural phenomena. Mapping China and Managing the World focuses on Chinese constructions of order (zhi) and examines the most important ways in which elites in late imperial China sought to order their vast and variegated world. This book begins by exploring the role of ancient texts and maps as the two prominent symbolic devices that the Chinese used to construct cultural meaning, and looks at how changing conceptions of ‘the world’ shaped Chinese cartography, whilst both shifting and enduring cartographic practices affected how the Chinese regarded the wider world. Richard J. Smith goes on to examine the significance of ritual in overcoming disorder, and by focusing on the importance of divination shows how Chinese at all levels of society sought to manage the future, as well as the past and the present. Finally, the book concludes by emphasizing the enduring relevance of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) in Chinese intellectual and cultural life as well as its place in the history of Sino-foreign interactions. Bringing together a selection of essays by Richard J. Smith, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese intellectual and cultural history, this book will be welcomed by Chinese and East Asian historians, as well as those interested more broadly in the culture of China and East Asia.

China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces

China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces
Author: Vanessa Frangville
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429509030

Presenting the collaborative work of 13 international specialists of contemporary Chinese culture and society, this book explores the spaces of creation, production, and diffusion of "youth cultures" in China among generations born since the 1980s. Defining the concept of "youth culture" as practices and activities that catalyze self-expression and creativity, this book investigates the emergence of new physical spaces, including large avenues, parks, shopping malls, and recreation areas. Building on this, it also examines the influence of non-physical places, especially digital cultures, such as online social networks, shopping platforms, Cosplay, cyberliterature, and digital calligraphy and argues that these may in fact play a more significant role in Chinese civil society today. As an exploration of how youth can be creative even in a coercive environment, China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces will be valuable to students and scholars of Chinese society, as well those working on the links between space, youth, and culture.

The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China

The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China
Author: Ling Hon Lam
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231547587

Emotion takes place. Rather than an interior state of mind in response to the outside world, emotion per se is spatial, at turns embedding us from without, transporting us somewhere else, or putting us ahead of ourselves. In this book, Ling Hon Lam gives a deeply original account of the history of emotions in Chinese literature and culture centered on the idea of emotion as space, which the Chinese call “emotion-realm” (qingjing). Lam traces how the emotion-realm underwent significant transformations from the dreamscape to theatricality in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century China. Whereas medieval dreamscapes delivered the subject into one illusory mood after another, early modern theatricality turned the dreamer into a spectator who is no longer falling through endless oneiric layers but pausing in front of the dream. Through the lens of this genealogy of emotion-realms, Lam remaps the Chinese histories of morals, theater, and knowledge production, which converge at the emergence of sympathy, redefined as the dissonance among the dimensions of the emotion-realm pertaining to theatricality.The book challenges the conventional reading of Chinese literature as premised on interior subjectivity, examines historical changes in the spatial logic of performance through media and theater archaeologies, and ultimately uncovers the different trajectories that brought China and the West to the convergence point of theatricality marked by self-deception and mutual misreading. A major rethinking of key terms in Chinese culture from a comparative perspective, The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China develops a new critical vocabulary to conceptualize history and existence.

The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture

The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture
Author: Richard J. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2015-10-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442221941

The Qing dynasty (1636–1912)—a crucial bridge between “traditional” and “modern” China—was remarkable for its expansiveness and cultural sophistication. This engaging and insightful history of Qing political, social, and cultural life traces the complex interaction between the Inner Asian traditions of the Manchus, who conquered China in 1644, and indigenous Chinese cultural traditions. Noted historian Richard J. Smith argues that the pragmatic Qing emperors presented a “Chinese” face to their subjects who lived south of the Great Wall and other ethnic faces (particularly Manchu, Mongolian, Central Asian, and Tibetan) to subjects in other parts of their vast multicultural empire. They were attracted by many aspects of Chinese culture, but far from being completely “sinicized” as many scholars argue, they were also proud of their own cultural traditions and interested in other cultures as well. Setting Qing dynasty culture in historical and global perspective, Smith shows how the Chinese of the era viewed the world; how their outlook was expressed in their institutions, material culture, and customs; and how China’s preoccupation with order, unity, and harmony contributed to the civilization’s remarkable cohesiveness and continuity. Nuanced and wide-ranging, his authoritative book provides an essential introduction to late imperial Chinese culture and society.

On Chinese Culture

On Chinese Culture
Author: Deshun Li
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2015-12-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9811002797

This book is divided into three main parts: an introduction to theories of culture, a section on Chinese culture, and one on cultural construction. The first part can be interpreted as an attempt to explore the meta-theoretical system of culture at the philosophical level. Based on the concept of “culture as ways of living,” the book further defines “culture” as “the preparation of people,” including the processes by which people adapt to local cultural and social customs. It stresses the subjectivity of culture, and the cultural rights and responsibilities of humankind. The second part takes on the subjective perspective of contemporary Chinese culture, interpreting it within the context of the historical situation of the Chinese people and nation, before engaging in a systematic reflection on several fundamental issues of Chinese culture. It closes by evaluating Chinese cultural practices and formulating a type of contemporary cultural self-identity. The book’s third part focuses on the interconnection between the revival of the Chinese nation and the modernization of Chinese society, analyzing the conditions and challenges for the three primary types of contemporary Chinese culture: material culture, political culture and spiritual culture. Lastly, the book puts forward suggestions concerning several of the critical problems facing a society in transition.

All About Chinese Culture

All About Chinese Culture
Author: Yonghong Wang
Publisher: Shanghai Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-04-20
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 1938368908

Are you curious about the diversified views in “Contention of the Hundred Schools of Thought”? What's the origin of the Chinese zodiac signs? Or the history of the Chinese tea culture that is popular around the world? As one of the few ancient civilizations in the world, China features her a multidimensional cultural deposit in consistency and unification, endowing her history with a sense of perplexity and enchantment. Would you find it quite difficult to study Chinese culture? Well, relax. Together in this book, we shall follow the historical trace of 50 national treasures of the museums through the time tunnel, and enjoy their stories buried in the past 5000 years. They would be your company to explore the magnificent world of ancient China. In this book, the Chinese history is divided into eight periods. The treasures selected as samples are precious collections from museums around the world, including ceramics, jades, bronze wares, paintings, bamboo slips, sculptures, gold wares and silver wares. Rich in photographs and illustrations, the book introduces the most representative academic thoughts, moral education, religious beliefs, and folk customs in every period of the ancient China, and describes the interaction of Chinese and foreign cultures, as well as the spirit of the times and the cultural characteristics hidden behind them. In this way, the most crucial social concepts and the most attractive anecdotes in history will be revealed, and a sketch of Chinese culture will be unfolding in front of you through the rising and falling of those ancient dynasties. The treasures will no longer be resting in silence, as they are about to tell their own stories and present you with a journey of knowledge and visual feast. Let's take a stroll along the glory years to unveil the Chinese culture.

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China
Author: David W. Pankenier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 617
Release: 2013-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107292247

The ancient Chinese were profoundly influenced by the Sun, Moon and stars, making persistent efforts to mirror astral phenomena in shaping their civilization. In this pioneering text, David W. Pankenier introduces readers to a seriously understudied field, illustrating how astronomy shaped the culture of China from the very beginning and how it influenced areas as disparate as art, architecture, calendrical science, myth, technology, and political and military decision-making. As elsewhere in the ancient world, there was no positive distinction between astronomy and astrology in ancient China, and so astrology, or more precisely, astral omenology, is a principal focus of the book. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including archaeological discoveries, classical texts, inscriptions and paleography, this thought-provoking book documents the role of astronomical phenomena in the development of the 'Celestial Empire' from the late Neolithic through the late imperial period.