Welcome to the intriguing world of "China under the Empress Dowager: Being the History of the Life and Times of Tzŭ Hsi" by J. O. P. Bland and Sir E. Backhouse, a vivid portrayal of one of the most influential figures in Chinese history. Explore the captivating story of Empress Dowager Tzŭ Hsi, a woman of immense power and influence who ruled China for nearly half a century. Bland and Backhouse's meticulously researched narrative takes readers on a journey through the tumultuous era of late Qing dynasty China, revealing the complex political intrigues, cultural shifts, and historical events that shaped her reign. Delve into the character analysis of Empress Dowager Tzŭ Hsi, a formidable yet enigmatic figure whose decisions impacted the course of Chinese history. The authors illuminate her role in navigating China through internal strife, foreign encroachment, and the challenges of modernization, offering profound insights into her leadership style and legacy. Through rich historical detail and vivid storytelling, Bland and Backhouse capture the overall tone and mood of late 19th and early 20th-century China, painting a comprehensive portrait of a nation in transition. Their narrative skillfully intertwines the personal and political, providing a nuanced perspective on Tzŭ Hsi's life and the era she dominated. "China under the Empress Dowager" has garnered critical acclaim for its scholarly rigor and compelling narrative. It appeals to readers interested in Chinese history, gender studies, and the influence of powerful women in shaping global events. Whether you're a historian, a student of Asian studies, or simply curious about the life of one of China's most controversial figures, Bland and Backhouse's account offers a fascinating exploration of power, politics, and culture in late imperial China. Order your copy today and immerse yourself in the life and times of Empress Dowager Tzŭ Hsi. Don't miss this opportunity to uncover the secrets of China's last Empress Dowager. Bland and Backhouse's compelling narrative will transport you to a bygone era of imperial splendor and political intrigue.

When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past.

The special focus of this book is the lives and experiences of women in China in the first half of the 20th century. Part One - Historical Interpretations - presents essays by Western-educated Chinese women and men, on the historical role of women in a time of great social and economic upheaval. Part Two - Self-Portraits of Women in Modern China - presents the views of women who experienced life in this period through essays and autobiographies that range from women as concubines to women as factory workers, from women suffering footbinding to women serving as nurses, from women in traditional role in a traditional family to women as scientists and teachers.

This volume completes Keith McMahon’s acclaimed history of imperial wives and royal polygamy in China. Avoiding the stereotype of the emperor’s plural wives as mere victims or playthings, the book considers empresses and concubines as full-fledged participants in palace life, whether as mothers, wives, or go-betweens in the emperor’s relations with others in the palace. Although restrictions on women’s participation in politics increased dramatically after Empress Wu in the Tang, the author follows the strong and active women, of both high and low rank, who continued to appear. They counseled emperors, ghostwrote for them, oversaw succession when they died, and dominated them when they were weak. They influenced the emperor’s relationships with other women and enhanced their aura and that of the royal house with their acts of artistic and religious patronage. Dynastic history ended in China when the prohibition that women should not rule was defied for the final time by Dowager Cixi, the last great monarch before China’s transformation into a republic.

Metaphor familiarizes things strange with things familiar to enrich old things with things newly made familiar. Thus metaphor is an effective intercultural highway without shared thinking-way, for each culture is a specific thinking-way. This volume shows such intercultural communication.

To a generation that has experienced two great World Wars, the closing quarter of the Nineteenth Century is bound, in retrospect, to appear in the light of a golden age. It was an era of peace in Europe, an age of great technological advance, a period of progress, of growing tolerance, of spreading liberalism. Or so at least it seemed at the time and so it appears to many even now. And yet, when viewed historically, when examined critically, the late nineteenth century emerges rather as an age of materialism, of smug self-confidence, of uncritical assurance. It was, as Professor Hayes sets forth, in many senses the seed-time of disaster, the prelude to an era of conflict and disillusionment. [...] In A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900, Professor Hayes has gotten down to fundamentals. He has stripped away many of the easy misconceptions and has re-examined some of the basic assumptions and tenets of the modern world. If history is indeed but the prologue, no intelligent person can afford, amid the storm and stress of the contemporary world, to overlook this fascinating and stimulating reappraisal of the generation that bore our own. (William L. Langer, Introduction) “THE IMPARTIALITY and fair-mindedness which the historian must set as his goal are severely tested in writing about a period so near to us as this. Professor Hayes passes the test admirably. He has, of course, feelings that are engaged, and these he very straightforwardly makes clear in his preface...he has packed into a single volume an immense amount of information and good sense.”—CRANE BRINTON “A brilliant, illuminating account of an epoch which is considered as a climax of enlightenment and a source of disillusionment. A reappraisal that must be read.”—Social Studies “This stimulating volume is ‘living history,’ written by a man who has keenly observed and sincerely interpreted his age.”—FRANKLIN C. PALM, The American Historical Review

Efforts to fight back against silencing are central to social justice movements and scholarly fields such as feminist and postcolonial studies. But claiming to give voice to people who have been silenced always risks appropriating those people's stories. Lisa Propst argues that the British novelist and public intellectual Marina Warner offers some of the most provocative contemporary interventions into this dilemma. Tracing her writing from her early journalism to her novels, short stories, and studies of myths and fairy tales, Propst shows that in Warner's work, features such as stylized voices and narrative silences - tales that Warner's books hint at but never tell - question the authority of the writer to tell other people's stories. At the same time they demonstrate the power of literature to make new ethical connections between people, inviting readers to reflect on whom they are responsible to and how they are implicated in social systems that perpetuate silencing. By exploring how to combat silencing through narrative without reproducing it, Marina Warner and the Ethics of Telling Silenced Stories takes up an issue crucial not just to literature and art but to journalists, policy makers, human rights activists, and all people striving to formulate their own responses to injustice.

For well over a thousand years Chinese and Japanese women created, commissioned, collected and used paintings, yet until recently this fact has scarcely been acknowledged in the study of East Asian art by Westerners.