Focusing on fengshui's significance in China, this book depicts the history of its reinterpretation in the West. It includes a historical account of fengshui over the last 150 years with anthropological fieldwork on contemporary practices in two Chinese rural areas. It is suitable for academic researchers and post-graduate students.

What if you could attract greater abundance and and more love into your life? What if you could find easy ways to support good health and wellness—both for yourself and for your loved ones? What if you could improve your ability to concentrate, to create and complete projects that are important to you? This book presents Form School Feng Shui, one of the oldest systems of Feng Shui still practiced in China today. Author and Design Expert Donna Stellhorn translates the ancient wisdom of Form Feng Shui into doable concepts for today's Western lifestyles, homes, community structures, and everyday environments. When we enjoy harmony in some physical place in our lives, we can give our full attention to the people who are important to us. We are free to focus on our work and the things we value on an individual, internal level. Form Feng Shui is very effective at creating the type of environment that can help you thrive and prosper. Read this book, and feel as if you are having your own personal Feng Shui consultation!

It has been said that for the Chinese "a house is a living symbol," one endowed with meaning and the result of conscious action. China's Living Houses is the first book in any language to explore comprehensively the extraordinarily complex links among folk beliefs and household ornamentation across time, space, and social class. Well-written and copiously illustrated, it reveals dwellings as dynamic entities that express the vitality of Chinese families as each journeys through life.

China has become accessible to the west in the last twenty years in a way that was not possible in the previous thirty. The number of westerners travelling to China to study, for business or for tourism has increased dramatically and there has been a corresponding increase in interest in Chinese culture, society and economy and increasing coverage of contemporary China in the media. Our understanding of China’s history has also been evolving. The study of history in the People’s Republic of China during the Mao Zedong period was strictly regulated and primary sources were rarely available to westerners or even to most Chinese historians. Now that the Chinese archives are open to researchers, there is a growing body of academic expertise on history in China that is open to western analysis and historical methods. This has in many ways changed the way that Chinese history, particularly the modern period, is viewed. The Encyclopedia of Chinese History covers the entire span of Chinese history from the period known primarily through archaeology to the present day. Treating Chinese history in the broadest sense, the Encyclopedia includes coverage of the frontier regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet that have played such an important role in the history of China Proper and will also include material on Taiwan, and on the Chinese diaspora. In A-Z format with entries written by experts in the field of Chinese Studies, the Encyclopedia will be an invaluable resource for students of Chinese history, politics and culture.

This is the first reference book to digest this vast cultural output and make it accessible to the English-speaking world. It contains nearly 1,200 entries written by an international team of specialists, to enable readers to explore a range of diverse and fascinating cultural subjects from prisons to rock groups, underground Christian churches to TV talk shows and radio hotlines. Experimental artists with names such as 'Big-Tailed Elephants' and 'The North-Pole Group' nestle between the covers alongside entries on lotteries, gay cinema, political jokes, sex shops, theme parks, 'New Authoritarians' and 'Little Emperors'. While the focus of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture is on mainland China since 1980, it also includes longer, specially commissioned entries on various aspects of contemporary culture in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Including full and up-to-date references for further reading, this is an indispensable reference tool for all teachers and students of contemporary Chinese culture. It will also be warmly embraced as an invaluable source of cultural context by tourists, journalists, business people and others who visit China.

Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this volume examines the relationship between space and the production of local popular culture in contemporary China. The international team of contributors examine the inter-relationship between the cultural imaginary of a given place and China’s continuing drive towards urbanization. This has led to the development of new spaces and places, and new forms of spatial practices that destabilize old concepts of the ‘local’ and ‘locality’. Delivering ethnographic observations and theoretical speculations, this work furthers our understanding of the link between spatial thinking and the production of consumer culture in China.

Putting China into the context of general anthropology offers novel insights into its history, culture and society. Studies in the anthropology of China need to look outwards, to other anthropological areas, while at the same time, anthropologists specialised elsewhere cannot afford to ignore contributions from China. This book introduces a number of key themes and in each case describes how the anthropology and ethnography of China relates to the surrounding theories and issues. The themes chosen include the anthropology of intimacy, of morality, of food and of feasting, as well as the anthropology of civilisation, modernity and the state.The Anthropology of China covers both long historical perspectives and ethnographies of the twenty-first century. For the first time, ethnographic perspectives on China are contextualised in comparison with general anthropological debates. Readers are invited to engage in and rethink China's place within the wider world, making it perfect for professional researchers and teachers of anthropology and Chinese history and society, and for advanced undergraduate and graduate study.

Drawing on the author’s extensive fieldwork in the Dong areas in southwest China, this book presents a detailed picture of the Dong’s buildings and techniques, with new insights into the Dong’s cosmology and rituals of everyday life meshed with the architecture, and the symbolic meanings. It examines how the buildings and techniques of the Dong are ordered and influenced by the local culture and context. The timber bridges and drum towers are the Dong’s most prominent architectural monuments. Usually built elaborately with multiple roofs, these bridges and drum towers were designed and maintained by the local carpenters who also built the village suspended houses, in an oral tradition carried down from father to son or to apprentice. They were funded entirely by the local people, and the bridges tend to be built in places without great pressure of traffic or another bridge already existing close by. Why does such great expense go into the Dong’s buildings with elaboration? How were they built? And what do they mean to their users and builders? This book is an anthropological study on the Dong’s architecture and technique, and it aims to contribute a discourse on the interdisciplinary research area. It is suitable for graduate and postgraduate readers.

Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia offers insights into various techniques of divination, their evolution, and their assessment. The contributions cover the period from the earliest documents on East Asian mantic arts to their appearance in the present time. The volume reflects the pervasive manifestations of divination in literature, religious and political life, and their relevance for society and individuals. Special emphasis is placed on cross-cultural influences and attempts to find theoretical foundations for divinatory practices. This edited volume is an initiative to study the phenomena of divination across East Asian cultures and beyond. It is also one of the first attempts to theorize divinatory practices through East Asian traditions.

Translated from classical Chinese texts for the first time comes this authoritative guide to two of China's most enduring ancient arts.