Product Description

One of the most creative and brilliant episodes in modern Chinese history, the cultural and literary flowering that takes the name of the May Fourth Movement, is the subject of this comprehensive and insightful book. This is the first study of modern Chinese literature that shows how China's Confucian traditions were combined with Western influences to create a literature of new values and consciousness for the Chinese people.

Product Description
Four experienced teachers of beginning Chinese have developed this introductory textbook. A pilot edition has been tested widely in classrooms and refined over a period of years. Among its salient features are lessons that are lively, amusing, and relevant to everyday life: concentrated training of ear and tongue in the sound system of Chinese; extensive grammar notes, clearly presented, with attention to mistakes English-speakers are likely to make; a carefully sequenced character workbook embodying a new and effective approach to the learning of Chinese characters; and audiovisual reinforcement via a complete set of audiotapes and two videotapes, one of which offers entertaining dramatizations of the lesson dialogues.

The Chinese Primer is available in two versions, one using the GR system of romanization, which employs different spellings instead of diacritical marks for different tones, the other using Pinyin romanization. The contents of the four volumes are as follows: (1) Blue Book: Introduction; foundation work on pronunciation; lesson dialogues in romanized Chinese and English; appendices; glossary-index. (2) Red Book: Vocabularies; grammar notes and culture notes keyed to the lessons; exercises. (3) Yellow Book: Character workbook. (4) Green Book: Texts of the lessons in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, and a Chinese introduction for teachers.

The first three volumes are sold as a set (GR or Pinyin). The Character Text is sold eparately.

Audio and video materials are available from the Chinese Linguistics Project at Princeton University for use with this text. These supplementary materials are not published by Princeton University Press. For further information and prices, contact the Chinese Linguistics Project, 231 Palmer Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. 08544. (609-258-4269). ... Read more

Product Description
The New York Times bestselling author of 1421 presents compelling new evidence that the European Renaissance was spurred in large part by Chinese advances in science, art, and technology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (59)

Amazing
I thought this book was amazing.It elaborates on the learning of the Chinese before the Renaissance.This will be emotionally difficult for westerners to listen to because we have been taught that all scientific learning started in Europe and spread to the rest of the world.However, it was already well known that Guttenberg was not the first to invent movable type; the Chinese had it long before. Of course the Chinese invented gunpowder; any reasonably well-educated person would know that. At the time of the early Renaissance, the Chinese had nearly 5,000 years of continuous cultural history while Europe had gone through centuries where learning and literacy were treated as suspect and dangerous since reading the Bible by common people would have reduced the power of the church over their lives.This book gives a credible explanation of the seeding of Chinese engineering and knowledge into the European renaissance; more credible than to believe that a few smart guys in Italy and Germany thought up new ideas about physics, math, chemistry, astronomy, and engineering out of thin air with no guide.To do science and engineering, you need math, and a mathematical mind. European scholars based their mathematical understandings on Roman numerals. Roman numerals were preferred for accounting because it was harder to fake financial records with them, but they are difficult and cumbersome for doing complex mathematical calculations.One of the other reviews complains that it could not have all happened in one year:Menzies does not say it did.He discusses Chinese trips to the Europe taking place over nearly 100 years, with 1434 being toward the end of that period. It is not an easy read, and if you make it to the end, the last section, about the background of the Conquistadors, was also enlightening.

1434 - gavin menzies
An amazing book - a real revelation of the gigantic role of China in 15th century European development, and supported by a depth of reaseach and scholarship that is amazing.Must read best with 1421 by same author that catalogues the stupendous navigation accomplishments of China before the well-publicised voyage of European explorers who benefitted covertly from the Chinese maps.

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet...
So far I have read through Chapt 4. There are issues! One glaring problem is his understanding of "sidereal time" vs "solar time." I would recommend that any believer read a introductory college text on astronomy.

Many years ago I taught Astron 101 from one authored by Abell. It was understandable. There are others that are as good.

The difference between Sun time and sidereal time is one day / year. This difference comes about because the earth makes 364 rotations, but revolves in the same direction on its once / year course about the Sun. It helps if the reader understands that a day is defined between the positions when the Sun is directly overhead. So 364 rotations + one revolution = 365 overhead Sun positions per year.

The description on Pg 35 of "1434" is incorrect. There is no "slip." The 4 minutes / day difference amounts to one day / year. Even my 12 year old calculator gets a 1.01 day difference between sidereal time and Sun time / year.

Several profs are mentioned as helping with this description. I suggest they might audit Astron 101.

More Details on China's Knowledge Base
1434 adds many more details, beyond 1421, about the Chinese accomplishments.This book indicates amazing creativity so many years ago.The new info on the Tsunami in early 1400's that swamped so many Chinese boats in the Pacific reveals the extent of their expeditions and trade.

Hastily Put Together
"1434" is a major disappointment:badly written, and overwrought with technical detail.It's an interesting read because it shows how closely interconnected the world was even back in 1434.

But I had major issues with Gavin Menzies' main argument that the Chinese, by sailing to Italy and transferring technology to the Italians, ignited the Renaissance.I would think that the Italians' republicanism and capitalism fueled the Renaissance. The Chinese may have provided the Italians with ideas, but it takes an open and progressive people to accept and implement them.For the past two centuries, China has lagged far behind the West, and technology transfer has constantly flowed from West to East.But new ideas could not find root, breathe, and grow in China.

The Renaissance was not just about ideas and technology -- it was more about attitude and openness.And if that's something that Admiral Zheng He could have brought back to China then that would have been more valuable than all the gold, the slaves, and the art in the world.

... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Canadian Geographer, published by Canadian Association of Geographers on March 22, 2004. The length of the article is 839 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility and Identity.(Book Review)
Author: David Ley
Publication: The Canadian Geographer (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2004
Publisher: Canadian Association of Geographers
Volume: 48Issue: 1Page: 88(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description

The poetry of the Late Tang often looked backward, and many poets of the period distinguished themselves through the intensity of their retrospective gaze. Chinese poets had always looked backward to some degree, but for many Late Tang poets the echoes and the traces of the past had a singular aura.

In this work, Stephen Owen resumes telling the literary history of the Tang that he began in his works on the Early and High Tang. Focusing in particular on Du Mu, Li Shangyin, and Wen Tingyun, he analyzes the redirection of poetry that followed the deaths of the major poets of the High and Mid-Tang and the rejection of their poetic styles. The Late Tang, Owen argues, forces us to change our very notion of the history of poetry. Poets had always drawn on past poetry, but in the Late Tang, the poetic past was beginning to assume the form it would have for the next millennium; it was becoming a repertoire of available choices--styles, genres, the voices of past poets. It was this repertoire that would endure.

Product Description

What can we do about China? This question, couched in pessimism, is often raised in the West but it is nothing new to the Chinese, who have long worried about themselves. In the last two decades since the "opening" of China, Chinese intellectuals have been carrying on in their own ancient tradition of "patriotic worrying."

As an intellectual mandate, "worrying about China" carries with it the moral obligation of identifying and solving perceived "Chinese problems"--social, political, cultural, historical, or economic--in order to achieve national perfection. In Worrying about China, Gloria Davies pursues this inquiry through a wide range of contemporary topics, including the changing fortunes of radicalism, the peculiarities of Chinese postmodernism, shifts within official discourse, attempts to revive Confucianism for present-day China, and the historically problematic engagement of Chinese intellectuals with Western ideas.

Davies explores the way perfectionism permeates and ultimately propels Chinese intellectual talk to the point that the drive for perfection has created a moralism that condemns those who do not contribute to improving China. Inside the heart of the New China persists ancient moralistic attitudes that remain decidedly nonmodern. And inside the postmodernism of thousands of Chinese scholars and intellectuals dwells a decidedly anti-postmodern quest for absolute certainty.