История
Различные книги в жанре ИсторияReligious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands
Revival of religious practices of all sorts in China, after decades of systematic government suppression, is a topic of considerable interest to scholars in disciplines ranging from religious studies to anthropology to political science. This book examines contemporary religious practices among the Premi people of the Sichuan-Yunnan-Tibet area, a group of about 60,000 who speak a language belonging to the Qiang branch of Tibeto-Burman. Koen Wellens's ethnographic research in two Premi communities on opposite sides of the border, and his analysis of available historical documents, find multiple advocates and rationales for the revival of both formal Tibetan Buddhism and the indigenous Premi practices centered on ritual specialists called anji.Wellens argues that the variety in the shape the revitalization process takes–as it affects Premi on the Sichuan side of the border and their counterparts on the Yunnan side–can only be understood in a local cultural context. This full-length study of the Premi, the first in a language other than Chinese, makes a valuable contribution to our ethnographic knowledge of Southwest China, as well as to our understanding of contemporary Chinese religious and cultural politics.
Better than the Best
In these engaging and forthright interviews, thirteen African American athletes talk about how they endured through pain, loneliness, and rejection to become champions. In sports as diverse as football and fencing, wrestling and track and field, these men and women triumphed over the odds to become better than the best. Their legacy is in their accomplishments and in their determination to continue contributing to the societal transformation their efforts helped make possible.
Communist Multiculturalism
The communist Chinese state promotes the distinctiveness of the many minorities within its borders. At the same time, it is vigilant in suppressing groups that threaten the nation's unity or its modernizing goals. In Communist Multiculturalism, Susan K. McCarthy examines three minority groups in the province of Yunnan, focusing on the ways in which they have adapted to the government's nationbuilding and minority nationalities policies since the 1980s. She reveals that Chinese government policy is shaped by perceptions of what constitutes an authentic cultural group and of the threat ethnic minorities may constitute to national interests. These minority groups fit no clear categories but rather are practicing both their Chinese citizenship and the revival of their distinct cultural identities. For these groups, being minority is, or can be, one way of being national.Minorities in the Chinese state face a paradox: modern, cosmopolitan, sophisticated people – good Chinese citizens, in other words – do not engage in unmodern behaviors. Minorities, however, are expected to engage in them.
The Adventures of Eddie Fung
Eddie Fung has the distinction of being the only Chinese American soldier to be captured by the Japanese during World War II. He was then put to work on the Burma-Siam railroad, made famous by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. In this moving and unforgettable memoir, Eddie recalls how he, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, reinvented himself as a Texas cowboy before going overseas with the U.S. Army. On the way to the Philippines, his battalion was captured by the Japanese in Java and sent to Burma to undertake the impossible task of building a railroad through 262 miles of tropical jungle.Working under brutal slave labor conditions, the men completed the railroad in fourteen months, at the cost of 12,500 POW and 70,000 Asian lives. Eddie lived to tell how his background helped him endure forty-two months of humiliation and cruelty and how his experiences as the sole Chinese American member of the most decorated Texan unit of any war shaped his later life.
Growing Up Brown
"I may have been like other boys, but there was a major difference – my family included 80 to 100 single young men residing in a Filipino farm-labor camp. It was as a �campo� boy that I first learned of my ancestral roots and the sometimes tortuous path that Filipinos took in sailing halfway around the world to the promise that was America. It was as a campo boy that I first learned the values of family, community, hard work, and education. As a campo boy, I also began to see the two faces of America, a place where Filipinos were at once welcomed and excluded, were considered equal and were discriminated against. It was a place where the values of fairness and freedom often fell short when Filipinos put them to the test.�"– Peter JameroPeter Jamero�s story of hardship and success illuminates the experience of what he calls the �bridge generation� – the American-born children of the Filipinos recruited as farm workers in the 1920s and 30s. Their experiences span the gap between these early immigrants and those Filipinos who owe their U.S. residency to the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965. His book is a sequel of sorts to Carlos Bulosan�s America Is in the Heart, with themes of heartbreaking struggle against racism and poverty and eventual triumph.Jamero describes his early life in a farm-labor camp in Livingston, California, and the path that took him, through naval service and graduate school, far beyond Livingston. A longtime community activist and civic leader, Jamero describes decades of toil and progress before the Filipino community entered the sociopolitical mainstream. He shares a wealth of anecdotes and reflections from his career as an executive of health and human service programs in Sacramento, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and San Francisco.
The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze
The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze considers the European representation and understanding of landscape and nature in early nineteenth-century India. It draws on travel narratives, literary texts, and scientific literature to show the diversity of European (especially British) responses to the Indian environment and the ways in which these contributed to the wider colonizing process. Through its close examination of the correlation between tropicality and “otherness,” and of science as a means of colonial appropriation, the book offers a new interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the tropical world. It will be of interest to historians of the environment, science, and colonialism; South Asianists; and cultural and environmental anthropologists and geographers.
Guest People
The essays in this volume analyze and compare what it means to be Hakka in a variety of sociocultural, political, geographical, and historical contexts including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Taiwan, and contemporary China.
Eat Everything Before You Die
In this vibrant and original novel, Christopher Columbus Wong, orphan son of a Chinatown bachelor community, is trying to invent a family for himself while all around him American popular culture is reinventing itself with sex, drugs, and rock �n� roll. Christopher finds himself on a wild journey with his gay older brother, Peter, a pan-Pacific TV chef; the defrocked, deranged, and eroding ex-director of a Chinatown settlement house, Reverend Ted Candlewick; the sharp-eyed, conspiring matriarch Auntie Mary, the bridge between the conflicting values that make up this cultural stew; and Uncle Lincoln, a bachelor, short order cook, and, quite possibly, Christopher and Peter�s father. Further complicating Christopher�s voyage are his ex-wives: Winnie, a Hong Kong immigrant looking for a green card, and Melba, an American orphan of the counterculture.Set against the backdrop of America�s wars in Asia and the assimilation of that experience�the refugees, the stereotypes, the food�Eat Everything Before You Die is an ironic commentary on the identities the children of Chinese American immigrants concoct from their questionable histories, cultural practices, and survival strategies.Chan�s riotous story will appeal to general readers, particularly those interested in the Asian American experience, and will be of strong, enduring interest to students and scholars in Asian American Studies.
Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers
Upon coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist government proclaimed that its stance toward ethnic minorities–who comprise approximatelyeight percent of China’s population–differed from that of previous regimes and that it would help preserve the linguistic and cultural heritage of the fifty-five official «minority nationalities.» However, minority culture suffered widespread destruction in the early decades of the People’s Republic of China, and minority areas still lag far behind Han (majority) areas economically.Since the mid-1990s, both domestic and foreign developments have refocused government attention on the inhabitants of China’s minority regions, their relationship to the Chinese state, and their foreign ties. Intense economic development of and Han settlement in China’s remote minority regions threaten to displace indigenous populations, post-Soviet establishment of independent countries composed mainly of Muslim and Turkic-speaking peoples presents questions for related groups in China, freedom of Mongolia from Soviet control raises the specter of a pan-Mongolian movement encompassing Chinese Mongols, and international groups press for a more autonomous or even independent Tibet.In Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers , leading scholars examine the Chinese government’s administration of its ethnic minority regions, particularly border areas where ethnicity is at times a volatile issue and where separatist movements are feared. Seven essays focus on the Muslim Hui, multiethnic southwest China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Together these studies provide an overview of government relations with key minority populations, against which one can view evolving dialogues and disputes.
Vagabond Life
George Kennan (1845-1924) was a pioneering explorer, writer, and lecturer on Russia in the nineteenth century, the author of classic works such as Tent Life in Siberia and Siberia and the Exile System , and great-uncle of George Frost Kennan, the noted historian and diplomat of the Cold War.In 1870, Kennan became the first American to explore the highlands of Dagestan, a remote Muslim region of herders, silversmiths, carpet-weavers, and other craftsmen southeast of Chechnya, only a decade after Russia violently absorbed the region into its empire. He kept detailed journals of his adventures, which today form a small part of his voluminous archive in the Library of Congress. Frith Maier has combined the diaries with selected letters and Kennan’s published articles on the Caucasus to create a vivid narrative of his six-month odyssey.The journals have been organized into three parts. The first covers Kennan’s journey to the Caucasus, a significant feat in itself. The second chronicles his expedition across the main Caucasus Ridge with the Georgian nobleman Prince Jorjadze. In the final part, Kennan circles back through the lands of Chechnya to slip once again into the Dagestan highlands.Kennan’s remarkable curiosity and perception come through in this lively and accessible narrative, as does his humor at the challenges of his travels.In her introduction, Maier discusses Kennan’s illustrious career and his reliability as an observer, while providing background on the Caucasus to help clarify Kennan’s descriptions of daily life, religion, etiquette, customary law, and local government. In an Afterword, she retraces Kennan’s steps to find descendants of Prince Jorjadze and describes her work in coproducing, with filmmaker Christopher Allingham, a documentary inspired by Kennan’s Caucasus journey.