This book brings audiences the enchanting melodies passing down from generation to generation in the Zhuang community, which are on the brink of extinction. Specifically, it sheds light on the origin, evolution and artistic features of Zhuang folk song in the first place, and then it shifts to their English translation based on meta-functional equivalence, through which the multi-aesthetics of Zhuang folk song have been represented. At length, forty classic Zhuang folk songs have been sele...

Suitable for students of all levels, this book provides a general description of the Korean language by highlighting important structural aspects whilst keeping technical details to a minimum. By examining the Korean language in its geographical, historical, social and cultural context the reader is able to gain a good understanding of its speakers and the environment in which it is used. The book covers a range of topics on Korean including its genetic affiliation, historical development,...

In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or...

This unusual and interesting book is a fascinating account of the world of Chinese writing. It examines Chinese space and the political and social use of writing as propaganda, a publicity booster and as a ladder for social climbing.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao exhorted the Chinese people to “smash the four olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. Yet when the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square chanted “We want to see Chairman Mao,” they unknowingly used a classical rhythm that dates back to the Han period and is the very embodiment of the four olds. An Anatomy of Chinese reveals how rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey time-honored meanings of which Chinese speak...

Ashes of Time, by the internationally acclaimed director Wong Kar-wai, has been considered to be one of the most complex and self-reflexive of Hong Kong films. Loosely based on the stories by renowned martial arts novelist Jin Yong, Wong Kar-wai has created a very different kind of martial arts film, which invites close and sustained study.This book presents the nature and significance of Ashes of Time, and the reasons for its being regarded as a landmark in Hong Kong cinema. Placing the f...

Solidly grounded in Chinese primary sources, Neo Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality engages the latest global scholarship to provide an innovative, rigorous, and clear articulation of neo-Confucianism and its application to Western philosophy.Contextualizes neo-Confucianism for contemporary analytic philosophy by engaging with today’s philosophical questions and debatesBased on the most recent and influential scholarship on neo-C...

Reading in Asian Languages is rich with information about how literacy works in the non-alphabetic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) used by hundreds of millions of people and refutes the common Western belief that such systems are hard to learn or to use. The contributors share a comprehensive view of reading as construction of meaning which they show is fully applicable to character-based reading.The book explains how and why non-alphabetic writing works well f...

In Obscene Things Naifei Ding intervenes in conventional readings of Jin Ping Mei, an early scandalous Chinese novel of sexuality and sexual culture. After first appearing around 1590, Jin Ping Mei was circulated among some of China’s best known writers of the time and subsequently was published in three major recensions. A 1695 version by Zhang Zhupo became the most widely read and it is this text in particular on which Ding focuses. Challenging the preconceptio...

Translating Chinese Culture is an innovative and comprehensive coursebook which addresses the issue of translating concepts of culture. Based on the framework of schema building, the course offers helpful guidance on how to get inside the mind of the Chinese author, how to understand what he or she is telling the Chinese-speaking audience, and how to convey this to an English speaking audience.A wide range of authentic texts relating to different aspects of Chinese culture and aest...

The first major work in Sino-Western comparative semiotics, Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations is a trans-disciplinary and intercultural effort that makes intellectual connections not only across such diverse academic fields as epistemology, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, and cultural studies but also between Chinese and Western theories of the sign in the conviction that they can shed light on one another.In this groundbreaking work, Ersu Ding studies two t...

This collection of essays reveals the dynamic role of the late Qing novel in the process of modernization of Chinese fiction. Substantial changes in various aspects of the Chinese novel at the turn of the century, demonstrated by structural analyses of several representative novels, suggest that the evolution of modern Chinese fiction was a more complex process than a simple imitation of Western literatures. The results challenge the scholarly consensus that modern Chinese fiction resulted...