This book contains a dynamic table of contents. Preview: The population of the city and suburbs has never been accurately, and therefore satisfactorily ascertained. The inhabitants of the seven suburbs are believed to be as numerous as the inhabitants of the city itself. The population of both has been estimated by residents and visitors at all figures, from 600,000 to 1,250,000. Including the people dwelling in boats, who are quite numerous, it probably would not be far out ...

This book contains a dynamic table of contents.Preview:The Chinese year contains thirteen or twelve months, according as it has or has not an intercalary month. Consequently the great annual periods, as the winter solstice or vernal equinox, do not fall in successive years on the same day of the same month. Generally, in five successive years there are two intercalary months ; or, more exactly, in nineteen successive years there are seven intercalary months. There are no in...

First Published in 2005. This is the most complete and detailed account of the traditional domestic and daily life of the Chinese in the mid-nineteenth century. Writing in the 1860's, Doolittle concentrates on social and religious customs, revealing the people through their practices and material culture which he observed for over fourteen years. Colourful, exotic and compelling, this is a more telling portrait than any history or encyclopedia, an innovative tour de force of popular cultur...

The fascinating and somewhat sensationalist memoirs of Anna Leonowens, the English travel writer, educator, and social activist that became tutor to the wives and children of the king of Siam from 186268. Her story was later fictionalised in the book 'Anna and the King of Siam', which was adapted by Rogers and Hammerstein into the hit 1951 musical 'The King and I'.

The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid and startling transition.

Manners and Customs of the Japanese in the Nineteenth Century is a delightful account of the Japanese of Tokugawa Japan.This unique handbook of Japanese manners, customs, history, and singular happenings was published in New York in 1841. Based on the firsthand observations of Dr. Philipp Franz von Siebold of the Dutch trading port Deshima in the years 1823-29, as well as on Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English records of early Japan, it provided us wi...

Arthur Smith was one of the top Sinologists of the late 19th century and early 20th century, and Chinese Characteristics is the book which best synthesizes his opinions on Chinese culture and society. He spent more than 50 years in China as a missionary and his opinions range from insightful and profound to inappropriate and ridiculous, but even the sections of the book that today seem to reflect Western cultural arrogance are entertaining and enlightening in terms of the Western mindset t...

Contains a Table of Contents.This is the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese, to produce a history of Chinese literature. Native scholars, with their endless critiques and appreciations of individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated anything of the kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a Chinese point of view, of achieving even comparative success in a general historical survey of the subject. The voluminous c...

Professor Aston's A History of Japanese Literature has a permanent place on the bookshelves of all lovers of Japan. William George Aston, who pioneered in the translation of Japanese literature into English, made many original contributions to Japanese studies. His writing is fresh and informative.The periods reviewed range from the ancient days, when Japan's history was just dawning, to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when all aspects of Japanese life were being transforme...

Originally published in 1898. INTRODUCTION: Since the time when I made my first journey into Cambodia to examine its ancient cities, it has been my constant endeavour to show how the explorer may add not only to the interest but to the permanent value of his work by the use of photography. To those of my readers interested in photography I may add a note on my method of working. All my negatives were taken by the wet collodion process, a process most exacting in its chemistry, especially i...

One day in the early dawn, a distinguished mandarin was leaving the temple of the City God. It was his duty to visit this temple on the first and fifteenth of the moon, whilst the city was still asleep, to offer incense and adoration to the stern-looking figure enshrined within. This mandarin was Shih-Kung, and a juster or more upright official did not exist in all the fair provinces of the Empire. Wherever his name was mentioned it was received with the profoundest reverence and respect; ...

First Published in 2002. This book looks at the small groups of Japanese people who were perpetually endangered by foreign invasions, actual and potential, and even more by the disruptive forces of their own ambitious kith and kin. These people were scattered over a number of islands, each again divided by mountain ranges into a set of island-like districts, and they lived and enjoyed a perilous existence which made them stronger and still more secretive. Traits and tendencies of this orde...