End User Development

The rulers of the Ming dynasty enacted paradigms of hierarchical order. Like imperial families, households, and courts in earlier Chinese dynasties, they articulated patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal organizational principles as exemplars for families and institutions throughout the empire. Women made indispensable contributions to the development of these paradigms and principles and to the social, cultural, and political fabric of the family and the state. And yet, in the existing literature in Chinese and English women are often burdened with stereotypes, positioned as peripheral, or rendered almost invisible. Reading available texts “against the grain,” and drawing on a trove of evidence from material culture, Soulliere shows how women defined a place for themselves in the multigenerational Ming imperial family, imperial household, and court. The Empress and the Dragon Throne spans the first Ming century from just before the founding of the dynasty in 1368 to the end of the

The Sinological Development Charitable Foundation (SDCF) aspires to help spread 5,000 years of cultural history embedded in the Chinese Classics as a fundamental basis for understanding Chinese civilization. To that end, every year since 2016, the SDCF has provided intensive summer programs by which means scholars from across the globe are brought together in situ (in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and mainland China) to learn together and share their research into some of the most important topics in Chinese Studies. Over the last five years (2016–2020), candidates representing nations from Africa, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and other parts of Asia have embraced the SDCF program and its goals. This compendium is published to mark the milestone of five comprehensive programs completed successfully. It includes a sample of the best research by program participants from around the world, along with personal reflections and reflections by professors and tutors allied with

China’s ascent to the ranks of the world’s second largest economic power has given its revolution a better image than that of its Russian counterpart. Yet the two have a great deal in common. Indeed, the Chinese revolution was a carbon copy of its predecessor, until Mao became aware, not so much of the failures of the Russian model, but of its inability to adapt to an overcrowded third-world country. Yet, instead of correcting that model, Mao decided to go further and faster in the same direction. The aftershock of an earthquake may be weaker, but the Great Leap Forward of 1958 in China was far more destructive than the Great Turn of 1929 in the Soviet Union. It was conceived with an idealistic end but failed to take all the possibilities into account. China’s development only took off after—and thanks to—Mao’s death, once the country turned its back on the revolution. Lucien Bianco’s original comparative study highlights the similarities: the all-powerful bureaucracy; the over-explo

By the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese culture had fallen into a stasis, and intellectuals began to go abroad for new ideas. What emerged was an exciting musical genre that C. C. Liu terms "new music." With no direct ties to traditional Chinese music, "new music" reflects the compositional techniques and musical idioms of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European styles. Liu traces the genesis and development of "new music" throughout the twentieth century, deftly examining the social and political forces that shaped "new music" and its uses by political activists and the government.