Reconstructing Religious

In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. While utilizing the vivid and unique perspective of its commander, Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou (Canton). Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His definitive narrative and original analysis constitute a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprise in the coastal areas of south China. The book begins by sketching the Tudor-Stuart historical background of British trade expansion in Asia before precisely reconstructing the voyages of East India Company and then

"In what period did objects of worship appear in China? Could there be a possible convergence between written testimonies and archaeological remains? How was the production of icons understood, especially in light of its eventual condemnation in iconoclastic discourse? This history of cultic images designed for religious worship in China remains to be written. The statue collections over the course of 16th to 20th centuries in central Hunan of southern China will give us insight into the local artistic tradition of statue-making, and the dynamics of multifarious religious practices consisting of a hybrid of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucian, Shamanism, and so forth. The documents contained inside these effigies, as well as the inscriptions found on the statues themselves, provide first-hand information that has not been filtered down through theological or philosophical discourses. Moreover, this art of domestic statuary—which is found far from palaces, large temples, monasteries, and pain

The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions that have survived since the inception of the British colony. She has contributed much during its development. As early as 1841, she set up a mission in Hong Kong. She and her various religious orders and congregations engaged in charitable works for the poor and the elderly in the early days of Hong Kong, greatly relieving the burden on the newly established colonial government. Today, apart from religious services, the Catholic Church still plays an important role in providing Hong Kong with diversified and professional services in medical care, education and social welfare. Historical studies on the Catholic Church in Hong Kong of a comprehensive nature are rare in comparison with other religions. The reasons of this may include the complicated organizational structure of the Catholic Church and the multiple languages used in the archival documents, such as Latin, French, Italian and Portuguese. As a Catholic clergy, the author of

Travels and Revelations: 23 Essays by Zhang Chengzhi is about cultures which the author knows intimately. With sophisticated sensibility, he describes the tangible cultures of Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang in recent decades – the landscapes and cityscapes, the roads and waterways, the rural and urban dwellings, the working and living habits, and the outstanding symbols and totems. Like a traveller pausing before stunning scenery – the Mongolian grasslands, the yellow-earth plateaus, the Yellow River’s mighty gorges – he reflects on the intangible cultures that have made the Han, the Hui, the Mongolian and the Uyghur peoples who they are, and contemplates on their language usages, socio-political dilemmas, philosophical traditions, beliefs and biases and their religious aspirations. These essays show how deeply Zhang Chengzhi understands modern China’s painful evolution through war and revolution and how deeply he is attached to his Hui–Muslim roots. They also

In Redefining Heresy and Tolerance, Hung Tak Wai examines how the Qing empire governed Muslims and Christians under its rule with a non-interventionist policy. Manchu emperors adopted a tolerant attitude towards Islam and Christianity as long as political stability and loyalty remained unthreatened. However, Hung argues that such tolerance had its limitations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing court intentionally minimised the importance of the Islamic identity. Restrictions were imposed on the Muslims’ external connections with Western Asia. The Christian minority was kept distant from politics and the Han majority. At the same time, Confucian scholars began to acquire a new understanding of religion, but they were not encouraged to get in touch with the Muslims and Christians. This book demonstrates how, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the Qing government prevented Confucian scholar-bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians an

A Sketch of Truth Theory The Truth Theory refers to a natural attribute which all things embody during cosmic movement. And which features the inherent quality of the universe, that is, the attraction between Yin and Yun, the negative cosmic gas and the positive cosmic gas. It is the natural and scientific reality of the universe. The appearance of this theory will completely shatter the barriers that have hindered human understanding of life and all things in the universe for thousands of years. It will put an end to the idealism-materialism dichotomous outlook on the world and completely terminate the theism-atheism dualistic religious concept that people have disputed for thousands of years. It will enable humankind on Earth to see the universe in the true, clear-minded and correct manner for the first time. It will enable humankind to explain mysterious cosmic phenomena with our acquired part of scientific knowledge about the universe in a deep and complete manner for the first

In the West, love occupies center stage in the modern age, whether in art, intellectual life, or the economic life. We may observe a similar development in China, on its own impetus, which has resulted in this characteristic of modernity—this feature of modern life has been securely and unambiguously established, not the least facilitated by the thriving of literature about qing, whether in traditional or modern forms. Qiancheng Li concentrates on the nuances of a similar trend manifested in the Chinese context. The emphasis is on critical readings of the texts that have shaped this trend, including important Ming- and Qing-dynasty works of drama, Buddhist texts and other religious/philosophical works, in all their subtlety and evocative power. -------------- The power of qing or strong emotion is a major theme in late imperial Chinese literature—some writers asserting that it can transcend even life itself. Qiancheng Li surveys a number of seventeenth-century philosophical, religio

Tracing its origins back to 1822 in Whampoa, the Mariners’ Club in Hong Kong was established to meet a specific need for an Anglo-Chinese society defined by that most dubious of activities, seafaring. Its creation was anything but straightforward, and in this can be seen the mutable and often tortuous relations between the various religious bodies, the local population, the transient sailors, the emerging captains of industry, and the growing regulatory reach of the colonial government. The club evolved through many embodiments and witnessed the growth of Hong Kong from a collection of mat-sheds on the foreshore, through colony to its current status. Throughout its turbulent past it has been occasionally marginalized but has always served as an important base for the key actors in the main commercial activity in Hong Kong: seafarers. This is a history of one of the most enduring institutions of Hong Kong, and the first of its kind. Using the Club’s own records as well as a wide rang

This volume first explores the transformation of Chinese Daoism in late imperial period through the writings of prominent intellectuals of the times. In such a cultural context, it then launches an in-depth investigation into the Daoist dimensions of the Chinese narrative masterpiece, The Story of the Stone—the inscriptions of Quanzhen Daoism in the infrastructure of its religious framework, the ideological ramifications of the Daoist concepts of chaos, purity, and the natural, as well as the Daoist images of the gourd, fish, and bird. Zhou presents the central position of Daoist philosophy both in the ideological structure of the Stone, and the literati culture that engenders it.

Negotiating Religion in Modern China traces the history of the Chinese state's relationship with religion from 1900 to 1937. The revolutionary regime condemned religious practice in the early twentieth century, suppressing "superstitious" belief in favor of a secular, more enlightened society. Drawing on newspapers and unpublished official documents, this book focuses on the case of Guangzhou, largely because of the city's sustained involvement in the revolutionary quest for a "new" China. The author pays particular attention to the implementation of policy and citizens' attempts at adaptation and resistance.

Li shang wanglai is a phrase that combines practice and principle. It is what others have discussed as Confucianism. But it is the summation of what is practised in daily life and without the leadership of an elite intelligentsia. With this phrase the author has brought together what had been separately discussed: the social philosophy of bao (asymmetrical reciprocity), the central importance of mianzi and lian (face), the moral economy of renqing (human relationships of fellow-feeling), the art of making guanxiwang (social networks), and much else. She shows how they work together in what might be called a discursive constellation. Using sociological and anthropological theorisations of reciprocal relations in China and Japan, she creates a framework of four dimensions, namely, principled rational calculation, human-feeling, moral, and religious, and four kinds of relationships, namely, instrumental, expressive, negative and generous.

《淮南子韻讀及校勘》是劉殿爵先生晚年的力作，繼清儒王念孫《淮南子韻譜》之後，此書是最精確的韻讀研究。校勘部分兼採諸家異說，提出獨到的見解，尤其精采。今後此書必將成為討論西漢楚語的堅實基礎，同時更是了解漢初思想史的重要依據。――丁邦新，中央研究院院士 D. C. Lau was, at the time of his passing in 2010, one of the world’s greatest scholars of classical Chinese philosophy. Long renowned for his translations of the Laozi, the Analects and the Mencius, and the Founding Editor for the CHANT series of critical texts and concordances, Lau was also a devotee of the Huainanzi. But during his long scholarly career he was only able to publish one article of textual notes in 1968 and the translation of the first chapter of the HNZ with Roger Ames, Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to Its Source. This publication of his meticulous notes on the rhymes and textual criticism of the HNZ represents a heretofore unknown gift of Professor Lau’s profound scholarship to the world of Chinese Studies.―Harold D. Roth, Professor of Chinese Religious Studies, Brown University In what is indeed a highly technical study, Professor D. C. Lau wields