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he Genera of Orchidaceae in Hong Kong is a handy reference for both amateurs and professional botanists in Asia who wish to enter the field of modern orchidology. Orchid appreciation is an art deeply rooted in Asian cultures. But in 1977, when this book was first published, orchidology as a science was new to people there. The technical vocabulary was unfamiliar and the subject matter difficult to understand. Therefore, this volume was intended as a general, easy-to-use reference book, with illustrations of the basic structure of orchids and their habit and habitat clearly described in Chapter I.The book may also be used as a self-help guide for naturalists and gardeners in Hong Kong who wish to identify an orchid new to them. In Chapter II, keys, descriptions, and illustrations are given to allow the reader to look up and gain information about individual orchid species. Chapter III provides an analysis of the composition and an interpretation of the phytogeographic significance of th

Gods and Goddesses are not always perfect, what did Chang E do to have herself ending up alone on the moon?And do you know that Yi the Great Archer did more than just shooting down nine suns? My Favourite Chinese Stories is a collection of three Chinese stories specially selected and retold in English for young readers. The first story is from Chinese mythology, while the other two are from classical Chinese literature. They are widely known to the Chinese people, and reflect, in varying degrees, some of the essential characteristics of Chinese culture. Each story is accompanied by beautiful full-colour illustrations drawn by Lo King-man as well as audio narration by the author Pamela Youde.

In The Making of Chinese-Sinophone Literatures as World Literature, Kuei-fen Chiu and Yingjin Zhang aim to bridge the distance between the scholarship of world literature and that of Chinese and Sinophone literary studies. This edited volume advances research on world literature by bringing in new developments in Chinese/Sinophone literatures and adds a much-needed new global perspective on Chinese literary studies beyond the traditional national literature paradigm and its recent critique by Sinophone studies. In addition to a critical mapping of the domains of world literature, Sinophone literature, and world literature in Chinese to delineate the nuanced differences of these three disciplines, the book addresses the issues of translation, genre, and the impact of media and technology on our understanding of “literature” and “literary prestige.” It also provides critical studies of the complicated ways in which Chinese and Sinophone literatures are translated, received, and reinveste

Traversing from the rapidly urbanising county-level city of Fuqing to the remote mountainous kingdom of Lesotho in Southern Africa, Searching for Sweetness is one of the first and most extensive ethnographies linking rural-to-urban migration in China with Chinese migration to Africa. Against the backdrop of China’s national struggle for modernity and globalisation, Sarah Hanisch examines Chinese migrant women’s complex and ever-shifting struggles for upward social mobility across different generations and localities in China and Lesotho. Embedding the women’s individual portraits into larger historical contexts, Hanisch illustrates how these women interpret and narrate their migratory and everyday experiences through and beyond powerful state metanarratives on ‘sweetness’ and ‘bitterness’. In her exploration of migratory identities and projects that have been overlooked by previous studies, Hanisch brings uniquely gendered, multi-sited, and intergenerational perspectives to existing sc

The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng: Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China is the first monograph in English on a controversial Ming dynasty literary figure. It examines and re-assesses the life and work of Ruan Dacheng (1587–1646), a poet, dramatist, and politician in the late Ming period. Ruan Dacheng was in his own time a highly regarded poet, but is best known as a dramatist, and his poetry is now largely unknown. He is most notorious as a ‘treacherous official’ of the Ming–Qing transition, and as a result his literary work―his plays as well as his poetry―has been neglected and undervalued. Hardie argues that Ruan’s literary work is of much greater significance in the history of Chinese literature than has generally been recognised since his own time. Ruan, rather than being a transgressive figure, is actually a very typical late Ming literatus, and as such his attitudes towards identity and authenticity can add to our understanding of these issues in late Ming intel

Reverse paintings on glass occupy a special place in Chinese art, spanning the genres of glass working, export art, folk art, erotica, and meiren hua (paintings of beauties). Their unique appearance is the result of a challenging production process in which artists layer pigments in the reverse order of the normal painting procedure–highlights first, then mid-layers, and finally base colours. The final product is viewed in reverse from the opposite side of the glass, which must also be considered when creating the paintings. A product of the encounter between East and West, the manufacture of glass paintings in China was stimulated by European glass paintings brought to the imperial court by traders and diplomats in the seventeenth century. Initially made in Canton for Western consumers, by the eighteenth century their production had spread throughout China, with subjects and styles adapted to suit local tastes. The glass paintings in the Mei Lin Collection represent this later floweri

English novelist E.M. Forster wrote his last and best-loved work, A Passage to India, both as a paean to his love for India and as a tribute to the relationships he formed with Indians. Forster became entranced by the India of the Raj at a young age, and his love affair with the sub-continent, its princes, and peoples, was to last all his life. At his most socially transgressive, it was with Indians that Forster chose to connect and with whom he put into effect his belief in man’s duty to value friendship over state or ideology. His time in India was undoubtedly when he was at his most human and most vulnerable.At once a contemporary reflection on India’s rich history and a biographical retelling of Forster’s travels through the country in the early 1900s, Developing the Heart delves into the past to better understand the profound impact certain events and people had on his writing. In doing so, it allows readers to look on as Forster matures and softens over time in his behaviour with

The fact that Snow did not sneak into “red China” to gather information constituting the basis of his Red Start over China all alone is in many instances isunderstood even by scholars.Mao Zedong’s biography has been the subject of an international mountain of commentary in China and elsewhere. Biographies praising Mao and those slandering him are all based on the American journalist Edgar Snow’s (1905–1972) account in Red Star over China for the route Mao traveled from early childhood through his youth.How the “Red Star” Rose introduces the image of Mao and the biographical information made known to the world through the publication of Red Star, and with its publication the circumstances which they fundamentally undermined. Ishikawa Yoshihiro uses Mao Zedong as raw material to examine from whence and how ordinary historical information and images which we habitually use unconsciously come into being.He desires to help readers to reconsider the historicity of the generation of not only

What does it mean to be queer in a Confucian society in which kinship roles, ties, and ideologies are of such great importance? This book makes sense of queer cultures in China—a country with one of the largest queer populations in the world—and offers an alternative to Euro-American blueprints of queer individual identity. This book contends that kinship relations must be understood as central to any expression of queer selfhood and culture in contemporary cultural production in China. Using a critical approach—“queering Chinese kinship”—Lin Song scrutinizes the relationship between queerness and family relations, and questions Eurocentric queer culture’s frequent assumption of the separation of queerness from blood family.Offering five case studies of queer representations across a range of media genres, this book also challenges the tendency in current scholarship on Chinese and East Asian queerness to understand queer cultures as predominantly counter-mainstream, marginal, and unde

Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness is a distinctive work that explores the much-neglected Chinese perspective in broader international relations theory. Using the concept of “self-feminizing”―adoption of a feminine identity to oblige and achieve mutual caring as a relational strategy―this book argues that postcolonial actors have employed gendered identities in order to survive the squeezing pressure of globalization and nationalism in their own ways. Sovereign actors who have historically claimed to act on behalf of Chineseness have taken advantage of the images of femininity thrust upon them by transnational capitalism, the media, or intellectual thought.Shih illustrates the feminist potential for emancipation through a range of empirical examples, showing that women of various Chinese characteristics, acting on behalf of their nation, city, and corporations, reject the masculinization of their groups of belonging as remedy f

This book carries decades of academic observations and the author’s personal political experience. It reviews and refects on the past trajectory of governance and administration, identifying strengths and capabilities as well as constraints and vulnerabilities of Hong Kong as a polity and society, while charting its course of ‘exceptionalism’ within a new context and under changing conditions.Hong Kong under British rule was a prime example of exceptionalism in many aspects —economic, political, and even social. It was governed under a colonial structure and yet had enjoyed a large degree of social and economic freedom, as well as fiscal self-sufficiency and autonomy from London. After returning to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong has continued to thrive as a relatively resilient city-state still known for efficiency andeffectiveness despite tensions and scepticism about its political future.This book carries decades of academic observations and the author's personal political experienc

The crisis of masculinity surfaced and converged with the crisis of the nation in the late Qing, after the doors of China were forced open by Opium Wars. The power of physical aggression increasingly overshadowed literary attainments and became a new imperative of male honor in the late Qing and early Republican China. Afflicted with anxiety and indignation about their increasingly effeminate image as perceived by Western colonial powers, Chinese intellectuals strategically distanced themselves from the old literati and reassessed their positions vis-à-vis violence. In Mastery of Words and Swords: Negotiating Intellectual Masculinities in Modern China, 1890s–1930s, Jun Lei explores the formation and evolution of modern Chinese intellectual masculinities as constituted in racial, gender, and class discourses mediated by the West and Japan. This book brings to light a new area of interest in the “Man Question” within gender studies in which women have typically been the focus. To fully r

This book focuses on a seldom discussed topic despite its immeasurable impact on the health of the citizens and public health in Hong Kong--the development of outpatient medical services and their contributions. In the early 20th century, Chinese elite organized and operated a number of Chinese Public Dispensaries in Hong Kong and Kowloon, initially to reduce the prevalence of "dump bodies" on the streets during epidemics of smallpox or plague, and to determine the cause of death of these bodies. Later other services including domiciliary deliveries by trained midwives were added. The government founded similar clinics in the New Territories. After WWII, the government took over all the Chinese Public Dispensaries and operated them as general outpatient clinics. Over the years, more general clinics and special clinics were developed. These clinics helped improve the health indices of the population to those of the Western countries by the 1970s.

“For this brief moment, the two sisters could be ‘together in heart and affection’, and through such letters bridge the distance of empire.”We often learn about the commerce, diplomacy, and military c

The context in which constitutional laws and human rights instruments are read is ever-changing, and this is particularly true for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. To understand the applic

This book adds richly not only to understanding of the unique form of Daoism in Central Hunan today, but to the entire fashi tradition that rose to prominence in the Song–Yuan. In the h

The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward th

Empowered by Ancestors: Controversy over the Imperial Temple in Song China (960–1279) examines the enduring tension between cultural authority and political power in imperial China by inquiring into S

A strong international interest in Congolese art, its collection and public display has grown steadily since it was first institutionalised with the foundation of Belgium’s Royal Museum of Central Afr

This book is a history of village communities in the New Territories of Hong Kong, including those in the areas of Ha Tsuen, Hung Shui Kiu, and Sha Tin as well as those on the islands of Lamma, Ma Wan

Testimony to the emotional truth of their life together even in these increasingly trying times.The memoir Ordinary Days(《過平常日子》) by the scholar and critic Leo Ou-fan Lee(李歐梵) and his wife Esther

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.

Maid to Queer is the first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic

Fragmented Memories and Screening Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution argues that films and TV dramas about the Cultural Revolution made after China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 tend to represent

Standing close together in a compound on a hillside above Victoria Harbour, the Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Gaol were a bastion of British colonial power, a symbol of secur

Proportionality is a German, and thus continental European, concept in public law that is applied by both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtH

Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 sheds new light on the history of charity among Chinese overseas and its place in the history of charity in China and in the wider history

Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social en

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, especia

The theoretical healthy school framework outlined in the main text by Dr Robin Cheung, a seasoned scholar-practitioner in the field of school health promotion, is complemented by success stories writt

The JINTIAN [今天] series of contemporary literature features new and innovative writing from mainland China and abroad. Titles in the series are edited by Bei Dao, Lydia H. Liu, and Christopher Mattiso

A “concise encyclopaedia” of Hong Kong in the Belt and Road. With the emergence of the Belt and Road boom have come many related research papers, but few have addressed Hong Kong’s role and opportunit

Paul A. Van Dyke’s new book, Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842, authoritatively corrects misconceptions about how the Qing government treated foreigners when it

The First Estates shows the impact on Hong Kong’s urban history of Fairview Park and Hong Lok Yuen, the earliest examples of private estates provided in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Completed in

Known primarily for his landscapes, Chak paints the forms of the natural world in abstract and poetic ways. After showing internationally―having lived in Japan and the USA for several decades―Chak: La

In Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities, John Wei brings light to the germination and movements of queer cultures and social practices in today’s China and Sinophone Asia. While many scholars attribu

The JINTIAN [今天] series of contemporary literature features new and innovative writing from mainland China and abroad. Titles in the series are edited by Bei Dao, Lydia H. Liu, and Christopher Mattiso

Medical Negligence in Hong Kong and How to Avoid It provides essential information concerning the potential legal liabilities that medical professionals face when they treat patients. An easy-to-read

Although the official propaganda surrounding the drug detainees in China is that of helping, educating, and saving them from their drug habits and the drug dealers who lure them into drug abuse, it is

China has traveled a unique road to reach its present economic significance in the world with corporate governance central to political and economic policy. In Understanding Corporate Governance in Ch