East Asian Languages and Cultures

Permanent link for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/3088

Browse

Browsing East Asian Languages and Cultures by Type "Book review"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Reviewed Work: Hok-lam Chan, Ming Taizu (r. 1368-98) and the Foundation of the Ming Dynasty in China
    (China Review International, 2012) Brose, Michael C.
    This variorum collection of eight articles written by Hok-lam Chan, all focused on Zhu Yuanzhang and the early years of the dynasty he founded, comes to us in the same year as his passing. For anyone interested in the Ming dynasty, this will be an important collection of seminal works. One of the great assets of these Variorum Collected Studies volumes is that they bring together articles that may be difficult to obtain or little known outside of specialist circles. This volume is particularly helpful since it selects some of the most outstanding studies by Hok-lam Chan on the focused period of the early Ming. This is important because Hok-lam Chan’s erudition extended well beyond the Ming, and he was prodigious in his writing. Hok-lam Chan began his professional work of some forty-four years researching the non-Han conquest dynasties Jin and Yuan, only later moving into the Ming era. A brief scan through a recently published bibliography of Chan’s work indicates his catholic interests and enormous productivity; he authored some nine monographs and collections and ninety essays and articles in Chinese. His English-language contributions were equally prolific with twelve monographs or collections and fifty-eight essays and articles.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Reviewed Work: The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World
    (Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, 2007) Brose, Michael C.
    One of the most interesting but, until now, least-studied regional empires in pre-Mongol Central Asia was that created by the Qara Khitai. It was truly an empire "in the middle." Located in one of the most remote regions of Eurasia, between Lakes Balqash and Issyk Ku! in present-day Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, the Qara Khitai governed a highly disparate group of peoples and client states that shared no common language, religion, or culture. They created an empire that differed considerably from neighboring sedentary or nomadic empires and was known by at least two quite different names, Qara Khitai and Western Liao.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Reviewed Work: Twentieth Century China: An Annotated Bibliography of Reference Works in Chinese, Japanese, and Western Languages: Subjects
    (China Review International, 2004) Brose, Michael C.
    Anyone who has tried to find a comprehensive list of reference works on any aspect of modern China knows just how piecemeal, frustrating, and time-consuming the process can be. James Cole is attempting to ease the process somewhat, for scholars and librarians, by compiling a bibliography of reference works published mainly during the thirty-year period from 1964-1994. Now that the first section, organized by subject headings, has been published, we can appreciate the utility and monumental scope of his work. This first section contains some 12 , 200 entries, arranged alphabetically by title within subject headings, ranging from "Abbreviations" to "Youth and Youth Movements" (there are approximately four hundred subject headings), that describe reference works on modern China in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages. This is the first of an eventual three-part bibliography; section 2 will be organized by "Persons" and section 3 by "Places."
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Reviewed Work: Yunnan: Periphery or Center of an International Network?
    (China Review International, 2010) Brose, Michael C.
    For those of us whose work focuses on Yunnan, there is often a sense of the liminal that seems to be a part of the territory. It is a given that Yunnan’s historic, geographic, and social landscape is heavily textured and not easy to navigate. And while contemporary state narratives make it clear that Yunnan is part of China, this is less clear once one attempts to find one’s way over and through that historic, geographic, and social terrain. Bin Yang’s energetic new book provides us with maps that make sense of Yunnan from these perspectives, and it should be read by anyone interested in this fascinating province.