Books in the Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions series

A look at the life of Shen Pao-chen who devoted his life to building China's first modern naval dockyard and academy. His successes and failures shed new light on the story of China's efforts at modernisation.

This is the first full scholarly study of the Great Wall of China to appear in any language, and it challenges many deeply held ideas about Chinese history. Drawing both on primary sources and on the latest archaeology, the book first demonstrates that the standard account of the Great Wall is untrue and misleading and then presents a convincing new account. It begins by tracing the various walls and systems of frontier defences that existed in early Chinese history, and shows how the greatest of these achieved a mythical symbolic stature which long survived the Wall itself. A striking concluding chapter traces how the true history of the Wall was lost in the early twentieth century as it was gradually transformed into a Chinese national symbol explained through historical myth. The book is an important contribution to the history of China's defensive policy, and her ideological attitudes, and will be of interest both to students of Chinese history and of international relations in the pre-modern world.

A study of the early versions of the classic Chinese novel known to readers in English as Monkey. Dr Dudbridge examines a long tradition of earlier versions in narrative and dramatic form through which the great episodic cycle slowly took shape

The author explains both fluctuations in policy and discrepancies between plans and reality and examines the mechanisms of wage determination. In so doing, he makes it clear that even in a highly planned society there are some limits to what is possible in the regulation of wages and incomes.

Much scholarly work has been published on the Chinese medieval 'aristocracy', in Chinese, Japanese and Western languages. It is commonly accepted that the change from an aristocratic society to a 'meritocracy' was one of the turning points of Chinese history.

Originally published in 1972, this is a detailed examination of the policy of the People's Republic of China towards the overseas Chinese.

This book is a study of the poetry of Huang Zunxian, one of the most famous authors of late nineteenth-century China. The first part consists of a detailed biography outlining Huang's literary and political career; the second, of a critical discussion of Huang's poetry. The book concludes with a generous sampling of his poetry in translation.

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents the only surviving primary evidence of a widespread and flourishing world of popular entertainment during these centuries. The tales deal with both religious (mostly Buddhist) and secular themes, and make exciting and vivid reading.

Fu Ssu-nien, the Chinese scholar, educator, and political and social critic, was one of the most colorful and influential intellectual figures in twentieth-century China. Wang Fan-sen's biography of Fu's extraordinary life and contributions offers an in-depth look at his role in intellectual and educational development in modern China.

Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how Qing China's Manchu leaders - unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded - quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Thomas Buoye examines the impact of large-scale economic change on social conflict in eighteenth-century China. He draws upon a large body of documented violent property disputes to recreate the social tensions fostered by the growth of property rights in land, a population explosion, and the increasing strain on land and resources.

The remains of Tai Fu's lost collection Kuang-i chi ('The Great Book of Marvels') preserve three hundred short tales of encounters with the other world. This study develops a style of close reading through which those tales give access to the lives of individuals in eighth-century China.

Wong reveals the extent of Britain's reliance on the opium and tea trade with China, and argues that Victorian free trade ideology was a less decisive factor in the Arrow War (1856-60) than was Britain's economic struggle to support a vast colonial enterprise.

Tu Fu is, by universal consent, is the greatest poet of the Chinese tradition and the epitome of the Chinese moral conscience at its highest. Eva Shan Chou investigates the evolution of his stature as an icon, and provides translations of many poems, both well known and obscure.

Stone Lake is a translation and study of the poetry of Fan Chengda, one of the most famous Chinese poets. Along with translations of Fan Chengda's poetry, this 1992 book also contains a biography of the poet and a discussion of his relationship with poets of the generation before him, and discussion of the major themes of his work.

Professor Chou here offers a new perspective on the rise and fall of the Kung-an school as a key to understanding the development of Chinese literary criticism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His book focuses upon the literary theories of Yuan Hung-tao (1568-1610) and his two brothers.

This is a study of landholding, taxation and social structure in one county of central China that became famous in the Ming and Ch'ing periods for producing great officials and remarkable intellectual traditions. The primary aim of the author is to investigate the composition, organisation and economic basis of the local elite.

Community, Trade, and Networks traces the economic and demographic history of a corner of China's southeast coast from the third to the thirteenth century, investigating the relationship between changes in the agrarian and urban economies of the area and the expanding role of domestic and foreign trade.

This study offers an interpretation of the origins of the T'ang-Sung intellectual tradition.

One of the major eleventh-century Chinese philosophers, Chang Tsai helped to reinvigorate Confucian thought. This book analyses in depth Chang's views of man, his nature and endowments, the cosmos, heaven and earth, the problems of learning and self-cultivation, the ideal of the sage - and how that ideal might be attained.

Between 1937 and 1941, terrorist wars broke out between Nationalist secret agents and the assassins of the Japanese military authorities who occupied most of Shanghai. The release of secret Chinese police files exposes the inner workings of these groups and their links to the Green Gang for the first time.

This work is the first comprehensive study of law enforcement in traditional China. The depth and rigour to which the subject is treated makes it invaluable in the study of Chinese society or law and order.

This radical reinterpretation of the formative stages of Chinese culture and history traces the central role played by cosmology in the formation of China's early empires. It crosses the disciplines of history, social anthropology, archaeology and philosophy to illustrate how cosmological systems shaped political culture.

The author explains the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, and gives a clear, succinct account of the Lu-Wang and Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth.

Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, this book shows how the civil war of 1924 opened the way for radical nationalism, deeply affecting the Chinese economy, society, politics, and foreign relations, and ultimately Chinese feelings about what should be changed in their society.

Every general account of the development of Chinese thought makes mention of Tung Chung-shu (195-105 bce) as one of the pivotal philosophers of the Han. This book represents the most systematic account yet of Tung Chung-shu's importance in Chinese philosophy and religion.

This book describes how the Chinese government, between about 620 and 850, developed an official organization designed to select, process, and edit material for inclusion in official historical works eventually to be incorporated in an official history of the dynasty. There is no comparable work in any language, including Chinese.

The book is a literary study of one of the greatest of Chinese writers, Ou-yang Hsiu. He was a major writer in each of several genres: prose, poetry, rhapsodies, and tz'u 'songs'. The striking diversity of his work presents an opportunity to investigate how one man's literary talent is manifested in different genres.

This book provides an important contribution to the economic history of modern China. It examines the history of the coal mining industry - one of China's largest and most important - from the beginnings of modernisation around 1895 to the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

Buddhism Under the Tang is a history of the Buddhist Church during the T'ang dynasty (618-907), when Buddhist thought reached the pinnacle of its development.