Chinese Culture

Chinese popular culture is extremely diverse and richly complex. The 18 chapters in this reference provide the most comprehensive and current bibliographical and descriptive study of Chinese popular culture in English. Each chapter, written by an expert contributor, provides a thorough survey of research materials and an overview of the most significant points of critical concern. The extensive closing bibliography provides references for topics not treated in the volume.

The contributors re-assess assumptions about state power, and a divide between state and society, in traditional China. The general conclusion is that the state was only one actor in a culture that both elites and commoners could shape.

This volume provides an illustrated introduction to 7000 years of Chinese art - from Neolithic pottery and jade to contemporary video, installation and performance media.

Tea is one of the world's most popular beverages after water, and the birthplace of tea is China. Until the 1830s, China was the only producer of tea, and today it remains the world's greatest producer and consumer. Tea in China is a history of China's national drink, where it came from, how it was drunk, and the place it has occupied in Chinese society from prehistory to the present. Along the way, Evans looks at the myths surrounding the development of tea. The preferences of the various dynasties are examined, as are changes within the industry as well as the place of tea within Chinese society.

A growing interest in China's borderlands accelerated after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, which brought independence to new states like Kazakhastan as well as a new configuration of power to Central Eurasia. Despite renewed interest in the region and its peoples, information on the Kazakhs, and particularly on the Kazakhs living in China, has remained limited. This new study, based on Chinese publications and archival materials as well as on recent field-work, provides an up-to-date treatment of Kazakh history and culture, emphasizing the Kazakhs in twentieth century China and, in particular, their status today as one of China's minority nationalities.