China

The acclaimed novel of love and resistance during late 1930s China by Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s. A legend in China, where it won major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new--and unforgettable.

The brutal realities of the dark places Su Tong depicts in this collection of novellas set in 1930s provincial China -- worlds of prostitution, poverty, and drug addiction -- belie his prose of stunning and simplebeauty. The title novella, "Raise the Red Lantern," which became a critically acclaimed film, tells the story of Lotus, a young woman whose father's suicide forces her to become the concubine of a wealthy merchant. Crushed by loneliness, despair, and cruel treatment, Lotus finds her descent into insanity both a weapon and a refuge. "Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes" is an account of a family's struggles during one momentous year; plagued by disease, death, and the shady promise of life in a larger town, the family slowly disintegrates. Finally, "Opium Family" details the last years of a landowning clan whose demise is brought about by corruption, lust, and treachery -- fruits of the insidious crop they harvest.

In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian (pronounced gow shing-jen) was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death.  But six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer -- he had won "a reprieve from death" and had been thrown back into the world of the living.  Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing.  He traveled to the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China and from there back to the east coast, a journey of fifteen thousand kilometers over a period of five months.  The results of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain. A bold, lyrical, prodigious novel, Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor.  Interwoven with the myriad of stories and countless memorable characters -- from venerable Daosit masters and Buddhist nuns to mythical Wild Men, deadly Qichun snakes, and farting buses -- is the narrator's poignant inner journey and search for freedom. Fleeing the social conformity required by the Communist government, he wanders deep into the regions of the Qiang, Miago, and Yi peoples located on the fringes of Han Chinese civilization and discovers a plethora of different traditions, history, legends, folk songs, and landscapes. Slowly, with the help of memory, imagination, and sensory experience, he reconstructs his personal past. He laments the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the ecology -- both human and physical -- of China. And in a polyphony of narrating selves -- the narrator's "I" spawns a "you," a "she," and a "he," each with a distinct perspective and voice -- the novel delights in the freedom of the imagination to expand the notion of the individual self. Storytelling saves the narrator from a deep loneliness that is part of the human condition. His search for meaning -- in life, in the journey -- turns up the possibility that there may be no meaning. The elusive Lingshan ("Soul Mountain"), which becomes the object of his quest, never yields up its secrets, but the journey is a rich, strange, provocative, and rewarding one. Soul Mountain is a novel of immense wisdom and profound beauty.

In a sweeping, erotically charged story that moves gracefully from the intimately personal to the great stage of world history, Anchee Min renders a powerful tale of passion, betrayal, and survival and creates a finely nuanced and always ambiguous portrait of one of the most fascinating, and vilified, women of the twentieth century. Madame Mao is almost universally known as the "white-boned demon" -- ambitious, vindictive, and cruel -- whose bid to succeed her husband led to the death of millions. But Min's story begins with a young girl named Yunhe, the unwanted daughter of a concubine who ignored her mother's pleas and refused to have her feet bound. It was the first act of rebellion for this headstrong, beautiful, and charismatic girl. She later fled the miseries of her family life, first to a provincial opera troupe, then to Shanghai and fame as an actress, and finally to the arid, mountainous regions of Yenan, where she fell in love with and married Mao Zedong. The great revolutionary leader proved to be an inattentive husband with a voracious appetite for infidelity, but the couple stayed together through the Communist victory, the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Min uses the facts of history and her lush, penetrating psychological imagination to take us beyond the myth of the person who so greatly influenced an entire generation of Chinese. The result is a complex portrait of a woman who railed against the confines of her culture, whose deep-seated insecurities propelled her to reinvent herself constantly, and whose ambition was matched only by her ferocious, never-to-be-fulfilled need to be loved. A daring narrative with all the compressed drama and high lyrical poetry of great opera, BECOMING MADAME MAO is the most ambitious and provocative work of Anchee Min's career.

The Columbia History of Chinese Literature is a comprehensive yet portable guide to China's vast literary traditions. Stretching from earliest times to the present, the text features original contributions by leading specialists working in all genres and periods. Chapters cover poetry, prose, fiction, and drama, and consider such contextual subjects as popular culture, the impact of religion, the role of women, and China's relationship with non-Sinitic languages and peoples. Opening with a major section on the linguistic and intellectual foundations of Chinese literature, the anthology traces the development of forms and movements over time, along with critical trends, and pays particular attention to the premodern canon.

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature has long been a definitive resource for Chinese literature in translation, offering a complete overview of twentieth-century writing from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and making inroads into the twenty-first century as well. In this new edition Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt have selected fresh works from familiar authors and have augmented the collection with poetry, stories from the colonial period in Taiwan, literature by Tibetan authors, samplings from the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, stories by post-Mao authors Wang Anyi and Gao Xingjian, literature with a homosexual theme, and examples from the modern "cruel youth" movement. Lau and Goldblatt have also updated their notes and their biographies of featured writers and poets. Now fully up to date, this critical resource more than ever provides readers with a thorough introduction to Chinese society and culture.

The Chinese Art Bookis a beautifully presented, authoritative and unprecedented overview of Chinese art. The book examines the art of the oldest continuous civilization on Earth through 300 works, from the (earliest dynasties) Neolithic period to the new generation of contemporary artists enlivening the global art world today. Every form of Chinese visual art is featured -including painting, calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics, figurines, jades, bronzes, gold and silver, photography, video, installation and performance art. Concise descriptive essays place each work in context, and cross-references lead the reader on a fascinating journey through Chinese art history. The Chinese Art Bookfeatures an introductory essay by Colin Mackenzie, Senior Curator of Chinese Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, an accessible summary of Chinese political and cultural history, a comprehensive glossary defining technical terms, and an illustrated timeline. Full of surprises for the reader new to Chinese art as well as for specialists, the book breaks new ground by pairing works that speak to one another in unexpected ways, enlightening historical, stylistic and cultural connections. Currently, the market for Chinese art is one of the hottest and fastest growing in the world. The Chinese Art Bookis the book that the global art community has been waiting for.

Chinese Artis a guide to the meanings behind the hundreds of common motifs and symbols found in all forms of Chinese art. A thorough examination of the diverse usage of natural symbols, colors, numbers, inanimate items and personages,Chinese Artcommunicates the deeper messages to be found in Chinese decorative art. It is an excellent reference for collectors, museum-goers and students of Chinese art, culture and history.

As his personal circumstances move in constant flux, Ai Weiwei remains a cultural magnet. Renowned for his political activism and social media activity almost as much as for his social interventions, contemporary approach to the readymade, and knowledge of Chinese traditional crafts, Ai's fame extends throughout and beyond the art world. Drawn from TASCHEN's limited Collector's Edition, this monograph explores each of Ai's career phases up until his release from Chinese custody. It features extensive visual material to trace Ai's development from his early New York days right through to his recent practice. Focus moments include his international breakthrough in the early 2000s, his porcelain Sunflower Seeds at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, his response to the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and his police detention in 2011. With behind-the-scenes studio pictures, production shots, and numerous statements derived from exclusive interviews with Ai, we gain privileged access to the artist's process, influences, and importance. The book includes texts from Uli Sigg, Ai's longtime friend and former Swiss ambassador to China; Roger M. Buergel, who curated the 2007 documenta and hosted the artist's Fairytale piece; and experts on Chinese culture and politics: Carlos Rojas, William A. Callahan, and James J. Lally.

The first and only comprehensive survey of contemporary Chinese art, one of the most vital and expanding sectors of the global art world today From its underground genesis during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), contemporary Chinese art has become a dynamic and hugely influential force in a globalized art world. In this first major introduction to the topic, Wu Hung provides an accessible, focused, and much-needed narrative of the development of Chinese art across all media from the 1970s to the 2000s, a time span characterized by radical social, political, and economic change in China. The book is a richly illustrated and easy-to-navigate chronological survey that considers contemporary Chinese art both in the context of China's history and in a global arena. Wu Hung explores the emergence of contemporary art--as opposed to officially sanctioned art--in the public sphere after the Cultural Revolution; the mobilization by young artists and critics of a nationwide avant-garde movement in the mid-1980s; the re-emphasis on individual creativity in the late 1980s and the heightened spirit of experimentation of the 1990s; and the more recent identification of Chinese artists, such as Ai Weiwei, as global citizens who create works for an international audience.