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The Construction of Space in Early China

2012-02-01 Religion
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Release : 2012-02-01
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 499/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Construction of Space in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book The Construction of Space in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis. This book was released on 2012-02-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend.

The Flood Myths of Early China

2012-02-01 Religion
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Release : 2012-02-01
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 227/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Flood Myths of Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book The Flood Myths of Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis. This book was released on 2012-02-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China. In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.

Social Memory and State Formation in Early China

2018-05-24 History
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Release : 2018-05-24
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 451/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Social Memory and State Formation in Early China by : Min Li

Download or read book Social Memory and State Formation in Early China written by Min Li. This book was released on 2018-05-24. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking book on the archaeology of power, knowledge, social memory, and the emergence of classical tradition in early China.

The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

2023 Cartography
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Release : 2023
Genre : Cartography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 461/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China by : Michelle H. Wang

Download or read book The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China written by Michelle H. Wang. This book was released on 2023. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of cartography in China. Its chief players are three maps found in tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and together constitute the entire known corpus of ancient Chinese maps (ditu). A millennium separates them from the next available map from 1136 CE. Most scholars study them through the lens of modern, empirical definitions of maps and their use. This book offers an alternative view by drawing on methods not just from cartography but from art history, archaeology, and religion. It argues that, as tomb objects, the maps were designed to be simultaneously functional for the living and the dead-that each map was drawn to serve navigational purposes of guiding the living from one town to another as well as to diagram ritual order, thereby taming the unknown territory of the dead. In contrast with traditional scholarship, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China proposes that ditu can "speak" through their forms. Departing from dominant theories of representation that forge a narrow path from form to meaning, the book braids together two main strands of argumentation to explore the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China"--

Chinese Urbanism: Urban Form And Life In The Tang-song Dynasties

2020-02-25 History
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Release : 2020-02-25
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 837/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Urbanism: Urban Form And Life In The Tang-song Dynasties by : Jing Xie

Download or read book Chinese Urbanism: Urban Form And Life In The Tang-song Dynasties written by Jing Xie. This book was released on 2020-02-25. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1990s, the urban landscape of China has witnessed revolutionary changes that are unrivalled in any country of the world throughout history. Rapid urbanization, facilitated by the modern planning mechanism for growth, provides a feast for property developers. Yet, associated urban problems such as housing affordability, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and environmental deterioration are aggravated. This book takes a historic approach to investigate the planning philosophy, urban form and life of the past. Through a detailed study of urban development from early times through the imperial period with a focus on the Tang-Song dynasties, this book attempts to articulate the good qualities of urban landscapes from the past that still have instructive value for modern practices. The focus on the Tang-Song period is not only because China was the most advanced civilization of its time, but also because it underwent a similar process of 'urbanization', evident by tremendous economic growth, a dramatic rise of urban population, and an extended building boom. Through evaluating the streets, city layout, public places, urban communities, houses and gardens, and using interdisciplinary research in urban planning, urban design, architecture, history, and cultural studies, this book asserts that the past is quintessentially important. The past not only truthfully records the course of social and cultural formation of urban community and its associated physical fabric, but also regulates the directions we may take in the future.

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