Wen C. Fong established America's first program in East Asian art history at Princeton University, where he taught Chinese art from 1954 to 1999. During this time, he supervised more than thirty PhD students, most of whom have gone on to hold professorships or museum positions throughout the United States, East Asia, and Europe. This two-volume book honors Professor Fong's extraordinary half-century career at Princeton and the Metropolitan Museum of Art by gathering almost forty essays on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art history, written by his students and by some of his lifelong colleagues in this field of study. These full-length essays address a wide range of subjects, building bridges in many directions, from early jades and bronzes through traditional painting and prints, to photography, cinema, and modern museum practice. The diversity, depth, and originality of these essays make this work a monumental contribution to the study of the arts of East Asia.

The book includes an interview of Professor Fong, conducted by Jerome Silbergeld, and a bibliography of Fong's work.

Throughout the history of imperial China, the educated elite used various means to criticize government policies and actions. During the Song dynasty (960-1278), some members of this elite found an elegant and subtle means of dissent: landscape painting.

By examining literary archetypes, the titles of paintings, contemporary inscriptions, and the historical context, Alfreda Murck shows that certain paintings expressed strong political opinions--some transparent, others deliberately concealed. She argues that the coding of messages in seemingly innocuous paintings was an important factor in the growing respect for painting among the educated elite and that the capacity of painting's systems of reference to allow scholars to express dissent with impunity contributed to the art's vitality and longevity.

In August 1968, the Pakistani foreign minister visited Beijing and presented Chairman Mao Zedong with a crate of mangoes as a diplomatic gesture. The next day, Mao sent the mangoes to the "Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong though Propaganda Teams," who had been stationed at Quinghua University to put down warring factions of Red Guards ten days previously. The message of this gift was to dismiss the Student Red Guards, who had been leaders of the proletarian movement in China, and in their stead to install workers as the permanent guardians of China's education system. During the following weeks, the mangoes were distributed to several factories, where they were treated as though they were religious relics. The golden mango was thus a powerful emblem of the power and respect accorded to the proletariat under Mao's rule.
"Mao's Gold Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution "is the catalog for an exhibition of the same title at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, which explores the golden mangoes' reverberations throughout Chinese culture for years to come. Included texts focus on the historical narrative of the golden mangoes' rise to fame; first-person accounts of both students and factory workers; an examination the National Day Parade in 1968, which used the symbol of the mangoes prominently; a critical essay on the 1976 film "The Song of the Mango"; and an in-depth comparative study of working conditions in China from the late 1960s and today.