History has many untold stories. In Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes the author provides glimpses into China's hidden past through the native's point of view. Rather than simply writing about ordinary people, this book is written from the perspective of ordinary people, how they told their own stories about themselves, their communities, and their pasts. The author examines historical consciousness as revealed in people's everyday lives and as expressed through customary rituals, sociocultural conventions, language, and the complex symbolism of common human experiences. The focus is on ethnic groups and individuals who have been routinely discriminated against in mainstream society and treated by officials as rogues and criminals. They were denizens of the underworld of "rivers and lakes" (jianghu), a sociocultural category that includes bandits, sorcerers, conmen, and prostitutes. To get at their silent history the author spent decades conducting field research in rural areas of southern China, collecting rarely used unconventional sources-folklore, legends, myths, rumors, and hearsay-that reveal nuggets of new information and insights not found in the conventional sources in libraries and archives. This book challenges many commonplace assumptions about how academics write history by offering alternative possibilities for China's past.

The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810 exposes readers to the little-known history of Chinese piracy in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries through a short narrative and selection of documentary evidence. In this three-hundred-year period, Chinese piracy was unsurpassed in size and scope anywhere else in the world. The book includes a carefully selected and wide range of Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese sources-some translated for the first time-to illustrate the complexity and variety of piratical activities in Asian waters. These documents include archival criminal cases and depositions of pirates and victims, government reports and proclamations, memoirs of coastal residents and pirate captives, and written and oral folklore handed down for generations. The book also illuminates the important role that pirates played in the political, economic, social, and cultural transformations of early modern China and the world. An historical perspective provides an important vantage point to understand piracy as a recurring cyclical phenomenon inseparably connected with the past.

The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810 exposes readers to the little-known history of Chinese piracy in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries through a short narrative and selection of documentary evidence. In this three-hundred-year period, Chinese piracy was unsurpassed in size and scope anywhere else in the world. The book includes a carefully selected and wide range of Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese sources--some translated for the first time--to illustrate the complexity and variety of piratical activities in Asian waters. These documents include archival criminal cases and depositions of pirates and victims, government reports and proclamations, memoirs of coastal residents and pirate captives, and written and oral folklore handed down for generations. The book also illuminates the important role that pirates played in the political, economic, social, and cultural transformations of early modern China and the world. An historical perspective provides an important vantage point to understand piracy as a recurring cyclical phenomenon inseparably connected with the past.

History has many untold stories. In Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes the author provides glimpses into China's hidden past through the native's point of view. Rather than simply writing about ordinary people, this book is written from the perspective of ordinary people, how they told their own stories about themselves, their communities, and their pasts. The author examines historical consciousness as revealed in people's everyday lives and as expressed through customary rituals, sociocultural conventions, language, and the complex symbolism of common human experiences. The focus is on ethnic groups and individuals who have been routinely discriminated against in mainstream society and treated by officials as rogues and criminals. They were denizens of the underworld of "rivers and lakes" (jianghu), a sociocultural category that includes bandits, sorcerers, conmen, and prostitutes. To get at their silent history the author spent decades conducting field research in rural areas of southern China, collecting rarely used unconventional sources-folklore, legends, myths, rumors, and hearsay-that reveal nuggets of new information and insights not found in the conventional sources in libraries and archives. This book challenges many commonplace assumptions about how academics write history by offering alternative possibilities for China's past.

A comprehensive treatment for implementing Statistical Process Control (SPC) in the food industry This book provides managers, engineers, and practitioners with an overview of necessary and relevant tools of Statistical Process Control, a roadmap for their implementation, the importance of engagement and teamwork, SPC leadership, success factors of the readiness and implementation, and some of the key lessons learned from a number of food companies. Illustrated with numerous examples from global real-world case studies, this book demonstrates the power of various SPC tools in a comprehensive manner. The final part of the book highlights the critical challenges encountered while implementing SPC in the food industry globally. Statistical Process Control for the Food Industry: A Guide for Practitioners and Managers explores the opportunities to deliver customized SPC training programs for local food companies. It offers insightful chapter covering everything from the philosophy and fundamentals of quality control in the food industry all the way up to case studies of SPC application in the food industry on both the quality and safety aspect, making it an excellent "cookbook" for the managers in the food industry to assess and initiating the SPC application in their respective companies. Covers concise and clear guidelines for the application of SPC tools in any food companies' environment Provides appropriate guidelines showing the organizational readiness level before the food companies adopt SPC Explicitly comments on success factors, motivations, and challenges in the food industry Addresses quality and safety issues in the food industry Presents numerous, global, real-world case studies of SPC in the food industry Statistical Process Control for the Food Industry: A Guide for Practitioners and Managers can be used to train upper middle and senior managers in improving food quality and reducing food waste using SPC as one of the core techniques. It's also an excellent book for graduate students of food engineering, food quality management and/or food technology, and process management.

The basic measurements in ophthalmology included here are described fitting different clinical situations. Simple diagrams which can be easily remembered and reproduced are included. This book can be used as a reference book for all ophthalmologists in their learning and teaching purposes and also in clinical practice.

Rook is a student who encountered a group of aliens. After convincing that they weren't a threat, they managed to convince him to undergo several advancements. These installments would heighten his abilities and attributes. Once he was told that his world was in danger and that these test would help prevent the crisis, he agreed to proceed with their plans. Months have gone by since he started these advancements with nothing to show for it or any other information to follow. Until one day during school, Rook goes berserk. The aliens soon realize that he is no longer in their control and is on a rampage. As they chase him down to figure out why he suddenly snapped, they soon discover that he is carrying out his own mission. Can they stop a weapon they themselves created, or will Rook's rage burn them?

A student named Kane discovers something powerful within him. It is a spiritual element known as a Mes Core. However, finding this out comes with bad news. There are beings called Mes that are escaping his Core. They seek to free themselves from Kane, mainly by ending his life. Kane finds himself fighting for his life as he tries to regain control of his Core. With the help of his love interest, Kiy, he strives to protect not only himself, but all those that are around him. The struggle for freedom weighs heavy on his shoulders. Can Kane regain control of his Core, or will his Mes become whole, setting their plans to destroy everything in their path.

A three-thousand-year old war between two distant planets has found a new battle ground: Earth. Shaylae Lucero, a beautiful fourteen-year-old Navajo girl, who has been isolated from her culture, finds herself thrust into the middle of this war. The Dark Ones, ancient enemies of the Navajo, have found her and have mistaken her for their mortal enemy, Changing Woman, the Sacred Mother of the Navajo. During Shaylae's Kinaalda, the puberty ceremony for Navajo girls, Changing Woman visits her and charges her with resolving this conflict. Initially reluctant to accept this mission, she soon realizes that she has no choice-the Dark Ones have kidnapped her parents, top researchers in the area of hyperspace. Before destroying Earth, the Dark Ones first want access to this new technology. With the help of her two friends, Ayanna and Micah, she learns of the richness of her heritage and discovers she has access to the ancient powers of the Navajo. Using these new-found powers, twice she is able to thwart the Dark Ones efforts to capture her, but is she ready for the final, cataclysmic conflict aboard their interstellar ship?

Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs is a tightly-focused collection of studies that explores how Qing governing institutions and strategies worked in actual practice to address the practical problems and needs of a regionally diverse and culturally complex empire from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. It highlights the Qing regime's ability to accommodate an astonishing variety of local governing environments in the management of short-term contingent crises and long-term evolutionary problems caused by changes in the social-economic fabric of Greater China during the Qing period. It argues that the Qing state should be viewed as a system of indirect rule because of its accommodative strategies of governance and its reliance on sub- and extra-bureaucratic power groups at the local level. Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs makes an important contribution to our understanding of the practical operation of Qing government, and its readability, thematic coherence, and inclusion of professionally-drawn maps and enhanced Chinese woodblock illustrations make this work attractive and accessible to students of late imperial China as well as Qing specialists.

Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs is a tightly-focused collection of studies that explores how Qing governing institutions and strategies worked in actual practice to address the practical problems and needs of a regionally diverse and culturally complex empire from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. It highlights the Qing regime's ability to accommodate an astonishing variety of local governing environments in the management of short-term contingent crises and long-term evolutionary problems caused by changes in the social-economic fabric of Greater China during the Qing period. It argues that the Qing state should be viewed as a system of indirect rule because of its accommodative strategies of governance and its reliance on sub- and extra-bureaucratic power groups at the local level. Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs makes an important contribution to our understanding of the practical operation of Qing government, and its readability, thematic coherence, and inclusion of professionally-drawn maps and enhanced Chinese woodblock illustrations make this work attractive and accessible to students of late imperial China as well as Qing specialists.

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime polities; they competed and cooperated with one another and with powerful political and economic units, such as the Manchu Qing, Tokugawa Japan, the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, and the Dutch East India Company. Maritime East Asia was a contested and contradictory place, subject to multiple legal, political, and religious jurisdictions, and a dizzying diversity of cultures and ethnicities, with dozens of major languages and countless dialects. Informal networks based on kinship ties or patron-client relations coexisted uneasily with formal governmental structures and bureaucratized merchant organizations. Subsistence-based trade and plunder by destitute fishermen complemented the grand dreams of sea-lords, profit-maximizing entrepreneurs, and imperial contenders. Despite their shifting identities, East Asia's mariners sought to anchor their activities to stable legitimacies and diplomatic traditions found outside the system, but outsiders, even those armed with the latest military technology, could never fully impose their values or plans on these often mercurial agents. With its multilateral perspective of a world in flux, this volume offers fresh, wide-ranging narratives of the "rise of the West" or "the Great Divergence." European mariners, who have often been considered catalysts of globalization, were certainly not the most important actors in East and Southeast Asia. China's maritime traders carried more in volume and value than any other nation, and the China Seas were key to forging the connections of early globalization-as significant as the Atlantic World and the Indian Ocean basin. Today, as a resurgent China begins to assert its status as a maritime power, it is important to understand the deep history of maritime East Asia.