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This collection of rare and vintage postcards offers a unique look
at a vanished China and its storied capital. Comprising 355
black-and-white and hand-tinted Beijing photography postcards that
span the period from the last years of Imperial China to the
Japanese invasion of 1937, it is a treasure trove for buffs of
Beijing history, collectors, Sinophiles, and anyone fascinated by
people and cultures from times past. Readers will enjoy the wide
selection of images showing different aspects of the life of old
Peking from the arrival of a camel train at a city gate to
hand-coloured views of the Forbidden City and an array of vendors,
street performers, officials, gentry, commoners, and foreign
tourists. Several chapters present the city's distinctive Beijing
architecture its walls and gates, towers, fountains, temples,
pagodas, memorial arches, and public or imperial buildings,
including the Summer and Winter Palaces and the Ming Tombs. Other
chapters of Chinese photography look at the Manchu rulers, street
life, the Legation Quarter and Western presence, and the Great
Wall. Included are some rare scenes depicting the aftermath of the
Boxer Rebellion and 1911 revolution Manchu fashion, colourful means
of transportation, and the coming of the railroad. Of particular
note are images of the Empress Dowager, the child emperor Puyi, and
other personalities at the Manchu Court. The book also includes
eight colour postcards of paintings by the famous artist Carl
Wuttke and rare cards showing etched drawings of the Old Summer
Palace now only a field of ruins. The author, who was born and
lived in China before 1949, has written an informative introduction
to each chapter as well as a general introduction to classical
Beijing. A foreword by historian and Beijing expert Susan Naquin
situates this collection at once as a precious record of old Peking
and a revealing snapshot of Western views of China in the first
golden age of tourism. Old Beijing: Postcards from the Imperial
City offers a visual time capsule of both Beijing's history and
traditional Chinese culture in a unique and revealing postcard
format.
The central character in Susan Naquin's extraordinary new book is
the city of Peking during the Ming and Qing periods. Using the
city's temples as her point of entry, Naquin carefully excavates
Peking's varied public arenas, the city's transformation over five
centuries, its human engagements, and its rich cultural imprint.
This study shows how modern Beijing's glittering image as China's
great and ancient capital came into being and reveals the shifting
identities of a much more complex past, one whose rich social and
cultural history Naquin splendidly evokes. Temples, by providing a
place where diverse groups could gather without the imprimatur of
family or state, made possible a surprising assortment of
community-building and identity-defining activities. By revealing
how religious establishments of all kinds were used for fairs,
markets, charity, tourism, politics, and leisured sociability,
Naquin shows their decisive impact on Peking and, at the same time,
illuminates their little-appreciated role in Chinese cities
generally. Lacking most of the conventional sources for urban
history, she has relied particularly on a trove of commemorative
inscriptions that express ideas about the relationship between
human beings and gods, about community service and public
responsibility, about remembering and being remembered. The result
is a book that will be essential reading in the field of Chinese
studies for years to come.
Until now, China has been scarcely represented in the burgeoning
comparative literature on pilgrimage. This volume remedies that
omission, discussing the interaction between pilgrims and sacred
sites from the tenth century to the present. From the perspectives
of literature, art, history, religion, politics, and anthropology,
the essays focus on China's most famous pilgrimage mountains as
well as lesser known sites.
During the eighteenth century, China's new Manchu rulers
consolidated their control of the largest empire China had ever
known. In this book Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski draw on the
most recent research to provide a unique overview and reevaluation
of the social history of China during this period--one of the most
dynamic periods in China's early modern era. "A lucid, original,
and scholarly summary of the social, economic, and demographic
history of China's last great period of glory. This will be an
important book for students of Chinese history."-Jonathan Spence,
Yale University "Engaging, complex, and elegantly written. . . .
Absorbing and valuable: a thorough, unique, and richly detailed
account of the social forms and cultural and religious life of the
people."-Choice "[An] interesting and well-informed survey of China
between about 1680 and 1820."-W.J.F. Jenner, Asian Affairs "I would
be a very odd scholar or general reader who could not derive profit
from reading this elegant and painstaking survey of the social,
cultural, and economic life of the Qing empire in its apparent
prime. . . . A superb survey which readers may absorb and
cherish."-Alexander Woodside, Pacific Affairs "A highly readable
synthesis of recent secondary literature on the subject."-William
S. Atwell, Journal of Asian Studies "Their coverage is
comprehensive and their writing is clear and lucid. reading this
book obtains one a very broad, yet penetrative, view of Chinese
society at the time."-Alan P.L. Liu, Asian Thought & Society
"The ground covered by this book is vast. . . . Its very breadth
conveys with great clarity the extent of current knowledge of
premodern China: it also serves as an excellent introduction to the
social history of the Qing dynasty."-Hugh D.R. Baker, China
Quarterly "This is a most challenging work and ambitious work. . .
. Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century give both the general
reader and also the historian who does not study China a tool for
grounding himself or herself in the basic patterns and trends that
could be found in eighteenth century China as well as in the
problems the specialists are now exploring. The book is also of
great value to students of traditional and modern China, for it
serves to synthesize much of the new literature on China in the
High Qing. Thus it serves the 'China hand' as a state of the field
essay that shows just where we are even as it suggests directions
for future research."-Murray A. Rubinstein, American Asian Review
"This excellent book provides an intelligent summary our rapidly
changing understanding of Chinese society in a crucial century of
political stability and economic and demographic expansion. Susan
Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski are distinguished contributors to the
field, energetically engaged in its multinational communication
networks."-John E. Wills, Jr., American Historical Review
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