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