Böcker utgivna av University of Washington Press

Written around 1660, the unique Chinese short story collection Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (Doupeng xianhua), by the author known only as Aina the Layman, uses the seemingly innocuous setting of neighbors swapping yarns on hot summer days under a shady arbor to create a series of stories that embody deep disillusionment with traditional values. The tales, ostensibly told by different narrators, parody heroic legends and explore issues that contributed to the fall of the Ming dynasty a couple of decades before this collection was written, including self-centeredness and social violence. These stories speak to all troubled times, demanding that readers confront the pretense that may lurk behind moralistic stances.Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor presents all twelve stories in English translation along with notes from the original commentator, as well as a helpful introduction and analysis of individual stories.

Wilt L. Idema is professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Harvard University. He is the translator of Heroines of Jiangyong: Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women¿s Script and Meng Jiangnu Brings Down the Great Wall: Ten Versions of a Chinese Legend, and coauthor of The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China.

In 1702, the second emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered construction of a new summer palace in Rehe (now Chengde, Hebei) to support his annual tours north among the court¿s Inner Mongolian allies. The Mountain Estate to Escape the Heat (Bishu Shanzhuang) was strategically located at the node of mountain ¿veins¿ through which the Qing empire¿s geomantic energy was said to flow. At this site, from late spring through early autumn, the Kangxi emperor presided over rituals of intimacy and exchange that celebrated his rule: garden tours, banquets, entertainments, and gift giving.Stephen Whiteman draws on resources and methods from art and architectural history, garden and landscape history, early modern global history, and historical geography to reconstruct the Mountain Estate as it evolved under Kangxi, illustrating the importance of landscape as a medium for ideological expression during the early Qing and in the early modern world more broadly. Examination of paintings, prints, historical maps, newly created maps informed by GIS-based research, and personal accounts reveals the significance of geographic space and its representation in the negotiation of Qing imperial ideology. The first monograph in any language to focus solely on the art and architecture of the Kangxi court, Where Dragon Veins Meet illuminates the court¿s production and deployment of landscape as a reflection of contemporary concerns and offers new insight into the sources and forms of Qing power through material expressions.Art History Publication Initiative

Elissa Washuta (Cowlitz) is assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University. Theresa Warburton is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in American studies and English at Brown University and assistant professor of English at Western Washington University.

Frederick L. Brown holds a PhD in history from the University of Washington and works on a contract basis as a historian for the National Park Service.

Mark Bender is professor of East Asian languages and literatures at Ohio State University. He is the author of Plum and Bamboo: China¿s Suzhou Chantefable Tradition and translator of Butterfly Mother: Miao (Hmong) Creation Epics from Guizhou, China. Aku Wuwu is a well-known poet and professor and associate dean of the College of Yi Studies, Southwest Nationalities University, Chengdu. Jjivot Zopqu is a local tradition-bearer in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan.

Charles R. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the University of Wisconsin¿Madison. Jungwon Kim is King Sejong Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Hwasook Nam is an independent scholar who previously served as the James B. Palais Endowed Associate Professor at the University of Washington. Serk-Bae Suh is associate professor of Korean studies at the University of California, Irvine. The other contributors are Jung-hwan Cheon, Ho Kim, Sun-Chul Kim, Yerim Kim, George Kallander, Franklin Rausch, Youngju Ryu, and Young Chae Seo.

John Stratton Hawley is Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Christian Lee Novetzke is professor of South Asian studies and comparative religion at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. He is the author of The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India. Swapna Sharma is senior lecturer in Hindi at Yale University. The contributors are Gil Ben-Herut, Divya Cherian, John E. Cort, Richard H. Davis, Shrivatsa Goswami, Phyllis Granoff, Eben Graves, David L. Haberman, Manpreet Kaur, Aditi Natasha Kini, Joel Lee, Kiyokazu Okita, Heidi Pauwels, Karen Pechilis, William R. Pinch, and Tyler Williams.

A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLEThe White Lotus War (1796¿1804) in central China marked the end of the Qing dynasty¿s golden age and the fatal weakening of the imperial system itself. What started as a local rebellion grew into a serious political crisis, as the central government was no longer able to operate its military machine.Yingcong Dai¿s comprehensive investigation reveals that the White Lotus rebels would have remained a relatively minor threat, if not for the Qing¿s ill-managed response. Dai shows that the officials in charge of the suppression campaign were half-hearted about the fight and took advantage of the campaign to pursue personal gains. She challenges assumptions that the Qing relied upon local militias to exterminate the rebels, showing instead that the hiring of civilians became a pretext for misappropriation of war funds, resulting in the devastatingly high cost of the war. The mishandled demilitarization of the militiamen prolonged the hostilities when many of the dismissed troops turned into rebels themselves. The war¿s long-term impact presaged the beginning of the disintegration of the Qing in the mid-nineteenth century and eruptions of the Taiping Rebellion and other uprisings.The White Lotus War will interest students and scholars of late imperial and modern Chinese history, as well as history buffs interested in the warfare of the early modern world.

Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian Art at the University of California, Berkeley.