The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

Talk Mandarin Today is a practical guide for learning and getting by in Mandarin Chinese for adult learners. With the busy reader in mind, each lesson works first to bring fast acquisition and build practical ability in speaking the language. By providing simple sentence structures and concise grammar notes, the book helps readers learn the language in a more intuitive way. Learners will build confidence fast in order to speak, to try, and to put what they have learned into practice.

There are thirty lessons in the book of which the contents are selected considering time, space and human activities. This book is sold with a CD.

Grotto Art of China: A Sourcebook traces the origins of this unique art form from the Indian subcontinent to its monumental flowering in China, offering a comprehensive look at the artistic, religious, and historical narratives of these sacred sites.

This volume brings together contributions from leading international scholars, providing systematic studies of major cave complexes—such as Dunhuang’s Mogao Grottoes, Yungang, Longmen, and Xiangtangshan—alongside lesser-known regional sites. Organized geographically, the book traces the evolution of cave art from its origins in early Indian Buddhist practice to its adaptation in China, where it became a medium for devotion, political authority, and cultural exchange. The book explores a range of topics, including how rulers like the Northern Wei and Tang dynasties sponsored colossal Buddha images, the distinctive artistic styles and techniques across regions like Xinjiang, Gansu, and Shandong, the role of caves in Buddhist worship, and the modern-day challenges of preservation and loss.
Rigorously researched and thoughtfully curated, Grotto Art of China serves as an indispensable reference for researchers, students, and travelers. It offers new insights into the spiritual, historical, and artistic dimensions of a tradition that bridged cultures, faiths, and empires.

In this book, Professor Fanny Cheung shares her inspiring journey as a psychologist, academic leader, and champion of gender equality. Growing up in a traditional Hong Kong family, she recognized early injustices against women and dedicated her life to change.
Pioneering gender studies in Asia and leading the Equal Opportunities Commission, she fought discrimination, domestic violence, and gender bias in policy and research. Her leadership reshaped academia and public policy through consensus-building and quiet determination, leaving a legacy of empowerment.
Blending personal memoir with social history, Cheung’s story is one of resilience, intellect, and unwavering commitment to justice. Her groundbreaking work in psychology and gender studies not only transformed Hong Kong but also resonated globally, inspiring future generations of women leaders. This memoir is a testament to the power of advocacy and the quiet strength of those who dare to make a difference.

Over a span of 260 years, from 630 to 894, Japanese embassies to Tang China (ken-Tō shi) played a vital role in importing Tang governance and culture to Japan, significantly shaping the political and cultural landscape of an emerging Japanese state with codes of law (ritsuryō). However, the seventeenth embassy during the Jōwa period, fraught with turmoil, marked the final mission to Tang China. Alongside disasters and significant loss of life during the voyage, mysteries persist around Vice-ambassador Ono no Takamura’s refusal to board the ship, the government's insistence on the mission, and the objectives behind dispatching this mission to China.

In this volume, Professor Saeki Arikiyo traces the journey from departure to return, focusing on the individuals involved and the prevailing trends of the era. Drawing upon a rich tapestry of historical sources, including records from Shoku Nihon kōki and the accompanying monk Ennin’s Nit-Tō guhō junrei kōki, Arikiyo delves into the arduous journey of this final mission and unravels the intricate motives of the embassy personnel and their encounters in Tang China, offering a comprehensive examination of a transformative chapter in ancient Japanese diplomatic history.

How have the sounds of China crossed borders, shaped by cultural, political, and technological forces? This volume traces Chinese music’s journey from 19th-century diasporas—driven by trade, migration, and imperialism—to today’s hyper-connected digital age, spanning locales from Japan and Jamaica to Italy and San Francisco. It examines how sound constructs identities, contests colonial and national power, and redefines cultural belonging across global contexts.
Structured into five sections (Asia, Maritime Worlds, Diaspora, Film, Media) and 17 case studies, the book explores the sonic dimension of China’s modern history and global presence. From Cantonese opera and Buddhist chants to propaganda records and classical repertoires, it analyzes how technologies like phonographs, radio, and cinema amplified sonic circulation, shaping social and cultural impacts of music worldwide. By weaving historical depth with global perspectives, the volume offers a comparative lens to understand the dynamic role of sound in China’s transnational interactions and cultural negotiation.

The Qing Dynasty of China was perceived as mysterious and beautiful in the eyes of Westerners. From the magnificent pleasure boats on the Pearl River to women with bound feet, all these sparked great curiosity among Europeans and Americans. These fantasies about China created a lucrative market for export paintings. Pith paper paintings, which adopted Western painting techniques, were prevalent in Guangzhou during the late Qing period in the 19th century. Due to their Chinese themes, affordable prices and portability, these paintings became popular souvenirs among European and American traders, collectors, and sailors residing at the port. These small pith paper paintings not only helped bridge the gap of mutual understanding between the East and the West, but also reflected the Westerners’ romantic imagination of this exotic land.
This album showcases the pith paper paintings collected by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library. Created in 19th-century Guangzhou, these artworks vividly depict daily life scenes of that era. After almost two centuries, these beautiful yet fragile “postcards” have returned to their place of origin. Despite the changes over time, the rich social landscape of China from a century ago is preserved through these delicate pith paper paintings, still radiating with vibrant colours before us.

This appealingly illustrated book is the second volume of Botanical Illustrated Guide to Hong Kong Native Plants. It presents a meticulously curated collection of 20 rare and endangered native plant species found in Hong Kong, featuring scientific, detailed pen-and-ink illustrations and morphological descriptions. This volume introduces a new section showcasing ‘Scanning Electron Microscope Images’ that reveals the intricate beauty of pollen and spores.
This guide provides essential reference materials for species authentication and is of particular significance for plant preservation efforts in Hong Kong.

The development of Western medicine in Hong Kong to its current sophisticated state over more than 150 years is a fascinating story. And this book tells the above history from a special perspective—the personalities responsible for this remarkable achievement.
These individuals, spanning over a period of over 150 years, comprised doctors in government public medical and health services who advocated new initiatives and laid the infrastructure; those who established health policies, and moved the health system forward; the medical educators who trained the medical workforce and generated new medical knowledge through their research; practising doctors, who not only delivered medical care but also offered their free services in education and social welfare; and pioneer female doctors before and after World War II who struggled their ways to the medical world and shined on their own specialties. The story of each doctor in this book is narrated in the context of the complex political, social, and economic backdrop of his/her time.
While these doctors from diverse backgrounds lived in different eras and engaged in different branches of medicine, they were strikingly similar in several aspects: their dedication to serving the community and their tireless labor to achieve their aim at times under adverse conditions, leaving their mark in the history of medicine in Hong Kong.

After her celebrated The Teddy Bear Chronicles, Xi Xi turns her creative vision towards the world of the primate kingdom. At the age of 73, Xi Xi traveled extensively across Asia, from tropical forests to conservation centers, immersing herself in the natural world of apes and monkeys.
Xi Xi then documented 51 endearing ape and monkey puppets that she had sewn, weaving them into a series of insightful dialogues with her friend, the Hong Kong writer Ho Fuk Yan. These discussions cover the depiction of apes and monkeys in Chinese and Western literature, painting, drama, and film, as well as the close relationship between humans and their primate relatives. Xi Xi’s own words, imbued with a profound empathy, reveal the heart of her work: “If there is a common theme to our conversation, it is to respect life and speak for those lives that have been discriminated against in the history of human development, and apes are the starting point for this.”

This edited volume presents a multidisciplinary exploration of Chinese identity, bringing together contributions from philosophers, historians, and legal theorists. The book examines the question of what it means to be, or to become, Chinese, offering a rich collection of perspectives that span both historical and contemporary contexts. Through a series of thought-provoking chapters, the authors explore the complexities of “Chineseness,” shedding light on its relational and multifaceted nature.

Key themes addressed include the importance of a relational worldview that underpins Chinese philosophy and social life, the historical evolution of Chinese identity, and the moral obligations associated with family, nation, and global responsibility. The book also explores the legal dimensions of Chinese identity, emphasizing the role of legal ties that provide fair treatment to all. Taken together, these diverse perspectives provide readers with a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Chinese identity, making the volume an essential resource for scholars and students of Chinese studies, philosophy, history, sociology and law.

Yuan Haowen (1190–1257) is one of the greatest Chinese poets of the past eight hundred years. He is especially famous for his poems lamenting the death and disorder that accompanied the decline, fall, and aftermath of the Jin dynasty, when the Mongols took over North China. Reading Yuan’s poems, one feels his intense pain at the demise of the dynasty and his deeply felt need to preserve the historical and cultural record of civilization as he knew it. The poems are distinguished by breadth of learning, linguistic creativity, and allusive depth. They also reveal an abiding sense of irony, and occasional self-directed wry humor.

John Timothy Wixted’s treatment of 150 of Yuan Haowen’s poems distills available scholarship on the poet in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages. The poems—lucidly introduced, interpreted, and explicated—are presented in romanization and translation as well as in the original.

This volume is a translated and edited collection of studies on the Shi ji (Records of the Historian) by Sima Qian, authored by the prestigious Japanese sinologist Miyazaki Ichisada. Providing a pathbreaking analysis of the structure and formation of the Shi ji, it serves not only as an excellent introduction to Sima Qian’s masterpiece but also offers historiographical and methodological insights that will stimulate further debate and research.
Miyazaki presents fascinating evidence of the role played by narrative fiction and drama in Sima Qian’s recreation of the entire length and breadth of Chinese history right up to his own time. Sima Qian created the mold for writing comprehensive histories in China, making an understanding of his text utterly essential for grasping the subsequent tradition of historical writing. This volume offers readers valuable insights into how Sima Qian constructed his seminal work.

How did lay people in old China save their lives when dealing with acute or chronic health issues? Conventional medicine was costly and might not have been an option for many. Instead, people in villages and towns relied on remedies drawn from a woodblock-printed illustrated booklet called the Seventy-Two Therapies, first published in 1847.

The goal of this book is to foster an appreciation of China’s long tradition of folk remedies. Each folk remedy is illustrated by a page from the circa 1860s woodblock edition of the Seventy-Two Therapies which the author used for translation. He also added a historical and interpretive analysis to expand on each therapy and to place it in the context of contemporary thinking, aiming at academics and readers interested in the everyday lives of common people in pre-1950 China, and in the folk medicine wisdom inherited from the past.

Health is not just the absence of disease.
In an era when living to 100 is becoming more common,
our concept of ageing must evolve.

While Hong Kong people enjoy the world's longest life expectancy, an important question arises: Are we truly achieving healthy ageing?

In this book, Professor Jean Woo addresses a diverse array of challenges associated with the elderly population in Hong Kong society, including issues like elderly poverty, unfriendly community designs, unfair stigmatization faced by seniors, and late-life loneliness. Drawing on extensive research and clinical experience, she advocates for self-care, education, and empowerment, encouraging us to move beyond dependence on doctors and medications.

Ageing is inevitable, yet we can control how we age.

Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent years of initial urban settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapor or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better.


The study draws upon many hitherto unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence—from previously lost watercolor illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings—that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society.

In this ground-breaking, posthumous study, the late Lo Jung-pang discusses the geographic, political, and commercial factors that led to the emergence of seapower and a navy under the Ming. While Zheng He and his seven expeditions have received some scholarly attention, few understand the long history of maritime engagement which provided the nautical and technical background for these voyages. The evolution of this maritime engagement and its extension into the Indian Ocean is the focus of Lo’s still-timely and highly significant work.

Empire in the Western Ocean represents the most comprehensive and insightful English-language treatment to date of the evolution and activities of the early Ming navy. Moreover, it encourages further inquiry into contemporary questions of China’s maritime aspirations.

Most of Xi Xi’s animal poems featured here are new works written during the past few years. Full of whimsical ideas, they embody the notion of “all humans are siblings, and all things are companions,” brimming with warmth and compassion. These poems could be described as bright and cheerful, approachable, clever and fluid, humorous, and deep with meaning, written as though the author is able to directly communicate with animals. Overall, they serve as a voice for animals, showing that they are able to coexist equally and peacefully, resulting in a “carnival of animals.” More than twenty young Hong Kong artists and illustrators have been invited to join this project, with each poem accompanied by different illustrations, their styles of illustration totally distinct, not limited to any particular form, presenting multiple heterogeneities.

This book is suitable for young readers, as well as adults who appreciate literature and art.

Hong Kong Taxation: Law and Practice 2011-12 Edition is a comprehensive yet practical guide to the tax system of Hong Kong. The book helps explain the three main types of taxes in Hong Kong, namely Property Tax, Salaries Tax and Profits Tax, and includes all related information dealing with the administration, assessment and collection of these taxes as well. Written in a clear and easy-to-understand format with real-life examples and case studies, this popular resource continues to be the standard text for up-to-date information on Hong Kong taxation law for students, investors, and business people. This revised edition covers all changes up to July 2011.
Ayesha Macpherson is the Partner in charge of tax services, Hong Kong SAR, KPMG China. She started her career with KPMG in London before joining KPMG in Hong Kong in 1993. Ms Macpherson is a member of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. She is the Chairperson of the Taxation Committee of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Ms Macpherson is a regular speaker on tax matters. Garry Laird, Bachelor of Economics (University of Tasmania), is a senior tax advisor with KPMG. Prior to joining KPMG he was a tax specialist for over thirty five years, initially with the Australian Taxation Office before joining the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) in Hong Kong. His responsibilities with the IRD included preparing Departmental Interpretation and Practice Notes, examining advance clearance applications, negotiating double taxation agreements and assisting in the introduction of new tax legislation.

First published in 1977, at a time where no comprehensive account of the genera of the orchids of Hong Kong has been attempted before, the work by Professor Shiu-ying Hu is a pioneering study.

This illustrated treatise fills the vacuum of complete lack of essential references on orchids, and meet the need for a guide to identify the species growing in Hong Kong, and is thus the base-line from which future taxonomists will begin their studies. It also contributes the first-hand observation for the information of orchidologists throughout the world who depend on herbarium material for comparative studies elsewhere.

This commemorative edition featuring a new foreword and a timeline of Professor Hu’s major life events.

This beautifully illustrated guide presents a carefully curated collection of 20 plant species native to Hong Kong, with scientific, detailed illustrations and morphological descriptions, together with botanical references, all essential for species authentication.

Of the 20 species selected, 15 are precious, rare and endangered, or protected species, making this guide of special importance for plant preservation in Hong Kong, as well as for botanists, plant lovers, and illustrators. The botanical illustrations are all based on many years of field observation, plant dissection, vouchers and collected specimens of the Shiu-Ying Hu Herbarium at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and have been authenticated by professional botanists and illustrated by botanical artists.

This book is also a very useful reference for STEAM education, with a helpful guide that provides a variety of suggested activities for primary and secondary school teachers to use in their classrooms, helping teachers to organize classes in a way that encourages students’ interest in science through the integration of plants, art and technology.

Thanks to dedicated efforts of early missionaries, pedagogues, and linguists, we can trace back the evolution of modern Cantonese—one of the most spoken dialects in China, Southeast Asia, and globally—while differences in sounds, words, and grammar distinguish the old from contemporary speech today.<br><br>Not much was recorded in official documents or gazetteers about the early history of Hong Kong where Cantonese is its most popular dialect. The knowledge of Cantonese is likewise quite limited except for occasional mentions of its culture and customs in writings here and there. For a long time, Cantonese was deemed a local dialect enjoying little prestige among the intellectuals. Its language and its origin remained much of a mystery until the mid-twentieth century when scholars started to accord it with increasing attention.<br><br>In <i>Cantonese: Since the 19th Century</i>, Cheung offers profound insights to some thirty firsthand century-old materials, with findings that will be useful for ongoing efforts to trace the development of a language that has gone through many rounds of incredible and, at times dramatic, changes during the last two hundred years.

The coronavirus pandemic that broke out in 2019 has finally calmed down in China, after the bungling occasioned by the iron hand of lockdown. But beginning in March 2020, the disaster spread abroad, and at present there is no end in sight. Discussions of the changes the pandemic brings to the world, and how “plagues change history,” are a hot topic everywhere.

In this book, Prof. Qin Hui offers a stunning reflection on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on political institutions, which are well worth pondering for both China and the West. China, with its “low human rights advantage,” has achieved success in imposing coercive lockdowns that got the virus under control after the disastrous outbreak in Wuhan, but it will be a challenge to prevent the normalization of emergency measures from worsening human right conditions in normal times. The West, handicapped by its “high human rights (dis)advantage,” must learn how a democracy can efficiently enter a state of emergency and put an end to these measures at the proper time.

Through investigation of Chinese cultural ideals and life practices, Prof. Cho-yun Hsu constructs an original portrait of Chinese spiritual life. Apart from focusing on the exalted subtleties of the scholarly elite, Prof. Hsu pays more attention to the everyday people’s cultural idea. By examining their daily practices (including eating, living, medical practices, poems, songs, art, and literature) and “collective memory” such as legends, he seeks to clarify Chinese ideas concerning the universe, human life and nature, from traditional times down to the present day. Different from Judeo-Christian tradition centered on “God,” the spiritual life of the Chinese people develops around ideas of being “human,” and thus cultivating an interactive relationship between man, time, and space.

Cho-yun Hsu considers the mode and direction of Chinese culture will impact the future of the entire world. Based on his observation, Western civilization represented by Europe and America nowadays is on the verge of a great change. The problems they are facing, including various crises of alienation and separation from nature, are, in terms of their basic origins, problems for which Western civilization lacks the resources to arrive at a solution. Thus, Chinese culture centered on the man and on the idea of intimate, interdependent relations between man and nature, might offer another solution. It is expected that, by integrating its features into modern civilization, Chinese culture can continue to prosper and be of benefit to the future of the world.

The United States is the land where Cho-yun Hsu pursued his life’s work, as well as his window to observations of Western civilization; through his eyes, the nation is revealed as both a mighty empire and a grand social laboratory containing the seeds of prosperity and decline.

In this memoir of his sixty-year sojourn in the United States, Cho-yun Hsu offers keen insights through the lens of history and sociology, providing a comprehensive assessment of the social lineaments of the United States in different eras, as well as its substantive transformation in the period spanning from the founding of the nation to the present—from a young nation of lofty ideals, to the successor to Europe as global hegemon, and, more recently, an emerging regime of tyranny.

The work touches upon geography, culture, politics, economics, industrialization, class, ethnicity, the urban-rural divide, military affairs, the imperial enterprise and more in analyzing the origins of tension and conflict, antagonism and divisions between different classes and ethnic groups in American society, and seeks to offer a way forward from a humanistic perspective, in the hope that society may be continuously renewed through our collective efforts, and find a new path.

St. Stephen's Girls' College is one of the many schools run under the auspices of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong. As one of the earliest schools for girls in the territory, St. Stephen's played a significant role in the opening up of educational opportunities for Chinese girls.

This book records the history and development of the school and is written for its 90th Anniversary, using much original source material. The author, who was head of the school for over thirty years, has set this history within the educational, social and political context of the times.

This is a story which begins in California and ends in China. It is a detective tale with a subtle love interest. Victor Lin, a Chinese-American died in mysterious circumstances on a trip to the Thousand Island Lake south of the city of Hangzhou. His wife Anne Gavin, an Irish-American, went to China to find out what really happened. In the course of her investigation, she teamed up with David Han, an academic from Hong Kong who also lost his sister in the same “accident”. As the story unfolds, the reader is treated to an exploration of the Chinese mind torn between two cultures – the native Chinese culture and the culture of the West.

At one level, this is a story about corruption, obsession, and the quest for closure. But running through the story is the soul-searching of David Han and the identity crisis he was going through. In the course of telling the story, Between Two Shores takes the reader behind the shroud that hides the Chinese persona and reveals the fears, aspirations, frustrations and underlying beliefs of the Chinese people. It splits open the archetypal “Chinese characteristics” to reveal the deep-seated motivations which underpin Chinese behavior. It is a very revealing book and goes to depths never before explored.

Until the present day, Mao Zedong’s biography has been the subject of an international mountain of commentary in China and elsewhere. Biographies praising Mao and those slandering him are all based on the American journalist Edgar Snow’s (1905–1972) account in Red Star over China for the route Mao traveled from early childhood through his youth.

How the “Red Star” Rose introduces the image of Mao and the biographical information made known to the world through the publication of Red Star, and with its publication the circumstances which they fundamentally undermined. There is no reason that Mao Zedong the person himself would completely change by virtue of the publication of Red Star. However, the external image surrounding him did completely change from before.

Ishikawa uses Mao Zedong as raw material to examine from whence and how ordinary historical information and images which we habitually use unconsciously come into being. He desires to help readers to reconsider the historicity of the generation of not only Mao’s image but of that of “historical materials.”

This book also examines the situation prevailing after the collection of data and publication of Red Star which played the definitive role in generating Mao’s image and will investigate the various editions of Red Star in English, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese.

This is a story which begins in California and ends in China. It is a detective tale with a subtle love interest. Victor Lin, a Chinese-American died in mysterious circumstances on a trip to the Thousand Island Lake south of the city of Hangzhou. His wife Anne Gavin, an Irish-American, went to China to find out what really happened. In the course of her investigation, she teamed up with David Han, an academic from Hong Kong who also lost his sister in the same “accident”. As the story unfolds, the reader is treated to an exploration of the Chinese mind torn between two cultures – the native Chinese culture and the culture of the West.

At one level, this is a story about corruption, obsession, and the quest for closure. But running through the story is the soul-searching of David Han and the identity crisis he was going through. In the course of telling the story, Between Two Shores takes the reader behind the shroud that hides the Chinese persona and reveals the fears, aspirations, frustrations and underlying beliefs of the Chinese people. It splits open the archetypal “Chinese characteristics” to reveal the deep-seated motivations which underpin Chinese behavior. It is a very revealing book and goes to depths never before explored.

This book, written by an internationally acknowledged pioneer in endocrine surgery, is intended as advice for aspiring medical professionals, in particular for young people from around the world who are hoping to attend one of the great medical schools in the US or the UK, such as Harvard or Oxford.

In clear, concise language, Dimitrios Linos explains the steps one needs to take to get into a top medical school, succeed as a resident, and become a board certified doctor. Drawing on his many years of experience, Linos discusses the career paths for practicing physicians, how to avoid burnout, and the importance of finding a work-life balance.

This is an honest, engaging and thoughtful book, written in an encouraging manner from someone who knows personally the struggles and triumphs of being a doctor and who wants to help others become “the best physician in the world.”

This is a most unusual book. For several decades Xi Xi has been widely known for her award-winning poetry and fiction. This time, she has chosen to write about the teddy bears she began making in 2005, after treatment for cancer, in order to improve the mobility of her right hand. She made the bears herself from scratch, choosing some of her favourite characters from history and legend such as the Taoist philosopher Master Zhuang, the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan, and Beauty and the Beast. She also created exquisite items of clothing for them and wove a series of delightfully witty essays around them, giving her readers fascinating insights into Chinese culture, and into the ways in which Chinese clothing and fashion have evolved through the ages.

This is a book for all who love literature and teddy bears.

The Drunkard is one of the first full-length stream-of-consciousness novels written in Chinese. It has been called the Hong Kong Novel, and was first published in 1962 as a serial in a Hong Kong evening paper. As the unnamed Narrator, a writer at odds with a philistine world, sinks to his drunken nadir, his plight can be seen to represent that of a whole intelligentsia, a whole culture, degraded by the brutal forces of history: the Second Sino-Japanese War and the rampant capitalism of post-war Hong Kong.

The often surrealistic description of the Narrator’s inexorable descent through the seedy bars and night-clubs of Hong Kong, of his numerous encounters with dance-girls and his ever more desperate bouts of drinking, is counterpointed by a series of wide-ranging literary essays, analysing the Chinese classical tradition, the popular culture of China and the West, and the modernist movement in Western and Chinese literature.

The ambiance of Hong Kong in the early 1960s is graphically evoked in this powerful and poignant novel, which takes the reader to the very heart of Hong Kong. Hong Kong director Freddie Wong made a fine film version of the novel in 2004.

In the late 1970s, at the close of the Cultural Revolution, a group of young, largely auto-didact artists in China endeavored to create artwork that would depart from present norms and reflect individual ideals. It was a period of hope for the future, full of energy permeating all levels of society. The artists came from a variety of backgrounds and had an even greater variety of artistic training and skill, but their ideas united them around a common goal. The first exhibition organized by the Stars group (Xingxing huahui, 星星畫會) is one of the key outdoor shows and one of the most radical unofficial exhibitions following the end of the Cultural Revolution, representing for many scholars the beginnings of a Chinese avant-garde for a post-Mao China. It is a movement toward artistic democracy—a performance even—taking place over the course of three years and bringing an engaged group, with individual ideas, into the heart of the official art establishment. These Stars would set into motion the policies and norms that later generations of contemporary Chinese artists would build upon to expand their minds and artistic vocabularies.

In the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Stars, Stars 79–80 collects the most significant writings, images and artworks of the Stars. It captures the youthfulness and vibrancy of a new ideological movement that swept through the capital with hurricane force.

This is a fascinating, insightful collection of essays by some of the world’s most renowned China experts, who share personal recollections of their time in China—often beginning in the 1970s, when foreigners were just beginning to navigate the linguistic and cultural terrain of that country—and reflect on what learning Chinese has meant to them in their careers and lives. Ian Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist notes in his essay, it is only by knowing the language that we can effectively enter people’s lives—their myths and histories, their interior lives and dreams. Trying to do this without speaking the language is usually fraudulent and results in only a clichéd understanding of other cultures. Simply knowing Chinese won’t solve all these problems, but the reverse proposition is true: we can’t really understand China and interpret it for audiences back home unless we know the language. Thomas Gorman’s equally sprightly essay tells how, in 1974, he set out hitchhiking to Vancouver in order to take a cheap flight to Hong Kong, where he arrived with only $150 in his pocket. Twenty-one years later, he was president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

These ten native English speakers (including veteran journalists, expert in Chinese art history, scholar in classical Chinese literature, teacher of Chinese language, economics policy advisor, businesspeople, and expert in Chinese law) share rare and, at times, humorous and intimate moments, of how learning and speaking Chinese has removed barriers, built rapport, opened doors, and sometimes led them down entirely unexpected roads that have changed the course of their lives.

Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary, and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture.

The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453–221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 16th–18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword’s reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages?

Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history, philosophy, and literature, explore keywords in different genres and illuminate their multiple dimensions in various contexts. Moreover, despite their different temporal focus, they take into consideration the development of selected keywords from the Warring States to the late imperial period, sometimes adding excurses that extend to contemporary usage.

ESSENTIALS IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-QIN PHILOSOPHY

The Mingjia (School of Names) is a notional grouping of philosophers first recorded as such in the Shiji. Their identifying feature was a concern with linguistic issues particularly involving the correct use of names. The origin of this concern is taken to be Lunyu XIII.3. The group, as listed in the Han Shu, comprised seven men living between the sixth and third centuries BC. Only four of these men have extant writings attributed to them (Deng Xi, Yin Wen, Hui Shi and Gongsun Long) and in three of these there are issues of authenticity. Nevertheless, it is an important group for an understanding of the development of pre-Qin philosophy as the men themselves and the concepts they explored feature prominently in the writings of the other schools.

The present work contains four sections: (i) the extant writings of the four men; (ii) all significant references to them in other works up to the fourth century AD; (iii) other significant writing on the topics up to that time; and (iv) four appendices on specific issues concerning the school.

This book covers the major areas of Hong Kong taxation—profits tax, salaries tax, property tax, personal assessment, and stamp duty, as well as a general overview of international tax issues and how they pertain to Hong Kong.

The book explains the principles and practice of Hong Kong taxation law together with the relevant Court and Board of Review decisions and contains numerous practical examples. The new edition includes legislative changes up to 31 July 2018 as well as the latest developments pertaining to the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project and the proposed measures to be adopted by Hong Kong.

Some believe in the “Thucydides Trap”: the idea that, since a rising power will challenge the dominance of an established one, a China-U.S. trade war will be inevitable. Being the largest and the second largest trading nations globally, the U.S. and China are in fact each other’s most important trading partners, among many aspects of their complex interrelationships.

In this book, Lawrence J. Lau examines various economic statistics of the past few decades to show that while the real effects of the China-U.S. trade war in 2018 are not negligible, they are relatively manageable for both nations. There is no need to panic, despite psychological effects on the Chinese stock markets and on the renminbi exchange rate. Behind the trade war is the potential economic and technological competition between China and the U.S., which is likely to become the “new normal.” It is up to each government to battle against the rise of xenophobia, based on the fact that China-U.S. economic collaboration is a potentially positive-sum game through better coordination and fully utilizing each other’s currently underutilized resources. Balancing China-U.S. trade and enhancing economic interdependence are not only possible, but desirable.

The Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan) are the only pre-imperial Chinese manuscripts on silk found to date. Dating to the turn from the fourth to the third centuries BC (Late Warring States period), they contain several short texts concerning basic cosmological concepts in a diagrammatic arrangement and surrounded by pictorial illustrations. As such, they constitute a unique source of information complementing and going beyond what is known from transmitted texts.

This is the first in a two-volume monograph on the Zidanku manuscripts, reflecting almost four decades of research by Professor Li Ling of Peking University. While the philological study and translation of the manuscript texts is the subject of Volume II, this first volume presents the archaeological context and history of transmission of the physical manuscripts. It records how they were taken from their original place of interment in the 1940s and taken to the United States in 1946; documents the early stages in the research on the finds from the Zidanku tomb and its reexcavation in the 1970s; and accounts for where the manuscripts were kept before becoming the property, respectively, of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, New York (Manuscript 1), and the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution (Manuscripts 2 and 3). Superseding previous efforts, this is the definitive account that will set the record straight and establish a new basis for future research on these uniquely important artifacts.

Since China undertook economic reform and opened its economy to the world in late 1970s, its economic growth was historically unprecedented in terms of both speed and longevity. No other economy in recorded history has grown at as high a rate and for as long a period as China has done. The questions that naturally arise are: was the Chinese economy a miracle? Or was it a mere bubble? Will the Chinese economy begin to stagnate like the Japanese economy did in the 1990s, and perhaps decline? Will it be able to escape the “middle-income trap”? If it is not a miracle, can the Chinese development experience be replicated elsewhere?

This collected volume of Professor Lawrence J. Lau’s papers provides a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the remarkable growth of the Chinese economy over the past decades, by scrutinizing the sources of economic growth, and evaluating the strategies adopted by the Chinese government to promote the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy by means of “dual-track” approach. It is argued that, while the Chinese economy is unique and exceptional in many ways, its development experience can be explained and attributed.