China: Its History and Culture

This book does a great job at giving an informed overview over centuries of Chinese culture and history. Highly recommendable if you're looking for a solid introduction to China. Personally I also liked Chinese Sketches: Life in 19th Century China, a first-hand account about life and culture in 19th century China; it not only gives insight into that time but helps to understand why modern China developped in the way it did.

China: Its History and Culture gives interesting facts and history about China. As one reads the book, he/she will see various types of prose from demographic facts to poetry, song, and moral teachings by people such as Confucius. Art forms such as pictures and sculptures are also seen in simple, yet intricate work. This book is currently a required text in my Chinese sociology class, and our professor lectures out of it.

With such a huge subject, this book makes easy work of approaching the dynasties and intellectual movements without fear of overload. In roughly 350 pages, the authors take the reader from Zhou to Zemin with a minimum of effort and confusion. For those who think China has no exciting movements and tales, think again. the most indelible impression on the Chinese nation was made by a single 15-yr dynasty (the Qin Dynasty, for which the westernized name "China" came into Romanized coinage, and which, speaking of coinage, finally standardized coinage to a state that remained unchanged until modern times. The Qin expanded to the current borders closer than any other had done before or since, and codified laws via Legalism, rather than the lax Confucian tradition of reasonable mediation). Most other dynasties lasted several hundreds of years, yet made far less noteworthy statebuilding achievements, nor were as unsupported by the populace at large. The Qin also hosted the first "cultural revolution" in Chinese history, which would much later be repeated under Mao with unexpectedly disastrous effects. Rome never knew of China beyond the association with silk trade, mostly from merchant tales. This state of affairs held largely unchanged until modern times, whereas China knew Romans intimately from around 300 AD onward. Learn why China fell so quickly in with Communist ideology and why the color red was so natural a choice for a Chinese revolutionary movement (if somewhat ironic). After reading this, for an expanded look, buy Gernet's legendary work of same subject.

This book does an excellent job of condensing centuries of history into its most salient points. The authors manage to pick the biggest factors of change or stability in each time period, and do a good job of tieing in the high points of Chinese culture, including art, religion and philosophy. I read this book before my trip to China and felt very well briefed on the long and diverse history of the area, especially for such a short volume. I thought it was a great introduction to Chinese history and culture, and found many reference items included to follow up on. Well done.

I think the resons I gave it 4 stars is because in some parts it was confusing but in the most it was good. See I had a repport to write and the book realy stared me of with info.It was realy innteresting though.