[...]... anarchists in ancient and medieval China and Marxist dissidents in modern China, as well as recent work on China s Taiping Rebellion He is coauthor of Autocracy and China s Rebel Founding Emperors: Comparing Chairman Mao and Ming Taizu At Beloit, his courses have included “Chinese Politics,” “Democracy in East Asia,” “Chinese Dissent,” “Communist and Post-Communist Systems,” “Daoism,” and China: The... water—something rulers in China have been attempting for well over three millennia China s Climate Any land mass as large of China s is likely to have significant climate variation China is in uenced by summer monsoons and warm moist air in the southwest, and in the north by high-pressure Siberian systems with cold, dry air and low-pressure systems coming in over the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea... Map of China which would amount to the equivalent of more than five people for every one now living in that area Then you have China Proper, the parts of the present-day People’s Republic of China (PRC) with provincial status, excluding the provinces comprising Manchuria—that is, those parts that have constituted China for the past 2,000 years Both China and the United States are subdivided into smaller... exilic imagination in Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) China, the role of literary borrowing in Chinese historiography, and the five cosmological mountains of China Anita M Andrew is an associate professor of history (China) at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois She was an adjunct faculty in the History Department at Beloit College from 1987 to 1994, and taught courses on Chinese history,... China s unfolding political and cultural history LAND, AGRICULTURE, AND THE LAOJIA Even a cursory glance at a map of China shows the enormous in uence of the Eurasian landmass on the country To be sure, China has a sizable coastline, but from its earliest times, agriculture and a landed worldview have dominated political and social institutions throughout China The origins of Chinese civilization in. .. conceptually divide the United States into geographical regions, China, too, can be usefully divided into regions As in the United States, one of China s most important regional distinctions is between the north and south We will return to this north-south distinction many times in this book In China, the distinction is rooted in geography, climate, and history From early times, distinct cultures have developed... be traveling to China soon on business None of them speaks or reads Chinese, and none will pursue the study of China at a professional level They are among the intelligent readers who often get lost in the flurry of publications in today’s book market xviii | Introduction CHAPTERS AND CONTRIBUTORS I have written the opening two chapters (with Warren Palmer offering assistance at the beginning of the... resources The cradle of early Chinese civilization lies in northern China, in the vast drainage area of the Yellow River Valley In fact, no other physical feature in early Chinese 6 | Chapter 1 Geography RAINFALL, AGRICULTURE, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS Until relatively recently, exceedingly wet or dry regions had tenuous connections to mainstream political and cultural life in China The more arid northwest... Chinese history, comparative interdisciplinary courses on Asia, and Asian American history She received her Ph.D in history from the University of Minnesota, where she specialized in China s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Her primary area of research is the autocratic ruling style of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty Her publications include Assessing the Ming Founder: Historical Studies... clustered in the Geographical Regions | 7 China s five cardinal peaks seat of Chinese civilization in the Yellow River drainage area Mt Song, the central mountain, is situated in Henan province between the cities of Luoyang and Zhengzhou The western mountain, Mt Hua, is located near the ancient capital of Xi’an, and the northern mountain, Mt Heng, is near Datong, which is a six-hour train trip from Beijing . Controversies , 360 Poaching of Endangered Species , 361 Tainted Products from China , 363 Lead Paint Products from China , 364 Political Events in China: China s Government Crackdown against Political. Class, and Status in Chinese History , 185 Wealth and Status in Contemporary China , 189 Ethnicity and Outlying Peoples in Early Chinese Thought , 190 Ethnic Minorities in Modern China , 192 Women. anarchists in ancient and medieval China and Marxist dissidents in modern China, as well as recent work on China s Taiping Rebellion. He is coau- thor of Autocracy and China s Rebel Founding Emperors: