First published in 2010. This is a fascinating account of life in China in the 1920's and 1930's, as seen through the eyes of a young American doctor based in the ancient Szechuan city of Chunking on the Yangtse, one of China's richest, most powerful and romantic ports. Fascinated by Chinese medicine and anxious to learn more about it, Basil agrees to supervise a Chinese hospital and is plunged into an alien and exotic world both medieval and modern, where the old China of coolies and rickshaws mix with the rising militarism that would soon overtake the country. As he learns more about traditional Chinese remedies, Basil is drawn into the turbulent politics of the period, treating Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and witnessing conflict between the Communists and the Central Government as he goes on his medical rounds, treating patients while comparing Chinese methods including feng shui with his own. Basil enters fully into the life of the city, traveling the river by sampan, dallying in markets, watching fortune tellers, entering into strange friendships and, through medicine, gaining intimate glimpses into the heart of the Chinese character, and into the complexities of their internal politics that would shortly erupt into war. He also makes insightful comparisons between the health of Chinese and western people. Vivid prose brings the city and its people to life, complimented by delightful line drawings.

An account of the author's experiences as a doctor in Chungking.

Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profoundtransformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s.

Singing on the River by Igor Chabrowski, based on Sichuan boatmen’s work songs (haozi), explores the little known world of mentality and self-representation of Chinese workers from the late 19th century until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937). Chabrowski demonstrates how river workers constructed and interpreted their world, work, and gender in context of the dissolving social, cultural, and political orders. Boatmen asserted their own values, bemoaned exploitation, and imagined their sexuality largely in order to cope with their low social status. Through studying the Sichuan boatmen we gain an insight into the ways in which twentieth-century nonindustrial Chinese workers imagined their place in the society and appropriated, without challenging them, the traditional values.

Bringing together children’s literature scholars from China and the United States, this collection provides an introduction to the scope and goals of a field characterized by active but also distinctive scholarship in two countries with very different rhetorical traditions. The volume’s five sections highlight the differences between and overlapping concerns of Chinese and American scholars, as they examine children’s literature with respect to cultural metaphors and motifs, historical movements, authorship, didacticism, important themes, and the current status of and future directions for literature and criticism. Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious in its encouragement of communication between scholars from two major nations, Representing Children in Chinese and U.S. Children’s Literature serves as a model for examining how and why children’s literature, more than many literary forms, circulates internationally.