Mandukhai dreams of being a warrior. Instead, she is forced to become the second wife to the Great Khan. Can she survive the dangerous life of the royal court, where everyone is an enemy?

Rapid economic growth in the world's most populous nation is leading to widespread soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and the depletion of vital natural resources. The scale and severity of environmental problems in China now threaten the economic and social foundations of its modernization. Using case studies, Morton analyzes the relationship between international and local responses to environmental problems in China, challenging the prevailing wisdom that weak compliance is the only constraint upon local environmental management in China. It advances two interrelated discussions: first, it constructs a conceptual framework for understanding the key dimensions of environmental capacity. This is broadly defined to encompass the financial, institutional, technological and social aspects of environmental management. Second, the book presents the results of an empirical inquiry into the implementation of donor-funded environmental projects in both China's poorer and relatively developed regions. By drawing upon extensive fieldwork, it seeks to explain how, and under what conditions, international donors can strengthen China's environmental capacity, especially at the local level. It will be of interest to those studying Chinese politics, environmental studies and international relations.

"In the Court of the Dragon" by Robert W. Chambers is a chilling tale about a man who attends a church service, only to be pursued by a menacing organist. As he flees through the streets, the sense of dread intensifies. The boundaries between reality and nightmare blur as the protagonist confronts an overwhelming, inexplicable terror, leading to a haunting conclusion that questions the nature of existence itself.

Erun Oncant, the ordinary son of ordinary parents, lived in Cardoney. That is, until chosen by a dying dragon to be the rider for her unhatched daughter. As he took the sword from her dying body, it became instilled with magical powers, and all that remained of her flowed into it. The egg hatched into the first ever yellow dragon, a colour never seen before and only talked about in legend, and with the help of Princess Lelia from the Kingdom of Vanticor, he cared for her, as she grew to full size. Her name, inherited from her mother, became Corella. Tensions between surrounding Kingdoms had developed into all out war under the influence of a wizard of immense power. All feared that Cardoney would be next. Erun and Corella forged an inseparable bond, and together, they set out to foil the evil machinations of the wizard and restore peace to the world.

This story begins on Beijing's winter streets and does not end until you plant your next garden. It is the story of the life of a god and the liberation of magic. Come along on a trip through winding streets and bamboo forest, but don't be surprised when you arrive somewhere you never expected. And before you drink your next glass of kvass, remember the danger...

The Yellow River has long been viewed as a symbol of China's cultural and political development, its management traditionally held as a gauge of dynastic power. For centuries, the country's early rulers employed a defensive approach to the river by building dikes and diversion channels to protect fields and population centers from flooding. This situation changed dramatically after the Yuan (1260-1368) emperors constructed the Grand Canal, which linked the North China Plain and the capital at Beijing with the Yangtze Valley. One of the most ambitious imperial undertakings of any age, by the turn of the nineteenth century the water system had become a complex network of locks, spillways, and dikes stretching eight hundred kilometers from the mountains in western Henan to the Yellow Sea. Controlling the Dragon examines Yellow River engineering from two perspectives. The first looks at long-term efforts to manage the river starting in the early Ming dynasty, at the nature of the bureaucracy created to do the job, and finally focuses on two of the Confucian engineers who served successfully in the decade before the system was abandoned. In the second section, the author chronicles a series of dramatic floods in the 1840s and explores the way politics, environment, and technology interacted to undermine the state's commitment to the Yellow River control system.

Presents an introduction to dragonology that includes spells for catching dragons, their natural history, and descriptions of legendary dragons and dragonslayers.