A New York Times–bestselling novel of the lives, loves, and foibles of five generations of a British family occupying a manor house in Wales. For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Quin family has lived at China Court, their magnificent estate in the Welsh countryside. The land, gardens, and breathtaking home have been maintained, cherished, and ultimately passed along—from Eustace and Adza in the early nineteenth century to village-girl-turned-lady-of-the-manor Ripsie Quin, her children, and her granddaughter, Tracy, in the twentieth. Brilliantly intermingling the past and the present, China Court is a sweeping family saga that weaves back and forth through time. The story begins at the end, in 1960, with the death of the indomitable Ripsie, whose dream of a life at the grand estate was realized through her marriage to the steadfast Quin brother who loved her—though he wasn’t the one she had always loved. With thrilling literary leaps across the decades, the story of a British dynasty is told in enthralling detail. It is a chronicle of wives and husbands; of mothers, sons, and daughters; of those who could never stray far from the lush grounds of China Court and the outcasts and outsiders who would never truly belong. Bearing comparison to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Rumer Godden’s novel relates the history of a family with sensitivity, wit, compassion, and a compelling touch of magical realism. A family’s loves, pains, triumphs, and scandals are laid bare, forming an intricate tapestry of heart-wrenching humanity, in a remarkable work of fiction from one of the most acclaimed British novelists of the twentieth century. This ebook features an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from the Rumer Godden Literary Estate.

China at the Court of the Emperors presents almost two hundred masterpieces, various in form and rich in beauty, coming from thirty-two museums and institutes in Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu, and Jiangsu provinces, many of them never seen in the West before. It examines the vast period from the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220) through the Tang (618-907), during which Chinese civilization underwent radical transformation. As a matter of fact, Tang China synthesized foreign and indigenous elements that had been present for centuries, thus creating a new, distinctive, and extraordinary cosmopolitan civilization, made possible by tolerance--a message as important today as it was 1,500 years ago. The book includes essays by some of the foremost experts in the field, including Roderick Whitfield (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Felix Schoeber (University of Westminster, London), Lillian Lan-ying Tseng (Yale University), Nicola di Cosmo (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Stefano Zacchetti (Università Ca' Foscari, Venice), and Chao-Hui Jenny Liu (New York University).

This book, first published in 1956, contains the stuff of other people’s memories. Thus you will read of magicians and immortals; of dragons and pills of eternal life; of generals and eunuchs; of emperors and poets; of palaces and concubines. The author has made nothing up; if there are liars along the route, they were there before he came along. The study of stories and ballads from deep in a country’s past can tell a reader much about the present-day culture of a society; this is surely true with these tales from China’s history.

The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have so far considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin here demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture and the Tang Empire (617-907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225-651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762-1258). Through close textual re-analysis of the Stele and by drawing on ancient sources in Syriac, Greek, Arabic and Chinese, Godwin demonstrates that Tang China (617-907) was a cosmopolitan milieu where multiple religious traditions, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Christianity, formed zones of elite culture. Syriac Christianity in fact remained powerful in Persia throughout the period, and Christianity - not Zoroastrianism - was officially regarded by the Tang government as 'The Persian Religion'.Persian Christians at the Chinese Court uncovers the role played by Syriac Christianity in the economic and cultural integration of late Sasanian Iran and China, and is important reading for all scholars of the Church of the East, China and the Middle East in the medieval period.

This book presents, in extraordinary detail, sixteen landmark cases that profoundly affect the protection of intellectual property rights in China. Written by six prominent Chinese legal scholars and jurists – including judges who themselves participated in these decisions – each case is fully described and analysed: the parties and their representatives, the basic facts, the facts ascertained by the court, the evidence presented by plaintiffs and defendants, the judges’ opinions with their arguments and reasoning, the unanimous conclusions, and the judgment, along with a wealth of deeply informed comment. Among the questions raised by these cases are the following: Is a website within the definition of a ‘work’ in copyright law, and thus protected? How should the acts of uploading and downloading of works from the Internet be classified? Can the concept of torts be applied in the Internet context? What is the legal liability of an Internet service provider? How is a defendant’s ‘unreasonable conduct’ to be determined? Who is responsible for the determination of ‘artistic value’ – e.g., of clothing designs? What evidence must be presented to serve as sufficient proof that a domain name is a party’s own creation? In what a manner should packaging and decoration be regarded? How should the ‘author’ in copyright conflict cases be identified? How should an unauthorized web link be judged? When do separate components assembled to create a product enjoy copyright protection? How should damages be determined? An introductory essay provides a detailed overview of the characteristics of China’s intellectual property law as it continues to develop, with attention to such factors as the specific laws enacted, the various courts and tribunals to which IP cases are assigned, the progress of a case, starting from filing to winding up, regulations, reform programs, and rules of evidence. The editor puts forward his own proposals – particularly in light of the so-called ‘interfering factors’ – on reform of civil trial style in intellectual property cases. It is difficult to overstate the value of this book to anyone involved in business dealings in China. With its authoritative expertise, abundant detail, and thorough elucidation of the salient features of developing IP law and practice in China, it will serve interested parties for years to come.

This volume challenges the conventional wisdom about judicial independence in China and its relationship to economic growth, rule of law, human rights protection, and democracy. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach that places China's judicial reforms and the struggle to enhance the professionalism, authority, and independence of the judiciary within a broader comparative and developmental framework. Contributors debate the merits of international best practices and their applicability to China; provide new theoretical perspectives and empirical studies; and discuss civil, criminal, and administrative cases in urban and rural courts. This volume contributes to several fields, including law and development and the promotion of rule of law and good governance, globalization studies, neo-institutionalism and studies of the judiciary, the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes, Asian legal studies, and comparative law more generally.

The studies brought together here focus upon the literary and cultural activity of the Chinese court during the Han and early medieval period. The first section concerns court literature in the Former Han and deals with the role of literature, especially poetry, at both the imperial and princely courts, including one study of the writings attributed to an imperial concubine, who used poetry to express her resentment at falling from the emperor's favour. The next section looks at a leading court writer of the Late Western Han dynasty, Yang Xiong, while the third part deals with the leading poetic genre of this period, the fu or rhapsody. These papers examine major themes such as praise, travel, dating and authenticity, and problems of translation. The volume concludes with two articles on food culture in early and medieval China.