Empfehlungen basierend auf "A Hero Born"

"This is a powerful, moving, at times shocking account of three generations of Chinese women, as compelling as Amy Tan." --Mary Morris. "An evocative, often astonishing view of life in a changing China." -- The New York Times

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

A landmark translation of one of the most popular works of world literture, this edition of the Tao Te Ching is based on the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts.

In eighty-one brief chapters, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the universe. Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

A dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate. Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call—there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he’s asking for her. This man isn’t the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy. While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother’s youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions—fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer. Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing employs a combination of stunningly rendered folklore and atmospheric prose to examine the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of three generations. Alice Evelyn Yang’s debut novel is a story of family and forgiveness, of folklore and fate, that will leave you unsettled and undone.

The Huang Di nei jing su wen, known familiarly as the Su wen, is a seminal text of ancient Chinese medicine, yet until now there has been no comprehensive, detailed analysis of its development and contents. At last Paul U. Unschuld offers entry into this still-vital artifact of China’s cultural and intellectual past. Unschuld traces the history of the Su wen to its origins in the final centuries B.C.E., when numerous authors wrote short medical essays to explain the foundations of human health and illness on the basis of the newly developed vessel theory. He examines the meaning of the title and the way the work has been received throughout Chinese medical history, both before and after the eleventh century when the text as it is known today emerged. Unschuld’s survey of the contents includes illuminating discussions of the yin-yang and five-agents doctrines, the perception of the human body and its organs, qi and blood, pathogenic agents, concepts of disease and diagnosis, and a variety of therapies, including the new technique of acupuncture. An extensive appendix, furthermore, offers a detailed introduction to the complicated climatological theories of Wu yun liu qi ("five periods and six qi"), which were added to the Su wen by Wang Bing in the Tang era. In an epilogue, Unschuld writes about the break with tradition and innovative style of thought represented by the Su wen. For the first time, health care took the form of "medicine," in that it focused on environmental conditions, climatic agents, and behavior as causal in the emergence of disease and on the importance of natural laws in explaining illness. Unschuld points out that much of what we surmise about the human organism is simply a projection, reflecting dominant values and social goals, and he constructs a hypothesis to explain the formation and acceptance of basic notions of health and disease in a given society. Reading the Su wen, he says, not only offers a better understanding of the roots of Chinese medicine as an integrated aspect of Chinese civilization; it also provides a much needed starting point for discussions of the differences and parallels between European and Chinese ways of dealing with illness and the risk of early death.

Late one night in December 2008, police arrived at the home of Liu Xiaobo—China’s leading dissident, a key figure in the prodemocracy manifesto Charter 08—and took him away. When Liu won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize as a political prisoner, the award was bestowed on an empty chair. Inside China, the regime sought to erase every trace of his existence. Liu died of liver cancer in 2017 without ever having been allowed to return home. I Have No Enemies is the definitive biography of Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi explore Liu’s upbringing, immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, bold challenges to literary conformity, and involvement in democratic movements. They trace the lifelong evolution of his thinking and chronicle his persecution, incarceration, and death. I Have No Enemies emphasizes Liu’s principled commitment to dissent and the significance of the example he set in China and around the world. Liu was a farsighted strategist whose ultimate goal was “to change a regime by changing a society.” In Tiananmen Square, he showed others how to face down armed soldiers; in daily life, he looked for ways to build a more democratic culture. A powerful record of Liu’s life and times, this book also tells the story of a generation of Chinese intellectuals who sought a better way forward.

In Eliot Pattison's Soul of the Fire, When Shan Tao Yun and his old friend Lokesh are abruptly dragged away by Public Security, he is convinced that their secret, often illegal, support of struggling Tibetans has brought their final ruin. But his fear turns to confusion as he discovers he has been chosen to fill a vacancy on a special international commission investigating Tibetan suicides. Soon he finds that his predecessor was murdered, and when a monk sets himself on fire in front of the commissioners he realizes that the Commission is being used as a tool to whitewash Tibet's self-immolation protests as acts of crime and terrorism. Shan faces an impossible dilemma when the Public Security officer who runs the Commission, Major Ren, orders the imprisoned Lokesh beaten to coerce Shan into following Beijing's script for the Commission. He has no choice but to become part of the hated machine that is devouring Tibet, but when he discovers that the most recent immolation was actually another murder, he realizes the Commission itself is riddled with crime and intrigue. Everywhere he turns, Shan finds new secrets that seem to lead to the last agonizing chapter of his life. Shan must make a final desperate effort to uncover the Commission's terrible secrets whose painful truth could change Shan's life - and possibly that of many Tibetans - forever.

In Water Touching Stone, the sequel to the internationally acclaimed The Skull Mantra, Shan Tao Yun is cloistered in a remote Tibetan sanctuary when he receives shattering news. A teacher revered by the oppressed has been found slain and, one by one, her orphaned students have followed her to her grave, victims of a killer harboring unfathomable motives. Abandoning his mountain hermitage, Shan Tao Yun, a former Beijing police inspector who has been exiled to Tibet, embarks on a search for justice. Shadowed by bizarre tales of an unleashed 'demon,' Shan braces himself for even darker imaginings as he stalks a killer and fights to restore spiritual balance to the ancient and tenuous splendor of Tibet.

From the bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China. In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of the average people—farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs—who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its modern history. Country Driving begins with Hessler's 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center. Peter Hessler, whom The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China," deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.