A while back, I spent some time looking at “Princess” Der Ling, a fascinating figure who lived during the end of the Qing dynasty. Now, I went back a bit further in time to the Taiping rebellion, or as Platt characterises it, “the Taiping civil war”. Although he started this research with the opinion that… Read More Book Review: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt
I’ve finally read this book! My friend who lent it to me has been raving about it for a while, and since I know nothing about footbinding, I was interested in learning more. Cinderella’s Sisters is a “revisionist history of footbinding”. The author, Dorothy Ko, applies the term “revisionist” to her history because she doesn’t… Read More Book Review: Cinderella’s Sisters by Dorothy Ko
After reading Two Years in the Forbidden City, I thought it was time to read about the woman who wrote the book, “Princess” Der Ling. Der Ling, who was also known as Elisabeth Antoinette White, was a fascinating woman. She claimed to be part of the Manchu ruling class, that she was fluent in multiple… Read More Book Review: Imperial Masquerade by Grant Hayter Menzies
I saw this in the NLB and was very intrigued because I wanted to know what kind of illustrations were inside. And also because I’ve never read The Classic of Tea (茶经) and really need to remedy that. This modern reader was great because it provided both a translation and a commentary on The Classic… Read More Tea Book Review: An Illustrated Modern Reader of The Classic of Tea by Wu Juenong
I stumbled across this book while browsing through Overdrive and knew that I was going to read it someday because it’s related to the World of Genji project I’m doing. I kind of put it off for a few weeks because it looked a bit intimidating, but I told Pan Pan about it and basically… Read More The Search for the Beautiful Woman by Cho Kyo