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The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 705
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429944129

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A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.


Chinese Lessons

Chinese Lessons
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2006-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805076158

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"As a twenty-two-year-old exchange student at Nanjing University in 1981, John Pomfret was one of the first American students to be admitted to China after the Communist Revolution of 1949. Living in a cramped dorm room, Pomfret was exposed to a country few outsiders had ever experienced, one fresh from the twin tragedies of Mao's rule - the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution." "Twenty years after first leaving China, Pomfret returned to the university for a class reunion. Once again, he immersed himself in the lives of his classmates, especially the one woman and four men whose stories make up Chinese Lessons, an intimate and revealing portrait of the Chinese people." "Beginning with Pomfret's first day in China, Chinese Lessons takes us back to the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982. We learn that Old Wu's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; Book Idiot Zhou labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; Little Guan was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father." "As we follow Pomfret's classmates from childhood to university and on to adulthood, we see the effect that the country's transition from near-feudal communism to First World capitalism has had on his classmates. This riveting portrait of the Chinese people will not only change your understanding of China but also challenge your perception of the way fate can shape the course of nations as surely as it has the extraordinary lives of these five classmates."--BOOK JACKET.


From Warsaw with Love

From Warsaw with Love
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250296064

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From Warsaw with Love is the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War, told by the award-winning author John Pomfret. Spanning decades and continents, from the battlefields of the Balkans to secret nuclear research labs in Iran and embassy grounds in North Korea, this saga begins in 1990. As the United States cobbles together a coalition to undo Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, six US officers are trapped in Iraq with intelligence that could ruin Operation Desert Storm if it is obtained by the brutal Iraqi dictator. Desperate, the CIA asks Poland, a longtime Cold War foe famed for its excellent spies, for help. Just months after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Solidarity government in Warsaw sends a veteran ex-Communist spy who’d battled the West for decades to rescue the six Americans. John Pomfret’s gripping account of the 1990 cliffhanger in Iraq is just the beginning of the tale about intelligence cooperation between Poland and the United States, cooperation that one CIA director would later describe as “one of the two foremost intelligence relationships that the United States has ever had.” Pomfret uncovers new details about the CIA’s black site program that held suspected terrorists in Poland after 9/11 as well as the role of Polish spies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In the tradition of the most memorable works on espionage, Pomfret’s book tells a distressing and disquieting tale of moral ambiguity in which right and wrong, black and white, are not conveniently distinguishable. As the United States teeters on the edge of a new cold war with Russia and China, Pomfret explores how these little-known events serve as a reminder of the importance of alliances in a dangerous world.


People Who Shaped China

People Who Shaped China
Author: New Epoch Weekly
Publisher: New Epoch Weekly
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-09-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9881234964

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When President Donald Trump visited Beijing, he showed a video of his granddaughter Arabella Kushner speaking Mandarin to the Chinese leader. The two-minute clip went viral on the internet, and Arabella became a minor celebrity among Chinese viewers. Like Ms. Kushner, more and more people are learning Chinese as China re-emerges as a great power with global influence. Yet for the majority of westerners, China remains a very foreign country, and the Chinese a perplexing people. Seen from a historical vantage point, China is a very unique nation. It has been said that American history is divided into decades, European history into centuries, and Chinese history into millennia. For the last 3,000 years, China is the only country in the world that has kept unbroken historical records. People and events of the distant past fill the memories of the Chinese people. It was they who created Chinese civilization and culture, and the people living in China today. Isolated from the rest of the world, millions of square miles of land within great natural barriers gave rise to a unique civilization. To the east and south is the endless Pacific Ocean. In the north, steppes and deserts stretch into the frozen Siberian tundra. In the west lies the plateau of Tibet and the massive peaks of the Himalaya mountains. Two great rivers, the Yellow River and Yangtze Jiang, flow ceaselessly from west to east. The people living there called their nation the Central Country—China. History is abstract, but its characters were real, living people. Each civilization is rooted in its history. The history remembered by its people guides its journey into the future. To understand the Chinese, we must understand Chinese culture. To understand Chinese culture, we must understand Chinese history. Presented in three volumes are stories of characters who shaped the history of the Chinese from past to present. By knowing them, you will begin to understand today's China.


China's Wings

China's Wings
Author: Gregory Crouch
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2012-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 034553235X

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From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe. With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history. A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, China’s Wings takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.


The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 705
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805092501

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"Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving, and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret ... takes us deep into these two countries' shared history, and illuminates ... every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations"--


The Porcelain Thief

The Porcelain Thief
Author: Huan Hsu
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307986314

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A journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family’s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before. In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu’s great-great-grandfather Liu’s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle’s semiconductor chip business. Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured both China and his heritage and finally complete his family’s long march back home. Melding memoir, travelogue, and social and political history, The Porcelain Thief offers an intimate and unforgettable way to understand the complicated events that have defined China over the past two hundred years and provides a revealing, lively perspective on contemporary Chinese society from the point of view of a Chinese American coming to terms with his hyphenated identity.


China

China
Author: Guang Guo
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-08-24
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0789210800

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A spectacular photographic tour of China's natural scenery and architectural landmarks, now available in a charming miniature edition. This attractive little volume takes us on a visual journey through the greatest splendors of China’s varied geography and the chief monuments of its 5,000-year-old civilization. Its 243 color photographs, which include 12 panoramic gatefolds, show us the country’s most famous landmarks—like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall—as we have never seen them before, and and introduce us to less familiar but just as fascinating sights, like the the multicolored travertine lakes of Huanglong Valley and the beautiful calligraphic inscriptions on the rugged rocks of Mount Taishan. Extended captions at the back of the book provide a concise introduction to the history and significance of each of the forty-four locales depicted, twenty-eight of which have been designated as World Heritage sites by UNESCO.


The Middle Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom
Author: Samuel Wells Williams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2018-10-24
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1317949889

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First published in 2009. This work by S. Wells Williams is a complete look at the Chinese Empire during the mid-nineteenth century. Subjects include the divisions of the Empire, geographical descriptions, religion and art, literature, the second war between Great Britain and China and social life among the Chinese. This is Volume one of two.


Treasury of Chinese Folk Tales

Treasury of Chinese Folk Tales
Author: Shelley Fu
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2012-07-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1462908411

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This colorfully illustrated multicultural children's book presents Chinese fairy tales and other folk stories—providing insight into a rich literary culture. Treasury of Chinese Folk Tales is a wonderful collection of seven classic Chinese stories that make for great reading adventures. From the stories of Pan Gu and Nu Wo, creators of the world, to Bai Su-Tzin, a snake who took on human form and found true love, this mesmerizing book includes myths of creation, mortality and love. More than just a Chinese children's storybook, Treasury of Chinese Folk Tales also explores the historical impact and roots of each tale, inviting you and the children you love to fully enjoy the many layers of meaning contained within them. The included pronunciation guide as well as information for further reading makes this a perfect tool for educators, librarians and parents.