CULTURAL ATLAS OF CHINA. - hardcover

Western civilization has only recently tapped into the ancient wisdom of Chinese enlightenment, from alternative medicines to spiritual balance and so much more. Cultural Atlas of China embodies the history, geography, and uniqueness of the world's oldest civilization, providing readers with a guided tour of this momentous kingdom. For all the importance of China to world history and contemporary affairs alike, Western readers lack for general overviews of the country. This oversize, heavily illustrated atlas goes a long way to fill that gap. The authors, both specialists in Chinese history, begin with a description of the physiographic regions of China, a complex series of environments whose rivers, valleys, and mountains have conditioned the growth of cities and empires over thousands of years. They move on to a detailed account of Chinese history from the Paleolithic to the present, deftly negotiating the complexities of dynastic lines and multiple kingships and surveying the growth of the modern, post imperial Chinese state, forged in warfare and under considerable hardship. Finally, the authors examine the arts for which China is justly famous, calligraphy, architecture, and cooking among them. The authors take care to explain many of the realities of contemporary Chinese society by noting past events. China has always been open to outside influences, they write, but foreign invasions beginning with the medieval Mongol and Manchu conquests have also led China to guard its frontiers jealously; even today, in a time when foreign investment is courted, China keeps a certain distance from outsiders. With so much history of its own, as this volume well summarizes, China's apparent lack of interest in the outside world of long ago is understandable.