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An authoritative account of five thousand years of Chinese history. Many nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's unrivaled, voluminous tradition of history writing, John Keay has composed a vital and illuminating overview of the nation's complex and vivid past. Keay's authoritative history examines 5,000 years in China, from the time of the Three Dynasties...

The magic treehouse takes Jack and Annie back two thousand years to ancient China where they must find the original copy of an old legend before the Imperial Library is burned down by the evil Dragon King.

"On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.". "When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed....

"To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything 'I refuse to be nothing...' In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness,...

"A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now"--

Historical reconstruction is in constant tension with two other more pervasive and influential ways of "knowing" the past - experience and myth. In this long-awaited book, Paul Cohen uses the Boxer uprising of 1898-1900 - a major antiforeign explosion and watershed event in Chinese history - as a vehicle for the skillful illumination of these tensions History in Three Keys juxtaposes the accounts of historians with those of participants and witnesses...

"A Cornelia & Michael Bessie book."

Where would we be without paper? We'd have no books or magazines, no paper money, and no material on which to paint or draw. But fortunately, paper has been around for thousands of years-and we have ancient China to thank for that! This detailed volume explains the history of paper, from its likely origins with hemp fiber to its use for books and documents and its growing spread to other areas of the world. Photos of historical artifacts bring history...

Although the compass was first invented by the Chinese about 2,500 years ago, it's gone on to help give direction to the entire world! The introduction of the compass lead to many other advancements in science and navigation, including reliable maps, the system of latitude and longitude, and GPS. You may even have a compass app on your phone! Readers will travel to ancient China to witness the invention of the compass as a fortune-telling item and...

Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but...