5 comments about Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met.

1. Americans seldom get an inside look into the Chinese Cultural
   Revolution. Here is one of the best as seen through the eyes of a sensitive and caring artist.The book is also a frank honest appraisal of what it takes for a person to break out of China to seek a new life in the West. It shows the enormous difficulty that the average Chinese immigrant faces in mastering a professional level of English. It is also a tender personal story of love andpersonal achievement flowering under extremely difficult conditions. Last but not least I learned how one becomes an opera singer.



2. Even if you are not an opera buff, this book is fascinating as it takes you through the history of China and its cultural revolution.



3. Hao Jiang Tian's journey is masterfully told in his own voice by Lois Morris. She has captured his electric personality that brought him to America from a time and place steeped in iconic imagery - Mao's oxymoronic cultural revolution that sent intellectuals and artists, such as Tian, to work in fields and factories. It is a story full of losses, near misses and miracles. That Tian has arrived in America to sing Major rolls at the Metropolitan Opera but still holds dear his attachments to his home country is profound and moving. His talent in singing is enormous and is equal only to his talent for sharing his remarkable journey. A must read by a gifted story teller and his equally gifted co-writer Lois Morris.



4. Knowing little about either what it is like to grow up in China or Opera, this book was riveting for me. Tian goes in depth about both of these topics and i truly feel as if i know him and his family now! Tian's journey reminds us that no matter where in the world people come from and how foreign they may seem, we are ultimately the same and seeking the same things in life. I am motivated to learn more about opera and have plans to go to my first one at the Central City Opera in Colorado he so passionately describes! You don't have to be versed in Opera to be inspired by this book!



5. This book is a real page turner. I left family and friends in a restaurant last night so I could come home and finish it. It is so lucidly written, the story as riveting as an historical novel. Tian is a complex but guileless fellow with a giant talent driving him to expression. The supporting cast, companions on the path of his destiny, are similarly well drawn. Tian's story brings home the truth of how much conditioning we all have, politically and cognitively. And it affirms for me that the human spirit, human relationships, divine providence, and the unseen world are much more active than ourconscious thoughts and feelings in determining the outcome of events and personal transformation.

No comments about Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women and Their Journey from East to West.

3 comments about The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics.

1. Confucius' influence has endured for nearly 2,500 years at the heart of Chinese culture, even though his light occasionally has been eclipsed by various political and cultural movements. In China, Annping Chin points out, he is simply known as "the first teacher."
   
   Just as the figure of Jesus is reinterpreted in each new age -- and there's vigorous debate among Christians and non-Christians over Jesus' life and teachings to this very day -- Confucius also is the target of continual scholarly reinterpretation.
   
   Chin points out that two large caches of ancient manuscripts that relate to Confucius' legacy, which were discovered in 1993, are sparking readjustments in our modern understanding of that legacy. Plus, after a condemnation of Confucian thought as recent as the 1970s in China, his influence is rising again in his homeland.
   
   In her book, she points out that, once again, Chinese government funding is available for scholarly conferences on the Confucian tradition -- an official move with complex interconnections to the current cultural mix in China. Ping has been part of all of this unfolding reinterpretation, traveling widely in China, examining the new manuscripts, attending at least one of these major scholarly conferences.
   
   That's why it's so important to select a recent book like this, published in 2007, in exploring Confucius and his ongoing importance as a spiritual and cultural figure. Books published in other eras spoke to other historical windows into his life and significance.
   
   Chin's work is respected among scholars and she writes with one eye on this elite audience. But, if you're a general reader in this field, you're likely to find this a very helpful book in understanding the "real" Confucius. Ping works hard in this book to limit her overview of his life, work and influence to hard facts attributable to original sources. In other words, this isn't a fanciful "legends of Confucius" treatment.
   
   This means that opening chapters of the book are a little challenging for general readers. In those chapters, Ping works through some of the more complex political situations Confucius faced as a philosopher-for-hire in the service of powerful rulers in his era. But the middle of the book opens up as a fascinating look of his teachings. Plus, Ping's accounts of his followers' distinctive characters and adventures make for flat-out fun spiritual reading.
   
   Her closing chapters look at some of the ways Confucius' body of work was used -- and reinterpreted and sometimes even abused -- in other eras. That's also a very interesting section of her book, especially for Christian readers in the West who are familiar with the many ways that Jesus' teachings bounced through similar waves of reinterpretation down through the centuries. This tendency to human re-interpretation of spiritual sages seems to be a universal yearning.
   
   This is an all-around excellent book for Western readers -- a superb choice as a book to help Westerners understand a major spiritual thread in Asian culture to this day.



2. A fine book on what is now reasonably thought to be known of the great teacher, Confucius. The author, Annping Chin, writes with clarity and authority on a still revered figure, whose actual life to most is lost in a mythical haze.
   
   People interested in China, ethical living, and governmental theory would profit from this biographical study.



3. Confucius, whose family name was Kong and given name was Qiu (551-479 B.C.) was a philosopher, humanist, teacher, and political theorist whose ideas were collected by his disciples in "The Analects of Confucius" and elsewhere.
   
   Annping Chin, who teaches in the History Department at Yale University, has done admirable and extensive research into the most reliable Chinese texts, seeking to make sense of the reconstructions and guesswork that has muddled Confucius' memory.
   
   But what can we really know about Confucius, who lived five centuries before the birth of Christ, aside from embellishments and conflicting stories concocted by his disciples? (Indeed, what can one know about Socrates other than what Plato (and a few scattered sources) reports concerning him, or of Jesus apart from what the Evangelists claim he said and did?). Did not Plato, the Gospel Writers, and the disciples of Confucius "put words into the mouth" of their heroes?
   
   Confucius often taught in baffling paradoxes that lead to various interpretations. Moreover, linguistic and cultural barriers may prove challenging for Western minds seeking to grasp the nuances and subtleties of his thought.
   
   In his essay, "On the Study of Latin," the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, "A man's thought varies according To the language in which he speaks." One worries that "something is lost in translation" from the ancient Chinese dialect in which Confucius spoke, and wonders if the Western thinker is on the same wave length as "the inscrutable Oriental mind."
   
   A few of Confucius' aphorisms, however, ring true, as when he is reputed to have said, "Do not impose on others what you do not desire yourself" or, as it is sometimes translated (or paraphrased), "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself." Some scholars assert that Confucius' "Silver Rule" is superior to Jesus' "Golden Rule" ("Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.") Their reason for such a judgment is that what one person might want done to himself, another person might not want done to him! Confucius' "negative" formulation seems akin to the Hippocratic oath: "First do no harm."
   
   Confucius also said, "The superior man practices virtue. To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue. [They are] gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness." Although, while serving briefly in the political arena, Confucius once ordered that a man be put to death (which, because of the man's criminal conduct, was probably deserved), the general tenor of Confucius' life and teachings is that of a caring and compassionate human being . . . and the world would be a much better place if there were more people in it like Confucius.
   
   On the subject of teachers, Confucius said, "Even when walking in the company of two men, I am bound to find my teachers there. Their good points, I try to emulate; their bad points, I try to correct in myself."
   
   No revolutionary, Confucius had a deep respect for the wisdom of antiquity, and considered his mission to help preserve the world from chaos and disorder. Teaching the virtues of benevolence and reciprocity, he strove to "keep the idea of the moral within human reach."
   
   A surprising result of Annping Chin's revelation concerning Confucius is that he was involved deeply in the rough and tumble side of politics. His plunge into politics was necessary, he believed, for to be "immaculate," one has be able "to withstand black dye." Morality, he believed, cannot be insulated from politics and society.
   
   Chin shows that Confucius was human, a man who made mistakes and could be duped. People did not always trust him, thinking his pursuit or the moral life was futile and Quixotic. Yet he persisted in listening, learning, and teaching the way of "the gentleman" and "the superior man." His lifelong pilgrimage was a quest for living a life of benevolence, kindness, and square dealings with others.
   
   Annping Chin studied mathematics at Michigan State University and received her PhD in Chinese Thought from Columbia University. She was on the faculty at Wesleyan University and currently teaches in the History Department at Yale University, where her fields of study include Confucianism, Taoism, and the Chinese intellectual tradition. She is the author of Children of China: Voices from Recent Years and Four Sisters of Hofei. She has also coauthored, with Mansfield Freeman, Tai Chen on Mencius, and with Jonathan Spence, The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years.

1 comments about Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter.

1. This was a story of triumph of a young chinese girl, Adeline Yen Mah, swallowed whole by the fate that left her with the cruelest face of humankind...her stepmother, Niang Yen. As a rose cannot grow without sun, light, and earth, nor could this girl have survived life w/out the endearing love from her Aunt Baba who encouraged and nurtured her despite inflictions from the Adeline's stepmother and father in doing so.
   
   After reading this book I feel compelled to hug Adeline Yan Mah and tell her what a wonderful person she is.

3 comments about On Gold Mountain: The 100-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family.

1. I wish I had read this book first. I read Lisa's Flower Net and enjoyed it so much that I looked to see what else she had written. Finding On Gold Mountain (thanks, Amazon) I became immersed in the life of the author and her family. I have read so many stories of Chinese families in Mainland China and Taiwan, but this is the first I have read of the Chinese American experience. It is doubly interesting because of the marriages between Chinese and Caucasians, and how they resolved their cultural differences during a time when China itself was undergoing so many cultural changes. I highly recomend the book for its content and for its excellent narrative style.



2. Lisa See, in describing the journey of her family over one hundred years, also takes the reader on a literary journey. I have read many auto-biographical and semi-auto-biographical accounts of the Chinese diaspora and Lisa's book is amongst the best. We can read her book as an adventure and also as a history. A history about which she must be proud. This book has inspired me to write about my own family, who made a similar journey, over a hundred years ago, but in Australia



3. Lisa See's path to discover where and how she fits in in this gifted, and far from ordinary immigrant American family is as much your story as it is hers. Her writing is fresh and alive enough to hold your interest and make you want to hear more from and about this author. Her mother is Carolyn See, who has written a little about Lisa's history in her own book, Dreaming: Good Luck and Hard Times in America. Look over both books and be prepared to hunker down for a while.

5 comments about Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.

1. The over all knowledge displayed by the Author Bill Porter
   is Exclent,and the knowledge of China.



2. "You can't be in a hurry. You have to be prepared to devote your whole life to your practice," says Master Hsueh T'ai-li after forty-five years on the slopes and summits of Huashan. "This is what's meant by religion. It's not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life."
   "Road to Heaven, Encounters with Chinese Hermits" by Bill Porter provides a fleeting image of the cloud people, the Chinese hermits who have turned their backs on this world of red dust - and survived.
   There is a stark, and sad, contrast between the monks and hermits, and the busy American writer who is rushing about asking homely questions like: "Were you upset when the Red Guards burned your library?" or "Do you get any mail?"
   "Taoism is very deep. There's a great del to learn, and you can't do it quickly. The Tao isn't something that can be put into words. You have to practice before you can understand," reiterates Master Hsueh.
   And yet I find myself returning to this "Road to Heaven" because it captures a few anecdotes, gems and asides about famous and unknown hermits that makes it worthwhile reading. Searching for a lost quote, I return to the hasty interviews with abbots and nuns standing guard at old temples and crumbling shrines. And I find more layers to their brief stories than first meets the eye.
   There is stillness and tranquility in the frugal lives of these Chinese hermits, and a firm and unwavering grip on the essentials of a religion. They represent the last living flicker of the spiritual wisdom originating with Lao-tzu thousands of years ago. And now their world is vanishing into the darkness, like the last sparks from a windswept fire.



3. This book is a great account of traveling in communist China and searching for the remnant hermit monks in the country's rugged mountains. I've noticed many reviewers apparently expected all sorts of different things from this book - Porter as enlightened writer weilding his pen as a delusion-cutting sword, hermit wisdom never before heard in the west that offers instant nirvana, etc. But the book is just what the title says it is: encounters with Chinese hermits, who, by going deep into the mountains and saving the essentials of their practice are "on the road to heaven."
   
   It is refreshing to know that in China there still are hermit monks and nuns, clarifying their insight away from the world's distractions.
   
   The hermits Bill Porter encounters in China have all survived communism, which is one subject of the book. The hardships the monks and nuns faced under communism is not a suprise, what is a suprise is the monks, nuns and temples now being sold as tourist attractions by the Chinese government. An entirely different threat - capitalism - now rears its exhausting head, and the hermits move deeper into the mountains to save their practice from becoming part of a Human Buddhist Zoo.



4. I enjoyed this biographical account of extraordinary journeys made by the author, Bill Porter, and his friend Steven Johnson in 1989. Their quest was into the heart of a range of mountains in China rumored by a few to be home to some modern Chinese Buddhist and Taoist hermits. But these hermits have been thought to be long gone, even by Buddhist and Taoist folk living in the local monasteries. Bill Porter followed his heart and a few good leads and encountered some, including some who were unaware that there had been a Maoist "cultural revolution." He was able to interview a number of these sages of the mountains, and here shares them with us plus his own studies and insights into the traditions of Chinese hermits. More exciting than fiction, here is the real deal. Quiet lives hidden away in stark, sparse, cold places, content with a dirt floor and a small fire for tea, not the romantic images I had encountered in reading the ancient poets. You should know that this is more a travelogue of incredible journeys than a book of inspiring insights into Buddhism or Taoism. Jim Harrison calls this book "a startling reminder of how far we have gone astray" and "a part of any serious Zen or Taoist library." I heartily agree.



5. This book reads like an adventure story but it is all true...Bill Porter speaks Mandarin and has many friends in China so he could travel into territories where few Westerners are able to go without a guide. He won the trust of many hermits high up in the mountains of China and tells a wonderful tale of their survival against all odds...Sadly, they are a dying breed and the last of a generation who dedicated themselves to a monastic life of meditation and living without wordly goods. A really good read! Marilynn Seits

2 comments about The True Story of Ah Q (Bilingual Series on Modern Chinese Literature).

1. A must-see work. The most well-known short works in China by the greatest writer Mr. Lu Xun in China's history. Try to ask any people from mainland China, I am sure 99% of them have read this story of Ah-Q.
   Ah-Q is the most famous character in China. This short novel reflects the status of the whole society in early 20th century, which was in the end of the last feudalistic Dynasty in China.



2. The Chinese communist party likes to claim Lu Xun as a precursor to later social critics who wrote along party lines. He definitely does not belong in that category. The cover of the English translation, published by the Foreign Languages Press Beijing,(not this edition) claims that his story, set in the China of 1911, reflects "the sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses' demand for revolution". Nothing could be farther from the truth. There are no peasants in Lu Xun's story who demand a revolution. On the contrary, when revolution "arrives" in the towns, it is the officials of the crumbling Ming Dynasty in the village who try to jump on the new train first. The peasants are dumbfounded, but essentially, they do not care. Ah Q is a day laborer who lives on the odd jobs he gets from time to time in his small village. He is an optimistic, naive peasant inclined to turn his daily humiliations into imaginary "victories" When he commits the mistake of confessing his love to a lowly female employee in the household of a wealthy official by saying "sleep with me", he is ostracised by the whole village and forced to steal in order to survive. Finally, he leaves the village. He returns as a man with money, and suddenly gains the respect of the villagers and the local officials. Later, however, he commits another mistake. He tells that the gained the money by selling stolen goods. In the end, he is executed because the officials decide that he has robbed the house of an official.

   Lu Xun tells the story in a very detached manner, never interfering with comments of his own. He is very sarcastic: the final chapter which tells of the execution of Ah Q is titled "The Grand Finale". Ah Q is depicted as a likeable fool, stumbling through life and thrown about by chance events and his own clumsiness. The world of the village is one of pettiness, slander, envy, opportunistic cowardness, intellectual tedium, and everyday muddling through. The revolution never has any meaning to the village, other than an interference of the balance of power, an external event to which the poor and the less poor have to adapt in order to survive. Ah Q seems to me to be a symbol for China in the early years of the 20th century: a naive peasant who dreams of great things but finally stumbles helplessly to a bitter end.

   The cover text of the Chinese edition concludes that it "was the author's sincere hope that the broad masses of peasants, victims of feudal oppression and imperialist aggression, might be aroused and rise in resistance against them." My own overall impression of the atmosphere in Ah Q's village is one of stifling inertia where everyone was caught in a net of inhibiting relationships and only looked for his own (and his family's) improvement in social status. No masses, no arousal. A sad story, but a true one, I guess.

5 comments about History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1).

1. The professional historians faint as prominent mathematician Doctor Fomenko et al research the known historical data and come to fairly controversial conclusions.
   
   For example, the English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. As the sign of recognition of the special role of the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.
   
   The Russian historians brand it as pseudoscience because Dr Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by over two centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called `Tartars and Mongols' were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a trilingual state and aspiring Global Empire with Arabic and Turkic spoken as freely as Russian.
   
   The ancient proto-Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities and the hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called `blood tax'). Their `invasions' were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion.
   
   Fomenko proves for a fact that official Russian history is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scholars brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs. Their ascension to the throne was the result of conspiracy, so they charged these German historians-imports with the noble mission of making Romanov's reign look legitimate.
   
   Dr Fomenko et al prove Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. These rulers represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate Godounovs and the ambitious Romanov upstarts.
   
   The European historians fume not only because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History but for asserting that all medieval European Kings and Princes were but breakaway vice-regents and vassals of the Global Empire who badly needed glorious and very `ancient' past in order to legitimize their new independence from the Empire.
   
   Dr Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one: the Ancient Rome: the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the 14th century A. D., the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, the Ancient Egypt: the pyramids of Giza become dated to the 11th to 14th century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global Empire, no less.
   
   The civilization of the `ancient'' Egypt is irrefutably dated to the 11th to 15th century A. D. following the breakthrough in decoding of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone and painted on the temple walls.
   
   Arabic historians may find some consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire as a part of the Global empire in the 15th - 17th century. The trouble is that this Empire was initially a proto-Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, but built in 1550-1557 A.D. by Sultan Suleiman according to Fomenko and Islam with all its key figures is datable to 15th 16th century A. D.!
   
   The Chinese historians are also an unhappy lot because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such history. Period. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the 17th 18th century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation.
   
   The Divinity excommunicates Dr Fomenko because the history of religions according to Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the 11th century and Jesus Christ ), Bacchic Christianity (11th to 12th century, before and after Jesus Christ), Jesus Christ Christianity (12th to 14th century) and its subsequent mutations (15th to 17th cy) into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on..; and The Old Testament written after the New Testament in xiv-xvi cy A.D., if you please! Everybody served? Saint Augustine was quite prescient when he said: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."



2. Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RAZQNMXM4M9CL Has history been tampered with? Yes, it has! Did events and eras such as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Roman Empire , the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance, actually occur within a very different chronology from what we've been told? Yes, they certainly did!
   
   The history of humankind is both drastically shorter and dramatically different than generally presumed.
   
   Why is it so? On one hand, it was usual custom to justify the claims to title and land by age and ancestry, and on the other the court historians knew only too well how to please their masters. The so called universal classic world history is a pack of intricate lies for all events prior to the 16th century. World history as we learn it today was entirely fabricated in the 16th-18th centuries. It's likely that nobody told you before, but
   
   there is not a single piece of firm written evidence or artefact that is reliably and independently dated prior to the 11th century.
   
   Naturally, after what you've learned in school and university, you will not easily believe that the classical history of ancient Rome, Greece, Asia, Egypt, China, Japan, India, etc., is manifestly false.
   
   You will point accusing finger to the pyramids in Egypt, to the Coliseum in Rome and Great Wall of China etc., and claim, aren't they really ancient, thousands of years ancient? Well, there is no valid scientific proof that they are older than 1000 years!
   
   The oldest original written document that can be reliably dated belongs to the 11th century!
   
   New research asserts that Homo sapiens invented writing (including hieroglyphics) only 1000 years ago. Once invented, writing skills were immediately and irreversibly put to the use of ruling powers and science.
   
   The consensual chronology we live with was essentially crafted in the 16th century by the Jesuits.
   
   The world history was compiled from contradictory mix of innumerable copies of ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts and other irrefutable proofs delivered by late mediaeval astronomers that were cemented by the authority of writings of the Church Fathers.
   
   Early in life, we learn about ancient history. Children love the magical lessons of history - they are like fairy tales. Teachers recite breathtaking stories; very soon We learn by heart the names and deeds of brave warriors, wise philosophers, fabulous pharaohs, cunning high priests and greedy scribes.
   
   We learn of gigantic pyramids and sinister castles, kings and queens, dukes and barons, powerful heroes and beautiful ladies, emaciated saints and low-life traitors.
   
   Ancient history is based documents, manuscripts, printed books, paintings, monuments and artefacts - called primary sources.
   
   The problem is that neither these ancient documents, nor events described therein can be irrefutably dated, moreover they contradict each other for the most part.
   
   When a school textbook tells us that Genghis Khan in year X or Alexander in year Y, have each conquered half of the world, it means only that it is so said in some of the written sources.
   
   There are no answers to simple questions:
   
   When were these primary sources written?
   
   Where and by whom were these sources found?
   
   It is wrongly presumed that ancient and medieval chronicles, written by Genghis Khan's or Alexander the Great contemporaries and eyewitnesses, are readily available. Actually, only sources written hundreds or even thousands of years after the events are there, compiled mostly in the 16th 18th centuries, or even later.
   
   As a rule, these sources suffered considerable multiple manipulations, falsifications and distortions by editing. At the same time,
   
   innumerable originals of ancient documents under various pretexts were destroyed in Europe under various pretexts.
   
   The names of persons and geographical sites often changed meaning and location during the course of the centuries.
   
   Geographical locations became clearly defined on maps only with the advent of printing.
   
   This made possible the circulation of identical copies of the same map for purposes of the military, navigation, education and governance tasks.
   
   Historians from Oxford say: "hey, everybody knows that Julius Caesar lived in the first century B.C.
   
   `Julius Caesar' statement is only a point of view as
   
   there is simply no irrefutable documentary proof that Julius Caesar or any other great name of antiquity ever existed.
   
   Better than that - extremely rare sources that can be reliably dated back to the 10th-14th centuries A D, do not show the polished picture of classical history.
   
   They show a picture both contradictory and confusing.
   
   All methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts are erroneous:
   
   Radio-carbon C14 method produces dating with exactitude of plus minus 1500 years, therefore it is too crude for dating of events in historical timeframe!
   
   The Almagest tractate, which lies as corner stone contemporary chronology, compiled in the 2nd century A D by Ptolemy, the founding father of astronomy, contains astronomical data of 9th to 16th century!
   
   The Bronze Age,that has supposedly began 5000 years ago. Bronze is made of 90% copper and 10% tin, but the technology for tin extraction dates back to 14th century A D!.
   
   All eclipses contained in manuscripts, like Thucydides one, relating 'ancient' events have exclusively medieval dating. All horoscopes cut in stone or painted in Egyptian temples, like Dendera have exclusively early medieval dating solutions.
   
   Not quite what you have learned in school? Open your eyes, and, you will find sufficient proof to reach step by step the inevitable conclusion that the classical chronology is false and therefore, that the history of ancient and medieval world universally accepted today, is also false. Have a fresh outlook on everything said or printed about "ancient" and "enigmatic" Roman, Greek and Egyptian, medieval as well as all other "lost and found" civilizations.
   
   Antiquity and Dark Ages are phantoms invented in the 16th 18th and polished in 19th 20thcenturies. Human civilization is in fact barely 1000 years old!
   
   This book will change your perception of History forever!
   What if Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were invented during Renaissance?
   What if The Old Testament was a rendition of events of the Middle Ages?
   What if Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086 AD?
   Sounds Unbelievable?
   Not after you've read "History: Fiction or Science?" by Anatoly Fomenko, the genius mathematician.
   Armed with astronomy and computers Anatoly Fomenko turns History into a rocket science.



3. Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun (ie. closer), different tilt on its axis (ie. less than 23.5 degrees), different orbit (ie. more circular), different rotation (ie. in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different relative positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently from how we would today? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history or geography is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.



4. Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.



5. There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
   
   For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

5 comments about China Men.

1. China Men, written as a male companion piece to her female-centered The Woman Warrior, focuses on the Chinese men of Maxine Hong Kingston's family. This book takes what critics said about Kingston being a man-hating nut in The Woman Warrior and sublimates it; now she can simply be accused of being a white-hating nut.
   
   The immigration process was very tough for the men in Kingston's family. Because they were foreigners that spoke little to no English, they were forced into low-paying, labor-intensive field work. The Chinese immigrants would often be called "chinamen." What Kingston has very subtly done with the word is turned it into a positive. The title of the book is "China Men," not "Chinamen." When whites in the book use the word, it's derogatory; Kingston uses it differently - with respect. With what her relatives have been through, it's easy to understand why Kingston tends to hate white Californians.
   
   China Men is heavily mixed with amazing fantasy and heart-breaking reality. Kingston has grown as a writer since The Woman Warrior and anyone interested in a fascinating read on Chinese immigration should pick this one up.



2. I loved this book, and I love how the author writes. She tells her stories not in a typical narrative, factual, journalistic way, but in a stylized, "storylike" way (does that make sense?!). All of the stories focused on the different men in her family, especially her father. They all center on the Chinese man's experience in America, from the railroad days onward, and tells of their struggles, triumphs and failures. As a whole the book is about how these experiences shaped the men in her family. She intersperses a few legends here and there, just like she does in Woman Warrior. I enjoy how she takes her family history and literally turns it into a work of art. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.



3. In China Men, Kingston took me on a ride all over the literary landscape. In general, I thought her book was an interesting tossed salad of memoir, fable, reporting, and poetry. As a reader, it reminded me of a scrapbook of family stories, newspaper articles, heritage legends -- all assembled in one place.

   Interestingly, Kingston begins the book with two distinctive chapters. Unlike the rest of the book, these two chapters are relatively homogenous, sticking with one form, voice, structure and tone throughout. The first chapter is the fable of the Land of Women. I didn?t understand this chapter until the last sentences, when it seemed as though Kingston was saying that coming to North America emasculated the Chinese men who made the journey to the Gold Mountain.

   If Kingston?s main theme is that the journey to North America emasculated the Chinese Men, then from a reader?s perspective I?m not sure if the book delivers on this promise. To put a fable with a very obvious moral at the beginning of the book seems to me to set up a contract with the reader about the subject or theme of the book. Although, Kingston explores many different aspects of the Chinese experience in North America, and even starts to explore the ways that China Men were oppressed, I?m not sure she completely proves her case in my mind. I could be wrong, however.

   Interestingly, the second chapter of the book is another short one, this time a nearly pure piece of memoir. Alone, this chapter seems to set up the author?s own relationship with Chinese men. By mistaking another man for her father, she seems to be saying from the beginning of the book that from her perspective Chinese men are nearly interchangeable. But interestingly, she isn?t the only one who makes the mistake. All the children in that scene mistake the strange man for their father. I like this chapter placed here because it contrasts nicely with the fable/story in the first chapter. The first chapter is told at a distance by a storyteller/narrator. The second chapter is told first person from our main narrator?s voice.

   Kingston returns to this theme several more times in the book. On page 217, she remarks that one of her Uncles looks just like her father. Interestingly, Uncle Bun is also completely forgotten, erased from her sister?s memory only a few years after he leaves. Kingston often hints at how distant and interchangeable the China Men were to her and to the women of her family. At other times she explores her narrator?s perceptions that China Men have no heart, no emotions.

   One of Kingston?s greatest strengths, in my opinion, is her ability to weave in all sorts of other stories into the narrative of her story -- presenting a mosaic of memoirs, possibilities, facts, essays, fables, legends, ghost stories, scenes and reporting -- that all add up to a complete picture of the lives of the China Men who came to the United States. On page 49, she starts one version of a trip to the US with, ?I think this is the journey you don?t tell me:? She then recounts the tale of the father?s arrival in the US as a stowaway. But like The French Lieutenant?s Woman, she (Kingston) also gives us another, more ordinary version of the father?s emigration. I don?t know which one is ?real? and which one is imagined and, frankly, I don?t care. The fact that some Chinese used each of these methods is credible enough to keep my disbelief suspended and keep me in the story.




4. The China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston was a very interesting book. It contains stories of Chinese men traveling to America in the 1800's and working on the transcontinental railroads, in Sierra Nevada. The author shares a lot of details in the stories about her family traveling to America. She retold the story from a male's perspective of what hardships they've been through to get to America, in search for the Golden Mountains. A rich country that they about which is full of riches. As they reach to America what they thought was the Golden Mountains was just a land of hard labor and low paying jobs. Some of them regretted coming to America, but they couldn't go back to their country because they had no money.
   Some part of the story made me feel like I could relate my family to the characters that Kingston has written about. My family immigrated to the United States in 1984. Like the characters in Kingston's book they heard about the Golden Mountains that's why they came to America. All they found was low paying jobs which are similar to the characters in Kingston's book. Is this really what they thought of as the Golden Mountains? It was for sure not what they had thought of. Like many Chinese family my parents thought that the Golden Mountain was really a place to find gold, but all they found was their own blood, sweat, and tears that they shed of all the hard work that they did.
   This book is also very educating because in one of the chapters, Kingston listed a list of laws that were set against Chinese in the 1800's. It gives the reader more information of what the Chinese immigrants had went through to come to America and to work for the country. Overall, this book is very good and very detailed. I strongly recommended this book, if you're interested in learning more about the experiences of Chinese men traveling to America and their stories. This is also one of the best book that I've read.



5. This is an amazing book, wrought with heartwrenching love and pain over the wiping out of Chinese Americans in American history. I disagree with people who say it can be confusing for a non-Chinese reader, because it is certainly accessible. The plot is made up of several stories from different eras of history, along with beautifully narrated myths that are symbolic of America's inhospitability. It made me reaccess my understanding of an America that is not covered in textbooks and really to see how it feels to not feel at home in one's own country.

5 comments about Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China (Chronicle).

1. Given the dearth of good English language books on Chinese history that are meant for the general public, it is refreshing to find a book tackling this area.
   
   However, it is all but impossible to cover all of the emperors of China in her 3,000 years of history in just over 200 pages, so this book is really only suitable as an introduction.
   
   As the title indicates, this is a chronicle of the emperors of China, rather than a history of China. Each emperor is given about a paragraph of text, with the exception of the more important rulers. As a result, some of the more important events and people that had profound effect on Chinese history were not included.
   
   On the positive side, this book is very well illustrated, and interspaced throughout the book, the author introduces various concepts on Chinese religion, culture, and arts.
   
   Also, I find the absence of the Shang and Zhou dynasties from this book to be an important oversight. Although they are normally considered part of imperial China, the kings of these dynasties certainly were part of Chinese history. Another oversight is the non-inclusion of the emperors of the Liao and Jin Dynasties.



2. All of these Chronicle history series books are great. This is the 4th one I have purchased. My kid is doing some big history project on a era of Chinese History that is hardly covered in traditonal Chinese history books. And to top it off the teacher is not allowing web references for the first draft. This book covered that era of history (the Three Kingdoms/Wei Dynastry) so that even I who don't know anything about Chinese history ( I am an Egyptian/Greek/Roman buff) could figure out where the 3 Kingdomsfit into the big picture. They give dates and the little plaques at the front of each reign with who their father was, who was the wife, big accomplishments is very helpful in school projects. The pictures are a big plus in making the material more interesting and real. I recommend these books to desperate parents everywhere.



3. I purchased this book in Shanghai hoping to learn more about early Chinese history. I had just visited Huang Shan meaning Yellow Mountain named after Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor. In this book there are only a few sentences on him. The material the book does cover is presented in an interesting but brief manner. Covering the material in great detail would take require a volume much larger. I recommend this as an introduction and starting point for those not familiar with Chinese history.



4. The author states that the first Tang Emperor, Li Yuan, designated his second son, Li Shimin, a crown prince. In fact, the crown prince was not Li Shimin but his first son, killed by Li Shimin in the 926 coup.



5. A blooper on page 10 says it all: the Sui Dynasty is inexplicably represented by the character 'Qi'. Paludan's book is well-intentioned and nicely-illustrated, but her grasp of the Chinese language and experience in historical research are clearly not up to the daunting task of presenting a comprehensive account of imperial Chinese history. As her bibliography shows, she has had to rely on several dated works in English, as well as more recent and authoritative ones like the massive Cambridge History of China. However, she flounders badly in the second section ("Confusion, Reunification and Golden Age", AD 220-907) and never makes it out of the confusion. The text in this section is peppered with factual inaccuracies and errors in translation that can only be blamed on general ignorance. While struggling with the emperors of the Southern Dynasties, she ignores those of the concurrent Northern Dynasties, sparing only two pages to comment on socio-economic developments in the North. The rulers of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms receive equally sparse attention. The superficial quotations that she has selected from estern sources betray the same lack of depth in examining the historical record.

   It would be unfair to single out Ann Paludan for lack of scholarship, however, because the ages of fragmentation from AD 189-589 and 907-979 suffer from a miserable dearth of research among Western historians of China. Paludan apparently had only three sources in English to go upon, none published within the last 20 years. Sadly, one of them is the famous but thoroughly mythologised "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the author of which she characteristically names as Zhong Luo Guan rather than Luo Guanzhong. She parrots that novel's popular perception of the Three Kingdoms as "the golden age of chivalry and romance", without any attempt to compare this with historical reality.

   From here, everything goes downhill, because the Cambridge History volume on the 220-589 period has yet to be published. Paludan, probably referring to the primary sources, fails completely to get her facts and names right, translating "Prince of Yingyang" as "Sun King of Ying", for example, and referring to his replacement by an "older" half-brother when that brother was in fact younger. For that matter, Paludan bothers to give us the Chinese characters for the temple names and reign titles of the various emperors, but not their actual names (not even in hanyu pinyin, in many cases). One would think the reader is just as much interested to know the name an emperor was born with.

   The later chapters from Tang to Qing are rather more credible, but readers would do better to read the (still incomplete) Cambridge History and F.W. Mote's "Imperial China 900-1800" for the same information in greater detail and accuracy. Sadly, a proper history of the chaotic period from AD 189 to 589, imperial China's longest-ever period of inter-regional war, has yet to be written for English-speaking readers. Beyond brief excursions into the then-rising religions of Buddhism and Daoism, Ann Paludan does not even begin to do justice to its fascinating complexities.