Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book is a study of the social and cultural change in Ming China's lower Yangzi delta region from about 1500 to 1644. It takes three social groups--literati, scholar-officials, and merchants--as the framework for discussing the political, socio-economic, and cultural forces that coalesced and reinforced one another to influence and facilitate the region's change. A still wider perspective reveals how the region's political ties with the state and commercial links with external markets impacted the region for better and for worse. The book also discusses the literati's reflection and discourse, which their participation in the change generated, on the issues of morality, money, politics, and disorder. The book evokes the richly textured social and cultural life of Ming China's heartland in an age of commercial and cultural vigor, which then descended into distress and despair. For scholars and for others conversant with Chinese history, and Ming history in particular, the extensive use of literati sources and the references to contemporary scholarship will be of interest.

China --- Yangtze River Delta (China) --- Changjiang Sanjiaozhou (China) --- Yangtze River (China) --- History --- Politics and government --- Economic conditions --- Social conditions --- Delta

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The book is a comprehensive study of the strategic position of Yangtze River Economic Belt in the political and economic development of China. It is a holistic and precise qualitative and quantitative delineation of Jiangsu’s position in this belt and its development strategy, and the strategic position of Yangtze River Economic Belt in national development. It also illustrates the great significance of the initiation of Yangtze River Economic Belt for the economy, politics, environment, and integration of natural resources. There is a research of the position of Jiangsu in the construction of the nation, and the difficulties it has encountered. Coordinated and balanced development of Yangtze River Economic Belt will effectively facilitate reasonable allocation and exploitation of various resources, the implementation of other national strategies, and communication and cooperation between China and Western countries, enhancing their mutual understanding. Therefore, common readers can get some general information from different perspectives, and professionals can have a detailed understanding of different arrangements and guiding principles. It is thus suitable for different readers. Yangtze River Economic Belt runs through the three regions of China, making a vital latitudinal axis, whose coordinated and balanced development is of great strategic importance for promoting coordinated and shared development of the three regions and for the spatial balance of population, economy and the environment. The current imbalance between them, the absolute disparity in regional development, the obstruction in the flow of resource factors, the inequality in development opportunities, the incoordination between regional economic growth and the bearing capacity of resources and environment, the fragmentation of regional economic policies, all contribute to the insufficient utilization of the Golden Waterway, problems numerous. How coordinated and balanced development can be realized within this economic belt is a prominent and pressing, even a severe problem.

Economic policy. --- Economic development. --- Economic Policy. --- Development Studies. --- Development, Economic --- Economic growth --- Growth, Economic --- Economic policy --- Economics --- Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) --- Development economics --- Resource curse --- Economic nationalism --- Economic planning --- National planning --- State planning --- Planning --- National security --- Social policy --- Yangtze River Delta (China) --- Yangtze River Valley (China) --- Yangtze Valley (China) --- Changjiang Sanjiaozhou (China) --- Yangtze River (China) --- Delta

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

How can we account for the durability of subsistence farming in China despite six centuries of vigorous commercialization from 1350 to 1950 and three decades of collectivization between 1950 to 1980? Why did the Chinese rural economy not undergo the transformation predicted by the classical models of Adam Smith and Karl Marx? In attempting to answer this question, scholars have generally treated commercialization and collectivization as distinct from population increase, the other great rural change of the past six centuries. This book breaks new ground in arguing that in the Yangzi delta, China's most advanced agricultural region, population increase was what drove commercialization and collectivization, even as it was made possible by them. The processes at work, which the author terms involutionary commercialization and involutionary growth, entailed ever-increasing labor input per unit of land, resulting in expanded total output but diminishing marginal returns per workday. In the Ming-Qing period, involution usually meant a switch to more labor-intensive cash crops and low-return household sidelines. In post-revolutionary China, it typically meant greatly intensified crop production. Stagnant or declining returns per workday were absorbed first by the family production unit and then by the collective. The true significance of the 1980's reforms, the author argues, lies in the diversion of labour from farming to rural industries and profitable sidelines and the first increases for centuries in productivity and income per workday. With these changes have come a measure of rural prosperity and the genuine possibility of transformative rural development. By reconstructing Ming-Qing agricultural history and drawing on twentieth-century ethnographic data and his own field investigations, the author brings his large themes down to the level of individual peasant households. Like his acclaimed The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (1985), this study is noteworthy for both its empirical richness and its theoretical sweep, but it goes well beyond the earlier work in its inter-regional comparisons and its use of the pre- and post-1949 periods to illuminate each other.

Rural development --- Rural families --- Farm families --- Families --- Community development, Rural --- Development, Rural --- Integrated rural development --- Regional development --- Rehabilitation, Rural --- Rural community development --- Rural economic development --- Agriculture and state --- Community development --- Economic development --- Regional planning --- Citizen participation --- Social aspects --- Yangtze River Delta (China) --- Changjiang Sanjiaozhou (China) --- Yangtze River (China) --- Economic conditions. --- Delta --- S11/0480 --- S20/0200 --- S20/0250 --- S20/0280 --- China: Social sciences--Rural life, rural studies: general and before 1949 --- China: Agriculture forestry, fishery, natural disasters--General works and before 1949 (incl. traditional Chinese works and the Yueling) --- China: Agriculture forestry, fishery, natural disasters--General works: since 1949 --- China: Agriculture forestry, fishery, natural disasters--Rural economic development

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"Tasting Paradise on Earth examines the tension between China's fast-forward modernization and its prevalent cultural nostalgia through an interdisciplinary exploration of how key cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces in the Lower Yangzi Delta region, or 'Jiangnan, ' preserve culinary inheritance while also revamping it for the new millennium. Throughout Chinese history, food nostalgia has generated cultural currency for individuals. Tasting Paradise on Earth examines literary treatments of Jiangnan foodways from late imperial and twentieth-century China, and demonstrates the metamorphosis of this cultural landscape in contemporary China, with its new platforms for food nostalgia, such as broadcast media and the Internet. It also highlights the role that gender plays in the expression of food nostalgia and the construction of personal and cultural identities. This analysis both sheds light on Chinese modernization and has broader comparative relevance for the study of global food cultures and modernization. It demonstrates that the (re)formation and management of individual and collective identities in a society undergoing massive transformations can be achieved by homely arts such as cooking, in addition to--and perhaps more effectively than--'high' art forms such as literature and music"--

Food habits --- Food --- Social change --- Eating --- Food customs --- Foodways --- Human beings --- Habit --- Manners and customs --- Diet --- Nutrition --- Oral habits --- History --- Social aspects&delete& --- Yangtze River Delta (China) --- Changjiang Sanjiaozhou (China) --- Yangtze River (China) --- Social life and customs. --- Delta --- Change, Social --- Cultural change --- Cultural transformation --- Societal change --- Socio-cultural change --- Social history --- Social evolution --- Foods --- Dinners and dining --- Home economics --- Table --- Cooking --- Dietaries --- Gastronomy --- S02/0200 --- S03/0617 --- S03/0618 --- S21/0600 --- Social aspects --- China: General works--Civilization and culture, nation, nationalism --- China: Geography, description and travel--Jiangsu --- China: Geography, description and travel--Zhejiang --- China: Medicine, public health and food--Chinese food and cookery, (incl. tea) --- Primitive societies --- History.