Chinese Life

The Secret of the Golden Flower is an ancient Chinese text, passed on for centuries, in which Taoist mystics reveal the path to true enlightenment. The first written version was believed to have originated with Lü Dongbin, a legendary scholar, poet, and spiritual master. Lü Dongbin was the founder of the School of the Golden Elixir of Life during the Tang dynasty. In the text, symbols for light represented awareness, which is normally directed outward toward externals.

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of...

One of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary Americans, Pearl Buck was the first person to make China accessible to the West. She recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in The Good Earth, an overnight worldwide bestseller in 1932, later a blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become...

Listen to everyday words and phrases in Mandarin Chinese, then repeat, practise and refine! A relaxing way to pick up the language. Follow the words using the free booklet, also available at: collinsdictionary.com/resources Covers the words you need for modern life in China with topics on home...

Live Well Live Long explores the wonderful Chinese tradition of nourishing life (yangsheng). Continuously developed over more than 25 centuries, it serves as a workshop manual for the care of the human body, mind, and spirit. Its teachings can help us improve our health and lengthen our lives through cultivating our mind, emotions, diet, exercise, sleep, sexual behaviour, and much more. And as this book reveals, these teachings are comprehensively backed up by the findings of modern lifestyle research.

After years of hard work, Mia Tang finally gets to go on vacation with her family - to China! A total dream come true! Mia can't wait to see all her cousins and grandparents again, especially her cousin Shen. As she roams around Beijing, witnessing some of the big changes China's going through, Mia thinks about the changes in her own life.

“Wonderfully performed and completely captivating, this is historical fiction at its finest.” —Kirkus Reviews (Earphones Award Winner) As rich in detail and emotion as Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Lisa See's Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, but with an exciting structure that reinvents the...

Brought to you by Penguin. Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book distils Japan's long, complex and fascinating history into the stories of twenty remarkable individuals. These vivid and entertaining portraits take the reader from the earliest written accounts of Japan right through to...

A groundbreaking and superlatively accurate new translation of Laozi’s The Dao De Jing, from the bestselling translator of The Art of War, promising to be the first English edition based on direct translation from the oldest known copies of the ancient Chinese text. One of the most significant...

The emperor sought to make his own daughter empress, but this violates the Mandate of Heaven! The empress endured humiliation for eleven years only to be deposed, unthinkable! It's lamentable that countless heroes of the realm were defeated by a frail woman! War is imminent, yet you say I triggered it? How can you be so heartless! The unity and division of the realm, how could it be influenced by a powerless woman like me? Beauty of a Lifetime (Parts I & II) takes you into the complex struggle within the imperial harem.

By listening to these specially composed melodies with their rhythmic repetitions of Mandarin and English a few times, you pick up over 200 essential words and phrases that will not just be on the tip of your tongue, but will be burned deeply into your long-term memory in next to no time.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD Two Chinese sisters, sold as wives to American merchants, must adapt to a strange new country in this “powerful” (The Washington Post) historical novel from the acclaimed author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. “A gifted...

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy “A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New...

Harbin, China, 1925. Fifteen-year-old Anyu Zhang discovers a priceless Fabergé egg in the snow and returns it to the owner, Isaac Mandelburg, a fugitive and former master jeweler for Russia’s imperial palace. In gratitude, he leaves her his address in Shanghai and a promise of hospitality, forever altering her fate. A dazzling world of jewelry shrouded in secrecy and greed awaits, when later Anyu arrives at Mandelburg’s jewelry shop as an orphan.

This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist's journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice, from the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence...

“Kirsty Manning weaves together little-known threads of World War II history, family secrets, the past and the present into a page-turning, beautiful novel.""— Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz A gripping historical novel that tells the...

Max helps his friend Lily and her family celebrate the Chinese New Year. Flowers, oranges, and special candy are all part of the fun!

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled.

The enduring wisdom of the Tao Te Ching can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. Reportedly written by a sage named Lao Tzu over 2,500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching is one of the most succinct―and yet among the most profound―spiritual texts ever written. Subtle enough to study...

On her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after twenty-four years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife. The House of Wu, one of the oldest and most revered in China, is...