- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
History has many untold stories. In Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes the author provides glimpses into China's hidden past through the native's point of view. Rather than simply writing about ordinary people, this book is written from the perspective of ordinary people, how they told their own stories about themselves, their communities, and their pasts. The author examines historical consciousness as revealed in people's everyday lives and as expressed through customary rituals, sociocultural conventions, language, and the complex symbolism of common human experiences. The focus is on ethnic groups and individuals who have been routinely discriminated against in mainstream society and treated by officials as rogues and criminals. They were denizens of the underworld of "rivers and lakes" (jianghu), a sociocultural category that includes bandits, sorcerers, conmen, and prostitutes. To get at their silent history the author spent decades conducting field research in rural areas of southern China, collecting rarely used unconventional sources—folklore, legends, myths, rumors, and hearsay—that reveal nuggets of new information and insights not found in the conventional sources in libraries and archives. This book challenges many commonplace assumptions about how academics write history by offering alternative possibilities for China's past.
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Table of contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Note to Readers
- Prelude. The Illusive Toothless Man
- Chapter 1. The Underworld of Rivers and Lakes
- Chapter 2. Righteous Yang and the Great Comet of 1680
- Interlude 1. Pirates into Goddesses
- Chapter 3. Of Rats, Cats, and Bandits in the Canton Delta
- Chapter 4. Demons, Gangsters, and Triads
- Chapter 5. Religious and Ethnic Unrest in Huizhou
- Interlude 2. What Ever Happened to Broken Shoes Chen the Fourth?
- Chapter 6. Identity, Messianism, and Rebellion on the Yao Frontier
- Chapter 7. Water Chicks, Amazons, and Goddesses
- Chapter 8. Weizhou Island, Dan Fishers, and the Mysterious Third Old Lady
- Postlude. China’s Culture Wars
- Afterword
- Appendixes
- Character List
- Notes
- Bibliography
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Yes, you can access Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes by Robert J. Antony in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Asian History. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.