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This is the first full scholarly study of the Great Wall of China to appear in any language, and it challenges many deeply held ideas about Chinese history. Drawing both on primary sources and on the latest archaeology, the book first demonstrates that the standard account of the Great Wall is untrue and misleading and then presents a convincing new account. It begins by tracing the various walls and systems of frontier defences that existed in early Chinese history, and shows how the greatest of these achieved a mythical symbolic stature which long survived the Wall itself. A striking concluding chapter traces how the true history of the Wall was lost in the early twentieth century as it was gradually transformed into a Chinese national symbol explained through historical myth. The book is an important contribution to the history of China's defensive policy, and her ideological attitudes, and will be of interest both to students of Chinese history and of international relations in the pre-modern world.

An attempt at an analysis in depth of the work of Yang Hsiung (53 BC-AD 18), and of the Fu or rhapsody (a mixture of rhythmical prose passages interspersed with free, rhymed verse).

Much scholarly work has been published on the Chinese medieval 'aristocracy', in Chinese, Japanese and Western languages. It is commonly accepted that the change from an aristocratic society to a 'meritocracy' was one of the turning points of Chinese history.

The western reader is here presented with a biography of a major figure on the Chinese side in the crucial period of China's political contact with the western world, which describes a man of his own time and country, with his own background of education, endeavour and achievement and not merely a figure symbolic of Chinese obstruction of British purposes as he was seen from London or Hong Kong.

A study of the early versions of the classic Chinese novel known to readers in English as Monkey. Dr Dudbridge examines a long tradition of earlier versions in narrative and dramatic form through which the great episodic cycle slowly took shape

A study of the tensions between region and nation in Republican China. Diana Lary gives a detailed examination of Kwangsi province in south-west China, the home base of a major warlord clique which was important both for its interesting internal politics and for its national influence in the late 1920s and the 1930s.

Li Hsiu-ch'eng - the Loyal Prince - was the most important military leader on the rebel side during the last years of the Taiping Rebellion in China (1851-64). The Taiping Rebellion has been called the greatest popular revolt in modern history, and it came remarkably close to toppling the Ch'ing empire some fifty years before it was finally overthrown in 1911.

All the works of the Chinese poet T'ao Yuan-ming (AD 365-427) generally considered genuine have been translated here with commentary and annotation. T'ao, in the author's opinion, is of all the major Chinese poets especially concerned with personal integrity and the meaning of man's life.

All the works of the Chinese poet T'ao Yuan-ming (AD 365-427) generally considered genuine have been translated here with commentary and annotation. T'ao, in the author's opinion, is of all the major Chinese poets especially concerned with personal integrity and the meaning of man's life.

The Ai Chiang-nan fu by the sixth-century poet Yu Hsin deserves study both for its literary merits and for its uniqueness. Dr Graham provides a translation of the poem with a very detailed literary and historical commentary. The book also includes an introduction to the history of the period.

A look at the life of Shen Pao-chen who devoted his life to building China's first modern naval dockyard and academy. His successes and failures shed new light on the story of China's efforts at modernisation.