The best-preserved mummies in the world are not found in Egypt or Peru but in the museums of Xinjiang, the westernmost province of modern China. For thousands of years the occupants of the barren wastes and oases that would later become the Silk Road buried their dead in the desiccating sands of the TÃ¨klimakan, the second greatest desert on earth. This arid environment, preserving body and clothing, allows an unparalleled glimpse into the lives and appearance of a prehistoric people. While the mummies lie mute, their faces eloquently challenge modern scholars to identify them. For these are not the faces of ancient Chinese but rather those of Indo-Europeans who settled in the Tarim Basin on the western rim of ancient China some four millennia ago, 2,000 years before West and East recognized each other's existence. This intriguing study describes the discovery of these people of ancient China and reveals the latest attempts of Chinese and Western scientists to explain their origin and determine their ethnic identity. The book examines the clues left by physical remains; their economy, technology, and textiles (some of the mummies even wore tartans); and the later traces of the languages of the Tarim region. The trail ultimately leads to two major contenders: the Indo-Iranians, those masters of the Eurasian steppes who poured south into the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, India, and China, and the Tocharians, the most elusive of the major branches of Indo-Europeans.

The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West

History

Mair, Victor H.

Mallory, J.P.

Ancient Civilizations

Thames&Hudson

The True History of Tea

A lively and beautifully illustrated history of one of the world's favorite beverages and its uses through the ages. World-renowned sinologist Victor H. Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to tell the story of this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present, from East to West. For the first time in a popular history of tea, the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals have been thoroughly consulted and carefully sifted. The resulting narrative takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, from the tea ceremony politics of medieval Japan to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia and the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters. Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways. The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in an entertaining tale that combines solid scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. 50 illustrations

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Hoh, Erling

Beverages & Wine

3000 years of Chinese history presented through the lives of ninety-six illustrious participants from all periods and all parts of the country
China is the most populous country on earth, with the longest history of any modern nation. Here, the full range of Chinese cultural and scientific achievements, as well as its military conquests, wars, rebellions, and political and philosophical movements, are told through the eyes of real people who created or were involved in them. 
The subjects include emperors and empresses, concubines, officials and political figures, rebels, exiles, philosophers, writers and poets, artists, musicians, scientists, military leaders, and committed pacifists. From Fu Hao, an early warrior lady of the thirteenth century BC, to the late twentieth-century leader Deng Xiaoping, their careers, achievements, misdeeds, disasters, punishments, ideas and love stories make this an unforgettable read. 
Illustrated with portraits, paintings, written documents, bronzes, sculptures, and location maps, and written in an authoritative yet accessible style, Chinese Lives provides the perfect introduction to China’s history and her peoples. 83 illustrations, 52 in color

Chinese Lives: The People Who Made a Civilization

Biographies & Memoirs

Wood, Frances

Chen, Sanping

Historical

World-­renowned scholar of Chinese history Victor H. Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to spill the tea on this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present and from East to West. This accessible and entertaining history of tea makes use of the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals to explore the subject in rich historical detail. The resulting narrative travels from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters. Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways. The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in a compelling tale that combines scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents authoritative translations of four vernacular Chinese stories, taken from fragmentary texts usually referred to as pien-wen or 'transformation texts'. Dating from the late T'ang (618-907) and Five Dynasties (907-959) periods, the texts were discovered early last century in a cave at Tun-huang, in Chinese Central Asia. However, written down in an early colloquial language by semi-literate individuals and posing formidable philological problems, the texts have not been studied critically before. Nevertheless they represent the only surviving primary evidence of a widespread and flourishing world of popular entertainment during these centuries. The tales deal with both religious (mostly Buddhist) and secular themes, and make exciting and vivid reading.

Tun-huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

Gathers ancient Chinese tales, poems, and parables which offer a Taoist perspective on the issues of ambition, grief, politics, love, evil, and death

Wandering on the Way

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Bantam]

This is the most comprehensive study of pien-wen (“transformation texts” i.e., tales of metamorphosis) in any language since the manuscripts were discovered at the beginning of this century in a remote cave complex in northwest China. They are the earliest written vernacular narratives in China and are thus extremely important in the history of Chinese language and literature.Numerous scholarly controversies have surrounded the study of the texts in the last three quarters of a century; this volume seeks to resolve some of them―the extent, origins, and formal characteristics of the texts, the meaning of pien wen, the identity of the authors who composed these popular narratives and the scribes who copied them, the relationship of the texts to oral performance, and the reasons for the apparently sudden demise of the genre around the beginning of the Sung dynasty.This is a multi-disciplinary study that integrates findings from religious, literary, linguistic, sociological, and historical materials, carried out with intellectual rigor. It includes an extensive bibliography of relevant sources in many languages.

T’ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)

Harvard University Asia Center

Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis

Social Sciences

University of Hawaii Press

Arts & Photography

Univ of Hawaii Pr

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Books by Mair, Victor H.