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Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted to local agriculture and taste profiles. To trace the roots of Chinese foodways, one must look back to traditional food systems before the early days of globalization. Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China traces the development of the food systems that coincided with China's emergence as an empire. Before extensive trade and cultural exchange with Europe was established, Chinese farmers and agriculturalists developed systems that used resources in sustainable and efficient ways, permitting intensive and productive techniques to survive over millennia. Fields, gardens, semiwild lands, managed forests, and specialized agricultural landscapes all became part of an integrated network that produced maximum nutrients with minimal input—though not without some environmental cost. E. N. Anderson examines premodern China's vast, active network of trade and contact, such as the routes from Central Asia to Eurasia and the slow introduction of Western foods and medicines under the Mongol Empire. Bringing together a number of new findings from archaeology, history, and field studies of environmental management, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China provides an updated picture of language relationships, cultural innovations, and intercultural exchanges.
The largest emitter of green-house gases since 2007 and top polluter of the increasingly stressed Pacific Ocean, the People’s Republic of China is both a major contributor to environmental degradation and a leading contender to mitigate and stabilize global environmental conditions. Reviewing the history of the PRC from the periods of central economic planning (1953-1978) followed by the single-minded pursuit of economic growth and mass consumption beginning in 1978-1979 to the adoption of a more balanced approach stressing environmental protection and restoration beginning in the 1990s, Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Environment documents both the enormous damage to the country’s natural environment and the dramatic attempts by the Chinese government and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) at environmental amelioration and restoration. Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Environment contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on environmental degradation including air and water pollution, deforestation, desertification, and resource depletion while efforts at amelioration and restoration include river and waterway clean-ups, reforestation and desert control, restoration of fisheries, creation of national nature reserves, along with energy conservation and development of renewables such as solar and wind power. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Chinese Environment.
Crossroads of Cuisine offers history of food and cultural exchanges in and around Central Asia. It discusses geographical base, and offers historical and cultural overview. A photo essay binds it all together. The book offers new views of the past.
The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 231 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format.
This book studies the East Asian world-system and its dynastic cycles as they were influenced by climate and demographic change, diseases, the expansion of trade, and the rise of science and technology. By studying the history of East Asia until the beginning of the 20th century and offering a comparative perspective on East Asian countries, including China, Japan and Korea, it describes the historical evolution of the East Asian world-system as being the result of good or poor management of the respective populations and environments. Lastly, the book discusses how the East Asian regions have become integrated into a single world-system by a combination of trade, commerce, and military action. Given its scope, the book will appeal to scholars of history, sociology, political science and environmental studies, and to anyone interested in learning about the effects of climate change on the dynamic development of societies.
Following decades of ignoring the environment, China has become a global leader in air and water purification, solid waste management, and wastewater treatment with dramatic growth especially in solar and wind power while major outstanding problems include continued reliance on coal and other fossil fuels especially in power plants and heavy industry. Concise Encyclopedia of Green Technology in China provides a basic understanding of green technology in the environmental and economic policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Green technology is defined as any technology used to mitigate or reverse the deleterious effects of human activity on the natural environment. Green technology involves the application of multiple environmental sciences including green chemistry, material sciences, and hydrology along with utilization of renewable energy sources such as geothermal, solar, tidal and wave, and wind power. Innovative technologies developed in China include mass production of electric vehicles (EVs), development of photovoltaics along with electronic devices for remote sensing, and monitoring, and utilization of enhanced computer power for the analysis of big data.
A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China's political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data This book is a multidisciplinary study of the ecology of China's early political systems up to the fall of the first empire in 207 BCE. Brian Lander traces the formation of lowland North China's agricultural systems and the transformation of its plains from diverse forestland and steppes to farmland. He argues that the growth of states in ancient China, and elsewhere, was based on their ability to exploit the labor and resources of those who harnessed photosynthetic energy from domesticated plants and animals. Focusing on the state of Qin, Lander amalgamates abundant new scientific, archaeological, and excavated documentary sources to argue that the human domination of the central Yellow River region, and the rest of the planet, was made possible by the development of complex political structures that managed and expanded agroecosystems.
China's rise as the world's second-largest economy surely is the most dramatic development in the global economy since the year 2000. But China's prominence in the global economy is hardly new. Since 500 BCE, a dynamic market economy and the establishment of an enduring imperial state fostered precocious economic growth. Yet Chinese society and government featured distinctive institutions that generated unique patterns of economic development. The six chapters of Part I of this volume trace the forms of livelihood, organization of production and exchange, the role of the state in economic development, the evolution of market institutions, and the emergence of trans-Eurasian trade from antiquity to 1000 CE. Part II, in twelve thematic chapters, spans the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800 and surveys diverse fields of economic history, including environment, demography, rural and urban development, factor markets, law, money, finance, philosophy, political economy, foreign trade, human capital, and living standards.
Recipes from the Garden of Contentment: Yuan Mei’s Manual of Gastronomy is the first English edition of the Suiyuan Shidan 随園食单, one of the world’s most famous books about food. It is both a culinary treatise and a cookbook, written in the late eighteenth century by the poet Yuan Mei 袁枚. This translation by Sean J. S. Chen conveys the charm, humor, and erudition of one of China’s greatest writers. The book includes recipes for well-known yet exotic dishes such as bird’s nest and shark’s fin, and offers modern readers a unique perspective on Chinese history and culinary culture.
This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume I: The Imperial Experience is dedicated to synthesis and comparison. Following a comprehensive theoretical survey and bold world history synthesis, fifteen chapters analyze and explore the multifaceted experience of empire across cultures and through the ages. The broad range of perspectives includes: scale, world systems and geopolitics, military organization, political economy and elite formation, monumental display, law, mapping and registering, religion, literature, the politics of difference, resistance, energy transfers, ecology, memories, and the decline of empires. This broad set of topics is united by the central theme of power, examined under four headings: systems of power, cultures of power, disparities of power, and memory and decline. Taken together, these chapters offer a comprehensive and unique view of the imperial experience in world history.