Song Full Of Tears: Nine Centuries Of Chinese Life Around Xiang Lake

(Paperback)

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Through a beautiful and compelling narrative, Schoppa traces the lives and history at Xiang Lake, a reservoir from its creation in 1112 to the present. Combining evocative historical description and cogent analysis, Song Full of Tears is a chronicle of nine hundred years of life in southeast China. It reveals the workings of Chinese society in times of environmental and military crises, how the Chinese reacted to changes, threats, and opportunities, and how they dealt with one another and the world of nature and the environment. Until the 18th century, Xiang Lake, in the province of Zheijiang, was the stage for morality battles between loyalty and betrayal, chastity and impurity, civic virtue and private greed. After the 18th century, concerns about ecology, public rights, and technology emerged as elements in the struggle, and in the 20th century, the fate of the lake became linked to national political developments and then to technological and ecological realities. Song Full of Tears shows how Chinese views of life, society, and nature both changed and remained constant through the centuries. The paperback will include a new epilogue by the author.

Author Bio

R. Keith Schoppais the Doehler Chair in Asian History at Loyola College. He is the au thor of five books, one of which Blood Road won the 1997 Association for Asian Studies Levenson Prize for the best book on twentieth cent ury China. In 1994 he was named Indiana Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Ad vancement of Teaching. He lives in Towson, Maryla nd.