The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942

In this beautifully crafted study of one emblematic life, Harrison addresses large themes in Chinese history while conveying with great immediacy the textures and rhythms of everyday life in the countryside in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Liu Dapeng was a provincial degree-holder who never held government office. Through the story of his family, the author illustrates the decline of the countryside in relation to the cities as a result of modernization and the transformation of Confucian ideology as a result of these changes. Based on nearly 400 volumes of Liu's diary and other writings, the book illustrates what it was like to study in an academy and to be a schoolteacher, the pressures of changing family relationships, the daily grind of work in industry and agriculture, people's experience with government, and life under the Japanese occupation.

Author: Henrietta Harrison
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 01/03/2005
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.36w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780804750684

About the Author
Henrietta Harrison is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds.