Synopses & Reviews
A renowned historian captures a critical moment in Chinese history.
Zhang Dai is recognized as one of the finest historians and essayists of China's Ming dynasty. When he was born into a wealthy family in 1597, the Ming dynasty had been in place for 229 years. Zhang's early life was marked by the expansive sense of progress that permeated Ming culture: the flourishing of reformist schools of Buddhism; wide-scale philanthropy; the education of women; a celebration of the visual arts, writing, and music; intellectual pursuit of medicine and science this was truly a time of cultural creativity and renaissance in China.
When the Ming dynasty was overthrown in the Manchu invasion of 1644, Zhang Dai's family lost their fortune and their way of life. Zhang Dai fled to the countryside, where, as a writer of tremendous skill, acuity, and passion, he spent his final forty years recounting his previous life as a way of leaving a legacy to his children and rebuilding a spirit shattered by the violent upheaval he had witnessed.
Celebrated China scholar Jonathan Spence has pored over Zhang Dai's extraordinary documents and vividly brings to life seventeenth-century China. This absorbing book illuminates a culture's transformation and reveals how China's history affects its place in the world today.
Review
"Spence only enhances his fine reputation with seasoned perceptions of the accessible, multifaceted Zhang Dai." Booklist
Review
"An extremely close-indeed, hermetically sealed-second-hand look inside 17th-century China....Spence might have served the reader better by giving an accessible translation of Zhang's own aphoristic words." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"In Return to Dragon Mountain, Spence has himself opened an unsuspected world of 'tadpole traces' and 'bird feet markings,' a magic-lantern realm lost until now and movingly retrieved." The New York Times
Synopsis
Splendid . . . One could not imagine a better subject than Zhan Dai for Spence.” (The New Republic)
Celebrated China scholar Jonathan Spence vividly brings to life seventeenth-century China through this biography of Zhang Dai, recognized as one of the finest historians and essayists of the Ming dynasty. Born in 1597, Zhang Dai was forty-seven when the Ming dynasty, after more than two hundred years of rule, was overthrown by the Manchu invasion of 1644. Having lost his fortune and way of life, Zhang Dai fled to the countryside and spent his final forty years recounting the time of creativity and renaissance during Ming rule before the violent upheaval of its collapse. This absorbing tale of Zhang Dais life illuminates the transformation of a culture and reveals how Chinas history affects its place in the world today.
About the Author
Jonathan Spence's eleven books on Chinese history include The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Treason by the Book, and The Death of Woman Wang. His awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at Yale University.