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Tempest over teapots: the vilification of teahouse culture in early Republican China

Article Abstract:

The Chinese teahouse was an institution that had a wide cultural appeal, serving not only as a place for leisure but also as an office, marketplace and a center for information. However, during the early Republican period, the teahouse lost its status. It was viewed as decadent by the new, rising elite. This group redefined the concept of leisure by promoting parks and stadiums. The teahouse as an area of conflict between the traditional order and the new elite highlighted the tensions prevailing in early Republican China.

Portrayals, Popular culture, Culture conflict, Cultural conflict, Popular literature

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Till death do us unite: Texts, tombs, and the cultural history of Weddings in middle-period China (eighth through fourteenth Century)

Article Abstract:

Tombs, Texts, and the cultural history of wedding in Medieval China are examined to recover the ritual practices of that period. It is argued that a reflective, dialectical hermeneutics, the art of discerning the discourse in work, which creates a dialectic between the historian and the living sources, between the act of representation in the past and reinscription in the present, is the only way to recover the ritual practices of eighth-through fourteenth-century China.

China, Analysis, Hermeneutics, Chinese culture

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