Tourism in China＇s Buddhist Temples

In recent years along with the improvement of the livelihoods of Chinese people and the public needs in cultural life, a religious cultural tourism is booming in China. In order to meet the tourist demand, this book is designed as a guide book to introduce 211 famous Buddhist monasteries and temples in various places of China representing different Buddhist sects including Han-Chinese, Tibetan and Southern Buddhism with their rich cultural and historical resources, characteristics of architecture and famous personages.     

Tibet＇s soclo-economic development in 2004

Located in the northern part of Tibet,Nagchu Pre-fecture covers an area of 0.42 million square km.As aState-class nature reserve,it is a major habitat of vari-ous wildlife,such as antelopes,argalis,black-neckedcranes and wild yaks,which are listed by the State asanimals subject to first-class protection.In recent years,the Forestry Bureau of Nagchu areabuilt many nature reserves of different levels andadopted effective measures for the protection of wildanimals.As a result,some species of endangered wild     

Emperor Qianlong＇s Policy for Rule Over Tibet

In 1751,when Qing troops had quelled the rebelion staged by Zholmet Namozhale ,the Qing court promulgated the 13-Article Ordinance for the Governing of Tibet,Which established the system of rule over Tibet by the Dalai Lama and Qing High Commissioners.     

A Bird＇s Eye View of the Snowland

Qomolangma,the summit ofthe world。A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE SNOWLAND     

Editor＇s Note

The JOURNAL OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS （JA C） is published annually by the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations （Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin Province, People＇s Republic of China）.     

Editor＇s Note

On July 15, 2008, Tsinghua University received into its collection a batch of Warring States Bamboo slips dating to around 300 BCE that had been previously smuggled out of China. Known as the ＇Tsinghua Bamboo Slips＇ 清华简（TBS）,     

Old Shezang＇s Story

The Namseling Manor rests on a site by a river, south of Samye Monastery and within the boundary of Namseling Village, County of Chanang in Lhoka Prefecture. The Manor was built during the Phagdrup regime. The Namseling Manor is a model of Tibetan feudal serfdom society. As an early, large-scalemanor house built in a time when Tibetan society lived under a serf-based regime, Namseling has survived hundreds of years as a witness to the formation and development of a feudal manor. After democratic reform in Tibet, the Namseling Manor stood deserted for more than half a century. The present manor, no longer what it once was, has embraced many life stories, including that of Shezang. The now elderly Shezang was born in Nagqu in 1927. Both his parents were servants in the nobleman＇s household. At 14 he was taken to Lhasa to work as a babysitter. The next year his parents passed away one by one. A fellow villager told him the news when he returned to Namseling at 26. Shezang has a younger sisterbut they were separated in Nagqu when both were still young. They never met again.     

Feeding and Healing Bodies and Souls: German Women in Nursing, 1830s–1850s

Nursing care of the 1830s−40s required significant financial stewardship, material resources, spiritual fortitude and political support alongside the everyday routines of cleaning, cooking and home visiting. The minutiae of Catholic, Protestant and other Prussian institutional donations, budgets and schedules, government records and occasionally women's own writings reveal how German nursing was not a singular and timeless profession. Rather, the feminisation of nursing emerged out of a myriad of gendered ways elite, bourgeois, religious and working women collectively cared for the poor and the sick even before bacteriology and maternalist women's movements transformed nursing in the late nineteenth century.     

Struggles for the Folk. Politics of Culture in Czechoslovak Ethnography, 1940s–1950s

Focusing on politics of culture in early socialist era, this article explores struggles for imposing particular visions of “folk” during the revolutionary zeal characterizing the post-1948 period's development in the discipline of Czechoslovak ethnography. It examines the self-proclaimed turn from previous ethnographic traditions, accused of bourgeois nationalism, to socialist orientation towards studying “true folk”. By tracing struggles around the re-conceptualization of constitutive criteria and boundaries defining the essential object of ethnographic inquiry, the socialist ethnographers readjusted to the changes by focusing on more “progressive” traditions and shifted towards the “working-class” seen as possessing revolutionary spirit and the true authentic essence of the nation. The article argues that the new ethnographic wave ultimately re-inscribed the essentialist categories they virtually combatted by embedding them within the same structural framework rooted in the national order of things.