ISBN: 9781935408185

"Ten Thousand Things" explores the many forms of life, or, in ancient Chinese parlance "the ten thousand things" that life is andis becoming, in contemporary Beijing and beyond. Coauthore… Plus…

"Ten Thousand Things" explores the many forms of life, or, in ancient Chinese parlance "the ten thousand things" that life is andis becoming, in contemporary Beijing and beyond. Coauthored by an Americananthropologist and a Chinese philosopher, the book examines the myriad wayscontemporary residents of Beijing understand and nurture the good life, practice theembodied arts of everyday well-being, and in doing so draw on cultural resourcesranging from ancient metaphysics to modern media. Farquhar andZhang show that there are many activities that nurture life: practicing meditativemartial arts among friends in a public park; jogging, swimming, and walkingbackward; dancing, singing, and keeping pet birds; connoisseurship of tea, wine, andfood; and spiritual disciplines ranging from meditation to learning a foreignlanguage. As ancient life-nurturing texts teach, the cultural practices that produceparticular forms of life are generative in ten thousand ways: they "give birthto life and transform the transformations." This book attends to the patternsof city life, listens to homely advice on how to live, and interprets the greattradition of medicine and metaphysics. In the process, a manifold culture of theurban Chinese everyday emerges. The lives nurtured, gathered, and witnessed here areglobal and local, embodied and discursive, ecological and cosmic, civic andindividual. The elements of any particular life -- as long as it lasts, and withsome skill and determination -- can be gathered, centered, and harmonized with theway things spontaneously go. The result, everyone says, is pleasure. Media > Book<

ISBN: 9781935408185

"Ten Thousand Things" explores the many forms of life, or, in ancient Chinese parlance "the ten thousand things" that life is andis becoming, in contemporary Beijing and beyond. Coauthore… Plus…

"Ten Thousand Things" explores the many forms of life, or, in ancient Chinese parlance "the ten thousand things" that life is andis becoming, in contemporary Beijing and beyond. Coauthored by an Americananthropologist and a Chinese philosopher, the book examines the myriad wayscontemporary residents of Beijing understand and nurture the good life, practice theembodied arts of everyday well-being, and in doing so draw on cultural resourcesranging from ancient metaphysics to modern media. Farquhar andZhang show that there are many activities that nurture life: practicing meditativemartial arts among friends in a public park; jogging, swimming, and walkingbackward; dancing, singing, and keeping pet birds; connoisseurship of tea, wine, andfood; and spiritual disciplines ranging from meditation to learning a foreignlanguage. As ancient life-nurturing texts teach, the cultural practices that produceparticular forms of life are generative in ten thousand ways: they "give birthto life and transform the transformations." This book attends to the patternsof city life, listens to homely advice on how to live, and interprets the greattradition of medicine and metaphysics. In the process, a manifold culture of theurban Chinese everyday emerges. The lives nurtured, gathered, and witnessed here areglobal and local, embodied and discursive, ecological and cosmic, civic andindividual. The elements of any particular life -- as long as it lasts, and withsome skill and determination -- can be gathered, centered, and harmonized with theway things spontaneously go. The result, everyone says, is pleasure. Media ><