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490 books match the query 'Asian' and 56 start with c

cover of Counterfeited in China: The Operations of Illicit Businesses

Counterfeited in China

The Operations of Illicit Businesses

Ko-lin Chin

Temple University Press, 2025

Counterfeiting tops the list of organized crimes committed worldwide, raking in nearly half a trillion dollars in 2019. The impact of this illicit business is felt by consumers, brand owners, state authorities, and workers, and it impacts the economy. Moreover, its proliferation has fueled the advancement of organized crime groups.

In his illuminating study, Counterfeited in China, Ko-lin Chin investigates this lucrative industry and its emergence in China. His face-to-face interviews with counterfeiters — business owners, workers, facilitators, and key informants — in the hub of Guangzhou, China reveal how businesses that design, produce, and distribute fake and unauthorized luxury goods manage the risks inherent in their business.

Counterfeited in China examines the individual and group characteristics of counterfeiters and their relationships with organized crime; analyzes the economic aspects of counterfeiting; assesses the relationships among counterfeiting, violence, and corruption; and seeks to understand the demand for counterfeit goods. Chin also discusses the role of Chinese authorities and other parties in the war against counterfeiting.  

Assessing the state of the industry and its future, Chin provides fascinating new insights into the modus operandi of counterfeiters.
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cover of Cross and Dragon – Matteo Ricci and China: A Screenplay by Edwin Kong

Cross and Dragon – Matteo Ricci and China

A Screenplay by Edwin Kong

Edwin Kong

Hong Kong University Press, 2025

In Ming China, foreigners were barred from entry—until Matteo Ricci found another way in.

Edwin Kong brings to life the extraordinary journey of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit whose daring mission to China reshaped the course of East-West relations. Sent by the Pope in the late sixteenth century to convert the Chinese Emperor, Ricci faced an impenetrable barrier—Ming Dynasty China was closed to foreigners. But armed with knowledge and an unmatched mastery of memory techniques, he found another way in.

Disguised as a Buddhist monk, Ricci captivated scholars, officials, and eventually the imperial court, introducing Western science while immersing himself in Chinese culture. His thirty-year odyssey from rural villages to the heart of the Forbidden City proved that engagement, rather than conquest, could bridge civilizations.

Told in the form of a screenplay, Cross and Dragon is a gripping historical drama with urgent contemporary resonance, exploring the power of faith and cultural exchange in the face of division.
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cover of Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary: Global Encounters via Southeast Asia

Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary

Global Encounters via Southeast Asia

Edited by H. Hazel Hahn

National University of Singapore Press, 2019

For years, the study of how culture operates in colonial contexts was dominated by the ideas of transmission and influence. Yet the more we learn, the less useful those concepts seem to be. This collection deliberately complicates the binary of colonizer and colonized in order to establish a more effective framework for understanding. The contributors address a wide range of questions, rooted in specific colonial experiences: How can a controversy about forms of deference in Java reveal tensions around colonial policies and the rise of nationalism? What was Vietnamese about the French colonial governor’s palace in Hanoi? What can the circulation of jazz in Asia tell us about its evolution, circuits of exchange, colonial culture, and its appropriation? Through such inquiries, the volume traces the multilinear trajectories of the flow of decorative objects, architectural styles, photographs, sartorial practices, music, deference rituals, and ethnographic knowledge, in a transimperial framework within and beyond Southeast Asia and Europe. Highlighting a wide range of actors along with their motivations and interactions, this volume treats cultural heritage as dynamic processes.
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cover of Crossing the River: Short Fiction by Nguyen Huy Thiep

Crossing the River

Short Fiction by Nguyen Huy Thiep

Nguyen Huy Thiep

Northwestern University Press, 2002

Crossing the River presents a wide range of Nguyen Huy Thiep's short fiction, both realistic stories in contemporary settings and retellings of folk myths that serve as contemporary parables. When Thiep's stories first appeared in the 1980s, they set off a chain of debate, not only within intellectual and political circles, but also within the society at large. Typically, the struggles of his characters were about survival, not survival in the context of war or revolution, but survival in the context of the emotional and psychological strength it takes to live within the harsh confines of post-war Vietnamese society. Thiep captured the emotional quality of Vietnamese life in a way no other author had done, and his importance can be recognized today by his enormous influence on younger writers.

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cover of Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture

Culinary Fictions

Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture

Anita Mannur

Temple University Press, 2009

For South Asians, food regularly plays a role in how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and national identity are imagined as well as how notions of belonging are affirmed or resisted. Culinary Fictions provides food for thought as it considers the metaphors literature, film, and TV shows use to describe Indians abroad. When an immigrant mother in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake combines Rice Krispies, Planters peanuts, onions, salt, lemon juice, and green chili peppers to create a dish similar to one found on Calcutta sidewalks, it evokes not only the character’s Americanization, but also her nostalgia for India.

Food, Anita Mannur writes, is a central part of the cultural imagination of diasporic populations, and Culinary Fictions maps how it figures in various expressive forms. Mannur examines the cultural production from the Anglo-American reaches of the South Asian diaspora. Using texts from novels—Chitra Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night—and cookbooks such as Madhur Jaffrey’s Invitation to Indian Cooking and Padma Lakshmi’s Easy Exotic, she illustrates how national identities are consolidated in culinary terms.

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cover of Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s

Cultures of Yusin

South Korea in the 1970s

Youngju Ryu, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2018

Cultures of Yusin examines the turbulent and yet deeply formative years of Park Chung Hee’s rule in South Korea, focusing on the so-called Yusin era (1972–79). Beginning with the constitutional change that granted dictatorial powers to the president and ending with his assassination, Yusin was a period of extreme political repression coupled with widespread mobilization of the citizenry towards the statist gospel of modernization and development. While much has been written about the political and economic contours of this period, the rich complexity of its cultural production remains obscure. This edited volume brings together a wide range of scholars to explore literature, film, television, performance, music, and architecture, as well as practices of urban and financial planning, consumption, and homeownership. Examining the plural forms of culture’s relationship to state power, the authors illuminate the decade of the 1970s in South Korea and offer an essential framework for understanding contemporary Korean society. 
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