This thoroughly researched book provides the first comprehensive history of how a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Central China Plain, Longmen's caves and the Buddhist statuary of Luoyang, was rediscovered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on original research and archival sources in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Swedish, as well as extensive fieldwork, Dong Wang traces the ties between cultural heritage and modernity, detailing how this historical monument has been understood from antiquity to the present. She highlights the manifold traffic and expanded contact between China and other countries as these nations were reorienting themselves in order to adapt their own cultural traditions to newly industrialized and industrializing societies. Unknown to much of the world, Longmen and its mesmerizing modern history takes readers to the heartland of China, known as "Chinese Babylon" a century ago. With remarkable depth and breadth, this book unravels both a bygone and a continuing human pursuit of artefacts-shared, spiritual, modern, and above all beautiful that have linked so many lives, Chinese and foreign.

About the Author
Dong Wang is distinguished university professor of history and founding executive director of the new Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University, as well as research associate at the Fairbank Center of Harvard University. Her books include The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present.


Book Information
ISBN 9781538141113
Author Dong Wang
Format Paperback
Page Count 314
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 508g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 155mm * 20mm