Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Dalian Ghost Stories

A collection of tales from a city at the crossroads of history, covering three wars and generations of occupation by colonial powers. While these ghostly sagas have all but vanished from the current social memory, the surviving oral histories have been compiled in this definitive work.

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Friday, August 8, 2008

Of Animus And Men

The groundbreaking virtual reality story set in the simulated world of Second Life continues. The saga of ANIMUS begins just after the conclusion of ANIMA with a shocking revelation, the Man In The Coma suddenly awakes. To his family it is a miracle, but the truth is far more elusive. Another Anima from the future has hijacked his mind and begins to control the flesh avatar for an unknown purpose.

Across the planet, the fate of Alex in Iraq is finally revealed. As an Anima trapped in a flesh body from the past, his immunity to manipulation from the future will play a key part in the course of human history. At the same time, a godlike entity of pure darkness has continued growing within Second Life, with the goal to use the virtual network to destroy all organic life in the future.

Against this struggle, as other unanswered questions find resolution from the first ANIMA novel, a new cryptic force comes into focus. Are the semi-human Anima of the future being controlled as Avatars as well? Evidence mounts of yet another future race that evolved from humanity, known as Animus. With the ability to control any living matter in existence from any time period, the virtual world of Second Life again finds itself as a battleground for the future of simulated and organic life.

Second Life® and Linden Lab™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. No infringement is intended.

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Monday, July 7, 2008

Blue Sky Red Tears: Book Two

Lin Baixue comes of age in Japan and uncovers the many secrets about her family, and how they have bound her life in a tragic web. Even her new Japanese identity becomes a harsh burden, as she is trapped by the very life she dreamed of.

Baixue's only refuge from her abusive and forced marriage is in the arms of a childhood friend. She and the young German must hide their love as they struggle to escape the destruction of the War all around them.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Radish and the Girl with Long Hair

Another classic folklore re-imagined into an original fairy-tale, "The Radish and the Girl with Long Hair" takes the reader on a fantastic journey to a distant Asian land. Farmers had moved near the high mountain to live because it provided everything they needed to prosper. But the fertile soil mysteriously turns barren. Crops wither and the people suffer from lack of water. One day while searching for food on the high mountain, a young girl with long hair makes a fantastic discovery. A magic radish stands as gatekeeper of a treasure that will save the land. However, before she can reveal the secret that will free her village, Long Hair Girl is captured by the god of the mountain.

Buy it On-line: Softback Edition | Artwork Merchandise

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Friday, February 8, 2008

Everyday Dalian

A former colony briefly founded by Russia but later developed over two generations by Japan, Dalian has always been a strategic hub for control of Northeast China. SongLi's photography collection about the city and its population has won multiple international awards. Each image captures the richness and color of the modern-day Manchurian metropolis, documenting its transition over six years. The "slice of life" presentation, a hallmark style of SongLi, offers a new depth to the environments and people living in this historic port. These pictures also present an original artistic and realistic view of a community shaped by the turbulent legacy of its foreign occupation, and the aftermath of the bitter Chinese Civil War, to emerge as one of the leading cities in the country.

This book also comes with a foreword by Phil Borges. The humanitarian photographer is famous for his signature black and white portraits with hand tinted skin tones of endangered cultures around the world.


Buy it On-line: Photobook | Framed Prints

ISBN: 0-9763168-5-4

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Sunday, September 9, 2007

Brave Little Mongolian Sisters

An original fairy-tale inspired by true events from the 1960s, "Brave Little Mongolian Sisters" is the heroic tale of two young nomadic girls in Northern Asia. Blossom and Jade provided for their sick parents by raising their poor family's sheep herd. Living in the desolate wilderness, the animals offered their only source of income. One winter their hard life becomes even more desperate, when the frail girls and their flock are attacked by an evil and hungry witch. The sisters struggle against many hardships and the icy elements to protect their sheep, and defy the menacing threat that continues to chase them. Xuemei Han brings this childrens' story to life with her unique and inspirational hand drawn illustrations. Her internationally award winning style is an innovative blend of traditional Chinese cultural paintings and Japanese Manga comics. This magical combination is the perfect match for a new generation of young readers interested in fables and fantasy stories from Asia.

Buy it On-line: Softback Edition | Artwork Merchandise

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Saturday, July 7, 2007

ANIMA: a novel about Second Life

Ben Tao is the avatar of a fired programmer who hacks Second Life. His goal is to profit from a false intellectual property claim. However, instead of changing the creation date for the items he has stolen, he is actually sending them back in time to the creation of the 3D world. This software exploit opens a wormhole of conflicting realities that unfold in a disjointed nightmare. Ben quickly finds himself controlled by an entity who robs him of all free will. Or is he just going insane? As the digital and real worlds merge in his mental interchange, he uncovers a secret that affects all of humanity. From this bleak future, Ben has only one chance to escape.

anima (n.) Psychology. Jung's term for the feminine part of a man's personality. Often contrasted with "animus." The part of the psyche that is directed inward, and is in touch with the subconscious. Often contrasted with "persona." ORIGIN 1920s: from Latin, literally "mind, soul."


Second Life® and Linden Lab™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. No infringement is intended.

Buy it On-line: Hardback | Paperback | Merchandise

ISBN: 978-0-9763168-9-3

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Friday, April 28, 2006

The Book Of Tea

Okakura Kakuzo devoted his life to teaching, art, Zen, and the preservation of Japanese art and culture. He was an ambassador, professor and popular writer during his long and influential career. At the time of his death, Okakura was the curator of the Chinese and Japanese Art Collection at the Boston Museum.






Buy it On-line: Virtual PrimBook

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Thursday, April 20, 2006

Some Chinese Ghosts

This is a collection of ghost stories based on Chinese old tales and legends. They are rich in atmosphere, authentic in tone, and almost without exception very good stories. They are an interesting contrast to Western lore, since ghosts in China are not evil but remain behind to fulfill their duty. This collection was written a hundred years ago by Lafcadio Hearn, the author credited with opening up Meji Era Japan to the world through his insightful books.



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Friday, July 8, 2005

The Awakening of China

China's period of isolation is over. To understand its future, look to its recent past. A century ago, China was considered a theatre of the greatest movement taking place on the face of the globe. Efforts of all other developing nations shrink to insignificance - for it was not political, but social. Its object was not a changed dynasty, nor a revolution in the form of government, but the promise of nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest, most populous, and most conservative of empires. Is there a people in either hemisphere that can afford to look on with indifference to the development of China? These words still ring true all these decades later.

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On the Great Highway

James Creelman became the first American journalist to interview the Pope, accompanied the Japanese in their war with China in Manchuria, visited Tolstoy at his home in Russia, got wounded in the Philippines as a correspondent in the Spanish-American War (he was taunting the Spanish after the Americans had seized their flag), pow-wowed with Sitting Bull, and reported on the death of President McKinley at the hands of an assassin. With the sharp, clipped writing of a master journalist, Creelman tells the story of his times, and of the part he played in that story.

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New Forces In Old China

This book from 1909 describes the development of change within old, conservative, exclusive China by the three great transforming forces of the modern world - Western trade, Western politics and Western religion. These forces are producing stupendous changes in China with its sluggish reform policies. The full significance of these changes both to China and to the world cannot be comprehended now. There is something fascinating about a nation numbering nearly one-third of the human race slowly and majestically giving way to its old dogma and embracing the influence of new and powerful revolutionary forces. No other movement of our age is so colossal with more meaning.

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Friday, April 8, 2005

The Time Machine - Japanese Edition

A dreamer obsessed with traveling through time builds himself a time machine and, much to his surprise, travels over 800,000 years into the future. The world has been transformed with a society living in apparent harmony and bliss, but as the Traveler stays in this world of the future he discovers a hidden barbaric and depraved subterranean class. Wells's translucent commentary on the capitalist society was an instant bestseller and launched the time-travel genre. NOTE: The Japanese language version follows the standard publishing layout of reading right to left. Therefore, the reader begins at the back of the book.

Buy it On-line: Softback

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Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Notable Women of Modern China

During a stay of some months in China during 1909, Margaret E. Burton had an opportunity to see the educational system of the country for women. She was greatly impressed, and compiled profiles of some of the most notable female figures she came to know. It was a time of an emerging New China in which women were trying to break free of centuries of tradition and enslavement by means of education. This book details their efforts to mould both their personal future and their country's.

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Wednesday, February 2, 2005

The Tale Of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu's epic-length novel, The Tale of Genji, probes the psychological, romantic and political workings of mid-Heian Japan. The novel earned Murasaki Shikibu notoriety even in the early 11th century, some six hundred years before the printing press made it available to the masses. Court society, which served as the subject of the novel, sought out chapters. Ladies-in-waiting and courtiers even pilfered unrevised copies, according to legend. Some thousand years later, the novel continues to delight an enthusiastic audience. Murasaki Shikibu and her creation Genji have achieved National Treasure status in Japan and admiration all over the world. The tale spreads across four generations, splashed with poetry and romance and heightened awareness to the fleeting quality of life. Murasaki Shikibu's tale of love, sex, and politics explores a complex web of human and spiritual relationships.

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Saturday, January 8, 2005

The Civilization of China

Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935) was a British linguist who modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system established by Thomas Wade earlier, resulting in the Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. Giles was a diplomat to China (1867-1892) who later became a Chinese professor at Cambridge. This book "The Civilization of China" is his classic detailed history of China, beginning in the Feudal Age and continues until 1911, long before the Communist Revolution.

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More Glimpses of Unfamilar Japan

Hearn offers another look into a side of Japan that no longer exists, lost in modern history. Yet his observations gave the Western world its first look at this mysterious and misunderstood culture. This second series also contains many stories that transcend time and remain an insightful and intriguing. A must read for anyone interested in Japanese history and society.

Buy it On-line: Softback

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Memoir of a Chinese Princess

In 1903, Princess Der Ling became First Lady-in-Waiting to Tzu-Hsi, the Empress Dowager, who was fascinated by the young woman's travels and experiences in places the Empress would never see. Der Ling served her Empress for two years inside the walls of Gu Gong, Peking's Forbidden City, a walled palace built in the year 1407, and which had been the seat of government for 24 Chinese emperors. Her intimate observations of court life under the Empress Dowager, aunt to China's last emperor, P'u Yi, allow a rare look into life in a time and place still shrouded in mystery, into the last years of imperial Chinese rule, and most importantly, into the character of the remarkable woman who ruled China for more than 40 years.

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Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

This collection of 17 old stories from Japan was collected and translated by the well-known ethnographer, Lafcadio Hearn, and first published in English in 1904. The tales are old folk stories that deal with ghosts and the spirit world. Many feature the theme of spirits who take human form to disguise their true nature. They are spooky, old-fashioned stories which remain as intriguing today as when they were first written.

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Kokoro: Japanese Inner Life Hints

These stories follow Hearn's particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings. This is what the Japanese people care about, what they think is important, what is inside.

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Japanese Fairy Tales

Yei Theodora Ozaki’s classic Japanese fairy tales are showcased in this new compilation. Featured are twenty-two favorite tales that introduce the vivid world of Japanese fantasy. It is a landscape of ghouls, goblins, and ogres. Of sea serpents and sea kings. Kind and magical animals. Demons and dragons, princes and princesses. A must read for anyone interested in Japanese myths and legends.

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JAPAN: An Attempt at Interpretation

Hearn's book is incredibly insightful and thorough, offering a history of the various forms of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and other folk-practices that shaped the national character of Japan. It also details Japanese interactions and culture, and most interesting are his speculations of Japanese culture, and where it would go in his pre-WWII era. Unfortunately, some of his worst fears were realized.

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In Ghostly Japan

Much of the collection focuses on how incense relates to ghosts in terms of the Shinto and Buddhist religion. In addition, there is a mix of true stories and Japanese lore as they relate to the world of the dead.

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Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

Hearn offers a look into a side of Japan that no longer exists, lost in modern history. Yet his observations gave the Western world its first look at this mysterious and misunderstood culture. This first series contains many stories that transcend time and remain an insightful and intriguing. A must read for anyone interested in Japanese history and society.

Buy it On-line: Softback

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Folklore of Old Japan

Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837-1916), Lord Redesdale, was in the British Foreign Service as a young man. He was assigned to the legation in Japan for several years and acquired a life-long fascination with Japanese culture. This book has been a standard source of information about Japanese folklore and customs since its original publication in 1871 and has been in print ever since.

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Diaries of Court Ladies From Old Japan

Written nearly one thousand years ago, these diaries continue to intrigue modern readers. Authored by three Ladies of the Royal Court in Japan, they show not only Imperial life, but also life in Japan before its traditional fourteenth-century image. These diaries were written centuries before the Shogun or samurai developed into the powerful military class that divided all of Japan, and plunged it into a long and bloody civil war. The events detailed are therefore very different in context to how the Western World views Old Japan. These accounts are also some of the oldest records in not only Japanese history, but in written history.

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Court Life in China

One woman ruled China for nearly half a century, The Empress Dowager. An unequaled historical figure, the Empress has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. From her participation in the Boxer movement to failing to modernize China in defense against Western Powers, she has been both praised and critisized, but rarely understood. This personal account of the Empress Dowager was written by a family doctor and close personal friend. This very intimate perspective details the womans life and influence on China, the effect of which can still be felt in the country today. A must read for anyone studying Chinese history.

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Christianity In Japan

This book attempts to interpret the characteristics of Japan at a time when it became a modern power. It focuses on many social attitudes, and the role of religion and influences of Christianity on the society. Written over a hundred years ago, the study remains key to understanding the modern Japanese mind, and unlocking further understanding of past events.

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China and the Manchus

Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935) was a British linguist who modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system established by Thomas Wade earlier, resulting in the Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. Giles was a diplomat to China (1867-1892) who later became a Chinese professor at Cambridge. This book "China and the Manchu" is his classic detailed history of the Manchu Empire and its 300 year reign in China.

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China and the Foreign Powers

The relationship between China and the world is a complex one of economic cooperation and political mistrust. This book give a detailed account of the turbulent times in Asia at the turn of the century. Plus, its historic perspective sheds light on the damaging effects caused by Japan and interfering Western Powers. It is set at a time when China is surrounded by outside forces, while being torn apart by inner ones. There remain many parallels to the condition of China then and now, and the resulting global effects. The future of China remains deeply rooted in its past, and to understand its course, we must first review its previous directions

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Bushido: The Soul of Japan

Originally written during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, this revised edition explains the Japanese soul from a unique historical perspective. Written by a Japanese professor, it contrasts the Spirit of Japanese culture at a time of its transition into the modern world. Bushido as the warrior code of the samurai. Bushido was a strict code that demanded loyalty, devotion, and honor to the death. Under Bushido, if a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by performing seppuku (ritual suicide).

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Saturday, November 20, 2004

Dairen: 1936

The South Manchurian Railway Company, formerly the largest economic enterprise in Manchuria and the main agency of Japans penetration, was organized shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. It undertook construction of towns, harbors, mining, utilities and trade. When a competing Chinese railway network threatened their monopoly, the Japanese Kwantung army staged the Manchurian Incident and set up the state of Manchukuo. At the end of World War II, China expropriated the company's vast property.

Buy it On-line: Booklet

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Blue Sky Red Tears: Book One

Dairen was Japan's first colonial city in Machuria. It was a foothold for the Empire's plans of expansion in and conquest of China. But the prosperity of the 1930s was not shared by all of the colony's citizens. "Blue Sky Red Tears" follows the life of Lin Baixue. Born from a secret affair between a high ranking Japanese official and his Manchurian Chinese housemaid, Baixue struggles to find her identity within two societies that each view her as an outcast. As she comes of age, the secrets in her household continue to mount. Through her misery, Baixue dreams of a life in Japan on the eve a war that will envelop all of Asia.

Buy it On-line: Hardback | Paperback | Mandarin | Merchandise

ISBN: 0-9763168-1-1
ISBN: 0-9763168-0-3

ISBN: 0-9763168-2-X

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Saturday, November 11, 1989

A Memory Without Pain

As a young college student drives across central Kansas for his summer vacation, he unknowingly stumbles into a series of events which weaves his life into the misery of lost generations. Blackmailed into committing himself to a state hospital, Kyle has no idea what kind of nightmare waits for him at the century-old insane asylum.

Forced to take drugs for the mentally ill, he is unable to distinguish between hallucinations or reality. These dark visions drive him to the brink of insanity. However, behind this lurks an entity seeking revenge for decades of torment and torture, pulling Kyle deeper into its realm of terror.

Buy it On-line: Softback | Merchandise

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Friday, March 3, 1989

The Cheshire Boy

Paul vanished from his college dorm without a trace, leaving everyone behind to search for what happened. With only a handwritten journal, his best friend discovers the epic journey Paul has taken. Not across land, but across realities. Slowly, his friend is pulled into a twisted world where Paul is a god that can determine life or death with the stroke of his pen.

Buy it On-line: Paperback

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