Berkshire publishes the leading academic resources on China past and present—including the 5-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of China and the 4-volume Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, the first general work of its kind since 1898. Read about our many and varied activities in China and our work with China experts at the Berkshire China page.
In this revised and updated edition, China expert Kerry Brown provides insightful answers to today’s questions about the world’s newest superpower. Beyond that, This Is China provides an engaging historical and cultural overview, as a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise and the complex challenges of the post-COVID-19 world. With all this in little more than 100 pages, This Is China is the shortest expert-written introduction to both historic and contemporary China. Listen to the podcast.
Recipes from the Garden of Contentment is the first English edition of one of the world’s most famous books about food. (It is the big sister edition of Berkshire's English-only popular version of the book, which is published as The Way of Eating.) This famous book is a treatise, a cookbook, and a memoir, written in the late eighteenth century by the Qing dynasty poet Yuan Mei 袁枚. It includes recipes for well-known dishes such as birds nest and sharks fin, and offers modern readers an appealing perspective on Chinese history and culinary culture, and was translated and annotated by Sean J. S. Chen with editorial advice from well-known China scholars E. N. Anderson and Jeffrey Riegel.
The Way of Eating: Yuan Mei`s Manual of Gastronomy (the Suiyuan Shidan) is, remarkably, the first translation into English of one of the world's most famous books about food. It is a treatise, cookbook, and memoir written in the late eighteenth century by the Qing dynasty poet Yuan Mei. It is the little sister edition of Berkshire's bilingual academic version of the book, which is published as Recipes from the Garden of Contentment. It includes recipes for well-known dishes such as birds nest and sharks fin, and offers modern readers an appealing perspective on Chinese history and culinary culture, and was translated and annotated by Sean J. S. Chen with editorial advice from E. N. Anderson and Jeffrey Riegel. This edition is in English only but it includes and explains some important Chinese terms. It's a unique introduction to the true cuisines of China, designed for readers interested in the social history of food as well as in techniques and recipes. The editorial team’s aim was to convey the charm, humor, and erudition of one of China’s greatest writers. Chinese food expert Nicole Mones, author of the novel The Last Chinese Chef, has contributed an engaging introduction to Yuan Mei and his work. “This is far more than a cookbook: "The Way of Eating is food history at its finest, a window into a fascinating and long-lost world.” Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet magazine and author of Save Me the Plums.
Becoming a Dragon: Forty Chinese Proverbs, is a bilingual (English-Chinese) collection of proverbs, popular phrases, and two-part allegorical sayings, designed for self-study and classroom teaching. Each proverb comes with the story behind the proverb and its source in both English and Chinese, a literal translation, the figurative meaning, an English equivalent, a vocabulary list, and examples of how the proverb is used in modern written and spoken Chinese.
This Is China: The First 5,000 Years contains, in brief, everything we need to know about 5,000 years of history, 30 years of “opening,” and a future that promises to shape the 21st century for all of us.
Eminent Chinese of the Qing Period (1644-1911/2) is a revised edition of the 1943 standard reference work edited by Arthur Hummel, including more than 800 Qing dynasty individuals, converted to pinyin and updated for modern users. The introduction by Professor Pamela K. Crossley explains the history of this publication and its continuing relevance.
The Internet in China, a Berkshire Essential, provides much-needed context and historical background for the technological development that is transforming Chinese society and creating new conflicts and new opportunities.
The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography uses the life stories of 135 key individuals, selected from the earliest dynasties to the present day, to tell the story of China itself over the entire span of its history.
The 10-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability is a unified resource that provides a balanced perspective on 21st-century global environmental issues. Six volumes of the are available in Chinese, translated and published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press. They can be purchased as a set from Berkshire Publishing.
Volume 4 of the Dictionary of Chinese Biography is a stand-alone handbook of short biographies of key people in China since 1979.
The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography uses the life stories of key individuals, selected from the earliest dynasties to the present day, to tell the story of China itself over the entire span of its history. Volume 4, available separately, is on contemporary figures.
Challenge to China draws attention to an underappreciated aspect of legal reforms in Taiwan: its 2009 abolition of labor camps for liumang, very loosely translated as "hooligans," and asks how Taiwan's experience might be relevant to its giant neighbor across the Taiwan Strait.