{"title":"Guoqi Xu","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the imaginative world of Guoqi Xu, where fantasy and adventure intertwine. Discover enchanting stories filled with mythical creatures and epic quests, perfect for fans of immersive storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"strangers-on-the-western-front-book-guoqi-xu-9780674049994","title":"Strangers on the Western Front","description":"During World War I, Britain and France imported workers from their colonies to labor behind the front lines. The single largest group of support labor came not from imperial colonies, however, but from China. Xu Guoqi tells the remarkable story of the 140,000 Chinese men recruited for the Allied war effort.  These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China’s reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe—across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic—and their experiences with the Allied armies. It was the first encounter with Westerners for most of these Chinese peasants, and Xu also considers the story from their perspective: how they understood this distant war, the racism and suspicion they faced, and their attempts to hold on to their culture so far from home.  In recovering this fascinating lost story, Xu highlights the Chinese contribution to World War I and illuminates the essential role these unsung laborers played in modern China’s search for a new national identity on the global stage.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730417492241,"sku":"NGR9780674049994","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50798753349905,"sku":"GOR012718375","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674049993.jpg?v=1751198798"},{"product_id":"olympic-dreams-book-guoqi-xu-9780674028401","title":"Olympic Dreams","description":"The world saw the political, economic, and cultural significance of hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But will those games make a lasting difference? This book approaches questions about the nature and future of China through the lens of sports-particularly as sports finds its utmost international expression in the Olympics.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51695332819217,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51695333736721,"sku":"CIN0674028406VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674028406.jpg?v=1750743239"},{"product_id":"idea-of-china-book-guoqi-xu-9780674976795","title":"The Idea of China","description":"An acclaimed historian’s bold response to two simple, yet vexed, questions: What counts as China, and who counts as Chinese?  China became a capitalist superpower by investing in globalization. Now that it has established its credentials—and emerged as a major US competitor—its leaders are looking within, focused on suppressing dissent and fostering cohesion. The result has been an increasingly nationalist cultural agenda, celebrating a Chinese identity steeped in the mystique of the Middle Kingdom and nostalgia for heroic twentieth-century resistance. Yet Chinese nationalism, like nationalism everywhere, is fraught. Few Westerners, and even fewer Chinese, recognize that the very idea of China is up for grabs.  In this sweeping history, Xu Guoqi explores the transnational construction of Chineseness. The Idea of China describes an identity constantly under renovation. Through dialogue and confrontation with neighbors, more distant outsiders, and Chinese speakers and writers within the state, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the diaspora, the idea of China has been reshaped repeatedly across time. Even bedrock cultural formations like Confucianism have been reimported to China after their translation in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The idea of China has always been and remains a continuing process, invented, subverted, and reinvented to serve the shifting needs of kings and bureaucrats, industrialists and intellectuals, allies and adversaries.  Xu’s chronicle is as provocative as it is rigorous, and his conclusion could hardly be starker: China, fundamentally, is constituted by a shared history. To accept this is to begin moving past the heated great-power rivalries that threaten international peace and stability today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51850023600401,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51850023797009,"sku":"NGR9780674976795","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53268071612689,"sku":"NIN9780674976795","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"china-and-the-great-war-book-guoqi-xu-9780521283236","title":"China and the Great War","description":"China's role in the First World War has been a curiously neglected topic. This 2005 book is a full-length study of China's involvement in the conflict from perspectives of international history, using largely unknown archival materials from China, France, Germany, UK, and USA. It explains why China wanted to join the war and what were its contributions to the war effort and the emerging world order in the postwar period. The book also demonstrates that China's participation in the First World War was not only a defining moment in modern Chinese and world history, but also the beginning of China's long journey toward internationalization. In this provocative book, Professor Xu adds a new dimension to our collective memory of the war, its tragedy and its significance, and restores the China war memory into its rightful place.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52332042354961,"sku":"NLS9780521283236","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53511282065681,"sku":"GOR006715932","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521283236.jpg?v=1758150350"},{"product_id":"china-and-the-great-war-book-guoqi-xu-9780521842129","title":"China and the Great War","description":"China's role in the First World War has been a curiously neglected topic. This 2005 book is a full-length study of China's involvement in the conflict from perspectives of international history, using largely unknown archival materials from China, France, Germany, UK, and USA. 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