The Man Awakened from Dreams

By Henrietta Harrison,

Book cover of The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942

Book description

In this beautifully crafted study of one emblematic life, Harrison addresses large themes in Chinese history while conveying with great immediacy the textures and rhythms of everyday life in the countryside in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Liu Dapeng was a provincial degree-holder who never held government office. Through the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Man Awakened from Dreams as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This beautifully written book gives a picture of the life and times of one ordinary man. Unusually, he maintained a daily diary throughout his entire life, which was mostly lived in a remote—but certainly not isolated—village. Harrison highlights the tumultuous political, social, and economic changes China was undergoing through the lens of a man who lived from the Qing Empire through the 1911 Revolution and the warlord era and into the rise of the Communist movement.

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