The wind rises in the East and West Seas

Author: Zhou Ning
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: 250 precious historical images from famous libraries in the UK and the US explain the 700 years of conflicts and interactions between the East and the West. History is like a drama: from legendary travels to competing for foreign lands, from coastal trade and wars to inland division and occupation. In the 13th century, Italian sailor Marco Polo and the Chinese Nestorian monk Alopen witnessed the legends of the East and the West during their travels. In the early 15th century, Zheng He made seven voyages to the Western Ocean, and by the end of the same century, the West began its global expansion. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the lightweight, tedious, and ethereal tea and opium were linked to the rise and fall of the two great empires at both ends of the Earth—the British Empire and the Chinese Empire. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Boxer Movement rose, and the Eight-Nation Alliance launched a brutal invasion, revealing the complex and dangerous dynamics of East-West interactions and conflicts, which influenced the entire century-long modernization movement of China. From miraculous travels and legends to encounters and conflicts in competing for foreign lands; from coastal trade and wars to inland division and occupation. These four acts vividly portray the conflicts, grievances, rises, and falls in the 700-year history of East-West interactions.