Dr. Fu Manchu is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years, and he has also become an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, while lending his name to the Fu Manchu moustache.
Laurence Michael Yep is an American writer. He is known for his children's books, having won the Newbery Honor twice for his Golden Mountain series. In 2005, he received the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for his career contribution to American children's literature.
Katherine Alice Applegate, known professionally as K. A. Applegate, is an American young adult and children's fiction writer, best known as the author of the Animorphs, Remnants, and Everworld book series. She won the 2013 Newbery Medal for her 2012 children's novel The One and Only Ivan. Applegate's most popular books are science fiction, fantasy, and adventure novels. She won the Best New Children's Book Series Award in 1997 in Publishers Weekly. Her book Home of the Brave has won several awards. She also wrote a chapter book series in 2008–09 called Roscoe Riley Rules.
The Grey King is a contemporary fantasy novel by Susan Cooper, published almost simultaneously by Chatto & Windus and Atheneum in 1975. It is the fourth of five books in her Arthurian fantasy series The Dark is Rising.
Erlang Shen, also known as Erlang of Guankou and the Lord of Sichuan, is a Chinese god with a third truth-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead.
The Hero and the Crown is a fantasy novel written by Robin McKinley and published by Greenwillow Books in 1984. It is the winner of the 1985 Newbery Medal award. This story focuses on "Aerin Dragon-Killer", also known as "Aerin Firehair", the heroine who is introduced as a legendary character in The Blue Sword. The book narrates Aerin's evolution from the shy, retiring daughter of the King of Damar to the heroic queen who protects her people from the demonic Northerners.
Jacob Have I Loved is a 1980 coming of age novel for teenagers and young adults by Katherine Paterson. It won the annual Newbery Medal in 1981. The title alludes to the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau in the Bible, and comes from Romans 9:13.
Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.
The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC, with selective stretches later joined by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains. Later on, many successive dynasties built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The best-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
These Happy Golden Years is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1943, the eighth of nine books in her Little House series – although it originally ended it. It is based on her later adolescence near De Smet, South Dakota, featuring her short time as a teacher, beginning at age 15, and her courtship with Almanzo Wilder. It spans the time period from 1882 to 1885, when they marry.
Dragon of the Lost Sea is a fantasy novel by American author Laurence Yep. It was first published in 1982 and is the first book in his Dragon series. Having already written several books, Yep had wanted to adapt Chinese mythology into a fantasy form for some time, and began writing the story in 1980 after undertaking careful research. He had originally intended to adapt a Chinese folktale in which the Monkey King captured a river spirit who had flooded an entire city, which he at first tried to conceive in picture book form.
Dragon Steel is a fantasy novel by American author Laurence Yep. It was first published in 1985 and is the second book in his Dragon series. In Dragon Steel, Yep decided to expand on the dilemma faced by exiled dragon princess Shimmer, that of how to govern, since she had been exiled from the Inland Sea at a relatively young age by dragon standards. He based her on experiences on a study of historical rulers, both those who had ruled poorly, and those who had "risen to the expectations of their people". He also based the undersea dragon kingdom of Sambar XII on the "real ocean", inspired by the undergraduate courses in marine biology and oceanography he had taken at UC Santa Cruz. The story picks up where Dragon of the Lost Sea left off. Coming off their victory over the witch Civet, Shimmer and her human companion Thorn discover inner turmoil among the dragon kingdoms amidst increasing tensions between the humans and the dragons, gaining a new ally in the process.
Dragon Cauldron is a fantasy novel by American author Laurence Yep first published in 1991. It is the third book in his Dragon tetralogy. Dragon Cauldron marks a shift in narration from Shimmer, who had narrated the first two books in the series, to Monkey, who had up to that point played a minor role. Yep found it necessary to change narrative voices after six years of trying to write Dragon Cauldron. Monkey's status as an immortal made him "naturally cheerful even in the most dire of situations. Tough and yet funny, his consciousness provided the right platform from which I could observe a world in crisis". He had to modify the outline he had been working with as he decided that it would be necessary to kill off at least one character in order to provide "jeopardy" to Shimmer and her companions, which in turn would convey drama and emotional truth. This also allowed him to incorporate new material based on Chinese folklore that he had researched, forming the basis for the characters the Smith, the Snail Woman, and the Nameless One.
Dragon War is a fantasy novel American author Laurence Yep first published in 1992. It is the fourth and final book in his Dragon series. Yep attempted to put the beauty and gallantry of dragons he had gleaned from his research of them in Chinese mythology into Dragon War. By contrast, in the first three books of the series he "had tried to capture their quirkiness and strength".
The Dragon series is a tetralogy of fantasy novels by American author Laurence Yep. Yep had already written several books including the Newbery Honor novel Dragonwings by 1980, when, after undertaking careful research, he decided to adapt Chinese mythology into a fantasy form, something he had always wanted to do since he had sold his first science fiction story at 18. He "tried to stay true to the spirit" of these myths, but did not try "to keep their exact details". The "perfect vehicle" he chose was a folktale in which the Monkey King captured a river spirit who had flooded an entire city, which he at first tried to conceive in picture book form. However, he kept questioning the motivations of the river spirit, whom he had renamed Civet. This resulted in the realization, as his outline ballooned exponentially from eight to 800 pages, that he would need a series as opposed to just one book to tell her story.
Dragonwings is a children's historical novel by Laurence Yep, published by Harper & Row in 1975. It inaugurated the Golden Mountain Chronicles and is the fifth chronicle in narrative sequence among ten published as of 2012. The book is used in school classrooms and has been adapted as a play under its original title. Yep and Dragonwings won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association in 1995, recognizing the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award. It had been a runner-up for the annual Newbery Medal.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a fantasy-adventure children's novel inspired by Chinese folklore. It was written and illustrated by Grace Lin and published in 2009. The novel received a 2010 Newbery Honor and the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. It has been translated into Chinese, French, Hebrew, Romanian, Korean and Slovene.
Dragon Blade is a 2015 Chinese historical action film written and directed by Daniel Lee starring Jackie Chan. In the film, Chan plays Huo An, the commander of the Protection Squad of the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty. Dragon Blade was released in IMAX 3D on 19 February 2015, the first day of the Chinese New Year holiday period. The film was released in the United States on 4 September 2015 by Lionsgate Premiere. It was met with generally mixed-to-negative reviews by critics, who praised its action scenes, cinematography and performances, but criticized its screenplay, story, editing and special effects.
Qizhuang, also known as Manfu and commonly inappropriately referred as Manchu clothing in English, is the traditional clothing of the Manchu people. Qizhuang in the broad sense refers to the clothing system of the Manchu people, which includes their whole system of attire used for different occasions with varying degrees of formality. The term qizhuang can also be used to refer to a type of informal dress worn by Manchu women known as chenyi, which is a one-piece long robe with no slits on either sides. In the Manchu tradition, the outerwear of both men and women includes a full-length robe with a jacket or a vest while short coats and trousers are worn as inner garments.
