Customer Reviews

The Imperial Capitals of ChinaA Dynastic History of the Celestial Empire

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Cotterell's overview of Chinese history is convenient and well-conceived: the idea of using the layout of China's various seats of empire as a framework for a thumbnail sketch was a good idea, because the frequent changes of capitol show how the country's historical base has shifted over time and the variations in town planning show why: influx of Buddhist influence in the early Christian era conflicting with traditional Confucianism, is reflected in the layout, and so on.

Unfortunately, the text is terribly proofed: on almost every page, I had to reread a sentence to discern the author's meaning among the errors of grammar, punctuation and style. The publisher's name is not one I recognize, and likely to remain so if he does not take more care for readability.

Examining China's historical capital cities might have been an interesting framework for a study of Chinese history, but this book turns the exercise into an undisciplined repetitive ramble without much point. What editor allowed the following:

p14: What he (Marco Polo) missed ... was the reluctance of the Southern Song emperors to regard Hangchow as an imperial capital at all. Kinsai, the name Marco Polo translates as "the celestial city," was in fact a corruption of "temporary residence," the only title these emperors could bring themselves to confer on the city....

p34: Marco Polo knew the city by the name of Kinsai, a corruption of "temporary residence," the only title the Southern Song emperors could bring themselves to confer upon Hangchow.

p178: He (Marco Polo) did not realize that Kinsai was a corruption of "temporary residence," the only title the Southern Song emperors could bring themselves to confer on Hangchow....

The author seems to have gathered a set of notecards of his favorite moments of Chinese history, tied loosely to the capital cities, and then used them without noting which remarks had been cycled already.