Chinese conduct books for women were read throughout East Asia, but because Chinese was considered too difficult for women in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, vernacular editions often were prepared in order to make the message more accessible. In this article we present a bibliographic study of surviving conduct books for Vietnamese women, both in Chinese and in Vietnamese, and in manuscript and printed forms, and consider the production of such texts in the light of conduct literature for women produced in Korea and Japan. A particularly interesting case is Lesser learning for women, a hybrid book combining a Ming-dynasty didactic text in Chinese with other didactic materials in Vietnamese. For the most part, these various conduct books for women purvey unchanging moral certainties and restrictions for women, and as such were increasingly at odds with the changing world of colonial Vietnam in which educational opportunities for women were growing.

This paper investigates perceptions of courtesans, gender and power from various perspectives, using both literary and non-literary sources and reconstructed lost books. Analysis focuses on representations of the celebrated courtesan, poet and painter Xue Susu (fl. 1575–before 1652) by writers of different backgrounds, gender and class. In late Ming times women participated in elite culture in unprecedented numbers. Courtesans gained prominence in the literati arts, playing a formative role in shaping cultural ideals. Late imperial Chinese discourse embeds the image of the courtesan in the formation of new beauty ideals and social negotiations of gender roles and power. Paradoxes abound, linking the courtesan with notions of chivalry, chastity and loyalism and depicting her in the context of national politics and warfare. The Ming/Qing texts reflect not only current perceptions of women and courtesans, but also the social and cultural aspirations, dreams, anxieties and desires of their authors.

The aim of this brief survey is to provide a critical review of studies of China's economic history recently published by prominent Western scholars. It will explore two veins of scholarly debates that underlie Western perceptions of both China's past and its trajectory of future development, and also consider the historic significance of joint-stock enterprise in China as opposed to Britain and Japan.

It is well known that the nations of Europe and North America take the lead in the majority of disciplines in the academic world today. In most fields, unless a scholarly work makes reference in some way or other to the findings of Euro-American research, it is not considered worthy of mention. It is not, however, so common for the accomplishments of Euro-American scholars to be taken up by Japanese and Chinese scholars working in the field of ancient Chinese history. Presumably one reason for this is that in East Asia, especially in Japan and China, there are long and rich traditions of scholarship on Chinese ancient history that reach back to premodern times. Yet to just what extent is the research of European and American scholars referenced in the introductory books and general surveys concerning ancient Chinese history that are published in Japan and China?