Jing LiuThe Making of Modern China: The Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty (1368-1912) (Understanding China Through Comics, 4)

A thoroughly enjoyable introduction to Chinese history for one who doesn't have time to be deeply interested.

Great! Informative!

Good book and easy way of getting down to brass tacks on Modern China. Worth the read.

I used it for school

Basically a story with picture. Unfortunately, the pictures are not integral to the book, but seem to be there to give space to a dry topic.

This series is great! This is book 4 of 5 of a comic book history of China. I found the first book hard to follow ( it covered 2,700 BC up to 200 AD, and was like a blow by blow of barbarian hords doing the same thing over and over), but other books in the series have been awesome. If you want a comic book history of China, your only options are this 5 book series with lots of info and a portion of Larry Gonick's History of the Universe.It may be that Chinese living in the U.S. want to get a bit of history to their kids and these might be good for that. Or, anyone might want a history of China since it isn't taught here. The comic book format is definite faster to read than a book of dense text, and the different format might appeal to people who wouldn't otherwise be as interested. This series isn't particularly graphic for sex or violence and seems to minimize these, but not censored either. There are many pics of blood dripping off swords but no graphic sex scenes and nothing is used as an excuse for lots of gore or smut. But, yeah, history has a lot of violence, so there it is. For young kids, you might want to read first. For adults who grew up in the U.S. and never got any history of China in school (this is me), this series is a fast read. The comic format is used mainly to give visuals of things like a map with an army or something that doesn't exist now, like an old fashioned piece of equipment.This book covers 1368 up to 1912, or the middle ages in Europe up to World War 1. This was pretty interesting to me, more so than previous books, because it gets into more recent times and so seems more relevant. Events were easy to follow. As books come out, the series has gotten better and started to do more of what comics can do that books can't. For example, in this one, emperors tend to have a distinctive feature, like big huge chin or something, so I can tell each character apart from page-to-page and that helps me keep thing straight, which I definitely have trouble with when I read a book.

Chinese history spans thousands of years and it can be intimidating to learn about all the peoples and places over such a long period of time. However, I found that this book did a remarkable job keeping it interesting. Obviously it is not a history text, but I cannot think of another style of book that a young person might actually read on his or her own without it being "work".It reads like a graphic novel, and it visually depicts major events and concepts in Chinese History. For example, the Opium Wars, the Sino Japanese War, and the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions are all represented with action scenes and maps and keep both the mind and the eye engaged.The book also even attempts to go into detail about certain less obvious concepts that were greatly important in certain periods of Chinese history -like the collapse of the economy and devaluation of paper currency, the rise of pirates or emperors, and the role of religion. And because each topic only exists on a few pages, and is accompanied by sometimes very detailed illustrations (though all in black and white), and is interspersed with maps, text boxes, and word balloons, the journey remains really interesting.I imagine I would have benefited if I had read these graphic novels before undertaking more serious studies because it would have provided a great foundation for later learning.Highly recommended,

When I was in college, I had the opportunity to take a class on China for my minor. While I did quite well in the class, learning about the various Emperors and Dynasties was not easy.But writer/artist Jing Liu has figured out a wonderful way to reach out to those who are interested in studying Chinese history and that's through comics!I recently read "The Making of Modern China: The Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty (1368-1912) (Understanding China Through Comics)" from Stonebridge Press and this timeline is important to learning how China began its way of modernization but also the challenges that were met after China was invaded by the Monguls but how various Emperor's had difficult of trying to find out how to continue the country's stability with various currency and taxation.But how China had to endure corruption from officials, to overprinting money or not having enough silver to provide currency of the country's growing population.And due to bad leadership, bad planning and a growing population, trying to please the people through little taxation but then not having any currency to provide stability to the people made things difficult. As certain areas did well, smaller locations in the country side and mountainous regions started to become angry as they did not have the same type of treatment and they rebelled.And with too many rebellions happening throughout China, it no doubt caused instability.While things got better in the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the need of silver led to the country of opening its ports to people from other countries and when Britain brought Opium to China, that changed things as it drained the economy of silver in China and increased opium addiction inside the country which led to the first Opium War.Seeing how China's openness to foreign trade led to China using their money and military to fight the British, which the British had superior weaponry and firepower and ushering China into Modernism.There is so much that happens between 1368-1912 and Jing Liu does a magnificent job of showcasing history in a simplistic way for people to read and understand China's history and how they entered into modernism but also how it led to turmoil within the country and with other countries.It's a well-written comic and educational as well!Overall, I was really pleased with "The Making of Modern China: The Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty (1368-1912) (Understanding China Through Comics)" and I definitely recommend it!