Swallowing Clouds

A. Zee is professor of theoretical physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics and An Old Man’s Toy: Gravity at Work and Play in Einstein’s Universe.

Preface

Time Line

A Word about Pronunciation

Introduction

Beijing Men Built a Fire

Slicing through Water

Interlude 1: Phonetics, or Why Some Characters Look Horribly Complicated

Sleep of the Truly Inebriated

Swallowing Clouds

Chinese Pigs Stand

Interlude 2: The Appalling Ignorance of Some Scribes

A Delicacy for Aging Men

No Contest between Fish and a Bear with Eight Legs

Courtesans Do Not Eat Crabs

Interlude 3: To All You Carnivores

The Sweet Fragrance of Crops Ripening

How to Avoid Being Vulgar

The Pockmarked Woman and the Pearly Empress

Interlude 4: Words Are Like Our Children

Buddha Jumping over Walls

Act without Acting, Taste without Tasting

Interlude 5: Like Eating Potato Chips

The Sublime Faith in Illusions

Pieces of Her Heart

Elixirs and the Food of Health

From Banquets to Voyages of Discovery

Epilogue: All Banquets Must Come to an End

Afterword by Linda Rui Feng

Appendix A. How to Exercise Your Arm and Throat while Drinking

Appendix B. A Few Recipes

Notes

Bibliography

Table of Dynasties

Table of Some Common Radicals Used in this Book

Table of Characters and Radicals Cited by Chapter

Acknowledgments

A Final Note