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Poetic journey of a woman’s spiritual quest amidst China’s turmoil.
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In the Shade of the Green Willow

Poems and Reflections of a Buddhist Woman in Modern China

$53.45

  • Paperback

    144 pages

  • Release Date

    24 November 2026

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Summary

Through verse, the rural world becomes the landscape for a woman’s resolute spiritual quest, set against the restless currents of twentieth-century China.

Twentieth-century China was rife with political and spiritual turmoil as it sought to shake off the shackles of its imperial past and move along the path of modernization. In the midst of this turmoil, Zhang Ruzhao (later ordained as Tiantai Master Benkong)—a prolific Buddhist, feminist, literary, and political figure—became disillu…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781645474807
ISBN-10:1645474801
Author:Zhang Ruzhao, Beata Grant
Publisher:Shambhala Publications Inc
Imprint:Shambhala Publications Inc
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:144
Release Date:24 November 2026
Weight:369g
Dimensions:140mm x 178mm
A-Format
In the Shade of the Green Willow by Zhang Ruzhao - ISBN: 9781645474807
140 × 178 mm
B-Format
C-Format
A4
mm / in
About The Author

Zhang Ruzhao

ZHANG RUZHAO (Tiantai Master Benkong) established a reputation as a poet early in life and was actively engaged in many of the political and feminist movements of the 1920s. Disillusioned both politically and personally, she turned to Buddhism and reinvented herself as China’s premier female lay Buddhist scholar, writer, and educator during the 1930s and 1940s. From 1949, she took ordination as a Buddhist nun and was officially designated a lineage holder in the Tiantai lineage. She was persecuted severely during the early years of the Cultural Revolution and died in 1969.

BEATA GRANT, professor emerita of Chinese and religious studies (Washington University in St. Louis), lives in Santa Fe, NM. Her publications include Daughters of Emptiness: Poetry of Buddhist Nuns of China; Eminent Nuns: Female Chan Buddhist Masters of Seventeenth Century China; Zen Echoes: Verse Commentaries by Three Female Chan Masters; and most recently, An Anthology of Poetry by Buddhist Nuns of Late Imperial China.

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