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A Tower Built Downwards is the latest instalment of poetry from one of the most innovative and influential poets from China. Before and since his enforced exile from 1989, Yang Lian has been widely hailed in America and Europe as a highly individual voice in world literature, he has been translated into many languages. The different sections – short poems, sequences, and one long poem – form a single comprehensive statement of Yang's recent explorations. It is rooted in his living experience of the historical retrogression of Hong Kong, the disaster of Covid-19, the global spiritual crisis, as well as his personal sadness at events such as his father's death. Yang Lian's work was criticised in China in 1983 and formally banned in 1989 when he organised memorial services for the dead of Tiananmen while in New Zealand. This edition of A Tower Built Downwards contains the full, unabridged collection, including poems that were removed for its publication in China.

Before and since his enforced exile from 1989, Yang Lian has been one of the most innovative and influential poets in China. Widely hailed in America and Europe as a highly individual voice in world literature, he has been translated into many languages. Narrative Poem, Yang Lian's most personal work to date, is built around a series of family photographs, the first of which was taken on the day he was born, on 22 February 1955, and the last of which dates from the time he spent undergoing ‘re-education through labour'– and digging graves – during the mid-1970s. The poetry ranges backward and forward in time, covering his childhood and youth, his first period of exile in New Zealand, and his subsequent adventures and travels in and around Europe and elsewhere. In ‘this unseen structure written by a ghost'Yang Lian weaves together lived experience with meditations on time, consciousness, history, language, memory and desire, in a search for new/old ways of speaking, thinking and living. Narrative Poem, or 敘事詩 (Xùshìshī), was published in China in 2010, and this bilingual edition presents the Chinese text alongside Brian Holton's masterly translation of a technically complex work of great beauty, The book also includes Family Tradition, Yang Lian's first ever preface to his own work, and Ghost Composer/Ghost Translator, a translator's afterword by Brian Holton.

This open access book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspectives, ranging from archaeology, paleoclimatology, antiquity, historical geography, agriculture, carving art and literacy. The Silk Road is a modern concept for an ancient network of trade routes that for centuries facilitated and intensified processes of cultural interaction and goods exchange between West China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest possible links between social upheaval, resource utilization and climate or environment forces along the Silk Road and in a broader area. Post-graduates in studying will benefit from this work, as well as it will stimulate young researchers to further explore the role played by the environment in long-term socio-cultural changes.