Collecting China: The World, China, and A Short History of Collecting is a unique collection of essays that brings together theories of materiality and what collecting has meant to various peoples over time. Collecting China grew out of a simple question: how does a thing become Chinese? Fifteen essays explore this question from different angles, ranging from close examination of world-renowned private collections (the Rockefellers, the Goncourts, the Walters, the du Ponts, the Yeh family, and the Getty Research Institute, among others) to critical reinterpretations of historical writings that continue from records of Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty to the story of Robinson Crusoe and the first international exhibition of Chinese art. With accounts that incorporate records normally unavailable to the public, the authors map the vast network of collecting practices in different periods, and demonstrate the ways in which material things produced in China acquire new cultural identities through collecting practices.

Contributions by: Stanley K. Abe, Shana J. Brown, Ting Chang, Paola Demattè, Ronald W. Fuchs II, Ellen Huang, Elizabeth Lillehoj, Lydia H. Liu, C Griffith Mann, Lawrence Nees, Stacey Pierson, Marcia Reed, Eugene Wang, Wen-Hsin Yeh