Six papers from The Qinq Formation in World and Chinese Time conference held in Bloomington, Indiana in June 1999 pivot on the theme that times of disrupted time reveal most vividly the time perception in China. Asian and American historians and scholars of language and religion find such a time in the well-recorded middle of the 17th century, during which the fall of one great dynasty and the rise of another was attended by adversities in climatic, microbial, and economic environments. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)