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The Tao of Seduction: Erotic Secrets from Ancient China |  | Author: Lin Liao Yi
Publisher: Abrams Books
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
Buy New: $1.34
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Seller: giftsbyrenee
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 863998
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 200
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 13.6 x 9.4 x 1
ISBN: 0810994437
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.77095109014
EAN: 9780810994430
ASIN: 0810994437
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Tao of Seduction consists of two texts on ancient Taoist sexual alchemy, discovered while excavating the Mawangdui archaeological site in Hunan province. Lin Liao Yi, a specialist in Chinese literature and philosophy, has translated and commented on this two-thousand-year-old treatise on ancient Chinese ways of love, which teaches the art of nourishing life. The first of these texts is a series of questions, from the emperor to his high functionaries, concerning Taoist precepts for enjoying a healthy and spiritual sex life. For example, the advisors recommend breathing only five times through the mouth during lovemaking to energize the members of the body. In addition, this portion of the book includes recipes for erotic dishes such as pan-fried beef, tea with dates and eggs, and sheeps kidney. The second half of the book is illustrated with sexual positions, including the tigers ballad, the grasshoppers landing, the caterpillar on a stem, the Phoenixs takeoff, and others. This title is bound in the style of a traditional Chinese text, along with a lavish casing.
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| Customer Reviews:
 great medieval illustrations, little else of practical value January 30, 2009
cocktail sage (Oakland, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While I agree with the other reviewers comment's on the illustrations, I feel they are overstating the value of the text.
If you've ever read any book on the Tao and sex, you already know everything that is in the text of this book, probably more. The translated texts have little or nothing of practical value - they are vague enough that you must already know more than what they specify in order to be able to understand them at all.
What this book does have is a large number of color illustrations of medieval Chinese erotica - all of which are Very Explicit. There is nothing about seduction in the book, and other than the illustrations nothing that is secret.
There is a collection of recipes, presumably based on trad. Chinese medicine, for sexual healing. Hard to know what their value / quality is.
great medieval illustrations, little else of practical value January 30, 2009
cocktail sage (Oakland, CA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you've ever read any book on the Tao and sex, you alread know everything that is in the text of this book, probably more. The translated texts have little or nothing of practical value - they are vague enough that you must already know more than what they specify in order to be able to understand them at all.
What this book does have is a large number of color illustrations of medieval Chinese erotica - all of which are Very explicit. There is nothing about seduction in the book, and other than the illustrations nothing that is secret.
 Lovely and engaging December 10, 2007
wiredweird (Earth, or somewhere nearby)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This gorgeous book reproduces many specimens of erotic painting from China's 17th to 19th centuries, all taken from the Bertholet collection. Most reproductions fill an entire page, clearly presenting the players and their play. Although the basics of human coupling never change, these paintings all present a happy, consensual tone that's all too often missing from Western erotica.
The text does a lot to explain that affectionate tone. Extracts from Chinese classics of Taoism and medicine show how sexual energy was integrated into wider range of beliefs, spanning the range from earthy and pragmatic to esoterics of religion and alchemy. Most of the texts address a male readership, prescribing sexual exercises that enrich the man's energies by tapping into female sources. The man's rituals can not be complete without the woman's full arousal, however, so significant parts of the text describe the stages of her arousal and techniques for engaging it to the fullest. Clearly, that requires the happy cooperation we see in the beautiful reproductions of people engaged in reproduction.
Although the imagery and text both offer plenty to enjoy, both have appeared elsewhere before. Nearly all of the paintings presented in this book also appear in Dreams of Spring, an earlier sampling of the Bertholet collection's Chinese holdings. Most of the text has also appeared in Art of the Bedchamber, often in more complete forms. Any collector who already owns both of those books will find little new here. That takes nothing away from this book in itself, though. The lush and distinctively non-Western look will charm many readers, and the translations will open doors to a culture of sexuality completely free of Puritan contamination.
-- wiredweird
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