Playing for Thrills
Shuo Wang - 1997
Instead of ascribing to the Communist Party's goal of "spiritual civilization", he shunned the heroic models common in Chinese literature. Playing for Thrills is the first book published in English from the man whom Newsweek calls "China's literary bad boy" and The Washington Post acclaims as "the irreverent voice of a disillusioned generation".With shades of Chandler and Kerouac, Playing for Thrills is a dark, disembodied, yet compelling story of an anti-hero's search for the truth about a mysterious murder. As the narrator drifts through the seamy underside of Beijing and its environs, he meets a handful of incredibly varied characters as jaded and enigmatic as himself.
Shanghai Station
Bartle Bull - 2003
Shanghai Station is a compelling tale of political terror and personal vengeance that unfolds in 1918 in China's colorful, turbulent port city of Shanghai. Well-born Alexander Karlov arrives in Shanghai with a mission, for the Bolsheviks have brutally killed his mother and abducted his twin sister. Vengeance commands Alexander's soul. It also entangles him in perilous allianceswith the Cossack hit man Ivan Semyonov; with Mei-lan, a woman who knows Shanghai's darkest secrets; with "Big Ear," leader of the city's most powerful Triad; with the French police; and with a spirited young American woman who calls herself Jesse James."
As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers Are Transforming Everything
Karl Gerth - 2010
While Americans and Europeans have become increasingly worried about China’s competition for manufacturing jobs and energy resources, they have overlooked an even bigger story: China’s rapid development of an American-style consumer culture, which is revolutionizing the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese and has the potential to reshape the world. This change is already well under way. China has become the world’s largest consumer of everything from automobiles to beer and has begun to adopt such consumer habits as living in large single-occupancy homes, shopping in gigantic malls, and eating meat-based diets served in fast-food outlets. Even rural Chinese, long the laggards of consumerism, have been buying refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, and larger houses in unprecedented numbers. As China Goes, So Goes the World reveals why we should all care about the everyday choices made by ordinary Chinese. Taken together, these seemingly small changes are deeper and more profound than the headline-grabbing stories on military budgets, carbon emissions, or trade disputes.
China's New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong
Jude Blanchette - 2019
Would it democratize? Would it embrace capitalism? Would the Communist Party's rule be able to withstand the adoption and spread of the Internet? One debatethat did not occur in any serious way, however, was whether Mao Zedong would make a political comeback.As Jude Blanchette details in China's New Red Guards, contemporary China is undergoing a revival of an unapologetic embrace of extreme authoritarianism that draws direct inspiration from the Mao era. Under current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, state control over the economy is increasing, civil societyis under sustained attack, and the CCP is expanding its reach in unprecedented new ways. As Xi declared in late 2017, Government, military, society and schools, north, south, east and west-the party is the leader of all.But this trend is reinforced by a bottom-up revolt against Western ideas of modernity, including political pluralism, the rule of law, and the free market economy. Centered around a cast of nationalist intellectuals and activists who have helped unleash a wave of populist enthusiasm for the GreatHelmsman's policies, China's New Red Guards not only will reshape our understanding of the political forces driving contemporary China, it will also demonstrate how ideologies can survive and prosper despite pervasive rumors of their demise.
Breakthrough Marketing Plans: How to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving Growth
Tim Calkins - 2008
They end up sitting on a shelf, unread and unrealized.Breakthrough Marketing Plans is an essential tool for people who create marketing plans and people who review them. The book provides simple, clear frameworks that are easy to apply, and highlights why marketing plans matter, where they go wrong and how to create a powerful plan that will help build a strong, profitable business.
Young Babylon
Lu Nei - 2014
At age nineteen in 1990s China, he feels pressure to follow suit with those around him and takes a job at the town’s saccharin factory. Slowly, he adjusts to the bureaucratic factory routine, making the best of the situation by bonding with coworkers, flirting with girls, and refusing to give in completely to the expectations of those around him.As Lu Xiaolu finds his way, a startling portrait of an economically expanding China comes into view; the propaganda of a common goal gives way to a bottom-line system that he sees as indifferent to individual happiness. But thanks to the relationships he develops, Lu Xiaolu decides to fight for the life he wants.
The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942
Henrietta Harrison - 2005
Through the story of his family, the author illustrates the decline of the countryside in relation to the cities as a result of modernization and the transformation of Confucian ideology as a result of these changes. Based on nearly 400 volumes of Liu's diary and other writings, the book illustrates what it was like to study in an academy and to be a schoolteacher, the pressures of changing family relationships, the daily grind of work in industry and agriculture, people's experience with government, and life under the Japanese occupation.
China's Wings: War, Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom During the Golden Age of Flight
Gregory Crouch - 2012
The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe. With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history. A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, China’s Wings takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.
A Single Swallow
Ling Zhang - 2017
After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It’s where they had fought—and survived—a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.All that’s missing is Ah Yan—also known as Swallow—the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.As they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan’s life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she’d been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.
Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking
Fuchsia Dunlop - 2001
Many of us know it for its "hot and spicy" reputation or a few of its most famous dishes, most notably Kung Pao chicken, but that is only the beginning. Sichuanese cuisine is legendary in China for its sophistication and astounding diversity: local gourmets claim the region boasts 5000 different dishes.Fuchsia Dunlop fell in love with Sichuanese food on her first visit to the province ten years ago. The following year she went to live in the Sichuanese capital Chengdu, where she became the first foreigner to study full-time at the province's famous cooking school, the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. Now she has given us a cookbook gathered on the spot from the kitchens of Sichuan, filled with stories and colorful descriptions of the region itself. Useful for the enthusiastic beginner as well as the experienced cook, Land of Plenty teaches you not only how to prepare the Sichuan recipes but also the art of chopping and to appreciate the textures of dishes.Among this book's unique features: a full glossary of Chinese terms; Chinese characters useful for shopping; a practical introduction to the art of cutting; detailed lists of the 23 recognized flavor combinations and 56 cooking methods used in Sichuanese cuisine; 16 color pictures of the ingredients and finished dishes; double-page maps of the region; and Chinese characters for every recipe
The Seventh Daughter: My Culinary Journey from Beijing to San Francisco
Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang - 2007
In THE SEVENTH DAUGHTER, Chiang presents a classic collection of recipes framed by her gripping life's story. Beginning with her account of a privileged childhood in 1920s and 1930s Beijing, Chiang chronicles a 1,000-mile trek on foot in the wake of the Japanese occupation, her arrival in San Francisco, and her transformation from accidental restaurateur to culinary pioneer. The book's recipes feature cherished childhood dishes and definitive Mandarin classics, while showcasing Cecilia's purist approach to authentic Chinese home cooking. • The signature recipes and extraordinary story of Cecilia Chiang, the grande dame of Chinese cooking in America. • Includes more than 80 recipes, 20 full-color styled food photographs, and archival photography from Chiang's private collection. • Recipes feature in-depth notes on sourcing ingredients and tips on simplifying the recipes. • Features menus for putting together Chinese banquets and dinners at home.
Around The World In 80 Trades
Conor Woodman - 2009
He's sold his house to finance the trip, but if his hunches are right - trading Sudanese camels for Kenyan coffee, coffee for South African red wine and then off to China to buy porcelain with the proceeds - he'll return six months later with a lot of money, some new friends and a whole raft of brilliant tall tales.Conor believes that the principles of profit are universal wherever you go, whatever language you speak. Whether trading teak or bath taps, light bulbs or seafood he'll work out how to make money in every market he encounters along his route. He'll trade on his wits and instincts, going head to head with the best operators in the world's most hotly-contested markets. But will years of experience in corporate finance mean anything when haggling with Chinese officials to trade his boat-load of tobacco down the Mekong River?Part Undercover Economist, part Apprentice challenge, "The Adventure Capitalist" swaps worry about the global credit crunch for an exciting insight into the human story behind the money in our pockets: face-to-face trade between people from around the world.
Master Wu's Bride
Edward C. Patterson - 2016
Chi Lin becomes the Fourth Wife – the ghost bride in the House of Wu, a respectable Ming Dynasty household. But to keep her honor, Chi Lin assumes her role under the stern command of her mother-in-law and the disdainful eye of the First Wife. Still, as Mistress Purple Sage, Chi Lin survives, managing to bring fresh breath into this ancient household. Women in Fourteenth Century China played a subservient role. Most accepted their lot and worked within a man’s world, supporting their husbands, revering their fathers and elders, and assuring their children followed the same dauntless path. Still, within the narrow confines of a subservient life, there was always a place to leave a mark and make a difference for the future.Master Wu’s Bride is a journey seen from a woman’s point of view — a woman who held secrets and cultivated them to everyone’s advantage. From yesterday’s stale cabbage, Chi Lin manages to cultivate her world to bloom. Come take this journey with Mistress Purple Sage, the ghost bride. Come take this journey that many women in a host of cultures still take today in the shadow of inequality’s quagmire.
Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise
Carl E. Walter - 2010
Instead of a stable series of policies producing steady growth, China's financial sector has boomed and gone bust with regularity in each decade. The latest decade is little different. Chinese banks have become objects of political struggle while they totter under balance sheets bloated by the excessive state-directed lending and bond issuance of 2009. Looking forward, the government's response to the global financial crisis has created a banking system the stability of which can be maintained only behind the walls of a non-convertible currency, a myriad of off-balance sheet arrangements with non-public state entities and the strong support of its best borrowers--the politically potent National Champions--who are the greatest beneficiaries of the financial status quo.China's financial system is not a model for the west and, indeed, is not a sustainable arrangement for China itself as it seeks increasingly to assert its influence internationally. This is not a story of impending collapse, but of frustrated reforms that suggests that any full opening and meaningful reform of the financial sector is not, indeed cannot be, on the government's agenda anytime soon.
The Last Communist Virgin
Wang Ping - 2007
She has interwoven the earthiness of China and the harshness of immigrant life . . . to create a series of short stories that are at once pitiful, heartbreaking, funny, and deeply inspiring.”—Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret FanFrom the restaurants of New York’s Chinatown to the retail emporium of Bergdorf Goodman, and from remote Chinese military outposts to the streets of Beijing, the tremors of China’s rapid economic and cultural growth can be felt. As the characters in these stories struggle to find their way, a young girl discovers love amidst a sea of angry Red Guards, émigrés navigate New York’s relentless rat race, an ambitious businesswoman finds the meaning of success in her rival, and an old man returns to a Beijing he doesn’t recognize on a mission to restore his son-in-law’s flagging honor.Moving smoothly across political, cultural, and personal borders and between countries, continents, and languages, these stories open a window into the rapid transformations of an ancient culture and the soul’s thirst for adventure and harmony in a quickly changing world.Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years spent farming in a mountain village commune, she attended Beijing University. In 1985 she left China to study in the United States, earning her PhD from New York University. She is the acclaimed author of the short story collection American Visa, the novel Foreign Devil, two poetry collections: Of Flesh & Spirit and The Magic Whip, and the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. She now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and teaches at Macalester College. Visit her website at www.wangping.com.