Spider Eaters


Rae Yang - 1997
    With stunning honesty and a lively, sly humor, Rae Yang records her life from her early years as the daughter of Chinese diplomats in Switzerland, to her girlhood at an elite middle school in Beijing, to her adolescent experience as a Red Guard and later as a laborer on a pig farm in the remote northern wilderness. She tells of her eventual disillusionment with the Maoist revolution, how remorse and despair drove her almost to suicide, and how she struggled to make sense of conflicting events that often blurred the line between victim and victimizer, aristocrat and peasant, communist and counterrevolutionary. Moving gracefully between past and present, dream and reality, the author artfully conveys the vast complexity of life in China as well as the richness, confusion, and magic of her own inner life and struggle.Much of the power of the narrative derives from Yang's multi-generational, cross-class perspective. She invokes the myths, legends, folklore, and local customs that surrounded her and brings to life the many people who were instrumental in her life: her nanny, a poor woman who raised her from a baby and whose character is conveyed through the bedtime tales she spins; her father; her beloved grandmother, who died as a result of the political persecution she suffered.Spanning the years from 1950 to 1980, Rae Yang's story is evocative, complex, and told with striking candor. It is one of the most immediate and engaging narratives of life in post-1949 China.

The True Story of Ah Q 阿Q正傳


Lu Xun - 1922
    While echoes of these stories can still be heard in the fictional works from both sides of the Taiwan Strait in the eighties and nineties, "The True Story of Ah Q" has long become an intrinsic part of the Chinese vocabulary.Like many Chinese intellectuals searching for a solution to China's problems, Lu Xun went to Japan to study medicine, a choice he later abandoned for a career in writing, which he considered to be a far more effective weapon to save China. A prolific author of pungent and "dagger-like" essays, Lu Xun is also a tireless translator of Western critical and literary works. His fictional works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America


Paul Chiasson - 2006
    Cape Breton is one of the oldest points of exploration and settlement in the Americas, with a history dating back to the first days of European discovery, and it is littered with the remnants of old settlements. But the road that Chiasson found that day was unique. Well-made and consistently wide, and at one time clearly bordered with stone walls, the road had been a major undertaking. In the two years of detective work that followed, Chiasson systematically surveyed the history of Europeans in North America, and came to a stunning conclusion: the ruins he stumbled upon did not belong to the Portuguese, the French or the English – in fact, they pre-dated John Cabot’s “discovery” of the island in 1497.Using aerial and site photographs, maps and drawings, and his own expertise as an architect, Chiasson carries the reader along as he pieces together the clues to one of the world’s great mysteries. While tantalizing mentions can be found in early navigators’ journals and maps, The Island of Seven Cities reveals for the first time the existence of a large Chinese colony that thrived on Canadian shores well before the European Age of Discovery.Chiasson addresses how the colony was abandoned and forgotten, in the New World and in China, except in the storytelling and culture of the Mi’kmaq, whose written language, clothing, technical knowledge, religious beliefs and legends, he argues, expose deep cultural roots in China. The Island of Seven Cities unveils the first tangible proof that the Chinese were in the New World before Columbus.

The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir


Lucy Lum - 2007
    Popo is a firm believer in the old ways, in stomach-churning herbalist remedies, in the dubious fortune-telling of mystics, and in mischievous little girls like Lucy knowing their place. She is forever dispensing her own wicked brand of justice, much to the despair of her adopted family.This is Singapore in the 1940s, a former British colony now living under the specter of the invading Japanese--the hungry worms crawling down from the north, as Lucy knows them--and fear floods the streets. Lucy's father, a kind-hearted and talented linguist, finds himself being used by the occupiers as a translator, and brings back terrifying stories of his merciless employers, which he confides to his daughter under the heavy teak table they use as a make-shift air raid shelter in the bedroom.With a fresh and powerful voice, The Thorn of Lion City breaks the long silence of the Singaporean Chinese. Heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant, it speaks of the softly-spoken, redemptive love between a father and daughter.

Mao: The Real Story


Alexander Pantsov - 2012
    Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot. Pantsov and Levine show Mao’s relentless drive to succeed, vividly describing his growing role in the nascent Communist Party of China. They disclose startling facts about his personal life, particularly regarding his health and his lifelong serial affairs with young women. They portray him as the loyal Stalinist that he was, who never broke with the Soviet Union until after Stalin’s death. Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life. The disastrous Great Leap Forward with its accompanying famine and the bloody Cultural Revolution were Mao’s creations. Internationally Mao began to distance China from the USSR under Khrushchev and shrewdly renewed relations with the U.S. as a counter to the Soviets. He lived and behaved as China’s last emperor.

Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China


Rao Pingru - 2013
    One glimpse of her through a window as she put on lipstick was enough to capture Rao's heart, the moment that sparked a union that would last almost sixty years. Our Story is that epic romance told through his paintings and accompanying text. We see Pingru and Meitang through the decades, in both poverty and good fortune--looking for work, opening a restaurant, moving cities, mending shoes, raising their children, and being separated for seventeen years by the government when Pingru is sent to a labor camp. As they age, China undergoes extraordinary growth, political turmoil, and cultural change. When Meitang passes away in 2008, Pingru memorializes his wife and their relationship the only way he knows how: through painting. In an outpouring of love and grief, he puts it all on paper. It's a tale at once tragic and inspiring, of enduring love and simple values, an old-fashioned story that unfolds in a nation rapidly becoming modern. Spanning 1923 to 2008, Our Story is a truly singular graphic memoir.

In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793–1815


Jenny Uglow - 2014
    Illustrated by the satires of Gillray and Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Austen, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening new horizons that would change their country for a century.

Sons of Heaven


Terrence Cheng - 2002
    In June 1989, the world watched in horror as China's military was mobilized to suppress a student movement that stood for peaceful democracy. Hundreds were killed; others say thousands. No one knows for sure. But the image that remains most powerful is that of a lone young man, looking confused yet terribly brave, as he held his ground before a rolling line of tanks. Who was he, and why did he do what he did? No one has ever been able to determine his identity or fate. Within the pages of "Sons of Heaven, in a stunning blend of history and fiction, Terrence Cheng has vividly created a life for this young hero and given him a voice.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio


Pu Songling - 1740
    With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems.

911 Finding the Truth


Andrew Johnson - 2010
    A study of the available evidence will challenge you and much of what you assumed to be true. "Now we are discovering that there is a highly-sophisticated black-ops weaponization of free energy technology and it was responsible for the bizarre, low-temperature pulverization of the Twin Towers. Dr. Judy Wood has pieced together the physical evidence and Andrew Johnson has highlighted who is working to silence or smear whom, as the powers that be rush to impede or at least contain the dissemination of these startling findings." - Conrado Salas Cano, M.S. in Physics ** NOTE: Book is sold at the cheapest possible price on the Amazon Kindle Store - if you hunt round, you can find it for free. **

China: Empire of Living Symbols


Cecilia Lindqvist - 1989
    To his surprise the bone, which had not yet been ground into powder, contained a number of carved inscriptions. Thus began the discovery of the 3000 year old sources of the written characters still in use in China today.In this unparalleled and beautiful book, Cecilia Lindqvist tells the fascinating story of these origins, and shows how their shapes and concepts permeate Chinese thought, architecture, art and culture. Illustrations in two-colour throughout, and a four-colour insert, make vivid each stage of the story, and the beauty of the characters themselves.

A History of Chinese Civilization


Jacques Gernet - 1972
    This revised and updated edition includes a detailed chronology that has been updated through 1993, a new bibliography, and an expanded index that includes Chinese characters.

The House of Yan: A Family at the Heart of a Century in Chinese History


Lan Yan - 2017
    One of the most influential businesswomen of China today, Lan Yan grew up in the company of the country's powerful elite, including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and other top leaders. Her grandfather, Yan Baohang, originally a nationalist and close to Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong May-ling, later joined the communists and worked as a secret agent for Zhou Enlai during World War II. Lan's parents were diplomats, and her father, Yan Mingfu, was Mao's personal Russian translator.Inspite of their elevated status, the Yan's family life was turned upside down by the Cultural Revolution. One night in 1967, in front of a terrified ten-year-old Lan, Red Guards burst into the family home and arrested her grandfather. Days later, her father was arrested, accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Her mother, Wu Keliang, was branded a counter-revolutionary and forced to go with her daughter to a re-education camp for more than seven years, where Lan came of age as a high school student.In recounting her family history, Lan Yan brings to life a century of Chinese history from the last emperor to present day, including the Cultural Revolution which tore her childhood apart. The little girl who was crushed by the Cultural Revolution has become one of the most active businesswomen in her country. In telling her and her family's story, she serves up an intimate account of the history of contemporary China.

Harlem 69: The Future of Soul (The Soul Trilogy)


Stuart Cosgrove - 2018
    In February a raid on tenements across New York leads to the arrest of 21 Black Panther party members and one of the most controversial trials of the era. In the summer Harlem plays host to Black Woodstock and concerts starring Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone. The world’s most famous guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, a major supporter of the Black Panthers, returns to Harlem in support of their cause.By the end of the year Harlem is gripped by a heroin pandemic and the death of a 12-year-old child sends shockwaves through the USA, leaving Harlem stigmatised as an area ravaged by crime, gangsters and a darkly vengeful drug problem.

Derek Prince: A Biography


Stephen Mansfield - 2005
    Not just another famous preacher's story, this biography promises to stir readers' faith as they discover Prince's unique brand of biblical wisdom and insight as well as his legacy as a father, prophet, teacher, and leader.