Pretty Woman Spitting: An American's Travels in China


Leanna Adams - 2012
    Leanna Adams moved to China in 2006, was nearly robbed, held her co-worker’s hand as she died in a filthy, smoke-filled hospital, bonded with many of her three hundred students and left part of her heart in Wuhu, China. Adams’s contrasting experiences highlight the differences that make the two cultures unique and the similarities that make all people human.

野火集


Lung Ying-tai - 1985
    Re-publication of the essays by the author whose criticism of Taiwan¡'s political culture became the seed of an essay wild fire for motivating the people of Taiwan.

Three Kingdoms


Luo Guanzhong
    "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." With this characterization of the inevitable cycle of Chinese history, the monumental tale Three Kingdoms begins. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming Dynasty masterpiece continues to be read and loved throughout China as well as in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways that Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day.Three Kingdoms portrays a fateful moment at the end of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) when the future of the Chinese empire lay in the balance. Writing more than a millennium later, Luo Guanzhong drew on often told tales of this turbulent period to fashion a sophisticated compelling narrative, whose characters display vivid individuality and epic grandeur.The story begins when the emperor, fearing uprisings by peasant rebels known as the Yellow Scarves, sends an urgent appeal to the provinces for popular support. In response, three young men - the aristocratic Liu Xuande, the fugitive Lord Guan, and the pig-butcher Zhang Fei - meet to pledge eternal brotherhood and fealty to their beleaguered government. From these events comes a chain of cause and consequence that leads ultimately to the collapse of the Han.

China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps


Larry Herzberg - 2008
    Readers will learn essential skills like how to haggle, exchange currencies, cross the street, decipher menus, say useful phrases in Chinese, and more. The guide comes complete with survival tips on etiquette, a map, and resource lists. Don’t leave home for China without it!Veteran travelers Qin and Larry Herzberg are Chinese language and culture professors at Calvin College in Michigan.

19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei


Eliot Weinberger - 1987
    As Octavio Paz writes in the afterword, “Eliot Weinberger’s commentary on the successive translations of Wang Wei’s little poem illustrates, with succinct clarity, not only the evolution of the art of translation in the modern period but at the same time the changes in poetic sensibility.”

The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies


Robertson Davies - 1979
    last year, this updated collection contains the best of Robertson Davies' newspaper and magazine articles written over the past 50 years. "Each piece is entertaining and enlightening. . . ".--Publishers Weekly.

Six Records of a Floating Life


Shěn Fù - 1809
    In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic and romantic joys of his marriage to Yun, the beautiful and artistic girl he fell in love with as a child. He also describes other incidents of his life, including how his beloved wife obtained a courtesan for him and reflects on his travels through China. Shen Fu's exquisite memoir shows six parallel "layers" of one man's life, loves and career, with revealing glimpses into Chinese society of the Ch'ing Dynasty.

Becoming Madame Mao


Anchee Min - 2000
    The unwanted daughter of a concubine, she refused to have her feet bound, ran away to join an opera troupe and eventually met Mao Zedong in the mountains of Yenan.

The Last Eunuch Of China


Yinghua Jia - 2008
    In their long-time talks, the former eunuch told his young friend lots of inside stories about the "last emperor" and the royal family. Sun allowed Jia to record these stories with a tape-recorder and a video-tape-recorder.Jia had already published the Chinese edition of the eunuch's biography and a Japanese-language edition.So far, Jia has written six books on the royal family. Jia said he wanted to translate his books into major foreign languages to help foreign readers better understand the history of China.(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2009)http://www.china.org.cn/books&mag...Los Angeles Times Review - "Biography of last Chinese eunuch reveals a tumultuous life"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwor...New Phoenix Intl LlcForeign Language Teaching &Foreign Language Teaching and Research P

Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless


Martin Clarke - 1999
    Starting with the band's origins in Oxford, journalist Martin Clarke covers the essential points: Radiohead's breakout single "Creep," the pivotal album OK Computer, Thom Yorke's continuing political and artistic evolution, and the band's future. This revised edition includes a close look at how the band escaped the rock straightjacket with Kid A and Amnesiac , as well as their most recent album, Hail to the Thief . Clark also offers an in-depth examination of the outspoken, mysterious Yorke, offering insight into the personal demons the vocalist has battled throughout his career as Radiohead's frontman. An incisive look at one of the world's most beloved, followed musical acts, Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless provides stimulating coverage of a provocative group.

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun


Lu Xun - 2009
    His celebrated short stories assemble a powerfully unsettling portrait of the superstition, poverty, and complacence that he perceived in late-imperial China, and in the revolutionary Republic that toppled the last dynasty in 1911. This volume presents Lu Xun's complete fiction, including 'The Real Story of Ah-Q,' 'Diary of a Madman,' 'The Divorce,' and 'New Year's Sacrifice,' among others.Julia Lovell's new translation of Lu Xun's short stories is accompanied by an introduction to the writer's political and literary life. This edition also includes suggested further reading, a note on Chinese names and pronunciation, a chronology, and notes.

Paper Son: One Man's Story


Tung Pok Chin - 2000
    Although scholars have pieced together their history, first-person accounts are rare and fragmented; many of the so-called "Paper Sons" lived out their lives in silent fear of discovery. Chin's story speaks for the many Chinese who worked in urban laundries and restaurants, but it also introduces an unusually articulate man's perspective on becoming a Chinese American.Chin's story begins in the early 1930s, when he followed the example of his father and countless other Chinese who bought documents that falsely identified them as children of Chinese Americans. Arriving in Boston and later moving to New York City, he worked and lived in laundries. Chin was determined to fit into American life and dedicated himself to learning English. But he also became an active member of key organizations -- a church, the Chinese Hand Laundrymen's Alliance, and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association -- that anchored him in the community. A self-reflective and expressive man, Chin wrote poetry commenting on life in China and the hardships of being an immigrant in the United States. His work was regularly published in the China Daily News and brought him to the attention of the FBI, then intent on ferreting out communists and illegal immigrants. His vigorous narrative speaks to the day-to-day anxieties of living as a Paper Son as well as the more universal immigrant experiences of raising a family in modest circumstances and bridging cultures.Historian K. Scott Wong introduces Chin's memoir, discussing thelimitations on immigration from China and what is known about Exclusion-era Chinese American communities. Set in historical context, Tung Pok Chin's unique story offers an engaging account of a twentieth-century Paper Son.

The Deer and the Cauldron: The First Book


Jin Yong - 1997
    Back in 1644, his great-uncle Dorgon broke through the Great Wall from Manchuria in the north-east and took the Imperial capital, Peking. Now twenty years later, the Manchus are quelling the last sparks of Chinese resistance, hounding down members of the underground movement known as the Triad Secret Society. But deep in the innermost recesses of the Forbidden City, with its maze of countless eunuchs, and the redoubtable troops of the Imperial Guard, a sinister conspiracy is brewing.Into this historical setting bursts a young teenage scamp by the name of Trinket. Born in a whorehouse in the southern Chinese city of Yangzhou, Trinket is an unlikely (and reluctant) kungfu practitioner, whose underhand tricks earn him many a harsh word from his masters. Foul-mouthed, lazy, opportunistic, but ultimately likeable and unforgettable, it is Trinket who holds together the picaresque episodes of this last (and many say best) Martial Arts novel by Hong Kong's master storyteller, Louis Cha.As the poet and critic Stephen Soong has said, this is 'a roller-coaster of a novel, packed with thrills, with fun, rage, humour, and abuse, written in a style that flows and flashes like quicksilver.'

The Writer as Migrant


Ha Jin - 2008
    Thirty years later, a resident of the United States, he won the National Book Award for his novel Waiting, completing a trajectory that has established him as one of the most admired exemplars of world literature. Ha Jin’s journey raises rich and fascinating questions about language, migration, and the place of literature in a rapidly globalizing world—questions that take center stage in The Writer as Migrant, his first work of nonfiction. Consisting of three interconnected essays, this book sets Ha Jin’s own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of his birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov—who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing—are enlisted to explore a migrant author’s conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie—refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration. Simultaneously a reflection on a crucial theme and a fascinating glimpse at the writers who compose Ha Jin’s mental library, The Writer as Migrant is a work of passionately engaged criticism, one rooted in departures but feeling like a new arrival.

Colors of the Mountain


Da Chen - 1999
    Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution engulfed millions of Chinese citizens, and the Red Guard enforced Mao's brutal communist regime. Chen's family belonged to the despised landlord class, and his father and grandfather were routinely beaten and sent to labor camps, the family of eight left without a breadwinner. Despite this background of poverty and danger, and Da Chen grows up to be resilient, tough, and funny, learning how to defend himself and how to work toward his future. By the final pages, when his says his last goodbyes to his father and boards the bus to Beijing to attend college, Da Chen has become a hopeful man astonishing in his resilience and cheerful strength.