Book picks similar to
After the Finale by Zhou Daxin
china
author-is-poc
chinese
eastern-asia-stories-biographies
The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Yang Jisheng - 2021
Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy.Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today.The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.
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.
The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
Bandi - 2014
Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds, from a young mother living among the elite in Pyongyang whose son misbehaves during a political rally, to a former Communist war hero who is deeply disillusioned with the intrusion of the Party into everything he holds dear, to a husband and father who is denied a travel permit and sneaks onto a train in order to visit his critically ill mother. Written with deep emotion and writing talent, The Accusation is a vivid depiction of life in a closed-off one-party state, and also a hopeful testament to the humanity and rich internal life that persists even in such inhumane conditions.
而立·24 (Independent 24)
Yixing Zhang - 2015
This book is his reply letter which he has written to everyone, “Because being loved like this, even if I only have a final fan remaining, I want to continue singing for this hefty single love.”[Translation credits for the description to laymerence and dailyexo]
Bound Feet & Western Dress
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang - 1996
Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years.In the alternating voices of two generations, this dual memoir brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.
The Scholars
Wu Jingzi - 1750
The Scholars is the first Chinese novel of its scope not to borrow any characters from history or legend and it is the first work of satiric realism to achieve an almost complete disassociation from the religious beliefs of the people. Departing from the impersonal tradition of Chinese fiction, Wu abandons such established narrative formulas as folk songs and poetic verse in favor of autobiographical experiences, descriptive realism, and characters modeled after his friends and relatives elements that combine to give this critique of the Confucian civil service system an unprecedented immediacy and humor.
The Concubine's Children
Denise Chong - 1994
There’s Chan Sam, who left an "at home" wife in China to earn a living in "Gold Mountain"—North America. There’s May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, who labored in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family he would have in Canada, and the one he had in China. It was the concubine’s third daughter, the author’s mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter, whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century.
Miss Sophie's Diary and Other Stories
Ding Ling - 1985
Other stories in this book by the same author deal with Shanghai in the 1930s and the harsh realities of rural life then and in the base areas during the war against Japan.
Lili
Annie Wang - 2001
Estranged from her parents, restless and cynical, she drifts from day to day. Then she meets an American journalist infatuated with China, who gradually opens her eyes to what is happening. Together they embark on a journey that will profoundly change Lili’s view of her country and of herself.
The Membranes
Chi Ta-wei - 1995
Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she's too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city's best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes--heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies--into a sensitive portrait of one young woman's quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader's own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich's translation brings Chi's hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.
Daughter of the River: An Autobiography
Hong Ying - 1997
Born during the Great Famine of the early 1960s and raised in the slums of Chongqing, Hong Ying was constantly aware of hunger and the sacrifices required to survive. As she neared her eighteenth birthday, she became determined to unravel the secrets that left her an outsider in her own family. At the same time, a history teacher at her school began to awaken her sense of justice and her emerging womanhood. Hong Ying's wrenching coming-of-age would teach her the price of taking a stand and show her the toll of totalitarianism, poverty, and estrangement on her family. With raw intensity and fearless honesty, Daughter of the River follows China's trajectory through one woman's life, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square.
Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu
Murong Xuecun - 2006
It's the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, China's fifth most populous city. Despite their aspirations in the newly capitalist China, the trio's lives are beset by dead-end jobs, gambling debts, drinking, drugs, and whoring. Chen Zhong is married to Zhao Yue. Although he loves her, he plays around with other women. But it isn't until Chen Zhong discovers that Zhao Yue is having an affair that he realizes exactly how much he stands to lose "
Tiger's Heart: The Story of a Modern Chinese Woman
Aisling Juanjuan Shen - 2009
Book by Shen, Aisling Juanjuan
A Woman Soldier's Own Story: The Autobiography of Xie Bingying
Xie Bingying - 2001
It provides a fascinating portrayal of a woman fighting to free herself from the constraints of ancient Chinese tradition amid the dramatic changes that shook China during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s.
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol 1: From Earliest Times to 1600
William Theodore de Bary - 1960
Here at last is a completely revised and expanded edition of this classic sourcebook, compiled by noted China scholars Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. Updated to reflect recent scholarly developments, with extensive material on popular thought and religion, social roles, and women's education, this edition features new translations of more than half the works from the first edition, as well as many new selections.Arranged chronologically, this anthology is divided into four parts, beginning at the dawn of literate Chinese civilization with the Oracle-Bone inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (1571-1045 B.C.E.) and continuing through the end of the Ming dynasty (C.E. 1644). Each chapter has an introduction that provides useful historical context and offers interpretive strategies for understanding the readings.The first part, The Chinese Tradition in Antiquity, considers the early development of Chinese civilization and includes selections from Confucius's "Analects, " the texts of Mencius and Laozi, as well as other key texts from the Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist schools. Part 2, The Making of a Classical Culture, focuses on Han China with readings from the "Classic of Changes" ( "I Jing"), the "Classic of Filiality, " major Han syntheses, and the great historians of the Han dynasty. The development of Buddhism, from the earliest translations from Sanskrit to the central texts of the Chan school (which became Zen in Japan), is the subject of the third section of the book. Titled Later Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism in China, this part also covers the teachings of Wang Bi, Daoist religion, and texts of the major schools of Buddhist doctrine and practice. The final part, The Confucian Revival and Neo-Confucianism, details the revival of Confucian thought in the Tang, Song, and Ming periods, with historical documents that link philosophical thought to political, social, and educational developments in late imperial China.With annotations, a detailed chronology, glossary, and a new introduction by the editors, "Sources of Chinese Tradition" will continue to be a standard resource, guidebook, and introduction to Chinese civilization well into the twenty-first century.