“[Chang] tried , with little success, to break into the English-language fiction market… But the cultural and linguistic gaps were to wide to cross. As C. T. Hsia, one of her earliest and most perceptive advocates, remarked, mid-century American readers’ views of China were greatly influenced by writers like Pearl S. Buck, which left them unprepared for Chang’s melancholy incisiveness and insider’s perspective.”

Don’t you find it ironic that the real Chinese was less accepted? Once I started, I could sort of see why. While Buck concentrated on the poor rural life, Chang wrote about the middle to high class Chinese society. From Westerners perspective, the tale of misery from a third world country might be more exotic than the intricacies of ordinary Chinese life and relationships.

The first story, Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, quickly set an image in my head as Pride and Prejudice in Hong Kong. There are parties and courtships, and people are measuring someone’s worth from how much he/she owns or earns. But unlike P&P, it’s not a feel-good romantic story, a pattern that will follow throughout the rest of the book.

Chang’s stories may be about love, but it may be love you’re not familiar with. The stories are essentially–borrowing words from the Introduction–”anti-romance”. Every single character is calculative–a very Chinese trait I think. I likened it to watching a game of chess, or a game whose rules I’m not very familiar with, so it’s required of me to pay attention to details, to what is said between  the lines, to things they say and not say, to little gestures. I love the intricacies, the power play, and complexity of the relationships. This is almost unheard of for short story collection, but I loved all the stories in the book. The more I read the more I love Chang’s writing and the more I appreciate her skills in building these tales of life.

Chang wrote film scripts apart from short stories and novels, so it’s little wonder that her strength in this aspect shines through. Her writing is often cinematic, it’s almost like she wrote with a big screen in mind. Jasmine Tea, her second story in the book started with a cup of tea:

“This pot of jasmine tea that I’ve brewed for you may be somewhat bitter; this Hong Kong tale that I’m about to tall you may be, I’m afraid, just as bitter. Hong Kong is a splendid city, but a sad one too.

First pour yourself a cup of tea, but be careful–it’s hot! Blow on it gently. In the tea’s curling steam you can see… a Hong Kong public bus on a paved road, slowly driving down a hill. A passenger stands behind the driver, a big bunch of azaleas in his arms. The passenger leans against an open window, the azaleas stream out in a twiggy thicket, and the windowpane behind becomes a flat sheet of red.”

In Jasmine Tea, we follow a young man who grows up in family with little love. Frustrated with his own father and stepmother, he starts to contemplate having a different father. He indulges in possibilities if her dead mother had married another man. All leads to dire consequences. The story is probably my least favorite because it’s quite disturbing at the end.

Next is the title story, Love in a Fallen City, which was made into a movie with the same name in 1984, played by Chow Yun Fat (The King and I, Pirates of the Caribbean). I really wanted to see the movie, but it’s an old movie and it’s so hard to find with proper subtitle so I gave up looking. But I searched some clips on youtube and watched some to have a feel of the atmosphere during the time as I don’t think I’ve ever watched a Chinese or Hong Kong movie from this era. I was especially intrigued by the clothes. During the time of reading, I had a hard time imagining the clothes they were wearing, so it was nice to see the clips and learned what they actually might look like. The story itself is one that most resembles a love story, with a man and a woman who find love in each other in the middle of turbulence and chaos.

In The Golden Cangue, we are faced with the epitome of evil mother and mother-in-law. She’s a very strong character, but I almost couldn’t stand to read on. Several times I needed to close my eyes and take a deep breath before continuing. Do you know what cangue is? Google it and check it out. It often appears in Chinese movies and only now I know the name of it. The title has great meaning in connection with the story.

My favorite stories happened to be the last two: Sealed Off and Red Rose, White Rose. In Sealed Off, the city is sealed off for unexplained reason and everybody is stuck at where they are until city is “re-opened” again. Camera pans to a tram, to the people in it, then is focused to a man and a woman. Two people meet by chance, forced to interact by circumstances. From the footnote of Sealed Off:

The military situation that creates this interlude is presented very obliquely; all that we know is that the authorities have shut down, or condoned off, all or part of the city. The authorities, in this case, are probably the Japanese occupiers or (more likely) the Chinese puppet government that answered to them. Chang made a point of never directly referring to the political or military situation in Shanghai prior to the defeat of the Japanese, and thus she usually escaped censorship and was never thrown in prison (as did befall those of her associates who took a more aggressive stance).

Interesting insight into the political situation of that time. Chang left China when she was 32 and for the next three decades was a banned writer in her homeland, though still much loved by loyal readers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the overseas Chinese communities. Sealed Off is told to be one of the stories that impressed Hu Lancheng, an influential man of the time, that “he looked her up, swept her off her feet, and became her husband” (from the Introduction).

Last, another favorite of mine, is Red Rose, White Rose. It has such a great opening:

“There were two women in Zhenbao’s life: one he called his white rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other a passionate mistress. Isn’t that just how the average man describes a chaste widow’s devotion to her husband’s memory–as spotless, and passionate too?

Maybe every man has had two such women–at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she’ll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is “moonlight in front of my bed.” Marry a white rose, and before long she’ll be a grain of sticky rice that’s gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart.”

Just brilliant.

This is the short story that was picked by Jeffrey Eugenides to be included in anthology he edited: My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, whose short stories I’ve been reading and talking about here several times before.

Like Hong Kong the city, the recurrent theme in the book is fusion or clash between the East and the West. There are many mixed blood people make appearances or Chinese people who have spent a lot of time overseas. That and the progressive nature of the place and time, there bounds to be confusion and tension between the old and the new ways.

“Yanli rarely spoke or raised her head and always walked a little behind him. She knew very well that according to modern etiquette she should walk in front, left him help her put on her coat and wait on her, but she was uncomfortable exercising her new rights. She hesitated, and this made her seem even slower and more awkward.” ~ Red Rose, White Rose, p294

Love in a Fallen City contains 6 short stories, 4 of which are sort of novella length, and I think they worked really well for me exactly because of that. The short stories are not too short, so there’s time to develop the characters and the plot and there’s time for you to get immersed in them. They’re not perfect, as I found the dialogues sound a bit odd at times, but it’s understandable as Chinese is a very sharp and short language (though sing-songy), so it must be hell to translate to a wordy language like English. Then the behaviours of the characters can sometimes be very abrupt which I didn’t quite get. But all in all, what a great find. Thanks to Claire for picking this up, otherwise I may not have found it by myself. I will definitely look for more Chang’s works in the future. She is a gem of the East.

Chinese (1940s), English (1990s), Penguin Modern Classic (2007), 321 pp

Quotes

“No matter how amazing a woman is, she won’t be respected by her own sex unless she’s loved by a member of the opposite one. Women are petty this way.” ~ Love in a Fallen City, p127

“Basically a woman who was tricked by a man deserved to die, while a woman who tricked a man was a whore. If a woman tried to trick a man but failed then was tricked by him, that was whoredom twice over. Kill her, and you’d only dirty the knife.” ~ Love in a Fallen City, p152

“Even though status wasn’t something you could eat, losing it would be a pity.” ~ Love in a Fallen City, p153

“We were way too busy falling in love–how could we have found time to really love each other?” ~ Love in a Fallen City, p166

Challenges/Projects
China Challenge (book #5), Women Unbound (fiction #9), Reading the World

Also reviewed by
kiss a cloud | A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook | A Striped Armchair

ps: We are going to read Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima for our next group read in September. Would you join us?

In the war time many people from mainland China ran to Hong Kong. As this could be done only by people who had money and Hong Kong went to become a great autonomy of its own, the small island is until now viewed as the place for the rich higher class people by the mainlanders.

Hong Kong was officially “returned” to China in 1997 by the British. When raising the flags, China flag must be raised above Hong Kong flag. Funny but, as an Australian passport holder I am allowed to enter the region for 90 days, while Chinese passport holder is only allowed 7 days. I guess Hong Kong remains the unreachable dream land for the mainland Chinese.

A couple of places in the book:

Repulse Bay

Tsim Sha Tsui

I haven’t read many books set in Hong Kong. One that I’ve read was Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah, a memoir, which I read many years ago, so apology if the review is a bit rusty. I remember it as a pretty good book. If you’re interested in movies, one that I completely fell in love with is City of Glass, a romantic movie. City of Glass is such a fitting name, since Hong Kong is full of skycrapers and at night the whole city is alive with lights from the myriads of tall glassy buildings. It’s so pretty.

Have you books or movies set in Hong Kong to recommend?

“In had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung fruit from it and from the fruit, silver.” ~ p31

In The Good Earth we follow the story of Wang Lung, a mere farmer at first, who strives to become more successful with wisdom and hard work. The book starts on his marriage day. Far from being extravagant, he has to pick up the bride himself who is a slave in a rich man’s house. His wife O-Lan is a plain quiet woman.

“Words were to her things to be caught one by one and released with difficulty.” ~ p44

O-Lan knows how to utilize everything that comes her way in any situation. She was sold to the big house when she was small and therefore learns all important things she needs to survive. I don’t think it was mentioned enough, but Wang Lung is incredibly lucky to have O-Lan as his wife. Behind every successful man there’s a strong woman, according to a saying, and this couldn’t be more true for Wang Lung and O-Lan.

The language is very simple. It reminds me of language that people use for folktales. Hence The Good Earth read like a very long folktale to me. But I don’t think this is caused only by the language. Wang Lung’s story is like a story of Every Chinese-man so to speak. You start poor, you work hard, you take wife, you have sons and daughters, you take care of your elders, building better life along the way, then you die. The story of Wang Lung and his grown-up sons rang very true to me. My father said, it’s all about cycle. One generation works so hard to be rich, the second generation does everything they can to spend the fortune, and the third generation must again work very hard to pay the debts and clean the mess. I have not read the sequels to The Good Earth, but my guts tell me it is going in that direction.

I love how everything comes down to the earth. The title of the book can’t be more fitting. It was a simple and humble life. Your life depends on the mercy of the gods, who bring rain or drought according to their fancy. What you can control is the land. The land you can work on, you can cultivate. The land gives you life. I think this notion of the importance of land is ingrained so much in the Chinese blood that even for the current day generation, land is still the most precious of them all. Wang Lung says, buy land, people can’t take land away from you. Did I just hear my elders talking? Invest only in land.

The part when Wang Lung buys more and more land reminded me of my dad. My dad started poor as well. We lived in 2 bedrooms house in which my parents, my two brothers and I stayed in the same room until I started high school. By then with my parents’ business started to get a lot better. The debt of the house was paid off. When he got more money, he bought a house next to us. More money, then the house behind us. Then the house next to the one behind us. Our house became this mishmash of different style of short buildings on a huge chunk of land, with holes on the walls to get through from one house to another. My friends got all excited everytime they came by. It’s like walking in a house of maze, they said. People could literally get lost.

For my dad, it was all about the land. Building could be burnt down. Gold could be stolen. Value of money could diminish into nothing. But land stays.

Overall I found The Good Earth to be enjoyable and easy to read. Considering time of writing, it has one hell of historical value. Pearl S. Buck presented China and its people with a broad stroke that has succeeded in its intention to reach a wide audience–the world.

1931,  316 pp

Interesting Facts about The Good Earth

• The Good Earth is Buck’s second published novel, first being East Wind: West Wind, which was the one that had been rejected by many American publishers, on the old ground that people did not want to read about China.
• After The John Day Company has decided to publish East Wind: West Wind, Pearl S. Buck returned to Nanking and wrote The Good Earth in 3 months, typing it herself twice.
• When the film was made, The John Day Company did not permit the usual movie tie-in edition with photographs from the film. (Is that why until now we’ve never seen the motion-picture edition?)
• The reason for the decision above was particularly because the main actors were not Chinese nor had Chinese features.

First line
It was Wang Lung’s marriage day.

Awards
1932 Pulitzer Prize
1938 Nobel Prize for Literature (the author for body of work)

Challenges
China Challenge (book #4), Book Awards IV (book #5), Read the Book See the Movie (pair #3)

For the Book Group

The rest of this post is for us who have read the book, so there might be spoilers ahead. Beware!

I posted an invite to you all to read The Good Earth together with our Asian Book Group. It is my pick for the first quarter of the year. I was delighted to find that four of us in the group had not read the book and would love to as it is one pivotal book that showed China to the foreign world. I’d like to thank you if you decided to participate. Please drop by and let me know if you wrote up something. I’m going to list and update the links to all your reviews so you can visit each other.

Rather than taking some book group questions off somewhere else, I’m going to just throw a few Q&As up in the air. Feel free to throw your own back!

What do you think about the characters? Do you have strong feelings for them?

My non-blogger friend Eeleng re-read the book when I told her about the book group reading. She mentioned that she hated Wang Lung. I can understand why, seeing it from modern eyes. But I think Wang Lung is just a byproduct of his time. The most appalling thing he’d done in the book I thought was when he got all obsessed about Lotus and took her as his mistress. I felt so much for O-Lan and the unfairness of it all. I was so mad at him for taking O-Lan’s pearls. He got so much money already. Why does he bother to take what little precious things that O-Lan has?!

Which scene was the most memorable for you?

Before this time around, I actually read the book about a couple of years ago, but didn’t finish it because it got too depressing. I stopped at the point when O-Lan gives birth for the third time and she has to eat a few beans to survive. I came into the book this time with the right mindset so I didn’t have much problem with all the hardness in the book. That scene though is still probably the one that will stay with me the longest.

How do you feel about the white American woman writing about China?

I normally do have a bit of skepticism and disapproval about author writing of a country or culture that is not her own. But reading Buck’s background about how she spent most of her lifetime in China, I think she should be as good as any Chinese writers to write about the people and the country. However my opinion is that the book is obviously targeted for foreigners. Would Chinese people appreciate the “mundane” life story of a Chinese farmer, whose life is probably not too dramatic in their eyes?

What do you think about the role of women in The Good Earth?

The absolute preference for daughters is quite maddening (though not surprising, since it’s one common topic for many old Chinese stories), but there seems to be a rather practical reason for it. These people had very hard life. Extreme poverty and starvation seem to be the norm. In their reality, girls would marry out and belong to another family. So the family must feed the girl until she’s of age for nothing, so to speak, while boys would stay with the family forever, supporting the elders until they die.

The Movie

The Good Earth the film was released in 1937, with non-Chinese casts for the main characters. I was utterly surprised when I found out about that fact. The movie won 2 Oscars in 1938 for Best Actress (Luise Rainer as O-Lan) and Best Cinematography. As always, awards pique my interest.

Fortunately The Good Earth is a black and white movie, and that sort of disguised the ethnicity of the main characters. But I couldn’t help to be very conscious that they were Caucasians and wished there would be a remake of the movie someday, with proper Chinese casts.

I paid attention to Luise Rainer because she won Best Actress. I’m not sure though if I liked her acting. She often showed this faraway look that made her look rather dumb. It’s a bit weird to say this, but I wish the actress playing O-Lan were uglier. Rainer was far from being ugly and that took away a lot of  the sadness of O-Lan depicted in the book.

Overall the movie made a good effort for what they had at the time, though again it was obviously targeted for foreigners. One awesome scene was when the locusts attacked the village people’s fields and they showed what looked like millions of crickets. Some characters’ roles were gone or diminished, like Wang-Lung last twin (non-existent), his uncle’s wife and son, and Cuckoo.

I’m not sure if you mind about spoilers for the movie. So I’ll keep it in white. Highlight the below paragraph to read.

Of course they just had to change the ending! Because that’s what Hollywood does. They change any story to become romantic and have a happy ending. The movie ends with O-Lan at her deathbed (probably a good decision since I too thought the book became less exciting after O-Lan died). Wang-Lung returns the two pearls that he took from O-Lan for Lotus the other day and claimed that he finally realized that she is the one. What the?

That’s one very crucial scene in the book where O-Lan moans with so much sadness for being born ugly and therefore is incapable for winning Wang Lung’s love. And at the very end Wang Lung cannot love O-Lan like he does Lotus even if he feels guilty about it. They just had to change that to lovey dovey ending, did they? *grumble*

Rating: 7/10

Gosh that was one long post. I’m not sure if you’re still here, but for me I can talk about this book for a long time. I hope you enjoyed the book and the read-along!

Participants’ Reviews

su[shu]
things mean a lot
eeleng chang
kiss a cloud
Absorbed in Words

For the next book we will read Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (1920-1995), which is a collection of short stories. I heard of Eileen Chang when Lust, Caution made a huge hit in Asian cinemas in 2007. Love in a Fallen City itself was made into a movie in 1984, played by Chow Yun-Fat (remember Anna and the King? Or the Captain Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean…) The book was picked by Claire and we’re going to post our thoughts in the last week of June. Hope to see you then!

I have other things to post, but I almost can’t wait to talk about this book! I read it sometime at the end of December during my vacation, brought over to January, so I’ll just count as my first book of 2010. And what a great start it was!

Waiting is written in English by Ha Jin, who moved to US from China in 1985. The story is of Lin Kong, an army officer in mid 1900s China, and two women in his life. One–his wife who was matched up by his parents but he never loved, lived in the village at countryside. Another is a female colleague who he falls in love, but could not marry, because his wife refuses divorce, year after year, until it goes on for 18 years.

While the concept of waiting might be foreign to our 21st century Westernized mind (who mostly also live in privileged circumstances), it is not uncommon for many Chinese stories. Waiting for the tides to turn, waiting for the wind to change, enduring, submitting to fate — it’s a very humbling thing to do if you think about it. It’s rather easy to pass judgement on why people don’t take action and do something to change their fates, but as I grow older, I find myself to be more willing to understand. After all, life is never easy, and I would never know what it feels like to live weighed down by centuries of suffocating customs.

I read this book straight after Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, so it’s hard for me not to make some comparisons. While I loved Snow Flower, there was always a feeling that it was China from the eyes of a foreigner and the characters were caricatures of Chinese people. With Waiting, the characters felt so much more real, like ordinary Chinese breathing and living somewhere. (As a note, Ha Jin was inspired to write the book by a true story that he heard about an army doctor in China who waited for 18 years to get a divorce to marry his long-time friend, a nurse. Source: Wiki)

I was expecting some sort of love story (because that’s the impression I got from the back cover and possibly some reviews), but I was getting so much more. Nothing is sugar-coated. Nothing is sweet. It’s all rather harsh reality, mixed with the complexities of human mind and reactions to bound circumstances. Really, it’s communist China around 1960s. In essence, it’s survival story. The love is not a glorified romantic thing. Chinese love is practical love.

I’m quite surprised to find that not everybody loved the book as much as I did. For me it’s such a poignant book and it speaks to me in many ways. It’s sad in a quiet way, it’s humbling, and it taught me so much about China, or to be more exact, about its people.

I highly recommend it for you who have any interest in China. I’m happy to say that I understand why Waiting has won so many awards. They can’t be more well-deserved.

1999, 308 pp

First line
Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.

Awards
1999 National Book Award for Fiction
2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Finalist of 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Challenges
China Challenge (book #3), Book Awards IV (book #1), Women Unbound (book #4): for a glimpse into women’s lives in mid to late 1900s China, Pulitzer Prizes, Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Loved it! – Regular Rumination
Liked it somewhat – mrdes | American Bibliophile | Reading Matters | Book Bird Dog
Didn’t – A Striped Armchair | A Book A Week

I tried to find more reviews but there weren’t many. Let me know if you’ve posted your thoughts about it, especially if you liked it! :)

The book is most famous for its depiction of foot-binding, one of the most mysterious Chinese culture starting in 17th century. I have seen pictures of bound feet before, but it was my first time to read about it in details, how the small toes bones are broken, leaving only the big toe as the main center of balance with the heel. It is simply fascinating! Why would anyone do that? To herself and to her daughters. Jeez. Foot fetish?

There were also some cultural elements that I never heard of and made me wonder about how much truth in it. After all, this is a work of fiction, and things can be distorted by the author. The two major ones were the laotong relationship and nu shu language. Laotong relationship is a bond between two women that works almost like marriage between man and woman, even more sacred according to the book. Nu shu is a secret-code writing used by and created for women in remote area of Southern China. “It appears to be the only written language in the world to have been created by women exclusively for their own use,” says the note at the front of the book. There’s documentary on this, which I’d love to watch: Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China.

The novel follows the life of Lily from her childhood to her very old years. Lily comes from a lower class family. By the turn of fate she is predicted to will have perfect lotus feet. It is important to know that the worth of a girl is determined by the size of her feet. So when Lily’s feet are told to potentially have the perfect shape, her status is already upgraded. That is how she is bonded to Snow Flower, a girl from higher class family, her laotong for life. The story then revolves around the friendship and life of these two women. Each changes the other’s fate.

My copy of the book (as the image above) has the endorsements from Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha) and Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club). It’s really spot on. I believe if you enjoyed those books (or any Amy Tan’s) you’d love Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. There’s the same air of familiarity when I read it.

The little thing that bothered me was the names. Instead of Chinese names, See used the translated ones, like Snow Flower, Beautiful Moon, Plum Blossom. It’s so clunky! Why? Again, like I Am a Cat, this seems to apply only to the major characters. I guess all publishers think English speaking people can’t handle too many non-English names.

The language is very easy to read. Interestingly, it felt like translated work sometimes, because it’s either too harsh or childlike. For example:

“To me, she was still as ugly as a pig’s genitals, but I knew she had not yet fallen ill and that she would care for my children as though they were her own.” ~ p237

Who would describe someone ‘as ugly as a pig’s genitals’ in English books?!

Enough nitpicking. Though the writing is pretty plain, it’s hard for me not to like the premise. I’d recommend the book for its rich setting of 19th century China and it’s a perfect book for Women Unbound Challenge (though there’s lot of binding…) I would love to read more See’s books in the future.

2005, 340 pp

Lisa See’s official website
Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See’s Deep Fried Sugared-Taro Recipe
Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China

First line
I am what they call in our village one who has not yet died”–a widow, eighty years old.

Challenges
China Challenge (book #2), Women Unbound (book #3), Herding Cats II (book #3), Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Liked it! Books for Breakfast | Dolce Bellezza | Serendipity | Trish’s Reading Nook | 1morechapter | Bonnie’s Books
Not very. Rebecca Reads | Fyrefly’s Book Blog | A Striped Armchair

Let me know if you’ve reviewed this book too and I’ll link to yours.

Also, Happy New Year to You All! This is my last book of 2009. My year wrap-up is coming soon!

My grandfather died when I was in third grade. What I remember of him now is an old figure sitting in his chair down the hall, drinking whiskey like water, but was never drunk. My dad was his favorite son and my mom his favorite daughter in law, which naturally made me his favorite granddaughter. We visited my grandparents’ house every other week. Whenever we came over, there would be fried noodle bought from a famous street vendor nearby — reserved for his favorite family, and a bunch of longan — reserved especially for me.

What I know about China is mostly stories from my dad — a man who is very fond of the country he always considers as second home, though he only visited it a few times in his life for work. He always tries to transfer his pride of being Chinese to his kids, though I always think of it as cultural and ethnic baggage that follows me everywhere when what I want is just to belong.

I’ve never been to China and I don’t speak its language. But I think I should start embracing my roots and know more about this mysterious country where all began, many generations before me.

Then came the China challenge..

1 September 2009 – 1 September 2010

Jennie @ Biblio File is hosting China Challenge! I can’t think of a better host, since she has read a wide range of China theme books.

I have read a few books about Chinese immigrants (most of them by Amy Tan), because it’s something I can relate to, but I probably have read very few books set in China by Chinese authors. Something I need to rectify. And apparently in this challenge, Chinese immigrants story don’t count. The majority of the setting must be in China (including Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Taiwan). Check out books I’ve read on China/Chinese.

Ideally I’m aiming for Fast Train to Shanghai which requires us to read 5 books about China (1 should be by Chinese author and 1 nonfiction). Okay, ideally I’d be able to go for Hiking the Great Wall (read 10 books), but let’s be reasonable and aim low first.

I already have quite a few books sitting on my shelf, and they are:

1. Waiting by Ha Jin (1999 PEN/Faulkner and National Book Award)
2. The Crazed by Ha Jin
3. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
4. Mr. Muo’s Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie
5. Binu and the Great Wall by Su Tong
6. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
7. Wild Swans by Jung Chang (memoir)
8. The Good Women of China by Xinran (memoir)
9. Bound Feet & Western Dress by Pang-Mei Chang (memoir)
10. The Cave of the Yellow Dog by Byambasuren Davaa (set in Tibet)

And I’d like to finish The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I didn’t finish it the last time because it got too depressing. I got to the point where the wife just gave birth and had to eat a few beans to survive (my gosh, talking about depressing). Now that I think about it, is there any China-theme books that is upbeat and happy?

My mom and one of my dearest auntie like to watch Chinese dramas and the characters always cry buckets. The one I remember the most was this one drama I also watched with mom when I was younger (around primary school). It’s about a young beautiful widow who falls in love with a man. At that time a widow in China is expected to never marry again until she dies, to be loyal and faithful forever to the dead husband so to speak. But the woman perseveres to be united with her lover. Somehow in order to do that she needs to pass through 9 gates which along the way was filled with condemning people from the village, ready to throw stones and do other cruel things to the supposedly unfaithful widow. This was required by the family of the deceased husband because otherwise they would lose face. The 9 gates represent 9 generations of her husband’s ancestors that she needs to ask forgiveness from. If she survives, they’d let her go.

Going back to books before it gets too long, do you have any China-theme books to recommend? I’d love to hear suggestions!

Books I read so far

1. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (finished 10/09, rating 4/5)
2. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (finished 12/09, rating 4.5/5)
3. Waiting by Ha Jin (finished 01/10, rating 5/5)
4. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (finished 03/10, rating 4.5/5)
5. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (finished 06/10, rating 4.5/5)

I think I’m gonna keep track of both lists. I’m especially pissed that they took out Never Let Me Go. Not only because it’s a good book, but also because that’s the first one I read for my 10 out of 100 out of 1001 Challenge. This new list just makes things complicated. Especially that they took out a whole bunch of books from no 1 to 100. I’m of course still going to continue with the challenge, but I’m not so sure what to do after that. We’ll see.

Anyway, rather than bitching about the dropped out books, let me just point out a few interesting additions. The thing with the additions are that almost, if not all of them are by International authors (by International I mean non US non UK). I’m especially interested in addition of Japanese or Chinese writers.

Pre 1800
0003 : The Tale of Genji . Murasaki Shikibu
0004 : Romance of the Three Kingdoms . Luó Guànzhong
0005 : The Water Margin . Shi Nai’an & Luó Guànzhong
0013 : Monkey: A Journey to the West . Wú Chéng’en
0054 : A Dream of Red Mansions . Cao Xueqin

I’m not sure if I will ever read The Tale of Genji. I started Tale of Murasaki before (it’s about Murasaki, the author of Tale of Genji), and it was boring so I couldn’t finish it.
Romance of Three Kingdoms is GREAT addition. This is a book that my father claims is (should be?) a required reading in a lot of countries around the world, in schools and army.
I grew up with The Journey to the West. I read illustrated books and watched countless tv series about it. Also a great addition. Although I didn’t know that they actually have a real book on that. I thought it’s more like a myth or folktale, which got told over and over, brought over many generations over various forms of entertainment medium.

1800s
No Asian authors

1900s
0258 : Rashomon . Akutagawa Ryunosuke
0376 : Rickshaw Boy . Lao She
0480 : A Thousand Cranes . Yasunari Kawabata
0498 : The Sound of Waves . Yukio Mishima
0602 : Silence . Shusaku Endo
0666 : The Twilight Years . Sawako Ariyoshi
0700 : Almost Transparent Blue . Ryu Murakami
0738 : Leaden Wings . Zhang Jie
0782 : Half of Man is Woman . Zhang Xianliang
0819 : Kitchen . Banana Yoshimoto
0829 : Paradise of the Blind . Duong Thu Huong
0897 : Deep River . Shusaku Endo

I’m happy with the addition of Banana Yoshimoto, Shusaku Endo, Ryu Murakami, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima. I haven’t read any of their books, but would like to and have heard good things about them.

2000s
No Japanese or Chinese authors, a few Indians. These are the ones I have on my shelf:
0972 : The Namesake . Jhumpa Lahiri
0991 : A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian . Marina Lewycka
0996 : The Inheritance of Loss . Kiran Desai

I’m surprised that with these many additions, Gao Xingjian and Pearl S. Buck’s books are still not there. Both won Nobel Prize in Literature. (Buck is not Chinese, but she grew up in China)

Talking about Japanese authors, 2 of Haruki Murakami’s books have been dropped out: Sputnik Sweetheart and After the Quake. Kafka on the Shore and the Wind-up Bird Chronicle stay.

Curiously Sarah Waters’ books -2 of them- have been totally dropped out (one author that I’m actually interested in). I wonder which other authors that have been completely dropped out of the list too. I mean I understand if they took out some books from the authors that previously had multiple books in the list, to make rooms for other authors. But to completely drop all books by one author is kinda weird. It’s like saying today some of your books are so important that everybody must read them before they die, and the next day, well no, none of your books are important anymore.

This book is shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, interestingly. I was flipping through the first few pages at Borders and was intrigued, so I borrowed the book not long after from the library. As funny and interesting the main character’s thoughts were, I quickly got annoyed with the deliberate writing of bad English. Especially with the omission of particles, which seems to be the foremost and most common method to convey how Chinese people speaking broken English. It just seems hard to believe that one could say florescent and wisteria but also say ‘I sad’, know the meaning of words like paradox and fatalism, but say ‘womans’ until the very end of book. It just gives me the impression that someone deliberately sprinkled mistakes everywhere to make it sound like natural bad English.

The story is about Z, a young girl from China who arrives in London to spend a year learning English, during which time she meets a far older Englishman, falls in love, then culture revelation and clash start to unfold.

SPOILER WARNING

I hate the part when she travels around Europe, meeting random guys and sleeping naked next to their beds. She is either very naive/stupid, or very wild. Since the hell when could you just follow random strangers in faraway country to their hotel rooms or houses and take off your bloody clothes? I mean, she’s not very good in English, doesn’t make her stupid in everything in life! And don’t even get me started on the unprotected sex. Does she even know the concept of cheating?

end of spoiler

Anyway, despite some of my complaints, the book has funny points and interesting point of views.

Pages: 354
Rating: 3 out of 5 [Okay]
Readable. Not bad for cultural clash topic and insight into Chinese culture.

First line

Now.

Last line

The rain was ceaseless, covering the whole forest, the whole mountain, and the whole land.

Quotes

“‘Love’, this English word: like other English words it has tense. ‘Loved’ or ‘will love’ or ‘have loved’. All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ‘愛’ (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future. If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.” ~Z, p301

This is the 3rd book from Amy Tan, her first book that I read. It’s about Olivia, a half Chinese-American, that meets her half sister from China, Kwan.

A lot of stuff about ghosts, reincarnation, and basically all Chinese superstitions. There are two parallel stories going on, this life and previous life. Both’s equally interesting :)

What amazes me still is how the description of scene in the climax of story in China is so powerful. I had the picture so solid in my mind that even a year later, when I read The Opposite of Fate, in which Amy Tan explains that the scene is real, I knew exactly which one she means. Characters and plots are often strong in stories. But scenery? That’s pretty rare to me!

It’s a small village hidden in deep inland China, with path going up to a big old gate. Behind the cliff is a valley full of big rocks and thousands of caves all over the side of the mountains. That’s my attempt to describe it =D

~ Finished it (roughly) on 30 January 2004

Award
Shortlisted for 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction ]]> http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2007/08/the-hundred-secret-senses-by-amy-tan/feed/ 0 http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2007/08/the-joy-luck-club-by-amy-tan/ http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2007/08/the-joy-luck-club-by-amy-tan/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:00:38 +0000 mee http://www.meexia.com/bookie/?p=1558 The first book from Amy Tan. It’s collection of stories about mother daughter relationships (four pairs to be exact :). Again, I feel it’s so captivating by each and every word.