Books about China
Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui (I have read it 5 times in total I think)Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the scenes of a New China
China Boy by Gus Lee (about an overseas Chinese living in San Fransisco)
Beijing Doll by Chun Sue (about a rebellious Chinese punk girl)
Candy by Mianmian (about a rebellious Chinese girl in Shanghai, self-biographic)
Jou Luck Club by Amy Tan (BEST BOOK EVER, I have never cried reading books, but I did with this one)
Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans (about adopting a Chinese girl from an orphanage)
Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Jili Jiang (I should let my mum read it)
Please give me more tips on the comment section.
Please give me more tips on the comment section.
Labels: Others
posted by Shopgirl at 1:47 PM
10 Comments:
Oh I love the book Foreign Babes in Beijing! Great Book!
Have you read any real book? Red star over China?
The People's Republic of Desire - Annie Wang.(fiction)
Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China - Ian Johnson.
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices - Xinran Xue.
Also Qiu Xialong writes a series of crime and mystery novels about a police detective (Inspective Chen) in Shanghai if you like that sort of fiction.
Wei Hui wrote a sequel to Shanghai Baby called Marrying Buddha. It's not bad.
If I had to recommend any particularly author, I'd say Gao Xingjian. (He's won the Nobel Prize.)
Based on your own list, you might like Red Azalea by Anchee Min.
I agree with anonymous. Red Star over China is a must-read.
Outlaws of the Marsh (Water Margin) is even better. The English translation by Sidney Shapiro is rib-crackingly funny...
And if you want a balanced view of living through the recent history China, Shapiro wrote his biography "Why I chose China".
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck (a fast read, good historical fiction)
Son of a Revolution - Liang Heng & Judith Shapiro
Riding the Iron Rooster - Paul Theroux
China Wakes - Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl Wudunn
These are some of my favorites and are all quite a bit lighter than Red Star Over China, which everyone assigns in college courses and it is important but is not that fun to read in my opinion.
Shanghai Baby 0_o shietest book i have ever read!!! seriously crap!! come on siyan i thought you were better then that?
Foreign babes in Beijing.. i havnt read but here is a good one.
Ive had bad reviews from China boy, Beijing doll and Candy.. basically nothing new... writing not great and just shallow.
the last two seem more interesting...
you need to read wild swans. Great book... well written also... dont read The Unknown Story of Mao... has many inaccuracies.
Red China Blues, My Long March from Mao to Now - Jan Wong
" 'Tis better to have believed and lost than never to have believed at all." Concluding her memoir with a paraphrase from Tennyson,Wong vividly describes her 12-year experience in China. At first, as a confused teenager coming of age amid the tumultuous late Sixties and early Seventies in Canada, she became a devoted Maoist, believing China to be "Paradise." She studied and worked in China for six years as an ordinary citizen, going through the Cultural Revolution and the period of the "Gang of Four." Later, as a reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, she spent another six years in China, witnessing the Tiananmen massacre, interviewing important dissidents such as Wei Jingsheng and Ren Wanding, and reporting on issues such as birth control and peasant riots in rural areas. The "insider" status gives her account a unique touch that set hers apart from numerous other "journalistic" writings about China. She is describing the people she knows and the events she experienced. Highly recommended.
Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Although I'm almost positive that you can't buy it in China, nor bring it into China.
Hey
I just read a really great book, it is called A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers it is written in slowly improving Chinglish about a Chinese girl's experience studying abroad and having a much older foreign boyfriend. I absolutely cannot remember the author's family name, but it is something Xiao Lu. Also A Dictionaty of Ma Qiao by Han Shen Gong (maybe wrong), it is a book arranged into short dictionary entries each of which explains the dialectical meaning of a character in this particular village, and in doing so indirectly tells the history of a village. I'd also I'd reccommend anything by Mo Yan (The Garlic Ballads, Red Sorghum, Shifu You'd do Anything for a Laugh)his books can get really graphic, but they are great. Ummmm... Anything by Lin Yu Tang, especially The Importance of Living, anything by Qian Zhong Shu, Fortress Besieged, Marginalia of Life. I can't think of any others right now...
It is Guo Xiao Lu
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