Showing posts with label classic literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classic literature. Show all posts

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (The New Cold War History) Review

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (The New Cold War History)
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China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (The New Cold War History) ReviewMr. Zhai's contribution to Cold War history is a worthy addition to any CW buff's collection, since China's role in the conflict has always been a mix of "Yellow Peril" paranoia, rumor and biased commentary. It is a sound summary of the initially cozy, then increasingly frosty relations between the two communist Asian nations. However, being familiar with many of the observations made in this book from other sources, I was hoping for a more cogent analysis of the synergy between the radicalization of Mao's vision of perpetual revolution and the Indochinese wars. For example, did the Cultural Revolution hinder or help the Vietnamese, and what were their perceptions? Did China encourage Pol Pot's intransigence vis-a-vis Hanoi because of ideological affinity or just plain spite? How did the Ussuri River clashes affect the Soviet supply link to Hanoi? This is a good volume for factual summary of the events, but a more profound reading of the new archival sources needs to follow.China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (The New Cold War History) Overview

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China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture Review

China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture
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China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture ReviewZha Jianying. 1996. _China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture_. New York: The New Press. Pp. 210. ISBN 1565842502 (pbk).
Zha Jianying captures in this book the ferment - intellectual, artistic and commercial - of China's post-Tiananmen urban culture industry. She presents a lively mix of reportage, personal revelation, personality profile and ethnographic insight centered on pop culture events and trends in the People's Republic. Through her focus on creators and consumers, _China Pop_ illustrates people who have "...shed their old skins and picked up new lives." (p. 7).
China's developing pop culture industry is media-driven; like its Western counterparts, the industry spans TV, movies, literature, journalism, music, art and more. Zha looks at a hugely successful TV melodrama, Yearnings, and traces how the show was conceived, written and produced (chapter 2). She lays out repercussions the show had on its writers' and producers' lives and careers and its effect on China's TV industry. In "The Whopper" (chapter 5), she shows how money and business combine to corrupt journalists; corruption is so severe, she thinks, that "...most of what the Chinese read in the paper or see on television as 'news' these days is little more than paid advertising." (p. 117). She tackles developments in the movies by contrasting the career trajectories, personalities and works of Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, China's leading directors in the 1990s (chapter 7). Chen directed the 1993 Cannes winner Farewell My Concubine; Zhang is perhaps known best in the west for his Red Sorghum (1987). Zha explores the sensation over author Jia Pingwa's ribald novel The Abandoned Capital (1993), and describes how readers, critics and state censors responded to it (chapter 6). (Beijing banned the book in 1994 only after sales cooled, pp. 127-8). Her account of the CIM Company, an investment outfit that "...is the first major Hong Kong company that has stepped into the tricky waters of joint venture media and cultural productions with China." (p. 165), is a tutorial on doing business in China as well as a close look at marketing hot pop performers. Chan Koon-Chung, a former avant-garde Hong Kong publisher who for a time was the CIM point man in Beijing, makes a telling comment: "Both economically and culturally, China looks similar to the Hong Kong of the seventies_so I can see clearly where the market is heading, where China is going to end up. We know exactly what to do and what will work. It's a huge market and this is an exciting time to be here" (p. 171).
Zha's book succeeds on several fronts. It is an artfully written commentary on changes sweeping China's media. The nation is developing a culture of mass consumerism, and the media market and propagate this culture. _China Pop_ documents this. Second, Zha ties her observations and interviews together using a keen sense of what being an urban, hip Chinese in post-Tiananmen China means. Her viewpoint moves adroitly between insider (native Chinese) and outsider (overseas Chinese or huaqiao); the book can be read as an ethnography minus overt theorizing. _China Pop_ is well worth reading as an accessible, intelligent commentary on urban cultural change in the People's Republic.China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture Overview

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China Boy Review

China Boy
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China Boy ReviewMost of the reviews here are critical and misinformed. They appear to be written by disgruntled hisgh school students who have probably been assigned to read Lee's book as an effort to heighten their multi-cultural sensitivities. The kids miss the point. This is an excellent, sensitive novel about growing up in many worlds at once. Where ever Kai Ting is, is the wrong place, even home. His way of finding himself, finding a place, is through an unlikely venue, the local Y. There is a gritty truth thst comes off of every page here. Lee is exposing a great deal of his soul and, at the end, I felt part of his life. This was the first work of Lee's I read. My satisfaction with China Boy led me to the rest. He has much talent, a powerful voice and a sharp sense of humor... even when it hurts.China Boy Overview

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Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth Review

Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth
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Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth ReviewHow many average American readers know that Pearl Buck won a Pulitzer Prize, or that she was the first American woman awarded a Nobel Prize for literature? How many realize she was read by Gandhi, Matisse, and Eleanor Roosevelt? In fact, how many even know of her at all? "The Good Earth" remains one of my all-time favorite novels, and Olan stands out as one of my favorite female characters in fiction. My own travels in China only enhanced my enjoyment of the book, and my experience as a child raised in multiple cultures gives me empathy for Ms. Buck's own upbringing as an American-born child raised in China as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries. Imagine my excitement to see a modern biography of this fascinating woman.
"Pearl Buck in China" gives a detailed and well-researched view into her upbringing, her struggles, and her influence as a novelist. Despite the slow first two chapters, much of which are devoted to her father's missionary zeal at the expense of his family, as well as his misogyny in the name of God, the book dives deeply into the psyche of young Pearl. By the age of ten, she had decided to be a novelist, finding escape in fiction from her parents' unrest, and enjoying connection with the Western world--particularly through Dickens' novels--which was still foreign to her. As we discover, she knew the street vernacular of the average Chinese, and grew to love them as her own. This familiarity caused a strain on her religious beliefs when fellow Westerners treated the Chinese with condescension. Later, she found a husband with a more practical approach to his missionary work, teaching the locals agricultural skills.
Although I appreciated the history of Pearl's stalwart mother and stubborn father, I grew more attentive as the book moved into her years as a young women, as a writer, as a wife and, later, a mother. She fought for the rights of women, of handicapped children, and of all races and cultures. She humanized the Chinese in America's eyes, even at the risk of losing her place with the missionaries she had grown up among. She was not perfect. She had physical, creative, and spiritual struggles. She left her husband after years of frustration. The book never glamorizes her life, and yet it causes me to appreciate her more than ever.
Pearl tells us: "Fiction is a painting, biography is photography. Fiction is creation, biography is arrangement." This book does provide snapshots of her life, arranging those scenes into some sort of sense. It's through her fiction, though, that we find paintings of her, both bright and bleak, creations of character and setting and moral fortitude that allow her to live beyond her earthly years. I hope "Pearl Buck in China" helps bring her to life for new readers, young and old.Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth Overview

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Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim / The Nigger of Narcissus / Typhoon / Nostromo / The Secret Agent Review

Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim / The Nigger of Narcissus / Typhoon / Nostromo / The Secret Agent
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Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim / The Nigger of Narcissus / Typhoon / Nostromo / The Secret Agent ReviewThis amazing collection has five complete Joseph Conrad novels, all of which other than Typhoon are top-tier. Those wanting more details about the individual stories may read my reviews on their respective pages; for others, suffice it to say that anyone who has not read these great works -- or has only read some -- should seek out this excellent omnibus. It is a convenient and affordable way to experience a substantial portion of Conrad's superb fictional universe at once. One would be very hard-pressed to find so much great literature in a single book by a single author anywhere else. This is simply essential for anyone lacking the contents.
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim / The Nigger of Narcissus / Typhoon / Nostromo / The Secret Agent Overview

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