Little China;: The Annamese lands, Review

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Little China;: The Annamese lands, ReviewFor those interested in the history of Vietnam, of WWII, French, Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese history...this book is an amazing find. It is beautifully written: it coveys all of the romance of the explorer's tale of the exotic east and the end of the colonial era ~ you can almost taste the quinine in your gin and tonic, see the ripples on the moonlit river from your colonial balcony, and hear the ancient "Annamese" city bustling below.
Yet there is nothing to make the educated modern reader cringe. Brodrick expresses little, if any, of the ignorantly dismissive attitude that so often mars these old books. He has a curious and generous spirit and appreciates the cultural, racial, and historic diversity he discovers on his travels through French Indochina in the early 1940s.
He calls Little China a "travel book" but it is quite a bit more. It is a serious book as well as a genuinely enjoyable read. I feel that I've stumbled upon a gem, too long lost in the library. I came home and found a few on Amazon and snatched one up and recommend you do the same.
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The North China Lover Review

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The North China Lover ReviewIn 1984, Marguerite Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for her short novel, "The Lover". That novel told the simple story of an adolescent French girl living in Vietnam in the 1930s. She meets an older Chinese man who becomes her lover. It is a sparely written novel, shifting in time and narrative perspective, often difficult to follow. It is also a novel charged with memory, yearning and erotic feeling.
"The North China Lover", written several years later and published in an English edition in 1992, is a kind of extension of the earlier novel, written with much more detail, inhabiting the interstices of "The Lover". Like its precursor, "The North China Lover" tells a powerful tale of love between the twenty-seven year old Chinese man and the barely teen-aged girl whom he meets on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. Once again, neither the Chinese man nor the girl has a name. However, unlike the earlier novel, many of the other characters are identified and the narrative of "The North China Lover" is considerably more detailed. Originally written as notes for a screenplay of "The Lover", the narrative of "The North China Lover" is episodic, described by one reviewer as having the "grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary." It is also more linear in its story line, easier to follow than the earlier novel, but still characterized by the nouveau roman influences that permeate Marguerite Duras' writing.
"The North China Lover", like its precursor, is a compelling work of memory, eroticism and yearning that, in true Duras style, conflates literary imagination and biography. Read it slowly, languorously savor its eroticism, and let it linger in your mind long after you've closed the book.The North China Lover Overview

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I Have Seen the World Begin: Travels through China, Cambodia, and Vietnam Review

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I Have Seen the World Begin: Travels through China, Cambodia, and Vietnam Review"The lone traveller is the most dependent of all, because he has need of everybody and no one has need of him."
So notes Carsten Jensen in I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN, his narrative account of his journey of discovery through China, Cambodia and Vietnam during the early 90s.
Jensen begins his travelogue in Beijing, but quickly moves on to Shanghai, from which he travels by boat up the Yangtse River, then by rail and bus, into southeastern China near the border of Myanmar (Burma). A constant thread is the state of the country and its inhabitants, individually and collectively, post-Tiananmen Square.
Then it's on to Cambodia, a country yet to recover from the cruel self-immolation imposed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge minions. As Jensen writes about this "biblical Judgement Day":
"... when the gates of Paradise were opened, it was only to reveal yet another graveyard. ... It was the humbled, the abased and the desperate who were raised on high, not to put an end to despair, but to extend it to everyone."
And lastly, Vietnam, with which the author is obviously entranced, and the reader with him. Much of Carsten's enthrallment is with the country's women - Tam, Kim and Scent of Spring in particular. It's with the first that he has a physical relationship. And it's Tam who states in the most eloquent manner I've ever encountered the worst thing about not being able to conceive a child:
"You can't pass on the eyes of the one you love to posterity. Like the stars they will be put out, instead of living on in a new face."
Whether Jensen is describing China's Tiger Leap Gorge, Shanghai's New Year fireworks celebration, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh's horrific Security Prison 21, Vietnam's Hanoi ("like a wood with streets"), the royal tombs at Hue, or Dien Bien Phu, the graveyard of French colonialism in Southeast Asia, his magnificent prose transports you there.
I was tempted to award I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN five stars, but am prevented from doing so by what I consider to be a significant omission. There's no photo section. What were the publisher and the author thinking?
Having finished the book, I now want to visit Vietnam, a country I really had no desire to visit before. If a travel essay can accomplish this for any destination, it's very good indeed.I Have Seen the World Begin: Travels through China, Cambodia, and Vietnam Overview

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China Candid: The People on the People's Republic Review

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China Candid: The People on the People's Republic ReviewI really enjoyed reading the little interviews in this book. There is a very wide range of people included, from common street hustlers and prostitutes to entrepreneurs and policemen, and there is even an interview with a Beijing executioner. The sum total of the work is hard to pin down, but I think what is most valuable to take from it is that the economic transition and overall changes taking shape in China in the past 20 years have effected many people in many different ways, some good some bad, and that just because China is economically open and generally prosperous doesn't mean the people are all rosy-eyed and loving every minute of it. Even the well-to-do, and connected insiders are frustrated with the government's penchant for red tape but feel powerless to change it, and the economic openness that has brought many new wealth is also seen as a double-edged sword that has brought about a Wild-West kind of materialism, selfishness and detachment from one's neighbors.China Candid: The People on the People's Republic Overview

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