Maydeebug Bookworms

 Our Book Club 

 China-Related Non-Fiction  Asian-American Non-Fiction  Chinese and Chinese-American Fiction 

 China Adoption  General Adoption  Parenting  Children's Books 
China-Related Non-Fiction
A red diamond indicates that a book has received at least one Maydeebug "stamp of approval." If you would like to add a book to add to the list, please e-mail Kerri at buonacosa@yahoo.com.

Title: River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze 
Author: Peter Hessler
Description:When Peter Hessler joined the Peace Corps, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching English in the town of Fuling along the Yangtze River. But what he experienced—the natural beauty, cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a radically different society— surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events like the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial construction of the Three Gorges Dam have sent tremors large enough to sweep through China and reach the people of Fuling. Poignant, thoughtful, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city caught mid-river in time, much like China itseld—a country seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

Title: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power 
Author: Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn
Description: "When China wakes, it will shake the world," Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked. That moment is now at hand. And in this book Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the Pulitzer Prize winning Beijing correspondents of The New York Times, bring to life the people, the politics, and the paradoxes of China as never before. China Wakes combines groundbreaking reportage with the authors' personal account of how they came to discover the human stories within the world's most populous nation. Attracted by China's potential for greatness and repelled by its propensity for cruelty, Kristof and WuDunn struggle to reconcile their optimism about China's future with the brutality that always seems to break their hearts. In the pages of China Wakes, the story of China's economic takeoff unfolds before us like passages from a great novel. Kristof and WuDunn, the first married couple ever to win a Pulitzer for journalism, take us with them to meet their friends (and enemies) and share their concerns - especially WuDunn's ambivalence about how, as a Chinese-American, she must come to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland. WuDunn takes us along as she slips into a China usually hidden from foreigners, a China of cabinet ministers making unwanted advances on local women and of peasants who cannot afford pants for their children. We also accompany Kristof as he witnesses Chinese troops massacring protesters at Tiananmen Square and later comes face to face with the man who betrayed the leaders of the democracy movement to the police. With the Chinese economy (the world's third largest) on a trajectory to overtake Japan and the United States in the coming decades, Kristof and WuDunn describe a spectacular economic boom that has enabled a twenty-three-year old to start his own airline or a manual laborer to become a millionaire furniture manufacturer. But they also reveal the chilling paradox lurking beneath these rags-to-riches stories: despite the stock markets and the cell

Title: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China 
Author: Jung Chang
Description: Bursting with drama, heartbreak and horror, this extraordinary family portrait mirrors China's century of turbulence. Chang's grandmother, Yu-fang, had her feet bound at age two and in 1924 was sold as a concubine to Beijing's police chief. Yu-fang escaped slavery in a brothel by fleeing her ``husband'' with her infant daughter, Bao Qin, Chang's mother-to-be. Growing up during Japan's brutal occupation, free-spirited Bao Qin chose the man she would marry, a Communist Party official slavishly devoted to the revolution. In 1949, while he drove 1000 miles in a jeep to the southwestern province where they would do Mao's spadework, Bao Qin walked alongside the vehicle, sick and pregnant (she lost the child). Chang, born in 1952, saw her mother put into a detention camp in the Cultural Revolution and later ``rehabilitated.'' Her father was denounced and publicly humiliated; his mind snapped, and he died a broken man in 1975. Working as a ``barefoot doctor'' with no training, Chang saw the oppressive, inhuman side of communism. She left China in 1978 and is now director of Chinese studies at London University. Her meticulous, transparent prose radiates an inner strength.

Title: The River at the Center of the World:  a Journey up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time 
Author: Simon Winchester
Description: It is the symbolic heart of China. Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, it pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Its path embraces every geographic feature and almost every ethnic group; its banks are home to both scenic splendor and foul industrial pollution. Connecting China's heartland cities with that volatile coastal giant Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters....To travel up those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China. The far reaches of the Yangtze are still off-limits to most tourists and travelers, but for Simon Winchester, traveling the length of this mighty river was a lifelong dream and, together with a Chinese companion, he set out to do just that. The result is this unforgettable portrait of China. To follow him on his adventures up the Yangtze is to experience the essence of China—to learn its history and politics, to feel its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and to meet up en route with uncommon people in remote and almost inaccessible places. This is travel writing at its best: lively, informative, and thoroughly engaging.

Title: The Chinese Have a Word For it: The Complete Guide to Chinese Thought and Culture 
Author: Boye Lafayette De Mente
Description: This is an ideal introduction to the Chinese language and culture for business people,students,and travelers. It sheds light on the character and personality of the Chinese by examining the meaning,historical significance,and use of more than 300 Chinese expressions. This practical guide will help readers anticipate Chinese behavior and avoid cultural faux pas.

Title: Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic 
Author: Bette Bao Lord
Description: Urgent and timeless, Legacies brings us closer than we have ever been to penetrating the great conundrum of China in the twentieth century. It could only have been written by Bette Bao Lord -- born in China, raised in America, author of the bestselling novel Spring Moon, wife of a former American ambassador to China, resident in Beijing during the "China Spring" of 1989. Lord's unique web of relationships and her sensitive insight have enabled her to observe Chinese life both high and low, Communist and dissident, intellectual and ordinary. Lord interweaves her own story, and that of her clansmen, with the voices of men and women who recall the tumultuous experience of the last fifty years, and the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. In precise, subtle prose, Lord explores the reality of Red Guards and reeducation camps, of friends and families severed by political disgrace, and captures the individual voices of those caught up in them: the seven-year-old girl with a heart full of hate for her father; the journalist whose girlfriend believes the Party newspapers, not him; the imprisoned scholar who hid his writings in his quilt for years; the anti-revolutionary who tells his bitter story in a vein of high farce. All bear heartbreaking witness to the surreal quality of Chinese society today -- and to the astonishing resilience, humor, and heroic equanimity of the Chinese spirit.

Title: Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Description: Adeline Yen Mah was born in 1937 in Tianjin, a port city one thousand miles north of Shanghai. She was the fifth and youngest child of an affluent family. Her grand aunt -- in an unprecedented achievement -- had founded the Shanghai Women's Bank in 1924, and her father was a revered businessman whose reputation for turning iron into gold began when he started his own firm at the age of nineteen. Yet wealth and position could not shield young Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of her own family. Adeline's mother died giving birth to her. As a result she was deemed bad luck, and considered inferior and insignificant by her older siblings, who bullied her relentlessly. When her father took a beautiful Eurasian as his new wife, Adeline found herself at the mercy of a cold and cruelly manipulative stepmother. While Niang treated all of her stepchildren as second-class citizens, the full power of her wrath was unleashed on Adeline. As the Red Army approached in 1949, the family moved to Hong Kong. Adeline was shuttled off to boarding school in virtual isolation, forbidden visitors, mail, and all contact with her family. Burying herself in books, she dreamed of freedom and a new life.

Title: Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Tradition, and Spiritual Wisdom
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Description: From the bestselling author of Falling Leaves, a remarkable book of wisdom and spirit. Somewhere it is written that every Chinese wears a Confucian thinking cap, a Taoist robe, and Buddhist sandals. In Watching the Tree, Adeline Yen Mah brings together the many influences on her life as a child of the East and as a student and adult in the West. Conveying a wealth of insight and experience, Adeline illuminates major aspects of Chinese customs and culture while weaving in stories of personal struggle triumph throughout her life. Taking a step beyond her previous book, Falling Leaves, a powerful memoir set against the backdrop of political and cultural upheaval in China, Adeline explores the centuries-old Chinese traditions and their legacy in modern-day China and the West. With Adeline's provocative essays on Buddhism, the I Ching, Tao, Confucius, and their role in shaping Chinese thought, Watching the Tree inspires as it uplifts the soul, giving readers an unusual glimpse inside a culture that remains mysterious and often misunderstood. In her sharp observations on Chinese food and medicine, yin and yang, Zen, and feng shui, Adeline enlightens readers with the mundane—an approach to healing an illness you might find at a Chinese grocery store—to the larger questions in life surrounding true happiness, health, and spirituality. Bridging the cultural divide between the East and West, these stories reveal the strength and peace of mind that comes from opening one's heart and mind to the wisdom and experience of our combined histories. For anyone looking for a clearer understanding of Chinese culture and for inspiring personal stories that embody a life lived in the wake of Chinese tradition, Watching the Tree opens the door into a world of calm reflection, knowledge, and spirituality.

Title: Daughter of the River: An Autobiography
Author: Hong Ying
Description: Daughter of the River is a memoir of China unlike any other. 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.

Title: Paper Daughter: A Memoir
Author: M. Elaine Mar
Description: When she was five years old, M. Elaine Mar and mother emigrated from Hong Kong to Denver to join her father in a community more Chinese than American, more hungry than hopeful. While working with her family in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and living in the basement of her aunt's house, Mar quickly masters English and begins to excel in school. But as her home and school life - Chinese tradition and American independence - become two increasingly disparate worlds, Mar tries desperately to navigate between them. From surviving racist harassment in the schoolyard to trying to flip her straight hair like Farrah Fawcett, from hiding her parents' heritage to arriving alone at Harvard University, Mar's story is at once an unforgettable personal journey and an unflinching, brutal look at the realities of the American Dream.

Title: Fifth Chinese Daughter
Author: Jade Snow Wong
Description: Reprint of the Harper edition of 1950. The narrative shows how members of a typical Chinese family in San Francisco adapt themselves to American conditions

Title: Spider Eaters: A Memoir
Author: Rae Yang
Description: Earlier this century the Chinese writer Lu Xun said that some of our ancestors must have bravely attempted to eat crabs so that we would learn they were edible. Trials with spiders were not so enjoyable. Our ancestors suffered their bitter taste and spared us their poison. Rae Yang, a daughter of privilege, became a spider eater at age fifteen, when she enthusiastically joined the Red Guards in Beijing. By seventeen, she volunteered to work on a pig farm and thus began to live at the bottom of Chinese society. With stunning honesty and a lively, sly humor, the complex and likable Yang incorporates the legends, folklore, and local customs of China to evoke the political and moral crises that the revolution brought upon her over three decades, from 1950 to 1980. Unique to memoirists of this genre, Yang expresses often-overlooked psychological nuances and, with admirable candor, charts her own path as both victim and victimizer. Through this gifted author's compelling meditation, readers will, with Yang, grapple with the human scale of national conflicts - and the painful lessons learned by spider eaters.

Title: Daughter of China: A True Story of Love and Betrayal
Author: Meihong Xu, Larry Engelmann
Description: Meihong Xu grew up during the upheaval of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and was inducted into the People's Liberation Army at the age of seventeen. Selected as one of the country's best and brightest, she became a member of the elite intelligence corps and was asked to spy on visiting professor Larry Engelmann, who had unwittingly drawn the suspicion of the Chinese authorities. But as she got to know him, she realized her old loyalties were gradually being divided. When their friendship was discovered, she was arrested, beaten, interrogated, and imprisoned. Engelmann was accused of raping Meihong Xu, shown her written accusation (forged by her interrogators), and ordered to leave the country or face immediate arrest.. "This is their stunning story.

Title: Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China
Author: Xiao Di Zhu, Zhu Xiao Di, Ross Terrill
Description: This is the personal account of a man who grew up in China and witnessed tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. Born in Nanjing in 1958, Zhu Xiao Di was the son of idealistic, educated parents. His father and uncles joined the Communist movement in the 1930s during the Japanese occupation and were influential underground and military leaders throughout the revolution. Despite their honorable history, they fell into political disfavor by the time of the Cultural Revolution. In 1968, when Zhu was just ten years old, his mother and father were taken to different labor camps for "rehabilitation." In the face of this injustice, the Zhus struggled to maintain family ties and uphold traditional values. Eventually, the family was reunited and restored to some measure of prominence, and a monument was later erected in Nanjing in honor of Zhu's father, Zhu Qiluan. At the heart of this narrative are the trials of a family caught in the crosscurrents of history - from the early attractions of the Communist revolution to the national disaster that followed and the subsequent odyssey of recovery.