Kitchen Chinese-A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself by Ann Mah -2010 - 361 Pages

Kitchen Chinese-A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself by Ann Mah -2010 - 361 Pages 

Earlier this month I read a marvelous memoir, Mastering the Art  of French Eating:Lessons in Food and Love from a Year  in Paris by Ann Mah.  From it I emerged wishing so much I could take my wonderful wife to Paris but her passing has prevented that.  We did go to China together so In

decided I to read Ann Mah’s novel. Kitchen Chinese.  

It is told by Isabelle Lee, an ABC (American Born Chinese) focusing on her relocation to Beijing

 after getting fired from her job as a fact checker for a prestigious New York City magazine. “Kitchen Chinese” is what Isabelle  calls the very limited version of Chinese she speaks. Her older sister, Claire, a high powered glamorous corporate attorney is already there. Claire is divorced.  Both are childless, which deeply grieves their mother.  Claire and Isabelle have never been really close.  Claire graduated at the top of her class in Harvard Law School.  Isabelle studied journalism.

Through Claire’s contacts Isabelle gets a job as food and music writer for an expat Magazine.  Her Chinese is not great and people wonder why at first.  The job introduces her to the vast diversity of Chinese cuisine.  There are many delightful descriptions of meals.

There are romances.  Some illadvised and one with marvelous potential.  The sisters become closer.  They are in frequent Communication with their demanding mother, pushing for Chinese grandchildren.  I found the dramatic ending very gratifying.

I very much enjoyed Kitchen Chinese.  It is fast moving, the minor characters are fun and interesting.  It is for sure a Chinese Food Lovers book.

Ann Mah is an American food and travel writer and the bestselling author of The Lost Vintage and three other books. A frequent contributor to the New York Times’ Travel section, she lives in Paris and Washington, DC.”  

https://www.annmah.net/

I hope to read her 2018 novel, The Last Vintage, set in vineyards of Burgandy during World War Two, next month.

Mel Ulm

 

The Moon Opera by Bi Feiyu - Translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt - 20@8 - 140 pages

The Moon Opera is about the backstage drama and political underpinnings involved when a rich cigarette factory owner offers to underwrite a second production of a classic Peking Opera.  The opera was last staged twenty years ago.  The female lead, in a jealous rage, assaulted her understudy and has been working as a singing teacher ever since then.  The factory owner will bankroll the opera only if the old star returns in the lead.

There is a lot of drama between the characters, we do learn a good bit about how  operas are staged.  There are romances and we learn about the last twenty years in the life of the diva.

I found the details on the opera production interesting, the characters only possibly engaging.

I bought this book, in a Kindle Edition, on sale for $1.95. I checked and it is now back up to $9.95.  I cannot endorse the purchase of this book at full price and in fact endorse it mildly only those who want to read a story about Chinese opera.

BI FEIYU, winner of the 2010 Man Asian Prize for Three Sisters, is one of the most respected authors and screenwriters in China today. He was born in 1964 in Xinghua, in the province of Jiangsu. A journalist and poet as well as a novelist, he has been awarded a number of literary prizes, including the Lu Xun Prize for 1995–96. He cowrote the film Shanghai Triad, directed by the acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Avant Bousweau 

"Love in the Market Place" by Yiyun Li (2005, from A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, 2005 Frank O'Connor Prize Winner)

Official bio from author's web page

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction; it was also shortlisted for Kiriyama Prize and Orange Prize for New Writers. Her novel, The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. MacArthur Foundation named her a 2010 fellow. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.

If you want to read stories by the very best contemporary writers, one decent idea  is  Frank O'Connor International Short Story winners works.  Yiyun Li won  in 2005 for her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.   I have previously posted on her superb novel The Vagrants and some of her short stories, all set either in contemporary China or related settings.  

"Love in the Market Place" is set in Beijing.  It centers on a female school teacher.  She loves the movie Casablanca and plays it for every class.   I love that movie also and I liked the teacher once I read that. She thinks the movie has strong ethical lessons to teach about keeping your promises.  Ten years ago she was jilted by a man who ended up moving to America with another woman.   She is completely single.   I liked her even more when I learned her only real comfort in life were a small collection of classic novels,  "works one could spend a life time studying", she bought in college.  Her mother makes hard boiled eggs and sells them in a train station, she has been doing this for forty years.  She prides her self on the care she takes to make the very best of hard boiled eggs.  Her daughter tells her why bother no one will take notice.   Her mother has big news for her.  The man who jilted her ten years ago is now divorced and is back in town.  Her mother pushes her to throw her self at the man.  She resists.  The conversations between mother and daughter are brilliant.  

The ending is remarkable, for some strange reason it made me think of Kafka's "The Hunger Artist".  The ending perplexed and disturbed me as I struggled to take it in.  This is a great short story.  I will post on more of her work, I hope.  

White Horse by Yan Ge (2014)

White Horse by Yan Ge is a very interesting coming of age story set in a small village in contemporary west China.  The central character is Yun Yun, a twelve year old girl living with her widowed father.  She is very close with her slightly older female cousin and her mother plays a big part in the story.  The story focuses on the developing sexuality of the girls.  Of course like all children that age they cannot imagine their parents ever having sex.  The cousin begins to develop breasts before Yun Yun and in one shocking and powerful scene she kisses the breasts of her cousin.

We see a lot of the village life, we sit in on meals, the food sounds good, and witness some terrible family fights.  The cousin gets a boyfriend and Yun Yun observes them kissing on the mouth, something they have been told only "dirty foreigners" do.  The cousin's mother finds out she has a boyfriend and things get very ugly for a while.  We see how success in school at an early age sets the stage for a potential better life. 

There are dark secrets in the family which are very exciting.   

A lot of the book is about the development of sexual feelings and knowledge by  the two young girls.  They live in a repressive culture without the internet or cable TV so they have to more or less learn on their own.  Of course growing up in the country they have seen animals having sex.  We see them developing interest in boys at school.  We see how competitive school was.  

Yan Ge does a superb job of making the central characters all very real.  I cared about the characters and found them very well developed and interesting.  

Dreams and visions  of a white horse haunt Yun Yun.  The horse is an important figure in Chinese mythology and is the seventh figure in the Zodiac.  

I enjoyed this book a lot.  I think it could be treated as a young adult novel with a mild caution warning but certainly readers of all ages will find much to like about White Horse.

White Horse is published by Hope Road Publishing.  

http://www.hoperoadpublishing.com/titles/white-horse/

Hope Road Publishing's mission statement.

From their webpage

"HopeRoad Publishing is an exciting, independent publisher, vigorously supporting voices too often neglected by the mainstream. We are growing a reputation as promoters of multicultural literature, with a special focus on Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. At the heart of our publishing is the love of outstanding writing from writers you, the reader, would otherwise have missed.

Most of our titles are e-books only, but we have ventured into print with three outstanding titles: The Cost of Sugar, Tula the Revolt and Indian Magic. Our list? It covers fiction, non-fiction, young adults, and works in translation. Very soon we are launching something new: a crime fiction list."

Take a few minutes and look at the offerings of Hope Road Publishing and you will probably find several books you want too read soon, I know I did.

Official Bio of Yan Ge

Yan Ge was born in 1984 in Sichuan in the People’s Republic of China. She recently completed a PhD in comparative literature at Sichuan University and is the chairperson of the China Young Writer Association.

Her early work focused on the wonders, gods and ghosts of Chinese myth and made her especially popular with teenagers. The novel May Queen (2008) saw her break through as a critically acclaimed author. She now writes realist fiction, strongly Sichuan-based, focussing with warmth, humour and razor-sharp insights on squabbling families and small-town life. People’s Literature magazine recently chose her – in a list reminiscent of The New Yorker's ‘20 under 40’ – as one of China’s twenty future literary masters, and in 2012 she was chosen as Best New Writer by the prestigious Chinese Literature Media Prize (华语文学传媒大奖 最佳新人奖). Yan Ge was a guest writer at the Netherlands Crossing Borders festival in The Hague, November 2012.

Her new novel 《我们家》(The Chilli Bean Paste Clan) was published in Chinese in May 2013 by Zhejiang Literature Press. 

Mel u

The Four Books by Yan Lianke (2012)

The Four Books by Yan Lianke (Beijing, 1958), translated by Carlos Rojas, takes its title from the four books of Confucianism and the four Gospels of Christianity.  The Four Books is a very dark, brilliant look at life in a Re-Education Camp in China during the years of The Great Leap Forward, 1958 to 1961, in which the government devoted all of the resources of the country to an effort to surpass the industrial productivity of the United States.  Anyone with the hint of a middle class or above past, with any sign of a western education was sent for an indefinite stay in what were called "Re-Education Camps" in which those who once might have been a concert pianist or a famous scholar were made to do farm work or smelt iron under the brutal direction of "leaders" who were distinguished only by their mindless devotion to the ideas of Mao and his underlings.  In one heart breaking scene, a mathematician presented a solution to a centuries old problem and the only comment on it by the authorities reviewing all academic work  was "send him for re-education". 

The Four Books focuses on camp 99.  All those in this camp used to be university professors.  They are under the direction of "The Child".  No one in the book has a name, they are referred to by their old work, as say The Theologian, the Author, the Musician,  the Scholar and so on.  The camp starts out producing wheat and later smelting Iron. People are given gold stars by the Child when he approves of their actions.  With enough stars, you can in theory leave the camp and go home.  People also get stars for informing on others and just at the whim of the child.  The child begins to collect all the western and Chinese classic books the professors had brought to the camp to burn in his quarters for warmth.  Sex is forbidden.

The atmosphere of the camp is one of constant anxiety and stress with terrible punishments for minor infractions of rules.  No one can trust anyone else.  Camp residents are referred to as "criminals".

The book has a very interesting narrative structure.  The author writes a running commentary on camp activities for the child, informing on others and gets extra stars and food for that.  He is also in theory writing a real book on the experience.  

Soon the Great Famine comes in which millions died and we see the terrible impact of this.  The sole focus of life for camp members is in the search for food.  Many die of starvation and some resort to cannabalism of the recent dead.  The Child is every boss you ever hated.  He worships the "higher ups" and drives those in his camp to impossible production goals.  

I know it may not sound like it, but in many ways this is a very entertaining book, a satire on institutional power. Large cooperations like to infantilize their employees and often characters very like the Child are placed as front line managers, selected for their stupidity and venal devotion to the "higher ups".  Anyone who ever worked for a giant corporation will see that.  There is a lot of violence, cruelty and incredible hardship depicted.  Some rise to great dignity, others sink to the pits, often the same person does both.  The ending is shocking and disturbing in its depth.  

I really enjoyed The Four Books and found it a near compulsive read.  

YAN LIANKE

YAN LIANKE

was born in Beijing in 1958. He is the author of a huge number of novels and story

collections, all remarkable for both their subject matter and their style. He has received many literary prizes, the most prestigious: the Lu Xun in 2000 and the Lao She in 2004. 

"The Science of Flight" by Yiyun Li (2010)

Yiyun Li is a wonderful, highly successful writer.  I have previously posted on her novel The Vagrants and one of her short stories.  This morning I read her very excellent short story in the anthology 20 Under 40:  Stories from The New Yorker, "The Science of Flight" centering on the life of a woman from China who has been living in the USA for many years, divorced and working in a lab that does experiments on animals.   Her mother disgraced the family by having her without being married.  She was abandoned by both parents and raised by her widowed grandmother.   She is close to two men who work in the lab, as friends only, and every year she goes back to China and she falsely tells them it is to visit her parents.   She married a man she met only twice as he was going to America and would take her along.  He was to pursue a phd in mathematics.   They divorced after two years.  Everything about the woman's life is considered in her culture a failure, she illegitimate, marriage ended childless in divorce and she has a job way below her intellect. She hides from her coworkers her ability to read Latin.  Li really takes us deeply into the mind of the woman.  The prose is elegant.  I hope to read more of her work.

Official biography

Biography

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction; it was also shortlisted for Kiriyama Prize and Orange Prize for New Writers. Her novel, The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. MacArthur Foundation named her a 2010 fellow. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.

Yiyun Li-Two Short Stories from the Winner of the 2005 Frank O'Connor Prize for Best Short Story Collection

"Extra"   (2005, 22 pages)
"A Thousand Years of Prayers" (2005, 28 pages)

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 22.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an e-mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.  

Yiyun Li (1972) won the 2005 Frank O'Connor Prize for the best collection of short stories by one author for her first book,  A Thousand Years of Prayers.   Her first novel, The Vagrants, won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.   In doing some research for Irish Short Stories Week Year II I discovered her "Irish Connection" and decided to read a couple of her short stories.    She has said that one of the greatest influences on her work is the great Irish short story writer (he will be featured during Irish Short Story Week Year Two), William Trevor.

Li was born and grew up in Beijing, China and graduated from Beijing University.   She left there to go to the University of Iowa to study immunology.  She got interested in writing while there and earned a master MFA from the Non-Fiction writing program as well as an MA in immunology.   She currently teaches at the University of California Davis.


The Two Stories I read, both from her prize winning 2005 collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Prayers, were about people dealing with the new realities of life in China or life in America for immigrants.
I liked both of these stories a lot an hope to read her full collection one day.

I am not sure which of these two stories I liked the most, both are flawless beautifully written stories that Frank O'Connor himself would like, I hope anyway!

"Extra" is the story of Granny Lin, in her fifties, never married and with no children who has just lost her job.  She is talking to one her friends and she tells her she should find and old sick man and marry him.   Lin, with no experience with men, is shocked.   She says how will I find a husband at my age.  Her friend tells her no problem lots of widowers are looking for care givers and have found it better to marry than hire one.    Her friend helps her locate a match and after some being interviewed by the man's grown children she marries a man who does not really know his first wife has passed away.    Granny Lein, as she is calls because once she marries the man she is grandmother to his grandchildren, does a very good job taking care of the man and coping with his disabilities.    Not to give away the full great plot, this situation ends and some how Granny Lin lucks into a job working in a private school for the children of  the newly rich.   Granny Lin really likes it there, in part because to her the food is so good and abundant.    One day new boy, about six, joins the school.   Unlike all of  the other kids, he lives there full time.   His father has moved a concubine into his house and now he does not want the son of his wife around the house.  Granny Lin identifies with the boy as someone no one really wants.   I will leave the rest of the story untold but it is just a beautiful story.

The title story "A Thousand Years of Prayers" is set in San Francisco, California.  There are only three characters on stage in the story, a father in his sixties or so who has come to China to visit her to help her get over her divorce, his thirty something very Americanized daughter, and a Persian speaking lady in her sixties who is a neighbor of the daughter.   This story is about communication in families and what to much silence can do.   It is about the corrosive effects of long term lies.   The father has been lying to his daughter about something very central to his identity as a man and father and the daughter has been lying about why her marriage broke up.  In addition to being about silence, it is about how a conversation once started can take on a life its own.   It was really interesting to see the bond being formed between the father and the Persian speaking neighbor who can communicate only in the little English they share.

Both of these are very good stories.   I also want to read her novel, Vagrants, which everyone loves.   Her latest collection of short stories is Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.  


You can learn more about her work and life from her web page



Mel u

Access Thirteen Tales by Xi Xu

Access: Thirteen Tales by Xi Xu (2011)

Access: Thirteen Tales  is an amazing collection of short stories by Xu Xi.   Set in Hong Kong and among those in the vast Chinese diaspora,  the stories are mostly about women, the ties of family, the inescapable consequences  of deep enculturation, the pervasive power of money, sex and loneliness.   Some of the women are highly educated and successful and some barely eke out a living.    The collection  is also very much about what it means to be a Hong Kong Chinese in the opening decades of the 21th century.   The people in the stories are very real.   Xu Xi makes them come alive for us in just a few pages.   We understand the people in these stories and how they got to where they are in their lives.   Xu Xi's stories show literature can also help us understand how we got to where we are in our own lives.   Xu Xi helps us see the universal in the very particularized people in her stories.   

I will spotlight two of the thirteen short stories in the collection so readers can get a feel for her work.  Most of the stories are between ten and twenty pages long.


"Space" is a brilliant short story about a never married sixty seven year old woman with no children living by herself in Hong  Kong.   Her brother has recently died and her nephew and his wife want her to move to America to live with them.   As the story opens, it was exciting and very interesting to learn the aunt has a close near intimate Internet relationship with a seventy year old American living in New York City who is a self taught Sinologist.   Her nephew Francis and his wife are in Hong Kong for a visit.   They are doing all they can to persuade Aunt Kar-Li to move to America.   They tell her they have a big room for her and also mention a retirement community. Kar-Li suspects their motives may be impure as she thinks they want her to sell her apartment in Hong Kong to invest in the three restaurants they own.    There is a great deal in this story.   It deals in a very subtle fashion with the conflicts between older Chinese and their younger relatives in terms of adherence to Confucian values.     The aunt knows that she is in part going to be used by her nephew and his wife once she moves but the family ties are just too powerful for anyone to really try to throw away.   


"Lady Day" is a really amazing story about a post operative transsexual prostitute.   The story line is very interesting and kept my attention level very high.    This is a story about deception of the self and the other.   About the power of sex to dominate and the reverse side of this when a person transforms  into  a commodity.   All swords seem to be two sided in the world of Xi Xu.   "Lady Day" is fairly explicit in its descriptions of what the clients want her to do.   It is in a way a woman's fantasy story about how the life of prostitute works out when  things goes very well.  Of course the story ends before Lady Day's looks begin to fade and we know the dark side of this fantasy world will take over soon.   


The people in these stores are often defined by their jobs.   Almost everyone works hard and is very money driven.   I was glad to see that many of the women in the stories are very high achievers both in commerce and education.   


Xu Xi is from Hong Kong.   She has published nine books.   She won an O Henry prize for best short story. (It is included in the collection.)  She has been a distinguished visiting writer at the University of Iowa.   She teaches at the City University of Hong Kong as well as the Vermont College of Fine Arts.   


Access Thirteen Tales will be published on November 25, 2011. There will be a book launch party November 25 at 630PM at the  City University of Hong Kong to which all readers are invited.   


(There are additional details about the launch event and about the very interesting and highly impressive  career of Xi Xu on her web site.)


I was provided a complementary e-book of this work.   


Readers of the stories of Jhuma Lahiri will relate very well to these stories.    I am very glad I had the opportunity to read the work of Xi Xu and endorse her work without reservation.   


Here is a link to the publisher's web page.


Mel u

"Shanghai Girls" by Lisa See

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (2009, 406 pages).

For months now I have been seeing rave reviews for Shanghai Girls.    Everybody seems to love it.    I have a long established rule of not buying hard bound fiction (there are no public libraries here in Manila.   I only bought one hard bound work of fiction in 2009, Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon and I would advise others to wait for the paperback or skip it if you are not a Pynchon fan)   I was so happy when I saw Shanghai Girls in paperback (regular paperback at that) for sale last week.   It also has a beautiful cover.

There are lots of very good blog posts on this book.   (I think the publisher gave away a lot of copies to USA and UK bloggers.)   I will  for this reason  not do a long post on this book.   I will just try to say how I felt about the book and what I liked and did not like about it.

The novel begins in 1937 in Shanghai.   I loved how Lisa See created the atmosphere of Shanghai in the late 1930s.    I understood why it was such a loved city and it was heartbreaking to see it destroyed by the Japanese in World War II.    I loved how the book depicted the family relationships.   The characters were perfectly done.   I really cared what happened to everyone.    I also enjoyed seeing the lead female characters develop and gain from their experiences.   I learned a lot about the horrific process Chinese often had in their immigration to the USA.    I admit I was not fully aware of the tremendous discrimination Chinese Americans faced, especially during the communist scare period of  the 1950s where every Chinese was seen as a potential Maoist spy.    The books covers twenty years in the history of two deeply bonded sisters.   A lot happens in their lives, some very sad things.   We see how an arranged marriage slowly develops into a real relationship.    The atmosphere of China Town in Los Angeles is as well done as the portrayal of Shanghai.   I really liked the the portrayal of Joy, the daughter of one of the sisters.   There are surprise revelations at every turn.    The action is fast moving and a lot happens.   The prose is well done and easy to read.    The only part of the book I did not really like was the ending.   It seems a bit forced but I read Lisa See is working on a sequel.

Lisa See has written two other historical novels, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love.   The first is set in 17th century China and the second in the 19th century.   I hope to read both of these works in 2010.  When   there is a sequel to Shanghai Girls I might have to violate my no hardbound fiction for it.

I am reading this book for these challenges


China Challenge
POC challenge (Lisa See is an American of Chinese Heritage)
New Author Challenge (this means new to the reader)
Global Challenge (North American book)-going for second level now-

I also think this book is very much related to issues of  the Women Unbound Challenge.    It depicts the the literal binding results of  foot binding.   It shows how daughters were viewed as property to be sold in marriage to the most generous bidders.    The suggestion in the Shanghai section  of the novel is that a woman can either be a dutiful wife and mother or prostitute, those were a woman's options in China in the 1930s.

Suko of Suko's Note Book has done an excellent review of Shanghai Girls.   

"February Flowers" by Fan Wu

February Flowers by Fan Wu (2006, 239 pages) is set in 21st Century China.    It centers on two women and their relationship to each other.   The central character and narrator, Ming, tells the story as a long flash back to her university days and her relationship with Yan.   Seventeen year old Ming is bookish, driven to succeed, devoted to her parents and naive in the ways of the world.    She has had no romantic experience whatsoever and accepts the official Chinese line that there are no homosexuals in China.    She lives with three other young women in a dormitory.   She is an avid reader of western classics as well as Camus.   She also reads and studies classical Chinese literature.    Her father was a well known scholar before he and her mother were sent for several years to work among agricultural peasants as part of the massive re-education program of Mao.    The father is back to his teaching and his reading now but his potential to be a great scholar was destroyed and you can see her parents live a cautious life.   Yan on the other hand is 24, quite a bit older than the other college students, worldly, attractive and dressed in a fashion that she seemingly cannot afford.   She has a cynical woman of the world wisdom that can dazzle her much young women friends.   (Seven years is a big age gap when you are 17).  

We do not at first know that much about Yan.   Ming wonders how she can afford the fancy clothes.   Ming says she has a part time job but will not say doing what.   Yan reveals that she was molested at 13 and has had a boyfriend.  (We later find out she has had many boyfriends).   Yan slowly begins to probe Ming concerning any sexual feelings she may have.   She asks Ming if she would like to have a boyfriend.   The atmosphere of the university is very puritanical and the university police have a right to raid lover's lane type places.   If  a student is caught there, the university officials may notify her parents.   Slowly Ming begins to develop feelings she does not understand for Yan.   Yan has contrived to undress in front of Ming several times.   The story line unfolds as a coming of age and wondering if I am a lesbian plot.   Keep in mind Ming has been raised to think only decadent foreigners are homosexuals.  

February Flowers is an interesting look at university life in modern China.  It is a credible coming of age story and the internal tension in Ming is well done.   The book is a bit slowly paced.   It is a good account of friendships between women.   We also see how terribly important family is to all the women.   We are made to feel  the attraction of Ming for Yan is real.   In the part of Yan, we sense she uses her ability to sexually attract men and women as a kind of a game, a power matter.    We see the results of the her involvement with numerous men.    In an erotically charged and quite not what I expected scene we see what is sort of Ming's first sexual encounter.    As the flash back ends we see what Ming is making of her life.   We sense she still does not fully understand her sexuality and may be too deeply programmed to accept her desires.  

To me February Flowers fits in well within the themes of the Women Unbound Reading Challenge.   We get a look at the lives of young women-17 to 24-enrolled in a Chinese University.   We see how the expectations for women in terms of family obligations shapes their world more than it does of the male students.  We see how even in 21th century China, a woman is expected to remain relatively naive sexually before marriage whereas there are no such strictures on the male students.   We see how women who cross the line are viewed.   We see the effects of the one child policy on families.  

The official biography of Fan Wu (from her personal web page) reads like a case study of a woman overcoming huge obstacles.   

"Fan Wu was born on a state-run labor farm in mainland China, where her parents were exiled during the Cultural Revolution. Despite poverty and isolation, the farm provided her with boundless freedom and joy. In 1985, her parents left the farm, bringing her four older brothers and her with them, and settled in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi Province.

In the mid-90s, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Sun Yat-Sen University, she went to work in Shenzhen, the first Special Economy Zone in China, transformed from a fishing village to a bustling metropolis in ten years. During her three years there, she held varied jobs and traveled extensively, witnessing the unprecedented economic boom, as well as the exploitation of workers from poor provinces and the countryside. In 1997, a scholarship from Stanford University brought her to America, and after earning an MA in Mass Media Studies, she joined Yahoo!, a Silicon Valley-based Internet company, where she worked in market research and editorial for more than seven years before devoting herself to writing."

February Flowers is well written (the book did drag a bit).  It is easy to read and follow.  I am glad I read it for the look it gave me at unversity life of young women in modern China and I enjoyed wondering if Ming would ever give in to her feelings for Yan.   I endorse this book (with the reservation it is not "high art" or close to it) for a semi-light read.   It does have one scene of a near x rated nature.   Most Goodreads reviewers gave it three stars and I would also.  

Mel u

"The Noodle Maker" by Ma Jian

The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian (1991, trans. from Chinese 2004 by Flora Drew) is the 3rd work I have read for Jeannie's Chinese Challenge.   The Challenges runs from Sept 1, 2009 to Sept 1, 2010.

The Noodle Maker is set China, in the 1980s.   It begins with two old friendly enemies having dinner together as they often do.   One is a writer of articles for the government about heroic workers giving their lives to save pigs on state farms.   The other is a professional blood donor who has found a way to become wealthy and have a big social standing by donating his blood.   (How this can happen is just part of the wonderful twisted humor of this book.)   The writer dreams of one day giving up his party propaganda work and writing the great novel he has been working on in his mind for years.   The blood donor tells him he is a delusional fool and should just try to write more and better stories about heroic workers who would rather work themselves to death than miss their factory production quotas.   After the opening chapter in which the two lead characters have a meal and solve the problems of China, the book develops into a set of very loosely related tales (each could stand on its own a short story) that are ideas for the book the writer hopes to write one day.   The blood donor feels free to but in at times telling the writer how stupid his stories are. 

There are eight stories.   The first one sort of explains how the blood donor got rich during the period of the open  door policy.   The second one is an insane story about a mother and her 35 year old son who run a for profit crematorium where much care is devoted to considering what songs to play while your love one is burned.    The son tells us all about dead bodies in China, what days certain types of people die on etc.  He is always happy to see a party official come in  as it is time for some well deserved revenge on the oppressor.  He has observations on all the people brought in, sort of summing up their lives in a few words,  grave yard humor at it best or worst.    (If you are a young attractive female I would not go here for cremation).

One of the stories is about a once beautiful actress (women are very much valued based on the appeal of their bodies in the world of The Noodle Maker ) who decides to kill herself by having a tiger eat her on stage.    The owner of the venue sees nothing odd about this and is maybe interested in allowing her to do it but then agrees when she offers to have sex with him, if he feels like it.    There is nobody with a healthy self image in this world.

One chapter "Let the Mirror Be the Judge" is a viciously nasty look at the reaction of the women in a small all female office to a new twenty year old coworker with what seem to be ideal breasts.   The character of women is somehow reflected in the size and shape of their breasts in common folk views.   Large round breast signify a virtuous wife and a good mother.   Medium size means  the woman is suitable as a mistress.
A woman with small breasts is normally the most intelligent sort.   The other women hate the new employee with perfect breasts as soon as they see her.   When she leaves the office  they speculate about her breasts.  The office manager, a totally loveless 51 year old, says her breasts are large because she has allowed many men to fondle them.   (This is presented as assumed to be true by all common sense.)   Some of the women insist she must make use of a breast pump, another speculates that she had implants.   All of them  assume the woman, who has never had any sort of romantic encounter in her life, is very promiscuous and freely tell everyone who knows her this.   One of the women pretends to be her friend then asks her to let  her see her breasts.   The woman is driven to despair by this and begins to take sleeping pills.   One take she decides to prove to everyone that her breasts are real by running naked through the streets.   Her and her family end up disgraced and they move to the country side.   She ends up married  years later to a farm worker, still never having had the first romantic episode in her life.   The farmer finds about her old reputation and assumes he has been tricked into marrying a woman with a very bad past and beats her for the rest of her life.   This is presented as if it were a  simple narration of normal events and attitudes.

No one in this book is spared.   Nobody comes off looking good.  Men are sexual predators and women are all one step above prostitutes.   This is not presented as if it were a bad thing, it simply life in China.   Every body is envious of anything someone else has and takes joy in the misfortunes of others.   If someone out ranks you, suck up to them until they are out of power then suck up to whoever takes  their place.   If someone is below you, exploit them as much as you can.   Personal relationships are power struggles not partnerships.  Life is a macabre joke so grab all the pleasure you can.  

One of the funniest chapters is a debate between a dog and a man who mouths the party line on everything because he is scared to do otherwise.   No one is seen as actually believing in the party doctrines but everyone pretends they do.  

The Noodle Maker is a very funny book.   It invokes a   nasty twisted kind of laughter.   I thought to myself, these things should not be treated as jokes then I wanted to get onto the next joke.  

If you can imagine George Orwell and Nikolai Gogol collaborating on a Mad Magazine article illustrated by R C Crumb and you sort of can see the flavor of this hilarious evil book.   Tyranny does not stand up well against laughter.  

I endorse this book  for those with a  bit of a twisted sense of humor but will advise parts of it shows misogistic actions and thoughts.  There is sexual violence.    In fact the only admirable character in the book is a talking dog.   Ma Jian's writings are banned in China.   He now lives in England.  

Mel u

"Miss Chopsticks" by Xue Xinran

Miss Chopsticks by Xue Xinran 

Translated by Esther Tyldesly from Chinese

Miss Chopsticks (2007) is an entertaining, good, very pleasant story about three country girls who go to the big city in search of their fortune.   The book is set in rural China and  the city of Nanjing.  Nanjing is a city of  about 6.5 million.   (It is also often called Nanking).  It is located in south China.   In the 20th century it is remembered for the Nanking Massacre in 1937 during  which the Japanese Imperial Army killed around 300,000 civilians men, women, children and infants in an orgy of rape and murder fully sanctioned by Japanese military leaders.

The time is a few years after the great cultural revolution in which millions of city people were sent out in the countryside to labor with and supposedly learn from the peasants.    In rural China a couple that had only daughters were a laughing stock.   A man was not considered a real man if he could  sire only daughters.

 The father of the girls who are the central characters of Miss Chopsticks  was so humiliated when his wife gave birth to only girls that he just gave them numbers not names.   So the girls ended up

being called One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six.    The six girls are a potentially crushing burden on the father.  He fears no one will want to marry them as they come from a father who can sire only girls.    He finds a husband for two of his daughters and one of his daughters takes herself out of the story.   

Sisters Three, Five and Six go into the nearest big city, Nanjing, to seek their fortune, aided by Uncle Two.

The girls are very naive in the ways of the huge and wicked city.    Three gets a job in a traditional restaurant right next to McDonalds and KFC.   The restaurant does great business as it serves wonderful traditional food at fair prices.      Five gets a job at The Water Dragon.    The Water Dragon is a health spa where the clients take mineral and herbal baths and get foot massages.   Five's sisters and uncle are a little worried as they have heard some stories about what can happen to country girls in such place but the Water Dragon is a completely legitimate and honest business.    Five adopts as her mentor the chief engineer of  the business and ends up learning a huge amount and becoming a great helper to her employers.    Six was the most educated of the girls.   Six loves books.    She ended up with a dream job working at the Book Taster's Tea House, surrounded by wonderful books, both traditional Chinese and western.    

As the story proceeds on one of the girls will stare down an angry mob.   One will fall in love.   One will handle a visit with government officials as good as any Confucian sage could have.  The girls have some adventures and learn a lot about the big city, eat a lot of very well described food, learn some good life lessons and have some fun.       

I laughed out loud when one of the older women in the book lectured the girls on how they missed out on the great experience of being sent to work among the peasants.     I really enjoyed seeing how Six was able to develop her love for reading and begin her Reading Life while working  in the tea house owned fellow book lovers.    The characters are well drawn.    Some sad things happen to the girls but nothing that is not a part of growing up.  We learn a lot about the conflict of generation in China between those who lived through the cultural revolution and those born after it.   We see age old conflict of city versus country people.   We learn about the inner working of tea houses, bath houses and restaurants.   We get a pretty close look at sibling relationships.

Miss Chopsticks  is worth reading and will repay our time with enjoyment and edification.

Xue Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958.   She was a very well known radio journalist in China before she wrote her best known work The Good Women of China.   I look forward to reading this book.

Mel u
 

"The Univited" by Geling Yan Chinese Challenge

The Uninvited by Geling Yan (2006, 276 pages) is my first book for The Chinese Challenge hosted by Jeannie of Bibliofile.   It was published in the USA as Banqueting Bug.

The Uninvited is a fun, fast paced, vivid account of the life of a Chinese peasant, living in contemporary Beijing, who changes his life when he begins to impersonate a free lance journalist one lucky day. 

Dan, the central character, finds out that by pretending to be a freelance journalist he can eat free at elaborate promotional banquets while at the same time being paid for his time in the hope that this will induce him to write an article favorable to the sponsor of the banquet.   Imagine
his shock when he discovers the fee is more than he could make in a month at his current hard labor job.   Plus the food is at a level and quantity he has never before experienced in his life.
We enter a food obsessed world.   (Of the 276 pages of the novel, at least 100 mention food.)

"minced pigeon breasts with mashed tofu  molded into tiny snowballs...in a big oblong plate lay 20 huge sea snails..he won't let her life pass without knowing what shark fins or sea cucumbers or crab claw tips taste like".

Modern Beijing seems a completely corrupt place.   It is taken for granted that bank loans require a gift of a TV set to the loan officer, that female college students will serve as plates in what is called a "Nude Banquet" to pay their tuition, and that the developer of a big condominium project will seek a way to cheat his workers out of their pay.    Under the morals of the regime, you are not allowed to take a cash payment of any kind but the gift of a car to a government official is normal.  

Dan grew up on boiled tree bark and grubs and soon gets used to his new way of life.   He begins to see going to banquets as his job.   He finds out that there are banquets all over town.   He even has some phony business cards printed up that identify him as a free lance journalist.
Dan meets some interesting people, has some adventures and does somethings that a man with a great wife like Little Plum should not do.   I do not want to give away a lot of the plot.

The book does not suggest that Beijing is an especially corrupt city.   it is a city in transition with millions of people once tied to old ways and the land now made adrift in a culture that provides no replacement values.   This occurs  when traditional values are destroyed or turned into a mockery of themselves.   I did note that all anyone seems to read in this book are newspapers.
No one has any real Reading Life.  

I liked The Uninvited a lot.  I learned some interesting things.   I toured a condominium
under construction, I learned a lot about Chinese food.   I found out why there are so many foot
massage places in Beijing.    I found out what preparations a woman must go through for her job as a human plate.  I saw a strong marriage, though not a perfect one.   I saw that not everyone is
in fact corrupted.     It is an easy to read, well plotted and deeper than it first appears.   I would happily read other books by Geling Yan.

Geling Yan has an interesting life history.   She was born in Shanghai.   She has been, among other things, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Chinese Army, serving in Tibet and Vietnam.   Several of her books have been made into movies, in China.   

Mel u

Two Very Different Ladies That Love Balzac-

I recently read two very different novels worlds apart in their setting, style, and characters but with a common theme.
They both center around women who love the novels of Balzac, whose lives have been radically affected by a reading of his works. One is an English Academic and the other is a Chinese seamstress in the time of Mao's re-edification programs in rural areas of China.

A Start in Life by Anita Brookner(1982-176 pages)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Dai Sijie (2000, 172 pages, trans. from French by Ina Rilke)

Dr Ruth Weiss, the central character in A Start in Life and the little seamstress (that is how she is always designated)
in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress are as different as two women from the same planet can be.

Dr Weiss is a literary academic who lives a very beige colored life. Her only striking feature is
her beautiful red hair. She lives in cramped quarters and is alone a lot. She is very careful and cautious.
Her real life does not begin until she is between the pages of a book or in a library or bookstore. She has published a book called Women in Balzac's Novels and has a second volume in the works. She basically gets paid to read what she wants to read, write about it and talk about it. Before we say, wow this sounds great, we must linger over
the opening sentence of the book: "Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature". I will admit the book had me at that point. I wanted to know why and I wondered if mine was also somehow and I can already see my middle daughter, 13, retreating into a world of books one day.

The little seamstress works for her father, a traveling tailor, in rural China during the period of Mao's re-edification programs. She is young, full of life, pretty and has many suitors. All she has ever read in her life are works approved by people's committees and the sayings of Chairmen Mao. Two late teenage cousins of affluent families have been sent from the city to do very hard work among the peasants in order to re-edify them. Both of the cousins become infatuated with the seamstress and one of them begins an affair with her. The cousins come into to possession
of a magic suitcase full of 19th century novels, Gogol, Dickens, Flaubert, Melville. The biggest treasure in the suitcase is a number of Balzac novels. (All the novels have been translated into Chinese.) The cousins at once set about reading and rereading these works. They are most taken with Balzac, maybe because they have more of his works but we are never told why they like him so much but maybe we can figure it out. One of the cousins decides to read Balzac to the little seamstress. She falls in love with his stories and they shape her life in ways no one can predict in advance. A lot of exciting things happen in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. We get a good feel for life in rural China. We feel like what it is like to go from the life of a son of the most famous dentist in China to hauling manure in the country side as part of a re-edification program from which you have little change of graduation. Unless you are a saint you will really enjoy the revenge enacted on a village headman. Their attempt to make the little seamstress a more refined girl friend back fires on them in a big way. There is a lot to be learned and thought about in this book. We take for granted our ability to read what we want. It made me think again how great the 19th century masters are, to see that they are not just books you have to read in school or because someone says they are good for you. There are also a number of exciting scenes in the book. You always want to know what will happen next. You really feel like you are in rural China.

Dr Ruth Weiss, the central character of A Start in Life, has no suitors at her door, has never done any physical work in her life and for sure has never had an outdoor romantic encounter. She does have beautiful red hair and we are somehow thankful for that. Her life and her appearance is all shades of beige with maybe a tan suede jacket for the cold.
She fits right into the world of libraries and lecture halls. The book is written with great stylistic economy. Sometimes it seems Dr Weiss is a minor character in a 19th century novel. Dr Weiss has her loves and tragedies but she always has Balzac to retreat into. My guess is that as Dr Weiss ages she won't make any big changes in her life but she will always have her Balzac and her increasing refinement will increase her loneliness. As the little seamstress ages she will do things we can never imagine and she cannot either. I do not think she will do a lot more reading in her life, she will be busy and she has already done the reading that will set the course of her life. "She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price."

I endorse Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress without reservation. It is a fun easy to read book and the production value of the paperback edition are high.

A Start in Life is an book of exquisite economy. It is what one might call academic fiction.

Dai Sijie has two other books translated into English. He was himself in a re-edification program and resides in France.
Both of his other books deal with reading life issues and I hope to read them by year end 2010.

Anita Brookner has written twenty four novels, one a year since she started writing twenty four years ago at age fifty.
It seems most are about somewhat lonely reflective a bit bookish people. I will read more of them also.

Maybe I need to read some more Balzac also!

Mel u