Download or read book When True Love Came to China written by Lynn Pan and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Guardian's Best Books of 2015 Most people suppose that the whole world knows what it is to love; that romantic love is universal, quintessentially human. Such a supposition has to be able to meet three challenges. It has to justify its underlying assumption that all cultures mean the same thing by the word ‘love’ regardless of language. It has to engage with the scholarly debate on whether or not romantic love was invented in Europe and is uniquely Western. And it must be able to explain why early twentieth-century Chinese writers claimed that they had never known true love, or love by modern Western standards. By addressing these three challenges through a literary, historical, philosophical, biographical and above all comparative approach, this highly original work shows how love’s profile in China shifted with the rejection of arranged marriages and concubinage in favour of free individual choice, monogamy and a Western model of romantic love. ‘This book, Lynn Pan’s best to date, adds a wonderful new angle by encouraging us, via comparison, to better appreciate how unusual, even in some ways exotic, a part of the Western past we take for granted, as though it were natural, actually is. While the reader will learn a great deal about Chinese literary and cultural traditions from this book, if read with an open mind the Western reader may end up rethinking things about his or her tradition just as deeply.’ —Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History, University of California at Irvine ‘Nobody writes about China quite as brilliantly as Lynn Pan, who in this new, illuminating work on love showcases her trademark erudition entwined with a novelist’s sensibility. Pan’s rare skill makes the book a treat from start to finish; a sumptuous, deft and moving analysis of China’s relationship with love.’ —Mishi Saran, author of Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang and The Other Side of Light

Download or read book China Love You written by Geshe Michael Roach and published by Diamond Cutter Press. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two largest economies in the world are now China and the United States—which means that these two countries will have the greatest influence on the state of our planet, for many years to come. If the two nations cooperate economically and politically, then the entire world will see a period of peace and prosperity which it has never seen before. And yet, surprisingly, those of us who live in these two countries know very little about each other. In each country, we read in our newspapers about the other, but this just gives us a general and often incomplete picture. We don’t really get to know each other, and it’s possible that we can start to misunderstand each other. Since our two countries are now the two strongest in the world, this kind of misunderstanding can hurt all nations. One place where normal Chinese and Americans work together every day is in business. When a big international business project throws us together, we begin to spend time with one another—we start to communicate more, person to person—and then the misunderstandings just melt away, often over a dinner table somewhere, because we find out where the other person is coming from and why they act the way they do.

Download or read book Our Story written by Rao Pingru and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Begun by the author when he was eighty-seven years old and mourning the loss of his wife, Our Story is a graphic memoir like no other: a celebration of a marriage that spanned the twentieth century in China, told in vibrant, original paintings and prose. Rao Pingru was twenty-four-year-old soldier when he was reintroduced to Mao Meitang, a girl he’d known in childhood and now the woman his father had arranged for him to marry. One glimpse of her through a window as she put on lipstick was enough to capture Pingru’s heart: a moment that sparked a union that would last almost sixty years. Our Story is Pingru and Meitang’s epic but unassuming romance. It follows the couple through the decades, in both poverty and good fortune—looking for work, opening a restaurant, moving cities, mending shoes, raising their children, and being separated for seventeen years by the government when Pingru is sent to a labor camp. As the pair ages, China undergoes extraordinary growth, political turmoil, and cultural change. When Meitang passes away in 2008, Pingru memorializes his wife and their relationship the only way he knows how: through painting. In an outpouring of love and grief, he puts it all on paper. Spanning 1922 through 2008, Our Story is a tales of enduring love and simple values that is at once tragic and inspiring: an old-fashioned story that unfolds in a nation undergoing cataclysmic change. (With gorgeous full-color illustrations throughout, and a distinctive exposed spine emulating the original Chinese design.)

Download or read book Love Stories in China written by Wanning Sun and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how political, economic, social, cultural and technological forces are (re)shaping the meanings of love and intimacy in China's public culture. It focuses on a range of cultural and media forms including literature, film, television, music and new media, examines new cultural practices such as online activism, virtual intimacy and relationship counselling, and discusses how far love and romance have come to assume new shapes and forms in the twenty-first century. Love Stories in China offers deep insights into how the huge transformation of China over the last four decades has impacted the micro lives of ordinary Chinese people.

Download or read book I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China written by Wen Zhu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In five richly imaginative novellas and a short story, Zhu Wen depicts the violence, chaos, and dark comedy of China in the post-Mao era. A frank reflection of the seamier side of his nation's increasingly capitalist society, Zhu Wen's fiction offers an audaciously plainspoken account of the often hedonistic individualism that is feverishly taking root. Set against the mundane landscapes of contemporary China-a worn Yangtze River vessel, cheap diners, a failing factory, a for-profit hospital operating by dated socialist norms-Zhu Wen's stories zoom in on the often tragicomic minutiae of everyday life in this fast-changing country. With subjects ranging from provincial mafiosi to nightmarish families and oppressed factory workers, his claustrophobic narratives depict a spiritually bankrupt society, periodically rocked by spasms of uncontrolled violence. For example, I Love Dollars, a story about casual sex in a provincial city whose caustic portrayal of numb disillusionment and cynicism, caused an immediate sensation in the Chinese literary establishment when it was first published. The novella's loose, colloquial voice and sharp focus on the indignity and iniquity of a society trapped between communism and capitalism showcase Zhu Wen's exceptional ability to make literary sense of the bizarre, ideologically confused amalgam that is contemporary China. Julia Lovell's fluent translation deftly reproduces Zhu Wen's wry sense of humor and powerful command of detail and atmosphere. The first book-length publication of Zhu Wen's fiction in English, I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China offers readers access to a trailblazing author and marks a major contribution to Chinese literature in English.

Download or read book Falling in Love written by and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-05-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Falling in love, with all its accompanying problems, was a subject of obsessive interest among writers and readers in the Ming Dynasty, when society held strictly to arranged marriages. The stories in this engaging collection all deal with this theme in very different ways, sometimes comically, sometimes tragically. They portray young people choosing their own lovers, resorting to ingenious stratagems and risky escapades in defiance of contemporary mores. Chosen to represent the best works from the great age of the vernacular story, they offer an admirable introduction to the world of Chinese fiction in this era. All of the stories in Falling in Love have been translated especially for this volume, and most appear here in translation for the first time. They are taken from two works, Constant Words to Awaken the World (Xing shi heng yan) and a related collection, The Rocks Nod Their Heads (Shi dian tou), both published in the early seventeenth century.

Download or read book Made in China written by Anna Qu and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future. As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work. Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work, and the costs of immigration.

Download or read book Letter of Love from China written by Bonnie Cuzzolino and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The love letter from the birth mother tells the story of a Chinese girl adopted into an American family and the land she left behind.

Download or read book Love and Marriage in Globalizing China written by Wang Pan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As China globalizes, the number of marriages between Chinese people and foreigners is increasing. These Chinese--foreign marriages have profound implications for China’s cultural identity. This book, based on extensive original research, outlines the different types of Chinese--foreign marriage, and divorce, and the changing scale and changing patterns of such marriages, and divorces, and examines how such marriages and divorces are portrayed in different kinds of media. It shows how those types of Chinese--foreign marriage where Chinese patriotism and Chinese values are preserved are depicted favourably, whereas other kinds of Chinese--foreign marriage, especially those where Chinese women marry foreign nationals, are disapproved of, male foreign nationals being seen as having a propensity to infidelity, deception, violence and taking advantage of Chinese women. The book contrasts the portrayal of Chinese--foreign marriage with the reality, and with the depiction of Chinese--Chinese marriage where many of the same problems apply. Overall, the book sheds much light on changing social processes and on current imaginings of China’s place in the world.

Download or read book Love s Uncertainty written by Teresa Kuan and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2015-02-27 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love’s Uncertainty explores the hopes and anxieties of urban, middle-class parents in contemporary China. Combining long-term ethnographic research with analyses of popular child-rearing manuals, television dramas, and government documents, Teresa Kuan bears witness to the dilemmas of ordinary Chinese parents, who struggle to reconcile new definitions of good parenting with the reality of limited resources. Situating these parents’ experiences in the historical context of state efforts to improve "population quality," Love’s Uncertainty reveals how global transformations are expressed in the most intimate of human experiences. Ultimately, the book offers a meditation on the nature of moral agency, examining how people discern, amid the myriad contingencies of life, the boundary between what can and cannot be controlled.

Download or read book For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent written by Joseph Zen and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship of China with the greatest secular world power—the United States of America—and the most universal global spiritual power—the Catholic Church—is in a state of flux. President Trump and Pope Francis are major protagonists in this dramatic period. Although what is happening in China has an impact worldwide, it is hard for the non-specialist to grasp what is underway and its significance for the future. There are two Catholic communities in China: the "underground", or unofficial, Church and the official, government-controlled Patriotic Church. Cardinal Joseph Zen is one of the most knowledgeable and credible witnesses to what is happening in China, especially on the relationship between these two communities. He is a courageous defender of the underground Church yet has intimate knowledge of the official Church, in part because hea taught in several of its seminaries. It has been recognized—and Pope Francis himself has confirmed—that the historic 2007 letter of Pope Benedict XVI to Catholics in China remains the magna carta of the Church in that country. On the tenth anniversary of this letter, Cardinal Zen gave a series of eight lectures on its origin, drafting process, and final content, and these enlightening talks are presented in this book. In these lectures, Cardinal Zen explains in detail what he considers is now threatening the fundamental principles of the letter—and therefore 'his people'. As the title indicates, for the love of his people, he will not remain silent.

Download or read book Double Cup Love written by Eddie Huang and published by One World. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Fresh Off the Boat, now a hit ABC sitcom, comes a hilarious and fiercely original story of culture, family, love, and red-cooked pork Eddie Huang was finally happy. Sort of. He’d written a bestselling book and was the star of a TV show that took him to far-flung places around the globe. His New York City restaurant was humming, his OKCupid hand was strong, and he’d even hung fresh Ralph Lauren curtains to create the illusion of a bedroom in the tiny apartment he shared with his younger brother Evan, who ran their restaurant business. Then he fell in love—and everything fell apart. The business was creating tension within the family; his life as a media star took him away from his first passion—food; and the woman he loved—an All-American white girl—made him wonder: How Chinese am I? The only way to find out, he decided, was to reverse his parents’ migration and head back to the motherland. On a quest to heal his family, reconnect with his culture, and figure out whether he should marry his American girl, Eddie flew to China with his two brothers and a mission: to set up shop to see if his food stood up to Chinese palates—and to immerse himself in the culture to see if his life made sense in China. Naturally, nothing went according to plan. Double Cup Love takes readers from Williamsburg dive bars to the skies over Mongolia, from Michelin-starred restaurants in Shanghai to street-side soup peddlers in Chengdu. The book rockets off as a sharply observed, globe-trotting comic adventure that turns into an existential suspense story with high stakes. Eddie takes readers to the crossroads where he has to choose between his past and his future, between who he once was and who he might become. Double Cup Love is about how we search for love and meaning—in family and culture, in romance and marriage—but also how that search, with all its aching and overpowering complexity, can deliver us to our truest selves. Praise for Eddie Huang’s Double Cup Love “Double Cup Love invites the readers to journey through [Eddie Huang’s] love story, new friendships, brotherhood, a whole lot of eating and more. Huang’s honest recounting shouts and whispers on every page in all-caps dialogues and hilarious side-commentary. Huang pulls simple truths and humor out of his complex adventure to China. His forthright sharing of anecdotes is sincere and generates uncontrollable laughter. . . . His latest memoir affirms not only that the self-described “human panda” is an engaging storyteller but a great listener, especially in the language of food.”—Chicago Tribune “An elaborate story of love and self-discovery . . . Huang’s writing is wry and zippy; he regards the world with an understanding of its absurdities and injustices and with a willingness to be surprised.”—Jon Caramanica, The New York Times “Huang is determined to tease out the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which Asian-Americans give up parts of themselves in order to move forward. . . . Fortunately for us, he’s not afraid to speak up about it.”—The New Yorker “Huang connects in Chengdu the same way he assimilated in America—through food, hip-hop and a never-ending authenticity, which readers experience through his hilarious writing voice and style.”—New York Daily News

Download or read book Revolution of the Heart written by Haiyan Lee and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an engagingly written critical genealogy of the idea of "love" in modern Chinese literature, thought, and popular culture. It examines a wide range of texts, including literary, historical, philosophical, anthropological, and popular cultural genres from the late imperial period to the beginning of the socialist era. It traces the process by which love became an all-pervasive subject of representation and discourse, as well as a common language in which modern notions of self, gender, family, sexuality, and nation were imagined and contested. Winner of the Association for Asian Studies 2009 Joseph Levenson Book Prize for the best English-language academic book on post-1900 China

Download or read book Love in a Fallen City written by Eileen Chang and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. A New York Review Books Original “[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." –Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Download or read book The Promise written by Xinran Xue and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the twentieth century in China, the Hans were married in an elaborate ceremony before they were even born. While their future was arranged by their families, this couple had much to be grateful for. Not only did they come from similar backgrounds – and as such were recognized as a good match - they also had a shared passion in their deep love of ancient Chinese poetry. They went on to have nine children and chose colours portrayed in some of their favourite poems as nicknames for them - Red, Cyan, Orange, Yellow, Green, Ginger, Violet, Blue and Rainbow. Fate, and the sweep of twentieth century history would later divide these children into three groups: three went to America or Hong Kong to protect the family line from the communists; three were married to revolutionaries having come of age as China turned red; while three suffered tragic early deaths. With her trademark wisdom and warmth, Xinran describes the lives and loves of this extraordinary family over four generations. What emerges is not only a moving, beautifully-written and engaging story of four people and their lives, but a crucial portrait of social change in China. Xinran begins with the magic and tragedy of one young couples wedding night in 1950, and goes on to tell personal experiences of loss, grief and hardship through China's extraordinary century. In doing so she tells a bigger story – how traditional Chinese values have been slowly eroded by the tide of modernity and how their outlooks on love, and the choices they've made in life, have been all been affected by the great upheavals of Chinese history. A spell-binding and magical narrative, this is the story of modern China through the people who lived through it, and the story of their love and loss.

Download or read book Thirsty Dragon written by Suzanne Mustacich and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inside view of China's quest to become a global wine power and Bordeaux's attempt to master the thirsty dragon it helped create The wine merchants of Bordeaux and the rising entrepreneurs of China would seem to have little in common—old world versus new, tradition versus disruption, loyalty versus efficiency. And yet these two communities have found their destinies intertwined in the conquest of new markets, as Suzanne Mustacich shows in this provocative account of how China is reshaping the French wine business and how Bordeaux is making its mark on China. Thirsty Dragon lays bare the untold story of how an influx of Chinese money rescued France's most venerable wine region from economic collapse, and how the result was a series of misunderstandings and crises that threatened the delicate infrastructure of Bordeaux's insular wine trade. The Bordelais and the Chinese do business according to different and often incompatible sets of rules, and Mustacich uncovers the competing agendas and little-known actors who are transforming the economics and culture of Bordeaux, even as its wines are finding new markets—and ever higher prices—in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, with Hong Kong and London traders playing a pivotal role. At once a tale of business skullduggery and fierce cultural clashes, adventure, and ambition, Thirsty Dragon offers a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges facing the world's most famous and prestigious wines.

Download or read book Love and War in Ancient China written by William S-Y. WANG and published by City University of HK Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents the reader with a fascinating glimpse of the peoples of Ancient China by analyzing many poems in Shijing and discussing aspects of culture and events reflected in the poems from a wide range of disciplines, including archeology, ethnography, history and linguistics. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。