No comments about Chinese Menus: Great Meals in Minutes.

No comments about Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court.

2 comments about Wah Ming Chang: Artist and Master of Special Effects (Multicultural Junior Biographies).

1. I found this book very inspirational, as it tells the life and struggles of an artist and Hollywood special effects master. The language sparked my interest and made me want to read more. I especially enjoyed the details about Chang's work with Walt Disney Studios and the Star Trek TV show. The book made me feel that I personally knew someone famous. This is an interesting story of a man who accomplished so much. As an educator, I would recommend the book to students and to adults. It will help others realize that we CAN get past difficult times and that we can nurture our own creativity in order to see our own dreams come true.



2. As an adult, I was fascinated by this book. I enjoyed the photos and the biography. I think this is a book for adults and children to read together and to use as a springboard for dialogue about life's challenges and how to deal with them, as well as the discrimination faced by a minority. It is all about the incredibly difficult challenges that one man has gone through (discrimination, parental loss as a child, polio, etc.), and is inspiring in how he reinvented himself over the years and managed to find success.

No comments about Quotations From Confucius (Chinese Sages Series).

1 comments about Autobiography of a Chinese Girl.

1. The Autobiography of a Chinese Girl is a translation of the memoirs of a young girl in China during the first half of the 20th century. Min Kon, who later changed her name to Hsieh Ping-Ying, wrote a first-hand memoir of her experiences in her youth. She also wrote other versions of her memoirs emphasizing different parts of her life. Her autobiography is written in the form of a coherent narrative, separated into five parts following the major stages of her life. Each part if divided into several chapters to clearly outline the major events and influences in her life. This coherent narrative is approximately 216 pages long and covers her early childhood through her schooling, her army life, her imprisonment at home, and then her pursuit of a freedom. In this vivid tale, we follow the development of the personality of resistance to the traditional Chinese culture in the early part of the 20th century. The story starts with Min Kon's childhood in a small village where she is confined to the life of a girl in traditional Chinese society at a time when many of these traditions, such as arranged marriage and footbinding, were already becoming outdated. Her rebel spirit is evident in her actions as a child and her modern ideas shine through in her desire to break the traditional mold. After resisting the pressures of her family, she is allowed to attend school. Despite her brilliant academic record, Min Kon often finds herself leading student movements. Her behavior causes her to change schools frequently until she quits to join the revolutionary communist army in 1926. Min Kon joins a military school where she is immediately expelled and rejoins under the new name of Hsieh Ping-Ying. In this autobiography, the themes of rebellion and resistance are most prominent. Hsieh Ping-Ying demonstrates her rebellious spirit through her endless pursuit of freedom from traditional Chinese culture and the place in society imposed upon her. She is not willing to conform or watch history be made. She not only incessantly resists her parents wishes, but also rebels against the politics and oppression of the people of China at that time. Not only does she fight for her own sense of equality, but also that of the entire population. Min Kon is a symbol of the oppression of women of her generation and those who came before her. Although she was more fortunate than most, her plight is representative of her period, while painting a picture of the political movements which took place. In this dynamic, touching story, she demonstrates the personal desire, motivation, and persistence needed to achieve her dream of freedom. This book is an excellent example of the transitional and unstable culture and politics of the time. Written through the eyes of a young girl from the country limits the scope of the story, but allows the reader to grasp how Chinese culture was transforming as history was taking place through a clear, yet limited view. This story is both captivating and enlightening in its narration of the passion of resistance at a turning point in Chinese history. Tsui Chi's translation has kept the spirit of Min Kon's passion alive to pass on to readers throughout the world. Infused with endless desire and motivation, Min Kon's story presents a striking account of the developments affecting the population of China during the early 20th century, which is both useful in the classroom and for personal enrichment. This book is a perfect choice for anyone interested in women's rights, Chinese history, or the place of women in Chinese culture.

2 comments about Chinese Cinderella (New Longman Literature).

1. This book is totally heart wrenching, and i cried for ages over some of the sad parts, such as when her father forgets her name and date of birth, and when her pet duck, PLT ( Precious Little Treasure), is killed by the dog, Jackie. Chinese Cindrella is so beautifully written that i really felt Adeline's sorrows as if i was in her place. You must read it!



2. A Great autobiograpy!!! Adeline Yen Mah Grows up unwanted. Her stepmothers children grow up spoiled yet she and her siblings are treated horribly.She Loves school.Itis unbeleivable how cruel someone can be.

1 comments about The Sammy Wong Files: Confessions of a Chinese American Terrorist.

1. Did you ever wonder what happened to the Chinese American family that ran your favorite Chinese restaurant? Remember the girl with pony tails and knee socks, doing her third grade math homework at a table piled high with folded napkins and cutlery right next to the cash register? Or that affable but slightly rumpled gentleman with three pens in his pocket protector who always seemed to be at the bar or the cash register, ready with a big smile and kind words no matter whether you were having dim sum on Sunday or grabbing takeout at 10PM on Thursday?
   
   Well, look no further. Eleanor Wong Telemaque, who grew up working at her family's Canton Cafe in Albert Lea, Minnesota, provides insightful and often hilarious vignettes of her life on the Minnesota-Iowa border in the 1940s. Her newly published memoir, "The Sammy Wong Files: Confessions of a Chinese American Terrorist," starts in Minnesota but ricochets from China to Canada to New York to Chicago. Add in the absurd and frightening way she was caught in the anti-Chinese Communist dragnet of the 1950s, freed by a member of President Kennedy's staff, and propelled into the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and you have a fast-paced memoir that makes for a great read at the beach this summer.
   
   Elly, as she is known to her many friends, first burst onto the literary scene in 1978 with "It's Crazy to Stay Chinese in Minnesota," a young adult book that was not accepted by the publishing industry as an adult novel because her protagonist, Bingo Tang, was not white. Elly was urged by people familiar with the publishing world to make this change, but she refused. After years marching, writing, and working for civil rights, including years on the staff of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, she was not about to back down on this important issue.
   
   Enter her name in Google. however, and you will get an idea of the impact that "It's Crazy" has had over the years. Excerpts have been included in anthologies about Asian Pacific Americans, women, the midwest, and Minnesota. Courses use the book to represent Asian Pacific American life in the midwest.
   
   Another place you may remember seeing Elly Telemaque's name is her 1980 book "Haiti Through Its Holidays," written to honor her Haitian-born husband Maurice Telemaque and her Haitian-Chinese-American daughter, Adrienne Chi-en Telemaque, who works as a physical therapist but who has been seen on stage and screen as an actress and dancer. Elly also has appeared in Amy Chen and Ying Chan's award-winning 2001 documentary, "The Chinatown Files," which examines the effect of Cold War anti-Chinese communist hysteria on Chinese Americans.
   
   Elly Telemaque is a master of dialogue and character development, and her decision to use the Chinese words as she heard them, and not necessarily as they would be written in a Chinese language text, is a wise decision.
   
   You can almost imagine yourself in her hometown, when her mother discovers three photographs of naked women that a passing tramp gave a young Elly and her brother Don in exchange for a glass of milk and two day-old doughnuts. "When Mother found the photographs, she knuckled our heads. 'Chuk nee ah,' she screamed. 'What example will you be to your children? You'll become white devils!'"
   
   The tensions between a father who supported Chiang-kai Shek and wanted to be one hundred percent American and a mother who learned little English and longed for the old country is a standard plot device. In Telemaque's deft hand, however, we understand the racist immigration laws that forced father to come in as a "paper son," and follow the family story as it describes the lives of her siblings and Wong cousins.
   
   Elly does all women a service in her book by going into detail about how her trust was violated at a young age by a visiting older relative who was a sexual predator. While she was able to run away from him and then keep him at bay when he tried to visit her at college, her words are a reminder that the "model minority" myth obscures the reality that the Asian Pacific American community, like every community, has its share of problems.
   
   "The Sammy Wong Files" is full of wonderful ironies, like the soy sauce factory co-owned by Elly's father where only the African American janitor remembers the secret recipe. As each chapter unfolds, however, you will see that when Eleanor Wong Telemaque describes her Asian Pacific American immigrant life for us, she is really celebrating an American history that is as varied as the lo mein and milk-fed turkey sandwiches served at the Canton Cafe.

No comments about Chow: From China to Canada: Memories of Food and Family.

5 comments about Girl On A Leash: The Healing Power of Dogs: a Memoir.

1. The book is a fascinating, colorful, unique collage of all the components that make up the writer's life - then and now. Weaving across and throughout her life is the "karmic" presence and significance of her beloved dogs. I never had a pet in my life, although my sister and her daughters have two huggable, affectionate labradors living with us in our New York apartment, the fact that I love dogs vicariously, even more, through the book, demonstrates how effectively Ms. King has written about this often-overlooked subject matter. If that is not powerful writing, I do not know what is....Her voice is authentic, uncommon and incredibly exquisite...Now that I myself am very much immersed in China, I can appreciate more fully the enigma and "stigma" of being Chinese...The book is beyond wonderful and I am in awe."



2. I could not put this book down. The stories about different climes, different dogs, make you want to read on and on at least to finish a chapter, and then to start another after that. They tug at your heartstrings: the little girl whose own grandmother wanted her dumped in a baby "tower" for the vultures, just because she was a girl too many; the other grandmother, the gentle one, the Buddhist who never had a pet in China but finally got one whom she loved too much. Then the remarkable mutt in Paris, who was intensely funny as the French are not. Hey, if one can be reborn again, I'd like to be a dog in Paris. Then, a sad tale of killing a pet by someone who could not accept what is different. This book teaches love for the different and "lowly"..



3. I am interested in animal welfare and Asian culture, so for me a book combining the two is like finding a gem. The way out of an inner struggle is unique as it is admirable. It's wonderful to know that other cultures different from mine, love animals as I do -- maybe even more.



4. The author gives a powerful voice to the often stifled voice of Asians living in strange circumstances. A must read for students of race, class, and gender. Very readable.



5. An extraordinary story for everyone to read. A wonderful insight into the minds of people and dogs. The true tales of a young woman as she struggles with her heritage, growing up, racial issues and familial acceptance wonderfully combined with touching stories of her true love for dogs. You must read this book!

5 comments about Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life.

1. I thoroughly enjoy reading about Chinese life. I learn quite a bit about a life away from home! I prefer these types of books that whisk me to different parts of the world, chronologically, socially, and culturally. The lives that other people experience elsewhere are fascinating, and one can become engulfed in the stories. I feel as if the author sat down and TOLD me all about his life, something I didn't know about. Like I had an interesting friend over for lunch. This was a superb book to the end!



2. This book conveys so many emotions, from all of this one is left almost numb. But having met the man, He LiYi, I can say that this book is a mirror of the man in real life. All that comes out in this book is so exact, in his mannerisms and gentle voice. He is so unassuming and modest, and does not appear to be capable of such strength and determination. This book lets you see that we are all capable of making a difference if only small. I had no knowledge of this book untill I visited his cafe in Dali, I purchased the book directly from him and now pass it to all who are interested. A truly powerful book full of what these people, the Bai, have had to endure at the hands of the ever present "Mr China".



3. I think I vaguely remember seeing this book at some point in the States, before I moved to China. But if I had not walked into the author's coffee shop in Dali (Yunnan Province), I probably would not have read this book.
   
   This book is unique in several respects. First of all, it is written in English by a man who is not a native speaker, using the English he learned in University. That is quite an achievement, given the fact that he was a village peasant who did not have much money, and spent most of his life working in the fields. Another very useful feature of this book is the fact that He Liyi was detained as part of the Anti-Rightist campaign, rather than the Cultural Revolution. He was all but untouched by the Cultural Revolution, but the Anti-Rightist campaign affected him profoundly. I have long been interested in the connection between the two events, because disdain of and even abhorrence for the Cultural Revolution is established orthodoxy in China now, but I am not sure China has ever quite come to terms with the Anti-Rightist campaign.
   
   His detention seems to have broken his spirit. He relays a relationship with three women in this book. The first was the girlfriend he almost married, the second was the "ignorant" village girl he did marry, and soon divorced, and the third was the peasant woman who ultimately became his wife. The first woman disappears early in the book, but the other two figure almost throughout. Only one could be his wife, but the other remained his friend, and the warmth of their friendship underlines the pathos of a life lived in the crucible of a world gone mad.
   
   I was mad at him for marrying his first wife. Then I was mad at him for divorcing her. Then I was mad at him for refusing to take her back. My sense of pathos was brought full circle when he finally married a peasant woman and basically became her servant. Slowly the realization hit me that he really had been "emasculated" by the trauma he had suffered. I have certainly read stories of people who went through greater suffering than he did during his time of confinement. But it is not so much what he suffered, but the complete humiliation of his position, and what it did to his spirit.
   
   Mr. China's Son is a good writer. He writes in a simple, personable style that is fun to read, and very absorbing. The book is full of "Chinglish" expressions, which can be a bit misleading if you don't know a little bit of Chinese. For example, he talks about the point when their son becomes a "big school" student. He gets this expression from the literal translation of the characters. The Chinese word for "university" is daxue. The first character means "big," and the second character means "school." So in a literal sense, the term "big-school" is an accurate translation, but a bit misleading. For native speakers of Mandarin, this term does not produce a picture in the mind's eye of a big school. Rather, it induces a picture of a university, because it is, in fact, the Chinese word for university. The equivalent word in English which produces the same picture for native speakers is, of course, the word "university." So using the term "big-school" makes them sound a little bit like country bumpkins, which they were, but not for that reason.
   
   Still, I do like the Chinglish expressions. They add an interesting dimension to the book, which would be missing if they had been edited out. And the folksy style of Mr. China's writing produces a work which is unique in the English language. It actually becomes a contribution to the language, because he has found interesting ways to phrase things that native speakers may not have thought about, but which are perfectly "legal" in the grammatical sense of the term.
   
   This book is published in the United States, and I don't think it is generally available in China. While I was in Dali, I recommended it to a young Chinese lady, and told her how to get to the coffee shop. She went there, but they would not sell her a copy. They did not actually say that she could not buy it because she was Chinese, but they told her that the book was published in the United States. In other words, it is published for foreigners, not Chinese people. My suspicion is that they are being allowed to sell the book out of their store, as long as they only sell it to foreigners. I don't know that for sure; I am just guessing, but I suspect that this is the case.
   
   I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in that dark period of China's history. But I want to stress that this book is not just another "complaint" about the evils of the Cultural Revolution. It is a window into the nature of village life in China. Some of it of course, deals with the particulars with the Bai minority culture. But much of it is just a simple story about what it is like to live as a village peasant in China. Read it. It will give you a unique view of the lifestyle of folks who are usually disinclined to write about themselves.



4. I was travelling around Yunnan reading my guidebook and came across an entry for a small cafe run by a local author. I wandered into the cafe and met with the author. He was very kind. He offered me a drink and we sat and talked about his cafe and his book. I was fascinated at the posters on the walls and the reviews for his book so I had to buy a copy and find out myself.
   
   I have deep admiration for Mr. He. He suffered so much and yet perservered. I can't find any palpable animosity in his writing toward those who mistreated him. It's just amazing how humble and kind this man is.
   
   If you are interested in Chinese culture, communism, or the Cultural Revolution, you should check out Mr. China's Son. I hardly read but this book really got me on many levels.



5. Mr He Liyi has written a remarkable book. His account of toiling as a political prisoner and suffering all the excesses of China's Maoist period are as stirring as any survivor's story. He is the Robinson Crusoe of Chinese Communism; cast away in a society that persecuted him for no rational reason-yet he survived. Through intelligence, optimism, guile and pluck he constructed the tools of his survival and his family's survival.
   But what make's his account so full of life as literature is his ability to translate into English his Bai minority culture and the Han majority culture of Yunnan province. Lao He ("Old He" as I heard him respectfully called) learned English and so wrote his memoir in English. There is no assimilating translation full of Western clichés that distort and keep an author's mind distant from the reader. This is an immediate, passionate, sad and inspiring story of a man who struggled, survived and triumphed. And its funny. His `great discovery' that kept his family from starving involved stealing from community crapper. In love as a young man he is taken away, branded "An enemy of the people" and doesn't see his sweetheart again for years, until remarkable circumstances bring them together again to save the life of his child.
   I stumbled across Lao He on the Internet and sent him an e-mail. His gracious reply was all it took for my son and I to change our China travel plans to cross China on a train to see Yunnan Province and visit Lao He in Dali. After 10,000 miles of travel we got off the local bus a couple of days early at 6 am and wandered into Dali. We were standing in the middle of the street orientating our map and my son said "Maybe we'll see Mr He Liyi. Maybe that's him." The man he pointed at was young, "No he's an old man." An old man walked around the corner. "He probably looks more like that man."
   "Are you William and Bazyl?"
   He is as remarkable as his book. Anyone who loves literature should read his work, anyone who loves travel should visit Yunnan Province and sip tea in his café.