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darlingfox) wrote2010-10-03 11:49 pm
darlingfox) wrote2010-10-03 11:49 pm
Entry tags:
[book challenge] animal & plant
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.
- Amazon.com
Wild Swans is an autobiographical story/family history of three generations of Chinese women in the 20th century China. It's a thick book but the story was so engrossing that it didn't feel long at all.
I've always liked cultural history more than political because politics tend to bore me. In Wild Swans, the political aspects were very important but they were usually shown, not told to the reader. Perfect for me, then! I would've loved to hear more about Yu-fang and the China of her time but since she was the author's grandmother, it's understandable that her story was the shortest. The author's story overlaps with her mother's and the differences between a child and an adult's perpectives of the same events were sometimes very startling.
What I found particularly interesting was the portrayal of people as a mass and how difficult it was to be an individual in an environment where it was discouraged and where everyone was watching you. Following the author and her growing doubts in the midst of the Cultural Revelation was sometimes difficult to read because it was clearly very painful for her. After reading the book, I did some googling and wasn't surprised at all to learn that it's been banned in China.
Whenever I'll have time and I'm in the mood for it, I'll read Chang's book about Mao.
Peony in Love by Lisa See
Set in 17th-century China, this is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. See offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals.
- Amazon.com
Okay, let's be honest here: I didn't like this book because I didn't like the narrator and certain inconsistencies within the novel's mythology. I didn't like the Never-ending Whinings of Young Werther either and from what I can remember, it had something in common with this story. For one, the play Peony Pavilion did in China what Werther did in Europe: encouraged young people to commit suicides.
(Which, strange as it sounds, is not something I think is a fault in a book. But I digress.)
Peony in Love is for the most part a ghost-story so I don't think I'll spoil anyone if I tell you right away that the main character dies soon enough (unlike Werther). Due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding her death, she's stuck here as a ghost instead of continuing her way to the more pleasant parts of afterlife.
The premise is interesting enough but it gets lost in a writing style I didn't particularly like and a main character I actively hated (whyyyyy don't you just die, Werther?). After her dead, Peony became a horrible person who did horrible things and I was left with the impression that the readers were supposed to support and cheer her on.
See got some things just right and some so wrong in her story. The horrifying foot-binding scene was told just right: while some of the characters found it emotionally difficult to do, no one denied its importance or decided to rebel against it. In that setting, no one would have. On the other hand, the whole afterlife business was wasted potential because it wasn't internally consistent. The characters used remedies based on their beliefs to cure people. Fine, makes sense. But why did some of them work and some didn't? Peony never wondered that but I definitely did.
I wouldn't read this again and I doubt I'll read See's other novels.
Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.
- Amazon.com
Wild Swans is an autobiographical story/family history of three generations of Chinese women in the 20th century China. It's a thick book but the story was so engrossing that it didn't feel long at all.
I've always liked cultural history more than political because politics tend to bore me. In Wild Swans, the political aspects were very important but they were usually shown, not told to the reader. Perfect for me, then! I would've loved to hear more about Yu-fang and the China of her time but since she was the author's grandmother, it's understandable that her story was the shortest. The author's story overlaps with her mother's and the differences between a child and an adult's perpectives of the same events were sometimes very startling.
What I found particularly interesting was the portrayal of people as a mass and how difficult it was to be an individual in an environment where it was discouraged and where everyone was watching you. Following the author and her growing doubts in the midst of the Cultural Revelation was sometimes difficult to read because it was clearly very painful for her. After reading the book, I did some googling and wasn't surprised at all to learn that it's been banned in China.
Whenever I'll have time and I'm in the mood for it, I'll read Chang's book about Mao.
Peony in Love by Lisa See
Set in 17th-century China, this is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. See offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals.
- Amazon.com
Okay, let's be honest here: I didn't like this book because I didn't like the narrator and certain inconsistencies within the novel's mythology. I didn't like the Never-ending Whinings of Young Werther either and from what I can remember, it had something in common with this story. For one, the play Peony Pavilion did in China what Werther did in Europe: encouraged young people to commit suicides.
(Which, strange as it sounds, is not something I think is a fault in a book. But I digress.)
Peony in Love is for the most part a ghost-story so I don't think I'll spoil anyone if I tell you right away that the main character dies soon enough (unlike Werther). Due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding her death, she's stuck here as a ghost instead of continuing her way to the more pleasant parts of afterlife.
The premise is interesting enough but it gets lost in a writing style I didn't particularly like and a main character I actively hated (whyyyyy don't you just die, Werther?). After her dead, Peony became a horrible person who did horrible things and I was left with the impression that the readers were supposed to support and cheer her on.
See got some things just right and some so wrong in her story. The horrifying foot-binding scene was told just right: while some of the characters found it emotionally difficult to do, no one denied its importance or decided to rebel against it. In that setting, no one would have. On the other hand, the whole afterlife business was wasted potential because it wasn't internally consistent. The characters used remedies based on their beliefs to cure people. Fine, makes sense. But why did some of them work and some didn't? Peony never wondered that but I definitely did.
I wouldn't read this again and I doubt I'll read See's other novels.
no subject
As for Jung Chang, meh. Chang's book about Mao has received quite a bit of criticism from academics, and honestly, she's someone with an axe to grind against Mao. I'm frankly not impressed by the writings of someone who hasn't lived in China since the 80s.
no subject
Anyway, the footbinding scene. I mentioned it only because in my opinon, it was written well. The binding itself was horrifying to read: why wouldn't it be to a modern reader? What I meant by "no one denied its importance or decided to rebel against it" was just that. It was important to the women because tiny feet were a sign of a wealthy woman and also attractive to men. The latter was less important than the first.
So no, I didn't think that China was portrayed in a negative light. I just didn't like the book because I didn't like the character Peony or See's prose.
And about Jung Chang, why wouldn't a Chinese person currently living outside of China be qualifed to tell about historical events and persons whose actions she herself had witnessed? Honest question, not meant to sound rude! I'm mostly interested in the Mao book because I liked Chang's writing style and I just want to read something else written by her. I always take historical books not written by professional historians without an agenda with a grain of salt.
no subject
I don't think your question was rude at all, and it's really a perfectly valid question! I think she's perfectly qualified to write about what she did in Wild Swans, and without having read the book, I can't comment on it further. I suppose my comment was about Jung Chang and Chinese authors like her in general, in that I think that Chinese people who don't keep in touch with mainland Chinese views and understandings (clarifying my meaning here, as people living outside China can still get a general sense of what's going on through the internet) are very likely to not get a lot of stuff about contemporary China right and are really likely to represent a (more) Westernized, skewed view about China. Of course, she might keep in touch with mainland views - I wouldn't know. The axe to grind, though, makes me wary of her works in general, since that'll colour everything she writes.
Though of course, we all have an agenda of some sort, in that no one's interpretations of the world can be bereft of their worldviews and understandings, so really, nothing can be completely objective.
Anyway, sorry again for kind of ranting in this entry! 3: