Chinese Books - Page 3

Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Buddhist Monk

Master Chan Sheng Yen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this landmark memoir, a renowned Buddhist master traces his spiritual journey against the panoramic story of China from the pre-Communist era to the present.

Master Sheng Yen has devoted much of his life to spreading the teachings of Chinese Buddhism—a practice that antedates the more familiar Japanese and Tibetan traditions—throughout the world. He became known in the United States after he began founding meditation centers here in 1980. Now in his late seventies, he tells the remarkable story of his life and spiritual education in Footprints in the Snow. From descriptions of the private world of Buddhist masters to first-hand accounts of Chinese history, it is a rare document that is both an important look at China’s past and a compelling spiritual journey across a lifetime.
Sheng Yen’s story is of a life lived in the last years of the Republic of China, the Sino-Japanese War, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China. An eye-opening slice of modern history as well as an authoritative introduction to an ancient religious tradition, Footprints in the Snow will appeal to spiritual seekers, travelers who want to understand more about China, or anyone looking for a fascinating story.

Chinese Through Tone & Color

Nathan Dummitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This title is avilable in book and CD. Most linguists believe that writing was unveiled in China during the latter half of the 2nd millennium BC. Despite the many thousands of written characters however, there are approximately 1,700 possible syllables in Mandarin, compared to over 8,000 in English. As a result, there are many homophones, distinguished in written Chinese by the use of different characters to represent each one. Not all the characters are pronounced using the same tone, so to Chinese ears they sound different. To Westerner ears, however, they all sound the same. It is even possible to write a test in Chinese using only one syllable, pronounced with different tones. The well known story by Chinese linguist Zhao Yuanren - Story of Shi Eating the Lions - uses nothing but the sound "shi".This book offers a new, intuitive method for more effectively mastering spoken Mandarin Chinese. It assigns a colour to each of the four tones in Mandarin, creating a psychological, synaesthetic resonance between written characters, colour and sound. Sample sentences and grammatical patterns are printed in colour to reinforce the association between tone and colour. With practice, each character generates a colour association, and the tone for the word can therefore be recalled immediately and effortlessly - a true asset to any beginner learning Mandarin. Designed as an engaging introduction to 100 primary characters, the book also contains an audio CD of the lessons and tones, as well as downloadable files and artwork for mp3 players or computers. Compact, well designed and innovative, it is perfect for a student interested in mastering spoken Chinese while simultaneously studying the written characters.

Bound Feet & Western Dress: A Memoir

Pang-Mei Chang

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"In China, a woman is nothing."

Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years.

In the alternating voices of two generations, this dual memoir brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.

The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother

William Poy Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An Amazing Story of Culture, History, and Grace 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I was drawn to The Eighth Promise, as I automatically veer towards any books related to China. Then I realized that this wasn't just about China, but about America as well. The author grew up in San Franscisco's Chinatown during quite volatile times--the Vietnam war, Civil Rights protests, Chinatown wars. I was fascinated by this history which he so vividly brought to life. Then, a terrible thing happened to his family, a terribly unjust, unfair thing that you would hope doesn't happen in America. I was moved to tears by the grace with which they dealt with this horrible injustice.
The Eighth Promise is an insightful book about Chinese Culture, American history during the 60's, 70's, and most importantly, grace in the face of injustice.

Editorial Review:

In the best-selling tradition of The Color of Water comes a beautifully written, evocative memoir of a relationship between a mother and son—and the Chinese-American experience

In The Eighth Promise, author William Poy Lee gives us a rare view of the Asian-American experience from a mother-son perspective. His moving and complex story of growing up in the housing projects of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1960s and ’70s unfolds in two voices—the author’s own and that of his mother—to provide a sense of tradition and culture. It is a stunning tale of murder, injustice, fortitude, and survival. Already, this exquisitely wrought memoir is garnering rave notices.

Woman Warrior, the (Picador Books)

Maxine Kingston

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

'A brilliant memoir...it is about being Chinese in the way A Portrait of the Artist is about being Irish; it is an investigation of soul, not landscape, its sources are dream and memory, myth and desire; its crises are the crises of a heart in exile from roots that bind and terrorize it...Maxine Hong Kingston writes with bitter and relentless love. Her voice, now, is as clear as the voice of Ts'ai Yen, who sang her sad, angry songs of China to the barbarians. It is as fierce as a warrior's voice, and as eloquent as any artist's' Jane Kramer, New York Times Book Review 'This is a delightful book...tells more than i ever imagined about the strangeness of being Chinese and a woman; it also gives a superb account of what it's like simply to be alive' Victoria Radin, New Society 'A strange, enchanting book...As a manual of self- discovery through the channels and terrors of one's own rejected communal memory, it is unbeatable' Guardian 'As a dream - of the "female avenger" - it is dizzying, elemental a poem turned into a sword...reimagining the past with such dark beauty, such precision and anger that you feel you have saddled the Tao dragon and see all through the fiery eye of God' John Leonard, New York Times 'A book of fierce clarity and orginality' Newsweek

The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics

Annping Chin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For more than two thousand years, Confucius has been an inseparable part of China's history. Yet despite this fame,Confucius the man has been elusive. Now, in The Authentic Confucius, Annping Chin has worked through the most reliable Chinese texts in her quest to sort out what is really known about Confucius from the reconstructions and the guesswork that muddled his memory.

Chin skillfully illuminates the political and social climate in which Confucius lived. She explains how Confucius made the transition from court advisor to wanderer, and how he reluctantly became a professional teacher as he refined his judgment of human character and composed his vision of a moral political order. The result is an absorbing and original book that shows how Confucius lived and thought: his habits and inclinations, his relation to the people of the time, his work as a teacher and as a counselor, his worries about the world and the generations to come.

In this book, Chin brings the historical Confucius within our reach, so that he can lead us into his idea of the moral and to his teachings on family and politics, culture and learning. The Authentic Confucius is a masterful account of the life and intellectual development of a thinker whose presence remains a powerful force today.

Six Records of a Floating Life (Penguin Classics)

Shen Fu

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A passionate and romantic story 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

"Six Records" (also known as "Six Chapters of a Floating Life"), c. 1805, is an extraordinarily frank autobiography that is totally unprecedented and unparalleled in the history of Chinese literature. It describes the life of the author Shen Fu and his beloved wife, Ch'en Yun (1763-1803), in extremely revealing detail. The intimacy and joy shared by the couple are as unusual by normal standards of Chinese married life as is the author's daringness in revealing them to others. Their close, playful relationship stands in defiant opposition to the staid decorum of married life expected by Confucian ideology.

A thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring read. Ch'en Yun is a woman ahead of her time who admirably balances her love of learning and passion for life with her duties and obligations as a traditional Chinese wife.

Editorial Review:

Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic and romantic joys of his marriage to Yun, the beautiful and artistic girl he fell in love with as a child. He also describes other incidents of his life, including how his beloved wife obtained a courtesan for him and reflects on his travels through China. Shen Fu's exquisite memoir shows six parallel layers' of one man's life, loves and career, with revealing glimpses into Chinese society of the Ch'ing Dynasty.

Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women and Their Journey from East to West

Helen Tse

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Spanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative memoir recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women.

Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through.

A love of food and a talent for cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals. Helen Tse's grandmother, Lily Kwok, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe. Eventually she opened one of Manchester's earliest Chinese restaurants where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of nine. But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and tragically they lost the restaurant. It was up to author Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother's dream. The legacy lived on when the sisters opened their award-winning restaurant Sweet Mandarin in 2004.

Sweet Mandarin shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes--passed down the female line--can be the most valuable heirloom.

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits

Bill Porter

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A glimpse of immortals 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

"You can't be in a hurry. You have to be prepared to devote your whole life to your practice," says Master Hsueh T'ai-li after forty-five years on the slopes and summits of Huashan. "This is what's meant by religion. It's not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life."
"Road to Heaven, Encounters with Chinese Hermits" by Bill Porter provides a fleeting image of the cloud people, the Chinese hermits who have turned their backs on this world of red dust - and survived.
There is a stark, and sad, contrast between the monks and hermits, and the busy American writer who is rushing about asking homely questions like: "Were you upset when the Red Guards burned your library?" or "Do you get any mail?"
"Taoism is very deep. There's a great del to learn, and you can't do it quickly. The Tao isn't something that can be put into words. You have to practice before you can understand," reiterates Master Hsueh.
And yet I find myself returning to this "Road to Heaven" because it captures a few anecdotes, gems and asides about famous and unknown hermits that makes it worthwhile reading. Searching for a lost quote, I return to the hasty interviews with abbots and nuns standing guard at old temples and crumbling shrines. And I find more layers to their brief stories than first meets the eye.
There is stillness and tranquility in the frugal lives of these Chinese hermits, and a firm and unwavering grip on the essentials of a religion. They represent the last living flicker of the spiritual wisdom originating with Lao-tzu thousands of years ago. And now their world is vanishing into the darkness, like the last sparks from a windswept fire.

Editorial Review:

Bill Porter (Red Pine) trekked through China's remote Chungnan Mountains in search of hermits. Lessons of spiritual wisdom emerge from his interviews with more than twenty male and female hermits. "A stupendous corrective to modern American Zen practice". -- Jim Harrison, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review "(A) fascinating book". -- Yoga Journal

The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl

Ma Yan, Pierre Haski

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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Wednesday, November 7

My father gave me and my brother a little money. My stomach is all twisted up with hunger, but I don't want to spend the money on anything as frivolous as food. Because it's money my parents earn with their sweat and blood.

I have to study well so that I won't ever again be tortured by hunger. . . .

In a drought-stricken corner of rural China, an education can be the difference between a life of crushing poverty and the chance for a better future. But money is scarce, and the low wages paid for backbreaking work aren't always enough to pay school fees.

Ma Yan's heart-wrenching, honest diary chronicles her struggle to escape hardship and bring prosperity to her family through her persistent, sometimes desperate, attempts to continue her schooling.

First published in France in 2002, the diary of ma yan created an outpouring of support for this courageous teenager and others like her -- support that led to the creation of an international organization dedicated to helping these children . . . all because of one ordinary girl's extraordinary diary.