| The
University of Akron
UA History Department China Resource Page |
 |
| The
University of Akron
UA History Department China Resource Page |
|
Reading Project for World Civilizations: China
Read one of the books on the booklist below
and write a 2-4 page response detailing how this work adds to our understanding
of Chinese culture.
Pearl Buck
Imperial Woman Moyer Bell Ltd.,
1991; ISBN: 1559210354
The story of the rise of Tzu-Hsi (Cixi), the
last empress of China, from a mere concubine to the most powerful person
in Ching (Qing) China.
Pavillion of Women Moyer Bell Ltd.,
2001; ISBN: 155921287X
The story of Madame Wu, a woman whose surprising
decision to retire from married life and select a concubine for her husband
upsets her extended household, has interesting insights into the limits
of women's lives in China.
The Good Earth Washington Square
Press, 1994; ISBN: 0671510126
This is the Pulitzer Prize winning story of of
the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan, ordinary people
caught up in the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Buck gives a graphic view
of the vast political and social upheavals in China and the sweeping changes
that occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.
Robert Elegant
Manchu currently out of print in the US, available from
Harper-Collins Australia.
Elegant’s work of historical fiction takes place in 17th century China.
Through the eyes of Francis Arrowsmith, Elegant uses historical truth and
vivid imagination to re-create the intrigue, decadence, and corruption
that led to the demise of the Ming Dynasty and the rise of conquering Manchus.
Taylor Caldwell
The Earth Is the Lord's: A Tale of the Rise of Genghis Khan currently
out of print
The book covers the early life of the great conqueror, focusing primarily
on characters: his stern and indomitable mother, the cynical and outcast
uncle who educates him, his manipulative wife Bortei, the boyhood friends
who become his generals and paladins, and his blood brother Jamuga, who
is both his dearest friend and bitterest enemy.
Don Dandrea
Orlok (paperback edition title:
Snow
Warrior) currently out of print
A fictionalized account of Subotai Bahadur, the greatest general of
Genghis Khan, includes details of the Mongol invasions of China and the
West, and of Subotai's travels in India.
Simon Elegant
A
Floating Life: The Adventures of Li Po Ecco Press, 1997;
ISBN: 0880015594
The up and down adventures of the Tang poet Li Po, as told to his scribe,
give a peak into the court and monastic life of Imperial China.
Jeanne Larsen
Bronze
Mirror 1992; ISBN: 044990671X
A blend of fantasy and history describes how a young maid in twelfth-century
China is fascinated by the betrayal, cunning, and affairs of the wealthy
family she serves, while the Yellow Emperor watches her through his magical
bronze mirror.
Manchu
Palaces Holt and Co, 1996;
From the hidden rooms of the Forbidden City to the dizzy heights of
Taishan temples, Larsen has woven a silken tale that carries the reader
into the mystery and magic of Imperial Qing China. Just as in her previous
books, Silk Road and Bronze Mirror, she has again overlaid the poignant
story of a young girl's coming of age with suspenseful action in the realm
of the Immortals of Chinese legend.
Silk
Road: A Novel of Eighth-Century China Holt and Co, 1989;
These are the adventures of Greenpearl, daughter of a powerful Tang
dynasty general, as she is is kidnapped by Tibetan raiders, sold to a caravan
of traders and then into the life of a courtesan. Along the Silk Road she
encounters monks, Persians, and people of the steppes—encounters often
brought about by the bumbling interference of a ghost or a deity.
Annette Motley
Green
Dragon, White Tiger Macmillan Publishing Co.,1986;
The story of Black Jade who goes from being a concubine to becoming
Empress Wu of China in the seventh-century Tang dynasty.
Robert Hans Van Gulik
The
Chinese Nail Murders (1977)
The Chinese Lake Murders (1979)
The Chinese Bell Murders (1987)
The Chinese Gold Murders (1988)
Judge Dee at Work: Eight Chinese Detective Stories (1992)
The Monkey and the Tiger: Two Chinese Detective Stories (1992)
Necklace and Calabash (1992)
The Lacquer Screen (1993)
Murder in Canton (1993)
The Willow Pattern (1993)
The Red Pavilion (1994)
The Emperor's Pearl (1994)
The Phantom of the Temple (1995)
Poets and Murder (1996)
The Chinese Maze (1997)
The Haunted Monastery (1997)
Robert Van Gulik translates the Ming dynasty novels about the exploits
of Dee Goong an (Judge Dee) a famous magistrate of the Tang dynasty.
Judge Dee solves crimes in his small province and at the same time affords
us a glimpse into the difficulties of service as a regional magistrate
in the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy
Diane Lee Wilson
I
Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade HarperTrophy, 1999; ISBN:
006440773X
Story of a young Mongolian girl and how she overcomes a crippling handicap
by becoming a great horsewoman. Written as juvenile fiction, but
very enjoyable for adults as well.
Bound Feet & Western Dress
by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang.
Anchor Books,
1997; ISBN: 0385479646.
The daughter of a distinguished family, Yu-i was born at the turn of
the century in China, and grew up between the fall of the last emperor
and the Communist Revolution. This is the story of her personal struggle
with the constant tug between familial duty and individual desire.
Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt
& Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai
Stanford
Univ Press, 1990; ISBN: 0804706069
Ida Pruitt's biography of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai (literally "old lady Ning"),
a peasant woman of northeast China born in 1867, is an anecdotal retelling
of Ning's personal history as she related it to the author over the course
of their two year long friendship. To survive and feed her children Ning
must become first a beggar, then a servant to various households: military,
Muslim, bureaucrat, and finally to Christian missionaries. And Ning speaks
against concubinage and prostitution, about the penury of employers, the
need to support and keep family together.
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
by Lu Xun
University
of Hawaii Press, 1990; ISBN: 0824813170
Lu Xun is often considered to be one of the greatest of Chinese fiction
writers and is touted for his eloquent and beautiful language. His
stories are glimpses into the lives of ordinary Chinese struggling to survive
in dificult times and despite an often corrupt system.
Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted
Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah
Broadway
Books, 1999; ISBN: 0767903579
Mah’s memoir of life in China, before and after the 1949 revolution,
is a chronicle of the emotional abuse she received from her father and
his beautiful, but vicious, second wife. Through Chinese proverbs Mah conveys
the traditional Chinese worldview that prompted the subservience of women
and fostered the belief that daughters were worthless.
The Family by Li Fei-kan Pa Chin
Waveland
Press, 1988; ISBN: 0881333735
Popular in China during the May 4th movement this is an absorbing account
of one family in early 20th century China.through whose generational conflicts
we can see the larger conflicts about to engulf the nation. The Kao family,
five generations living in one complex is headed by the father, Master
Kao, an autocrat unwilling and unable to admit that his country and his
family are changing before his eyes. His three sons seem to represent a
cross section of Chinese attitudes, behaviors, and hopes during post-Imperial
revolutionary chaos.
Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong
Penguin USA,
1996; ISBN: 0140260307
Three novellas of a disturbing intensity--including "Raise the Red
Lantern," the basis of an acclaimed 1991 film. Set in provincial China
of the 1930's, all three stories evoke a place where a concubine might
have attended college and a landlord's son might have learned to play tennis
at his boarding school--but where the harsh old ways still prevail.
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
Berkley Publishing
Group, 1995; ISBN: 0425147762
Min’s heart-wrenching memoir of herself as a young Chinese schoolgirl,
during the collapse of the Maoist regime, tells how, as a distinguished
young communist, she denounces her own friends.
Son of the Revolution by Liang
Heng
Random House,
1984; ISBN: 0394722744
An emotion packed account of the destructive practice of Maoist thought
and the Cultural Revolution on this Chinese family as seen through the
eyes of the son who watches the hardships his intellectual parents must
endure.
Spider Eaters: A Memoir
by Rae Yang
University
of California Press, 1998; ISBN: 0520215982
Yang's memoir is of her girlhood torn between two worlds, that of her
loyalty to the Communist Party, and that of her parents and friends.
She tells the tale of China's most violent days, during the Cultural Revolution,
together with her own struggle to respect party authority in light of its
high-handed and destructive campaigns.
The Attic: Memoir of a Chinese Landlord's
Son by Guanlong Cao & Nancy Moskin (trans.)
University
of California Press, 1998; ISBN: 0520204069
Cao's lean elegant prose creates a moving autobiographical account
of daily life in urban Shanghai in during the forty turbulent years following
the Communist Revolution.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by
Jung Chang
Anchor World
Views, 1992; ISBN: 0385425473
Jung Chang tells the story of three generation of Chinese women—her
grandmother as a warlord’s concubine, her mother in the Communist movement,
and herself—from the end of the Qing dynasty to the Sun Yatsen years, through
the revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution dealing
with personal survival in a country in constant flux.
Genghis Khan by R. P. Lister
Cooper Square Press, 2000; ISBN: 0815410522
This book based on the Secret History of the Mongols, the one
early primary source for Mongolian history, is a easily readable account
of the early life and rise to power of Genghis Khan, the most fearsome
warrior of all time, who forged the largest empire the world has ever seen.
Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman
Vintage Books; ISBN: 0394755111
In 30 short anecdotes, Mark Salzman gives a compassionate and humorous
account of teaching English and studying martial arts in Changsha, a provincial
capital in central China shortly after the opening of the country in the
early 1980s.
Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an
Erotic Tradition by Beverley Jackson
Ten Speed Press, 1988; ISBN: 0898159571
Jackson’s fascinating and detailed account of the thousand-year-old
practice of Chinese foot binding is accompanied by personal interviews
of women with bound feet and an extensive collection of photos, old and
new, of the foot-binding process, the embroidered shoes, and the folklore
surrounding this now discarded tradition.
The Devil's Horsemen
by James Chambers
Cassell, 1988; ISBN: 0304321885
Chambers writes about the Mongolian invasion of Eastern Europe telling
the story from the Mongol perspective with rich details of Mongolian cavalry
tactics and battle strategies. I wonderfully concise and detailed
military history of a fascinating people who conquered Asia and the Middle
East and very nearly conquered the West as well.
Women of Mongolia by Martha
Avery
Avery
Press, 1996; ISBN: 0937321052
A collection of photos, interviews, and anecdotes highlighting the
changing roles of women in Mongolia today.