China Books

I never had an interest to go to China. It just seemed like some distant fantasy. But when I was required to pick a book from my high school book report, I picked Postcards From China. I must admit that I partly picked it because it was written by my Aunt, but it was no mistake. This book journies through the lives of a family trying to survive in a country where the language is foreign and the culture is out of the box. As I finished the book I realized how badly I want to go to China. I want to experience being in a different culture, and being with different people. More than that, I want to go to China show the love of Jesus to the people who are suffering there. The pain of the people that is expressed through this book opened my eyes to see how lost this world is. This is an amazing book, and it is worth your time to read it. I am a sophomore who is not a big fan of reading, but I am telling you, it is amazing.

The Postcards came from Xiamen, China's incomparable "garden city". I received Sandy's Postcards one by one, as they were written, and I was one of the people who urged her to publish them in book form so that others could also enjoy Megan, Larry, Sandy, and Xiamen. Sandy's writing is just like her voice---she is a great communicator. I was worried that her editor might tamper with her writing, thereby obscuring her inimitable style, but thankfully, this did not happen. The editor had the good sense to leave her excellent writing intact.
The story is a charming and compelling one, but is Xiamen and its people really like Sandy has described, or is this fiction masquerading as non-fiction? Well, I was so enchanted with what I was hearing about Xiamen that I went and visited the Slavins twice, for a total of ten weeks. The Xiamen you will read about is truly the Xiamen I experienced first hand.
Do something nice for yourself---read this book!

The most impressive part of the story was when the Slavins moved to China so their adopted daughter can reconnect with her country of birth. Their open hearts and eyes made the book a joy to read. I liked its down-to-earth view of life in China that any American can understand. Even though China is westernizing at a dizzying pace, their daily adjustments to life in China reminded me of the many conveniences we take for granted in the U.S. Their spirit of adventure was inspiring. A fun read!

Sandra Slavin relates their family's China experience with an astute eye. She paints pictures with charm, wit and a insight and portrays a culture that eventually impacted their lives in unforeseen ways.

This book was first written in English I think, by the foreign journalist who interviewed Pasqualini (they spoke in French I guess, Pasqualini's mother tong; but Pasqualini spoke English also). Then it was possibly translated in French only afterwards ? Anyway, the book is available for reading in French for free right in Beijing, in the nice library of the nice new French cultural centre, opened in 2005, freely opened to everybody, including Chinese citizens, in the South-West corner of the Workers' stadium (well, you have to pay a subscription, except if you read the book in staying in the library, where there are good armchairs; and of course you have to read French). Maybe there is also a copy in English available in the excellent and famous private library & bar called The Bookworm, in Beijing, not far from the French Cultural Centre ? Otherwise, except under this French diplomatic shield, I guess that the book is forbidden in all the libraries in China, in the language departments of universities for example ? and has never been translated in Chinese as well ?
In fact the author is named only by his French name in the book in French, Jean Pasqualini (from his Corsican father's name). I guess that if he had had a Caucasian face, and not a Chinese mother, he would have never spent all these years in a Chinese prison and would have been just expelled or at least been better treated. The irony was that, even if he spoke perfect Mandarin when he went to prison, he couldn't read Chinese. At least a benefit of his prison years was that he learned how to read Chinese. What is fascinating in this book is to discover the meticulous and permanent ideological work on all these prisoners, and on Pasqualini in particular. I was expecting mainly stories of harsh life, beatings, physical torture, etc. but no, the key issue for Pasqualini was to play the permanent ideological game, or some kind of mental torture in fact, where you really have to accept to be brainwashed, at least act as if you were, otherwise you can't survive. Or course there were immense sufferings, but the irony is that they seem mainly coming from planned hunger in the prison, but that due to famine in China, prisoners seemed, even if half starving, almost better off than most peasants who happen to be described in the book (precisely in the book some high ranking guy at one stage visits the prison and complains about this situation, saying that prisoners are treated too well during the famine). When you read this book you understand much better what may have been the life during the culture revolution later on. For example, with what Pasqualini calls "l'épreuve" (ordeal ?), when tens or hundreds of people shout at you, again and again during days, during hours, when you have to publicly confess your (most of the time imaginary) horrible ideological crimes. Everybody interested in China should have read this book (as well as Harry Wu's book). A must read.

By the way the author's Chinese name BAO Ruo-Wang doesn't appear on the cover of the French edition of this book, only Jean PASQUALINI. One can easily understand the better marketing effect of a Chinese name for selling a book about the "Laogai" (name used for the past and present Chinese gulag). I don't know why they didn't use as well his Chinese name for the French edition in 1974 ?
The not-so-weird thing (in Maoist Paris in the 60's) is that it was an American journalist who, in Paris, was interested in Pasqualini's story in the first place, when Pasqualini was brought back by the French authorities from China in 1964 (at the reopening of French-Chinese diplomatic relations). He had been imprisoned since 1957 in Beijing on charge of having been a spy (what he was more or less for the US or UK military, at least before 1949). The US journalist who in fact wrote the book in interviewing Jean Pasqualini in Paris is Rudolph Chelminski (source Penguin's authors biographies: Rudolph Chelminski has written articles for dozens of national magazines, ranging from People and Time to The Atlantic Monthly, and his prior books include The French at Table. He holds a degree from Harvard and has studied at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. Raised in Connecticut, he began living in Europe more than thirty years ago, when Life magazine dispatched him to Paris.)
Pasqualini himself says in the introduction that he was not good at writing. Of course a large part of, if not all, the merit of the story goes to Pasqualini.
Apparently the book is 'out of print' in English ? But according to amazon.fr, the book, even if published in 1974 in France is still available in French at its famous French publisher's, Gallimard. It is called "Prisonnier de Mao; Sept ans dans un camp de travail en Chine" by Jean Pasqualini and Rudolph Chelminski. The book was probably ostracized in the 60's and 70's by the French Maoist and pro-China intelligentsia, very influent in Paris (including well-known journalists, thinkers, politicians, praising Maoism and the great Culture Revolution), that's why the book is probably still available in Gallimard's warehouse... (not joking..., the famous French speaking Belgian sinologist and great writer, Pierre Rickmans, aka Simon Leys, who wrote against the Culture Revolution at the time, in the early 70's, had to leave Paris for Canberra to find peace if not save his life !)
Jean Pasqualini became a quiet Chinese teacher and translator, in France, after 1964. He died in 1997 at 71. "In 1992 he, along with Harry Wu and Jeff Fiedler, became a founding director of the Laogai Research Foundation. Illness incapacitated Mr. Pasqualini in many of the years since, but he did write a number of essays for Laogai Report, including "Beijing's Old Trick" for the February 1995 edition." [...]
Well, do read the book if you can find it. Amongst many other merits, the story is well told and well written; it's really like a good novel, and you won't leave the book until you finish it 2-3 hours later.

I've been doing China-related stuff for more than three decades. This book, which I've read three times, remains one of my favorites. No other book captures the ghastly and bizarre nature of Chinese Communism better. It's a breezy read and also touches not just on issues related to China but to all of mankind as well. Colleges and high schools should use it.

It's a crying shame that this book is not currently in print. It offers a fascinating inside look at the Chinese penal system during the trying times of the Great Leap Forward and Sino-Soviet split. Bao Ruo-Wang never loses his ironic detachment and eye for detail. Despite the grim subject matter, "Prisoner of Mao" is actually a very funny book. There's a laugh on every page!

Highly readable account of the author's seven years in the Chinese gulag ("reform through labor") beginning in 1957. Period included the "three years of suffering," when the disastrous results of the Great Leap Forward and poor harvests starved 30 million or more. Labor camp prisoners were used for experiments with anti-famine foods such as paper pulp and marsh plankton food substitutes. Bao Ruo-wang was half Corsican and he was freed in 1964 following French diplomatic recognition of China.

I am like The Rice Sprout Song.Eileen chang is the greatest writer of China.

Another one of Eileen Chang's translations of her Chinese works, this is an excellent novel about China's farmers and the struggles they encounter as a result of Maoism in China. This is my second favorite novel of hers, behind Naked Earth. Unlike the latter, The Rice-Sprout Song is much easier to find, and now includes an excellent introduction by David Wang.

The Old Master who collected Chinese wisdom in Tao Te Ching some 2,500 years ago wrote pithily:
"The sage never has a mind of his own;
He considers the minds of the common people to be his mind."

Today, he would not change a word for the sage: the sheng-jen in Beijing. True, modern China, a colossus of 1.2 billion people, is fronted by Shanghai and other booming, skyscrapered, fiber-opticked, globally connected metropolises. But beyond the urban fronts, reality is 900 million peasants--75% of the total population--living a rural, feudal life with Marxist trappings. What gives the Beijing mandarin insomnia is not rhetorical exchanges with America like we saw earlier in 2001. No, it's much more the primal fear bad weather and bad crops might visit hunger upon the 900 million--if the peasants go hungry, the government goes down and chaos surely follows. Chaos, for the Chinese mind, being anathema (off the Tao, hindering wu-wei).

The Rice-Sprout Song by Eileen Chang (1920-95), first published in 1955, deftly evokes rural Chinese life in the early days of the Maoist Revolution. Though well known to Chinese readers everywhere, Chang's work has only recently been in print again for English readers. In 1998, three years after her death, the University of California reissued this novel and a companion work, The Rouge of the North.

Chang, a giant in Chinese literature, wrote and lived a self-proclaimed aesthetic of desolation, especially after immigrating to the United States in the mid-Fifties. A Garbo-esque recluse, Chang was found dead in a barren Hollywood, California, studio apartment. Her will asked that her body be "cremated instantly, the ashes scattered in any desolate spot, over a fairly wide area, if on land." If Chang, as she said, was haunted by thoughts of desolation, then The Rice-Sprout Song shows a corollary to her artistic hunger: Her writing transcends any simple, obvious political interpretation of her material. Neither pro-Mao nor anti-Mao, but a literary meditation on peasant lives caught up in the ironies of political will and human need when hunger stalks the countryside.

The Rice-Sprout Song gets underway with a common family event: a wedding. Gold Flower of T'an Village will marry Plenty Own Chou of neighboring Chou Village. This might not be a joyous occasion for Chang begins to summon the isolation and loneliness of village life: "Sunlight lay across the street like an old yellow dog, barring the way. The sun had grown old here." Yes, even that universal restorer of the spirit--the sun--can be menacing. That all is not right when the festive wedding occasion arrives is shown by note of the "inferior food" that of necessity is served. Big Uncle complains that he cannot see the rice in his bowl of watery gruel. This jho mush--anything but solid rice--becomes one thematic particular for hunger that haunts this novel.

If Chang were less an artist, the reader's easy-to-hate nemesis would be Comrade Wong, the kan pu of T'an Village, the local representative of the Party. For it is Comrade Wong's unenviable task to carry out a political action showing support for the People's Liberation Army in their fight on the Korean front: a gift the peasants cannot afford: half a pig and forty catties of rice cakes from each family. But before this leads to the tragic end to The Rice-Sprout Song, we follow, in flashback, Wong as he finds the love of his life, Shah Ming. He loses her in the vagaries of fighting for the PLA. When at last he sees her again, she waves from a window in the facade of a collapsed building on the battlefield. Inside the building, Wong sees only rubble and overhead, at the window, nothing. He knows his hallucination proved Shah Ming was saying good-bye from beyond. For Comrade Wong, fate gave him nothing but the Party.

We also see dramatic irony when Comrade Ku, the city intellectual, comes to live in T'an Village, to learn the ways of the peasants. His goal of a movie script about village life suffers from writer's block; he habitually sneaks off to another town to buy food to eat on the sly. And when Big Aunt, who spouts Communist rhetoric that is appallingly upbeat, breaks down in a fit of anger. She says they are all empty-bellied and she doesn't care if she is reported. And when Moon Scent, the wife of Gold Root, returns from working three years as a maid in Shanghai. A force to be reckoned with, Moon Scent, in an act of righteous anger, gives this tragedy its capstone.

Essential reading that shares the texture, the heritage, and the yearnings of nearly a billion of our fellow earthlings, search out this reissue of The Rice-Sprout Song. As one t'ai chi ch'uan teacher said, "Perfect doesn't exist. Near-perfect does." The Rice-Sprout Song is a "near-perfect" evocation of the common people in the timeless Middle Kingdom.

Rice Sprout Song is possibly the best work of literature I have ever read. It was first recommended to me as descriptive of the collectivization era shortly after the 1949 Revolution in China, a classic tale between the state and the individual. It is a spellbinding, troubling work, and is almost impossible to believe that it was Eileen Chang's first work in English. The language she uses is sparse, beautiful and conveys greatest impact after the last page is read, and the cover closed. It is more than an interesting story about conflict between the state and the individual. It is an unsettling story of physical starvation and the death of hope and love.

I used the sixth (2006) edition of the ROUGH GUIDE TO HONG KONG & MACAU during a recent two-week stay in Hong Kong. Reading it before my trip, I found it to portray Hong Kong as a fascinating and immense place to visit, where one can spend weeks covering all manner of out of the way places. This was a great contrast to the Berlitz guide to Hong Kong I also took along, which make the region seem like a two-day stop where the only interesting thing is shopping.

There's a chapter each on Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories, and the outlying islands. The description of each town or wilderness inside these divisions takes the form of a walking tour. The authors guide the reader through the streets well, and like all Rough Guides the maps here are clear and accurate. I unfortunately didn't visit Macau, so I cannot comment on that portion of the guide.

I didn't use the accommodation listings, as like many travelers I prefer to stay with local from hospitality associations for closer contact with the local culture. As the Rough Guide does not cover this option, I have removed one star from my rating. However, there does indeed seem to be an adequate amount of both budget and luxury accommodation, with the stops in between of course. The needs of shoestring travelers are not given short shrift here, as in the offerings of all too many guidebook publishers. I did use the recommendations for restaurants, which do a great job of steering travelers to hole-in-the-wall eateries with little English signage which might not look fancy, but which show you the real Hong Kong in a way flashier places don't.

At the end of the book one finds a history of the region, as well as some general information on Hong Kong culture. The history soberly discusses the uncertainty of Hong Kong's true autonomy after the handover, while other guidebooks I read gave only a rosy view. In these appendices there's also a list of films and books, fiction and non-fiction, about Hong Kong, letting the reader learn more about the place before he visits.

If you're an independent travelver going to Hong Kong, I'd certainly recommend ROUGH GUIDE TO HONG KONG & MACAU. I find it better than the Lonely Planet guide due to the range of its listings and the quality of its maps, and light years ahead of the paltry listings and assumption that the reader is a millionaire which one finds in many other guidebook lines.

This book gives ou a nice overview of the region, and incredible specific tips for visiting HK and Macau.

Great walking tours are included in this Rough Guide to Hong Kong and Macau-the directions are explicit and easy to follow and the places to which we ventured exceeded expectations. There were GREAT shopping tips for a shopping mecca and we scored on several fronts! This is a great way to introduce yourself to Hong Kong and Macau before you get there and a great way to bring what you read into reality. A must-buy for travel to Asia.

I recommend this guide, it was quite useful.

The descriptions of various areas were quite accurate, and the maps were mostly very good. The one of Macau seemed to have some minor errors, but that place is very confusing to walk around, so it could have been me. Anyway, you want the maps in this book or something pretty good, because the free tourist map is basically worthless.

I really like Rough Guides, because their reviews are very honest and balanced, and they are excellent about cross-referencing recommended locations, restaurants, hotels, etc and maps in each book. This guide is up to the same high standards, so it was very easy to use.

I would recommend that the walking tours guide (available for free at the airport, etc) is a good supplement to this guide. I used it extensively.

this is a great book to have it is very easy to read and learn the samoan language.

I have personally used this book many times at work to find the meaning of Samoan words. It is written very well, with all of the diacritical marks - including the ÿokina (glottal stop) and kahako (macron), to allow for correct pronounciation. The book is beautifully bound in a neat hard cover, with burgundy red as the main colour, and with a yellow flower motif running down the side, and a yellow title line, "Samoan Dictionary". Go check it out! Itÿs worth the price. Soifua! -Kaliko Trapp, Hilo, Hawaiÿi

This is the best Samoan dictionary I've used! Besides its qualities already mentioned, it also has sample sentences for each word. It gives all definitions for the words, and definitions are precise. Don't settle for anything less!

25 years ago, I arrived at my school site as a Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa. I soon figured out that the key to having a good experience was to learn Samoan. This dictionary was a dear friend in that process. While I was immersed in Samoan every day, I used this dictionary and whatever written matter I could find for a couple of hours every day to supplement the spoken Samoan I was learning. My Samoan eventually got to be pretty good for a Palagi, and this dictionary was a great help. Faafetai tele lava ia G. B. Milner.

Shanghi Quartet found me in the footsteps of Min Zhan Lu. I found the book riveting - couldn't lay it down. I wanted to lift
the characters out of the book and spend some time with them over tea. This book is destined as a best seller.

This is simply a beautiful book. I read it on a long flight to Australia and kept turning to my travel companion to say, "I love this book. You have to read this book."

When I got to my conference, I gave the book to the first person I met who was also writing about the people of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I wanted to share it with everyone.

So, now I'm on-line to get a new copy. I don't want to be without it.

Shanghai Quartet is a wonderful book that gives a honest portrayl of life in China over the last century. Unlike other books of its kind, it gives voice to three generations of Chinese women and their struggles through the various political regimes.

This memoir also gives voice to a generation of Chinese immigrants who immigrated to the US in the early 80's. This generations has thus far been very silent and this book provides an accurate account of their experience.

In addition, Shanghai Quartet tells of a Catholic and aristocratic family in Shanghai that we rarely see in other books. I highly recommend this complex book -- it was a true joy to read!

I meant to save this book for an upcoming long air flight, but after the first two pages, I couldn't put it down. Min-Zhan Lu's compelling stories of her life and that of her grandmother, nanny, and mother are much like her scholarship in composition studies: rigorous, sensitive, thought-provoking. She depicts herself and the other women in her family as devoted to crossings, travel, immigration, and shows what strengths and challenges arise out of such lives. As she tells and revises and retells these stories, she looks for hints and strategies for doing better to recognize those strengths and handle those challenges. Her quest to compose possible lives, for herself and her daughter, rendered in exquisite prose, inspires us to see our lives as writing projects, always open to rethinking and revision.

It's like reading Proust's Rememberance of Times Past, but not so long. Each detail is mined for its resonances, memories, connections, meaning in the past and in the future. What's the meaning of her parents' clasped hands? What does it mean to drink green tea? Why do people we barely knew sometimes come to mean so much to us? So much meaning in the small details of everyday life.

It's a great book for a book group to read - if you're like me, you will be dying to talk about it with friends as soon as you finish it. It's the best thing I've read this year, and I read a lot.

Prior to this book, I didn't know much about the Jews who fled to China during WWII. This was an interesting and eye opening book. The story line follows a young girl and her family as they flee Austria and move to Shanghai, China. When the Japanese take over Shanghai, Jews are forced to live in an isolated part of the city guarded by soldiers. The living conditions are horrid. Many die. I highly recommend this book to anyone, young and old, studying the Holocaust.

Sometimes fiction is truer than memoir. In reading a memoir, the reader is outside the story, looking in; but in good fiction, the reader enters the story and experiences it almost as if there. With her newest book: Shanghai Shadows, Lois Ruby conjures up the magic of "being there." The setting of the book may be Shanghai, but the real story is human nature.
Ilse, her older brother Erich, and their mother and father have come to the awful realization that Austria is no place for a Jewish family. It is time to get out, but to where? There is only one possible place, Japanese occupied China--or Shanghai. At first, conditions are tolerable. As the political situation deteriorates and the United States enters the war, the immigrant population is imprisoned in a ghetto where the inhabitants have to deal with near starvation and an odious, cruel, but eccentric keeper of the gate. But it is the relationship that develops between Ilse and the little Chinese street-boy, Liu that make this refuge story so outstanding. Filled with daring resistance activities in which she and her brother participate, and inhabited by wonderfully drawn characters like Ilse's parents-- once proud and proper upper class Viennese Jews who evolve realistically as their fortunes change--this book is highly recommended.
Ages 11-14.
Reviewed by Rachel Kamin

Shanghai Shadows is another great read from Lois Ruby. The plot and setting are novel as well as well-researched. The main character Ilse is complex--at times not too admirable but always honest.

Recommended for mature readers--too old for most young children.

For suspense and surprises, twists and turns, no one invents plots like Lois Ruby. Shanghai Shadows covers six years in the life of Ilse Shpann, her brother, Erich, and their parents - six years as "stateless refugees" in Shanghai, to which they have fled from Nazi-occuped Vienna. Amidst intensely realistic evocations of the sights, sounds, smells, and diverse population of the city, Ilse matures from a willful child to a courageous, self-sacrificing (but still willful) young woman. Her acerbic sense of humor and love of adventure sustain her as conditions of life for Jews and everyone else go from bad to worse. Ilse and Erich both work for a resistance group; their father, an unemployed violinist, grows apathetic; their proper mother is the iron will that keeps together and alive until a secret from Mrs. Shpann's past shatters the family. So eventful a plot is held together by sparkling dialogue and superb characterization, with major and minor characters all interacting believably as well as coherently. The grimness of the Shpann's six years in Shanghai never overwhelms the story because it is mitigated by flashes of humor, humanity, and Ilse's indomitable spirit. Ruby is the author of Swindletop and The Moxie Kid among other books. The talent that was glimpsed in those reaches fulfillment here, in a historical novel that should not be missed! Highly recommended for grades 6 - 9.
Reviewed by Linda R. Silver
Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter, Sept./Oct. 2007

Got to me in a decent enough time and nothing was wrong with the book so i would say overall pretty good.

This is the book I wish I had written. I have traveled in most of these countries and studied their history and culture. I was so thrilled to see the information pulled together and the follow-through to show the outcomes of movements and trade goods. Fascinating. Loved it!!

This book is a fantastic cultural adventure and should be read by anyone interested in cross-cultural relationships. More than a topographical description of the silk road, it is a gallop though history explaining paths taken by silk to get to Europe. It starts in prehistoric china and ends with the Karakorum highway, synthetizing in twenty chapters the reasons for the often difficult diffusion of luxury products from the Far East. The author, that evidently knows well chinese history and mentality, takes us by hand into the ancient cinese political issues as to foreign commerce, the fundamental role played by Iranians, byzantines and arabs during the Middle Ages up to the wary reciprocal opening of European and Cinese worlds due to brave and curious travelers. So we meet princesses, monks and merchants and get to know their fascinanting stories. One point of force of the book is the meticulous and modern analysis of these travel tales, so we have a critical perspective of what has come down in history and makes up our cultural background. Marco Polo get's revisited and also less well known ancient and modern travelers are cited.
Boulnois loves silk (her detailed description of materials of the old world and how they were made is enlightening)and its history, so she brings us to her country, France, and to the evolution of the silk industry in the XIX and XX century. And this somehow closes the circle of the story of this precious tissue that reached its apogeum in the last century.
The book however is much more than this and carries a great amount of information. It could be described actually as a textbook on the history of silk. It is well written even if not too easy to read, and sometimes it is a little repetitive.
I enjoyed it very much and feel enriched by its reading.

This is a fascinating coverage of a area, region call it what you may. The Silk Road has been part of the adventure stories that we have come across over many years, not knowing much about it; but we have thought that one day we might just get there ourselves.

Purchased with the idea that if I am going to visit this area, and I will in the not too distant future, this is the ideal book to read, savior and be intrigued with the Monks Warriors & Merchants that have gone before us.

If only I could pronounce the names - but then that is another book, another read.

The best I've read because of its accuracy. I normally don't read histories because they tend to be dry, but I couldn't put this one down.

Being a student of History I have read my fair share of history books. This was one of the few that held my attetion. I had trouble putting it down, and finished it in 2 readings. "Spring winds of Beijing" was a wonderful introduction to the Chinese people and their culture, and has made a lasting impression on me.

This was perhaps one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. Even though I am a student of history, I typically find non-fiction to be very dry and sometimes boring. With "Spring winds of Beijing" this was not the case. This was a wonderful way to be introduced to the Chinese people and their culture.

This book was not only a pleasure to read, it changed my understanding of the Chinese people. It gave me deeper insight into the culture of China, the problems of it's politics and instilled a fondness in me for it's people that will last. Although, it is an educational piece of literature, it reads like a novel in it's warmth, familiarity and personal touch.. I fell in love with the Chinese people and with Gail Copeland. I was delighted and surprised by it. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Tours of Shanghai's former Jewish Ghettoes are popular, and the fact they are offered gives you a sense of the importance of the Jews' contributions to the city's past. For those who want to delve deeper and who want the stories behind the stories told and the buildings seen on the tours, there is Rena Krasno's Strangers Always.

Krasno was born in Shanghai in 1923 to stateless Russian Jewish parents. Krasno lived there her entire life until expats were forced out of China in 1945. The author includes detailed, yet concise, background information--including newspaper articles and some Japanese propaganda pieces--about issues that affected her daily life during this era and her reactions to the world around her. She tries to puzzle out the truth behind the propaganda and figure out what is the real status of the war, for example. She also attempts to illustrate how the lives of the various groups of people in Shanghai intersected and how the ways in which people interacted changed.

Although the book focuses on the war years of 1942 to 1945, she provides other interesting information as well. One of the worthwhile tangents Krasno provides is the story of her parents' emigration. Her father, David Rabinovich, left Russian for Siberia, and then went on to Harbin. As the Russian Jews picked up their lives again in Harbin, they began to suffer hardships at the hands of White Russian Fascists and the Japanese. Eventually, Rabinovich and many other Jews left Harbin to try their luck in the more tolerant city of Shanghai. There, Rabinovich met and married his wife and became the editor of a Russian Jewish newspaper called Our Life. He also served as the honorary secretary of the Shanghai Ashkenazi Jewish community. Krasno's mother owned a children's dress and toy shop called Peter Pan. Luckily, during Ghettoization this little shop kept the family fed. One of the fun anecdotes about the store involves writer and personality Emily Hahn, who shopped there for clothing for her pet gibbon.

Other notable side stories include the history of the Opium trade, the background of the Bund, and the story of Jewish immigrant Silas Hardoon and his impact on the city.

Although the book deals with a difficult time in Shanghai's history, Krasno's account maintains a lighthearted, youthful exuberance. Despite the air raid sirens and bombs going off around her, food shortages, and other hardships of wartime, young Rena remains determined to pursue her education and insists on having as much fun as is humanly possible under these unusual conditions. Fortunately, she wrote down all of these elements of her life in Shanghai for us to contemplate in the 21st Century.

Strangers Always is a quick and satisfying read. I found it better than some of the other war time memoirs for its style, tone, and level of details. The book will appeal, of course, to readers interested in the history of Jews in Shanghai, but also to readers interested in WWII era Shanghai or immigrant life during the boom years in general.

This book is the memoir of a young woman from a Russian Jewish family growing up in Shanghai during World War II. The setting is multicultural, multilingual and multiracial, and the author provides fascinating details from the history of a city that no longer exists. Shanghai had Chinese, White Russian, French, British, American, German, Iraqi and many other citizens. The author lived there under the Japanese occupation, but this is not a Holocaust story. Some people were interned and imprisoned, and there was some anti-Semitism, but there were no mass deportations to death camps or a "final solution" as was taking place in Europe. The city was full of refugees from many governments, including Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Fascist Italy and Franco's Spain, as well as "stateless" people, many of whom had escaped to China following the Russian Revolution. The author documents publications of the day, Japanese propaganda, and news from the U.S. and its allies. She also explains well what happened to various people later, what rumors turned out to be true or false, and gives her sources. First-rate research, good writing, and an interesting story add up to a great read. I add that I read this after becoming interested in pre-Communist Shanghai after reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans. If you liked that book, try a real-life version!

This book is the memoir of a young woman from a Russian Jewish family growing up in Shanghai during World War II. The setting is multicultural, multilingual and multiracial, and the author provides fascinating details from the history of a city that no longer exists. Shanghai had Chinese, White Russian, French, British, American, German, Iraqi and many other citizens. The author lived there under the Japanese occupation, but this is not a Holocaust story. Some people were interned and imprisoned, and there was some anti-Semitism, but there were no mass deportations to death camps or a "final solution" as was taking place in Europe. The city was full of refugees from many governments, including Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Fascist Italy and Franco's Spain, as well as "stateless" people, many of whom had escaped to China following the Russian Revolution. The author documents publications of the day, Japanese propaganda, and news from the U.S. and its allies. She also explains well what happened to various people later, what rumors turned out to be true or false, and gives her sources. First-rate research, good writing, and an interesting story add up to a great read. I add that I read this after becoming interested in pre-Communist Shanghai after reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans. If you liked that book, try a real-life version!

I wanted to share my personal experiences in Shanghai both before World War II and during the Japanese occupation (1923-1949). I base my book on my private diaries, notes taken during radio broadcasts, and years of research. My father, who at the time was the Editor of the best known Jewish weekly in Shanghai and Honorable Secretary of the Russian Jewish community, put all his personal papers at my disposal. This book describes the end of imperialism in Shanghai and, I believe, is of interest to the general public, Jews and non-Jews alike. Rena Krasno, author.