Topic: China March

Everyone wonders about the future of China with the approach of the 66th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC. As well-known Chinese author Lu Xun wrote in Hometown: ‘Hopefulness and hopelessness are not authentic. It is like the path on the ground: there is no path on the ground in the beginning; it forms when more people walk the same course.’ The path to the future is founded by books.

This issue of Books & the City will introduce five books of different genres, including proses and a novel that illustrate Chinese people’s sentiment, reportage and social sciences books that explore serious issues, and a photograph album that record the beauty of the Chinese landscape.

Experienced American journalist Evan Osnos lived in China for eight years and gained a more profound insight than many natives. The book gathers hundreds of interviews he conducted, hundreds of pages of court records he obtained, and numerous reports from the press and websites he took reference from in these eight years. On top of this, Osnos truthfully delineates the bearing of this superpower with delicate description alongside appealing narratives and stories from various perspectives.

The eloquence of the book is grounded in Osnos’ interviews in person; for example, he participated in a European tour with middle-class people to comprehend Chinese visitors’ psychology and attended the dinners launched by dating websites to understand the anxiety of Chinese singles. Interviewees in the book include businessmen who gained instantaneous wealth, activists who defend human rights against the government, and grassroots people who contribute to society silently. The book includes the names of the interviewees and is therefore very convincing.

As an intellectual, Osnos has his own values; as a journalist, he insisted on the principle of objectivity and neutrality. When he interviewed human rights activists he faithfully reflected their fragility; when he interviewed the online social pundits supporting the government he also depicts their innocent prospects. The book won the 2014 National Book Award Winner in non-fiction in the U.S.

Born in Hong Kong and growing up in Taiwan, academic Leung Man Tao has travelled in Mainland China in recent years. He titles the prose in his collection with 44 key words. He wrote about the major social events in China of recent years which integrate to form a development blueprint of China in the 21st Century.

Leung presents in-depth observation of these major social events in addition to his scholarship in ancient and modern studies. For example, he analysed the conspicuous consumption of Internet celebrity Guo Meimei with his academic studies on rich merchants’ behaviour during the Renaissance period and a British academic study on epidemiology; he also scrutinises the Chinese Internet users’ war of words regarding patriotism and the betrayal of one’s nation citing the cases of North Korean footballer Jong Tae-Se who was born in Japan and American thinker Thomas Paine who emigrated from Britain.

A Buddhist believer, Leung is sympathetic towards the public so he has a sagacious discernment of social affairs that complies with human nature and love.

Few people could study the issue of spinsters in China with a strictly academic approach. Chinese American Leta Hong Fincher’s father is a diplomat and his mother a linguist. Both are renowned academics of Chinese studies. Fincher herself grew up in Hong Kong and entered China for the first time when she was three, achieving her doctoral degree in Sociology in Tsinghua University. She was puzzled by the fact that many single women in China were derogatorily referred to as ‘leftover women’ thus she decided to access the issue in an in-depth manner.

To approach spinsters, Fincher requested hundreds of individuals to complete detailed online questionnaires before conducting thorough and comprehensive interviews with hundreds of respondents. She also perused many official documents, news reports and legal regulations, and even compared the feminist rights of the Song Dynasty to the current situation to conclude that the wealth discrimination and domestic violence that the ‘leftover women’ are now being faced with originated from the inherent problems of the current system.

A foreign correspondent over the years, Fincher penned a truthful and appealing account in an academic report of more than 200 pages. Interviewees with fictitious names articulated their pitiful predicament meticulously; a divorced woman recounted the frustrating domestic violence she experienced in her real name. This is a magnificent survey on gender studies of the PRC.

The Fat Years is a novel which narrates the zenith of China as the global economy hits rock bottom. However, a month vanishes into the air prior to the zenith. Nobody cares about the truth - except the protagonist who attempts to search for the lost memory. Nowadays, we may take this zenith for granted but the novel was composed in 2009 when China had not actually ‘emerged’.

Chan Koonchung was born in Shanghai and grew up in Hong Kong. He resided in Taipei and is now living in Beijing. He realistically depicts China’s heydays with proliferative income, prosperous press publishing, diversified religions and docile residents under government rule, even its Gross National Happiness tops the world. The prophecy in the book represents every Chinese person’s wish so even the reader may reckon that the protagonist’s enquiry has brought contempt upon himself.

The work of contemporary literature represents the eccentric phenomena in Chinese society and has become an introduction to China. The book has been translated into over 10 languages.

Tom Carter, an American author who taught English in China, did not decide to analysis the situation of China elaborately with words. Instead, he had readers memorise its magnificent landscape through photos. This photographic album of more than 600 pages is the result of his 4-year trip to 33 Chinese provinces. His lens captures historic heritage and modern architecture, an old lady with bound feet and a maiden with pierced body parts, as well as lavish shoppers and beggars on the street.

The book is divided into chapters according to where the photographs were taken. The preface of each chapter is different: the author depicts historical allusion to the place, shares heart-warming condolences on a train in icy Heilongjiang or composes a poem for the Zhejiang landscape in various chapters. He pays attention to people of different ethnicity of the soil: from the Hui people in Xinjiang to Tibetan people in Tibet, Filipino domestic workers and the Indo-Pakistan community in Hong Kong, native construction workers and an old Hakka woman in Macao have all become subjects in his album.

Not only does this photographic album reflect the social reality of large-scale construction and the disparity between rich and poor, but also portrays peaceful and happy faces.