Great Flowing River A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.John Balcom teaches at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His Columbia University Press translations include Cao Naiqian’s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (2009); Huang Fan’s Zero and Other Fictions (2011); and Yang Mu’s Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet (2015).
An inspiring life story of unvanquished resilience.
Kirkus Reviews
A personal memoir set against the history of modern China and Taiwan. . . . From coming of age during China’s war with Japan to her eventual move to Taiwan, Chi’s story remains both intimate and historically connected.
World Literature Today
The Great Flowing River is a grand memoir. It tells a story of loss, suffering, fortitude, and the nobility of sacrifice. It is a personal narrative that reflects the fate of the Chinese nation, especially the fate of those who were driven away from their homeland and managed to survive elsewhere with integrity and dignity. There is a calmness and tremendous power in the wise narrative voice, whose resonance lingers long after the last page is turned.
- Ha Jin, author of <i>Waiting</i> and other novels,
An engaging read for those interested in memoir, 20th-century Chinese and Taiwanese history, and Chinese culture.
Library Journal
The Great Flowing River is one of the great memoirs of modern China. Telling the story of one woman's odyssey through the twentieth century, this is not just a deeply moving account of Chi Pang-yuan and her family, but a window into how the Chinese people came through the trauma of war and turmoil, and created a new set of civilized values in their aftermath.
- Rana Mitter, author of <i>Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945</i>,
This is a memoir of epic proportions. Chi’s work is a testimony of this tremendous historical period that is the long twentieth century for the Chinese and the Taiwanese peoples. The English translation of this epochal memoir is most certainly significant.
- Letty Chen, author of <i>Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity</i>,
I don’t know of any other memoir in English that is quite like this. It is of enormous significance because it adds so much for those with an interest in the Republic of China in both China and Taiwan.
- J. Megan Greene, author of <i>The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization</i>,
The Great Flowing River is a compelling account of life in a war zone, the perils of mass migrations and all the artifices of revolution.
- Paoi Wilmer, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
The autobiography is highly readable, with all the historical ups and downs delivered in a clear, calm, and sensitive voice. John Balcom, a seasoned and award-winning translator of Chinese literature, has rendered the original text in an elegant flow of English with his own creative touch. This authentic and powerful biography will be a good read for any scholar or general reader who is interested in modern East Asian history, literature and culture, or women’s experience in a non-Western context. Scholars who work on the Chinese Northeast, the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, or modern Taiwanese history and literature will find the book particularly helpful. In addition, the book or excerpted chapters would be useful as an assigned text for classes on modern East Asia.
- Miya Xie, China Review International
A bestseller in Chinese, and here translated by John Balcom, The Great Flowing River takes an extensive look at a transitional time in Chinese and Taiwanese history, especially when it comes to education and literature.
Asian Review of Books
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.John Balcom teaches at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His Columbia University Press translations include Cao Naiqian’s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (2009); Huang Fan’s Zero and Other Fictions (2011); and Yang Mu’s Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet (2015).