China Witness--by XinRan

It is a collection of interviews with Chinese people. Different people from different provinces, having different political background, may have different stories.

People talk about the past, the political activities and some terrible experience forced by the Party. But I don't think they are willing to tell the truth from the bottom of their heart. Since they are still live in China and people's talk are still under Party's control, they are afraid to say what they would like to say.

Thus this book is not as good as I have expected for it lack of detail and deep analysis of China's history. Maybe the book will be better if the author interviews with Chinese who are living outside Mainland China. However, it still provide some interesting insight into the elders' past experience.

Trafficking in old books--by Anthony Marshall

This is not a guideline that help you to run a secondhand bookshop. But this is a very interesting book that can excite those booklovers, like you,like me.

I can't explain why I prefer secondhand bookshop to bookshops which sell new books, I can't explain the feelings. Maybe because I can directly deal with the owner and may have interesting conversations; maybe I feel more comfortable when I stay with the old books and elder people (most 2nd-hand booksellers are 50 or 60 something);or maybe because I can find lots of good books in much cheaper price.

Someone says, books will die out in the future and internet resource will replace the paperbooks. I don't believe that and I even dream of opeaning my own 2nd-hand bookshop(may turn to be true in 10 years or 50 years?). It is different from the bookshop in the internet, it is more real, more interacting,more interesting.I used to operate an e-bookshop and earned some money, but I would prefer face-to-face dealings. Talking on the internet is dull and most customers can compare your price immediately with other online booksellers(force you to set a low price).

I want to know more about 2nd-hand bookshops, look into the booksellers' feeling and experience, so I searched the library and then I found this book. The author, Anthony Marshall, is running a 2nd-hand bookshop, calls Alice Book, in Melbourne. This book gave me great pleasure while I was reading it. Have you ever found a fried egg or bacon(already dried, of course) in the old books?Do you know how the 2nd-hand bookseller set their price? And can you imagine the life where you live above your shop?

This book is for the readers who love books or interested in 2nd-hand bookshops.It won't disappoint you!!

evil text books

I always regard text book as a commercial good which is different from other books.

For one thing, who can say 'reading text books is a great joy or enjoyment'? Or, 'I have a hobby of reading text books'? Ok, admit it, we all hate text books!

In Australian,text books are changed every year. The content may haven't been changed a lot, but the cover, footnotes, questions and presenting order may be changed. Students have to spend more than $300 to buy text books every semester which is a great burden to family. But we can't find 2nd-hand text books--will booksellers keep those text books which can't be used in the next year?

Moreover, text books are heavy, over weight, fat and large, in need to keep fit. I really don't want to carry a text book for reading! I have to say I only use my text book when I prepare the exams.

Text books have no value to keep, generally speaking. Few text books are kept for they will increase value in 5,10 or 100 years.

I always seperate text book from my real worth-reading books. I hate to mix them together. But when I mention that I love reading, lots of my Chinese friends would said 'wo!!' and normally think that what I love to read are text books and I must be a boring guy. Maybe Chinese people are poisoned by too many text books and tent to regard all the books are in the purpose of studying.

So evil the text books!

Finding out-by Elspeth Sandys (New Zealand)

It is the early 1950s. In Knox Bay, a remote part of New Zealand, people are scarred by war and steeped in a repressive puritan tradition. But all these are changed by an arrival of an “outsider”, a new teacher, Tom.

Tom uses a different approach to teach. He breaks the discrimination of orphan and brings out a great potential of acting of Albert. He helps children to know more about history of Maori and English settlers.

Tom’s students start to find out something about themselves. Mary has a sexual experience with a boy and conscious of her new adult status; Jennie find herself fall for her teacher and finally tell Tom about the sexual harassment by her uncle; Avril thought she has pregnant but the result tells her that it is not. She has learnt the bitterness and tries to take responsibility for her body.

Tom has found out some to do about himself. He cares about Jennie but has to leave for England to start a new life. Maybe in the other continent he can know more about the history and himself.

I was breathed in the conversation of the two girls, Jennie and Mary. They imagine the love life of the new teacher; pretend themselves as Tom and his lover. In those conversation they know more about their bodies, sexuality and love.

I remember when I was a little girl, I sometimes imagine I will fall in love with the handsome schoolteacher, or a pirate, or a foreigner. It is the girl’s imagination that helps us to grow up, to start our love and to know more about our desire.

P.S It is really hot in Sydney and I have no mood to write. Just mark down some feeling after I finish this book.

The Thousand Miles Without a Cloud-by SunShuYun

Last nigh I can not sleep (insomnia?!), so I got up and finished the book at 3am.

The author grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Each night she listened to her grandmother’s forbidden Buddhist prayers and she became interested in Xuanzang after she read the book Monkey King, given by her grandmother.

As the Revolution failed, the author began a search for her own beliefs and to discover more about the monk, Xuanzang by traveling from China along the Silk Road, through dangerous parts of Asia to India. This book gives us a vivid, fascinating insight into China and its history, and what Buddhism is in different area and different people’s mind.

I always want to know more about Cultural Revolution in China. My parents have told me what they have suffered and how crazy the people are in that time. But I feel not enough. I can read very little information in newspapers and books in China because Chinese government doesn’t want its people know the true of the Communist history.

I was free and I had not suffered like my forebears and my fellow-countrymen. But like so many Chinese, I felt strongly that something was missing. The idea of a confirming faith dies hard. I was increasingly unsure of where I was going, why I was doing the things I did; I was at a loss, and pondering. (P41)

I have the same lost feeling like the author. I may not have the chance to do the same things like her to find out more of the past of our country, but I can read books to know. Lucky I am, I have come to Australia and have found a lot of books about Chinese history. This book is one of the excellences.

Communists always say they united China and brought peace to the people. I doubt that. What about the Cultural Revolution? What about Chairman Mao’ deadly faults? Why Chinese people are prevented to discuss these kinds of matters? Yes, they did good things for our country but why they avoid admitting the faults?

Revolution in China almost pushed the people back into the abyss from which they had been saved, all in the name of Communist idea of absolute equality. The peasants, like the rest of the country, were so equal that nobody wanted to work: however hard they labored, they were paid the same. The whole nation lived on rations for more than thirty years. And then we suffered one of the worst famines in history, when over thirty million people died of starvation in the early 1960s, most of them in villages. (P282)

What caused this suffering, unprecedented in Chinese history? Never before was the whole nation, hundreds of millions of people, allowed to think only one thought, speak with one voice, read only one man’s works, be judged by one man’s criteria, Never before were our traditions so thoroughly shaken up, destroying families, setting husbands against wives, and children against parents. Never before was our society turned so completely upside down. The Party was barely in control, with all its senior members locked up or killed. Workers did not work; farmers did not produce; scientists and artists were in labor camps; not criminals, but judges, lawyers and policemen were in prison; and young men and women were sent to the countryside in droves for re-education. On top of the physical devastation, the psychological impact on everyone was even more poisonous. The Cultural Revolution brought out the worst in people. They spied on, reported, betrayed and murdered each other—the strangers, friends, comrades and families alike—and all in the name of revolution. So much hope, so much suffering and sacrifice, and for what? (P36)

Not only those who are the targets of the revolution suffered, but also those who joined the revolution got nothing but pain, regret, and confusion.

They were betrayed; they were even being blamed for what had gone wrong. The bitterness of loss was crushing and the void left in their hearts was deep. They found it impossible to cope with a past that had been cancelled and a future so uncertain. (P39)

Until now, the influences of the past have not yet disappeared. Some people who are sent to Xinjiang or some remote countryside to produce or re-educated have no chance to return home. Their children, for they can not find jobs outside the place they lived, also forced to stay.

They live in an impossible dream of returning home, and their longing has become a poison, filling them with loneliness, fear and resentment. (P141)

Many historical places or religious sites are destroyed by red-guards.

Temples in village were destroyed and the farmers used the stones to build pig-sties and houses. In Tibet, the destruction was almost total. Gone with them was a large part of our history, culture and life- a part we had denounced as antiquated, feudal and backward, a part whose value we did not know until it was gone. (P60)

In the way to unite all the nationalities in China, Communist government destroyed our religious and cultural roots. This do harm to our nation in the long run. I start to understand why Tibet and Xingjiang try to break up from mainland China. Minorities don’t admit to be ruled by Han and they do not feel the belongingness of China.

There is a song that‘56 nationalities are 56 flowers; 56 nationalities are the families of China’. It is easy to put them all in one song and one set of stamps; but to make them into one big, happy family will need more effort. (P348)

Though people suffered from the past, they try to lead a new life to their best effort. The author meets a man, Duan, who is used to be a monk before the Cultural Revolution but forced to married a woman in the revolution. He dose not return to be monk after the revolution and feels content of his poor and simple life.

Instead of blaming others and bearing grudges, Duan would always look deeply inside himself and think how he could improve. (P62)

The author finally reaches India. India is the neighbor of China and also a large population country, rapid developing. But actually they are quite different.

China and India seem to be humanity’s polar opposites. The Indians are philosophical, spiritual and transcendental, while the Chinese are practical, materialistic and down-to-earth. For the Chinese, the world we live in is all there is. Confucius told us that ‘to dedicate oneself seriously to the duties towards men, to honor spirits and gods but to stay away from them.’ For Hindus, religion dominates life. Their ultimate goal is moksha-the final liberation from this mundane and ephemeral world into blissful eternity. And they have a staggering 300 million gods and goddesses to help them achieve it. (P222)

The way Indian and Chinese people think of Buddhism is different too.

In China, people simply did what the sutras told them to do: to pray sincerely and make offerings to the best of her capacity, and leave the rest to the Buddhas and the Bodhissattvas.

Because Chinese people relay on the help of God and do nothing by themselves, government used to make people believe that Buddhism was nothing more than superstition. Even today, we regain religious freedom, the way we interpret Buddhism has not change much.

In India, Buddha was thought to be born a man and died as a man. ‘Pray to yourself, not to anyone else’. (P276) There is no other Buddha except what is inside you. Buddha himself did not approve of miracles: they were impediments to spiritual progress and the final awakening. (P295)

There is one interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching. I guess it tried to draw as many people as possible to Buddhism in the first place. Once they learn more about it, they would realize it is good for them and they would not need the extra incentives. (P274)

I try to learn Buddhism by myself and come to know that Buddhism is not only religious but also a philosophy that encourages people to find inner peace and achieve goals by ourselves.

Self-nature, complete and clear,
Like the moon in the water.
The mind in meditation, like the sky,
Ten thousand miles without a cloud. (P255)

And the most precious I learn from Buddhism is ‘Everything is impermanent’. We feel sad about the tragedy and show pity of the cultural loss. But this is the law of nature, everything is changing, no matter it is good or bad. We have to move on and content with what we have at the very moment.

There are conflicts between religion and science. Most people regard that the two are at daggers drawn, two can not exist at the same time. But I always think both religion and science are the themes of the world, people can not live without them.

I often think of Ganga as life, with science and faith as its two banks. The banks never meet but the river wouldn’t flow without them. Without science we would be back in the dark ages; but without faith life would be poorer. (P298)

We, Chinese have success at revolution and now focus on economic development. But there are still countries suffering wars and conflicts. Revolution is the common way people seek to liberate their country and sometimes it bring more suffering to people.

We have to free ourselves from the mental slavery we have grown up with. That’s our worst enemy. Revolution might be quick, but its results could not last; change had to come from people’s minds-that was the only durable solution. Had people’s mind been seized with hatred and revenge, I would have brought disaster upon this land. (P309)

The Last Chinese Chef-by Nicole Mones

I like cooking; it is a source of creation and happiness. So I am very excited to find this book: The Last Chinese Chef.

The author does a fantastic job to link a cliffhang story with Chinese cuisines and culture.

The story begins when Maggie, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husband’s estate. She has go immediately to Beijing, China. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment: to profile the rising culinary star Sam Liang.

In China, she knows that his husband has a one-night affair with a Chinese woman, Gaolan. She meets Gaolan’s child, Shuying with the help of Sam. Millions of reason that Maggie should hate her husband and angry with the Chinese woman, but she accepts this fact. She remember her husband once asked for having a child before he died but she proponed so that they never have opportunity to have a child. In Maggie’s heart, she hopes the child proved to be his husband’s and she understand the pain and helpless of Gaolan after they met. Even though the lab test proves the child belongs to the other man, not Maggie’s husband, she still provides help to Gaolan.

Meanwhile, with Sam as her guide, Maggie is drawn deep into a world of food rooted in centuries of history and philosophy. Unlike western food, the peak of Chinese cuisine is giving and sharing of food. “Great food should never be taken alone. What pleasure can a man take in fine cuisine unless he invites cherished friends, counts the days until the banquet, and composes an anticipatory poem for his letter of invitation?” Chinese people like to place all the dishes at table and every one can eat those dishes. That is sharing: food must be eaten with a group of people.

Westerners do not understand the real Chinese food. “A meal for them was nothing but food. When it came to the food of China they had their version, a limited number of dishes that always had to be made the same way with the sauces they would recognize from other restaurants. Sameness was what they wanted. They went out for Chinese food, they ordered their dishes, and they did not like them to change.” It is true that, in western countries, we can’t find out a restaurant that offer real Chinese food because chefs have to modified Chinese dishes to meet the need of westerners. So it is sad that westerners rarely understand Chinese food and culture. (I miss Chinese food so so so much!)

Different parts of China have different food and culture. Maggie comes to know that food always related to the Chinese culture and history. “The major cuisines of China were brought into being for different purposes, and for different kinds of diners. Beijing food was the cuisine of officials and rulers, up to the Emperor. Shanghai food was created for the wealthy traders and merchants. From Sichuan came food of common people, for, as we all know, some of the best-known Sichuan dishes originated in street stalls. Then there is Hangzhou, whence came the cuisine of the literati. This is food that takes poetry as its principal inspiration. From commemorating great poems of the past to dining on candlelit barges afloat upon West Lake where wine is drunk and new poems are created, Hangzhou cuisine strives always to delight men of letters. The aesthetic symmetry between food and literature is a pattern without end.”

Beside these cuisines, there are thousands of local cuisines all over China, you may have unexpected surprise while you eating in different parts of China.

Sam is participate in a banquet contest and has to prepare dishes with the help of his uncle. Maggie follows him to visit his dying uncle Xie in Hangzhou. She feels warm and comfortable in Xie’s house. The close relationship between relatives and friends is quite different from America and Maggie comes to enjoy life in China. She used to eat alone and live apart from people; she thought it is the life she wants. But after she comes to China, recalling the old life, she realizes she lost so much happiness in the past. At the end, Sam loses the contest. But he gets more than expected—love. Maggie and Sam are in love: they are brave to step out of their comfort zone.

“Eating is only the beginning of cuisine! Only the start! Flavor and texture and aroma and all the pleasure—this is no more than the portal. Really great cooking goes beyond this to engage the mind and the spirit—to reflect on art, on nature, on philosophy. Never cook food just to be eaten.”

If we cook food just to be eaten, cooking may become a repeated and uninteresting task. Food should be shared and appreciated with others--that is what Maggie learnt in China and that is what readers learnt in this book.

First day of work

I begin my first work day today in a busy cafe. Making mile tea and coffee is not as easy as I think, and too much orders make me confus.

I get very tired for several stressful hours and my hands ache!

But I am quite enjoy working with the people there who are nice to me. Have to work hard! But never stop reading!! (Hands shaking when typing)

Squeeze time to read

I really want to make a list and then read one by one. But I find it difficult for I have little spare time to read regularly.

I have to work from 6am till 7pm four days a week and I often spend one day to walk around the city to find interseting gallery. Every two week I have to go shopping. That means every week,I have only one or two days left. If I have to go to school, may be several hours left.

So I squeeze time to read:

1. Read while taking a train

2. Read when in toilet(quite enjoy the quiet moment in toilet)

3. Taking books in bag, read in case have to wait some one

4.Listen audio book while cooking,jogging and before sleep(though I always feel hard to concentrate)

5.Shorten my cooking time, cook 2 meals a time(eat one and store one in frige)

6.Have to sleep late,coffee and tea to support

........................................

Do you have any other suggestion?

I often search or idlely walk in the library to find books without any plan. Beacuse I find it quite exicited to do so: if I unexpectedly find a good book I will feel extrat happy. So I may read some books out of most reader's list. But, so what?haha~~~~

Good earth-by Pear S.Buck

I have heard of Good Earth years ago but I can’t find an English version in China. Last week, I found it in the local library among a heap of books.

Pearl S. Buck is a Noble Prize-winner and famous for her stories about Chinese farmers. What she writes in the book reflects the character and destiny of Chinese people which hasn’t changed for decades and decades. I have read some comments on Pear S. Buck in China--some Chinese people criticize her for the false and unfair description of China.

Yes, Pearl is a foreigner in China, she may not know as much as Chinese people but as far as I concern she gives an objective and profound observation of China and its conflicts. I really enjoy this books and I spend days and nights to read it!

Generally, the book presents a graphic view of China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals through a story of an honest farmer, Wang Lung. The story begins at Wang’s marriage and ends when Wang is going to die.

At that time, poor people have no money to marry a woman. They may ask the rich family to give them a slave if they don’t want to keep. Wang was given a woman call O-lan, an ugly and quiet kitchen slave in the rich family of Hwang. This woman works days and nights with Wang, even before she gives birth to the child.

For their hardship, they harvest more food than before and manage to buy a rich land from the declining family of Hwang which is overspending and consuming too much opium for years. It seems that their life will becomes better because they have the lands, the root of the farmers. But a drought destroys their dreams.

Terrible things happen. People have nothing to eat. They have to eat weed, soil, even human flesh. Everything will become evil when people are starving to death. Maybe it is hard to understand, and people may ask: is there any government aid? There is not such thing in that time and situation still not change nowadays in some remote villages.

Wang don’t want to sell his land for he believes the land can save him in the future. He leaves with the family to the southern city with a bag of beans given by his neighbor, Ching and two silvers by selling all the furniture. In order to survive, O-lan and their three children go to the street to beg and Wang pull riksha for the passengers.

It is hard but at least they survive by very little money they can get. Wang never forget his lands. It strikes his heart days by days. Later, Wang has to give up the job for it is dangerous to walk on the street before the war broke and men are at the risk of laboring for war for no return.

The war forces him back to the lands. After winter, fields become wet and good to plant. One night, Wang finds out that there is bag in O-lan’s bosom. Inside it, there are expensive jewels! O-lan takes them from the loosen brick of a rich family of southern city. Wang feels uncomfortable to keep the jewels, but his desire of land drives him to exchange the jewels for pieces of land from Hwang. Only two pearls are kept by O-lan wrapped in the bag and hidden in her bosom. Wang do not know why O-lan wants to keep them for she is ugly and never put on them as earrings.

When Wang becomes richer and richer, he feels boring and idle for he has hired people to farm the lands for him. His desire for land and gold is fulfilled and now he looks at his wife: ‘there is nothing he does not know of her and nothing new which he may expect or hope from her.’(p167) He dislikes and avoids O-lan for she is not beautiful, not with a pair of small binding feet and her eternal silence. He becomes angry with O-lan and the angry grows ‘because he remember that all the lands of his he could not have bought in a life time if O-lan had not seized the handful of jewels from the rich man’s house and if she had not given them to him when he commanded her.’

In China, man has great power in the family. Woman is just a child-birth machine and in the poor family, woman is also a good labor without paid. The relationship is not equal, even woman contribute a lot to the family she still has to obey man. The situation change in the modern China, but the root of androcentrism still exists, for example, man would prefer marry a virgin, man can’t tolerate if his wife earn more….

Wang is then looking for new entertainment. He falls in love with a harlot called Lotus in a great tea shop. The description of the desire for Lotus is brilliant, ‘Yet never could he grasp her wholly, and this it was which kept him fevered and thirsty, even if she gave him his will of her. When O-lan had come to his house it was health to his flesh and he lusted for her robustly as a beast for its mate and he took her and was satisfied and he forgot her and did his work content. But there was no such content now in his love for this girl, and there was no health in her for him. At night when she would have no more of him, pushing him out of the door petulantly, with her small hands suddenly strong on his shoulders, his silver thrust into her bosom, he went away hungry as he came. It was as though a man, dying of thirst, drank the salt water of the sea which, though it is water, yet dries his blood into thirst and yet greater thirst so that in the end he dies, maddened by his very drinking. He went in to her and he had his will of her again and again and he came away unsatisfied.’(P 181)

Wang even takes the pearls from O-lan for the new woman he likes. This act shatters O-lan’s heart and dignity and in the later life, Wang feels ashamed about himself. But at that time, Wang only cares what Lotus want and later marries her to satisfy his desire.

More than one woman under one roof is not for peace. O-lan never speaks with Lotus, and Lotus continually demand luxury and good food. The family conflicts between women, children and relatives never stop in Wang’s family. Poor people may be misery and rich people will also have their own problems.

When O-lan falls ill and become dying, Wang looses interest about lands and Lotus. He realizes what a great part of O-lan contributed to the family and how she endures all cruel acts and disrespect from her husband. Selfless she is, she never complain a word. She feels proud that even though she is not pretty, she marry a man and give birth to five children.

After O-lan dies, Wang has to face unrest troubles in his family: his elder son knows nothing but spending, the second son concerns only money and business, Lotus never stops eating and consuming, his uncle demands continuously, and later the war breaks out….He feels that time turns him into an old man, only he want is peace but he will never gets it until he die.

The society changes by the time. Lands will be free if revolution is successes. And the elder son and the second son plan to sell his father’s lands to turn money into other business. Though Wang commands not to sell his lands, saying land is root to man, he still can not change anything.

It hurts me when I came to the ending, knowing that lands defiantly would be sold once Wang died. Lands do be freed when RPC is established, but lands never divided equally to farmers. The government just takes all the lands from landlords to be the national wealth and gives back very little land to farms. A lot of farmers still lead a poor life and they won’t get enough money by farming. Rich people can get lands easily and build apartments and skyscrapers to earn high profit. Rich become richer, poor become poorer. Nobody willing to be farmer and they can’t survive as farmer. Poor people have to pour into big cities to be low-paid workers.

Conflicts between farmer-workers and oppidans never rest. Wang’s love of land and the dislike of land of his sons reflect and preview the destiny of new society.

I feel strong love of this book because I am a Chinese and I understand what she writes, or because the misery life of O-lan strikes my heart. Nevertheless, it is must reading!

Fun of book search

‘When people are united by a common love of books, the transaction between salesperson and customer can become one of life’s more memorable experience, perhaps not in large bookshops but certainly in the smaller, independent bookshops.’(Left Bank Waltz--Elaine Lewis)

I like to search second-hand books through many little bookshops. When I live in Narwee, there is a second-hand bookshop owned by an elder Australian man, Mick. He has great favor of books. Even when he has cancer, he never stops working and reading. He said he sleep for 4 hours a day and spends times mainly in reading.

I can’t read as crazy as him. But I really admire his passion about reading. So I often go to his bookshop to chat with him or help him do some simple work. He is so generous to give me great discount to buy books, sometimes for free.

With his help I buy some good books, like April Fool’s Day by Bryce Courteney, Sgarlett, a sequel written by Alexandra Ripley. I become interested in Australian books and decide to read more in the future.

Several months later, I move to Arncliffe, and start a new experience of book search. There is a local second-hand item shop run by several elder ladies. The revenue they gain will go to the charity or church. Lots of second-hand books are sold at very low price, sometimes 1 dollar each, sometimes 1 dollar a bag! I have caught a large book sale in the early December and have brought 34 books for 3 dollars!

It is crazy! After buying so many books, I start to read them every week and share my opinion with my family and friends.

I will continue my book search in my life. A booklover will never say there are too much books!