I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately:
"Factory girls; from village to city in changing China" by Leslie T. Chang. Fascinating but often depressing look at modern China, focusing on three girls who make the trip from their rural villages to the vast factories of the new Chinese economic miracle. One of these factories employs 11,000 people, and is a small city of its own. Workers, usually young women, live in dormitories, cheek by jowl, and work 10 and 11 hour days, changing employment frequently to get better conditions and more money. Friendship and family connections become tenuous or non-existent, but the lure of money, fashionable consumer goods and a new life away from the boredom of the country is a powerful one that keeps the girls in the big cities.
A much older, very different China is depicted in this travel classic by Peter Goullart. Goullart recounts his years spent in Likiang, Yunnan Province, in the years before the second world war and the subsequent Communist take-over. Likiang is situated at the border of China, Burma and Tibet, and Goullart's experiences of the many different peoples and tribal groups of the area and the now vanished way of life is well worth reading.
Marilyn Johnson wrote an expose of the librarian's world in "This book is overdue!" and here she does the same for archaeologists. Interesting fodder for the Lara Crofts/Indiana Jones's among you, but quite American in its focus, which I found a bit disappointing.
Lastly, Andrea di Robilant's book about finding and naming a mysterious but distinctive un-named rose which grew in the garden of his family palazzo. Suspecting that the rose may be one of the old "China" roses that gave birth to our modern roses, he searches for its identity with rose specialists and through historical research. Di Robilant has written before about his Venetian ancestors, and this is sort of a spin-off of those works. A light read, good for the bedside table.
Lots of promise there. Thank you. I usually have at least one non-fiction book on the go. Sometimes more.
ReplyDeleteChina, particularly old China fascinates me.
Hi Elephant's Child. You might like a novel I read recently, called A cup of light by Nicole Mones, about the contemporary trade in contraband and fake ceramics from China to the West. The Communists did such damage to the artistic heritage of China. I remember how shocked I was to read in Nan Cheng's Life and death in Shanghai about the Red Guard destroying her husband's large collection of priceless antique porcelain; this seemed particularly vile and pointless to me.
DeleteThank you. I am sure I would like it - while gnashing my teeth.
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