Well, in a little over five weeks from now, we'll be touching down in Shanghai. Perhaps with school out and a few weeks to sleep off the studying frenzy, you're ready to pick up a book again. If so, you may want to consider the following titles, recommended by Lonely Planet Guidebooks as the top five books on Shanghai:Shanghai by Harriet Sergeant. A recommended reconstruction of Shanghai's swinging history.
Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City by Stella Dong. Another wee-researched history of the good-old bad-old days.
In Search of Old Shanghai by Pan Ling. An easy read into the characters of Shanghai's murky past.
New Shanghai: The Rocky Rebirth of China's Legendary City by Pamela Yatsko. Bring yourself up to date with this portrait of the new Shanghai. Ask Livaditis what he thought, I believe he's reading this book right now.
Candy by Mian Mian. Hip modern novel from a darling of the city's social set, proving that sex, suicide and drug addiction aren't just limited to Shanghai's past.
4 comments:
I think I will pick up new shanghai, I picked up English: a novel by Wang gang about an English student and teacher in xinjiang during cultural revolution but does not linger on cruelty. I am just about finnished with zhao ziyang's journal. Is Zhang yimou's riding alone for thousand of miles any good?
So far I have only read an excerpt of new shanghai from amazon, focussed on the bund, it had a narrative style, I can't find I in any store though, also on my list is last days of old Beijing about destruction if hutongs, I might choose something else though as this topic was covered in oracle bones and wild grass extensively. I highly reccomend wild grass focusse on three stories of corruption in China incluing taxing peasants, destruction of old beijing, and falun gong crackdowns.
yeah, i really enjoyed riding alone for thousands of miles. certainly zhang's most japanese film, as the lead characters are japanese, but it's a good story and i think you would appreciate some of the themes. if you haven't seen farewell my concubine yet, it's a must see. it contains some rather mature themes, but if that's no problem, it's a masterpiece.
I finnished zhao ziyang's memoirs. It is split into six parts. An account of the events leading up to June 4th from an insider of the Communist Party and its General Secretary, an account of his house arrest, details on reform and its roots and obstacles (really interesting are the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign and Anti Burgoise Liberization Campaign and how Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang dealt with them), the political atmosphere in China in the 1980s, the turmoil of 1988 panic buying, and Zhao's views on how China must change, in which he states China must adopt a tripartite system in order to fully modernize. He uses a quote from Sun Yat-sen, "Worldwide trends are enormous and powerful; those who follow them prosper, and those who resist them perish." Great primary document, would be great to use an excerpt when discussing Deng Xiaoping era China on the blog. I understand reform and June 4th better having read it now.
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