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Title: Beijing Coma |
Author: Ma Jian |
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Publisher: Chatto and Windus 2008 |
Price: £12.59 |
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This is a remarkable novel based on a far-fetched conceit: the narrator is a young man injured in the vicinity of Tiananmen Square in 1989, who has ever since been to all appearances in a persistent vegetative state. But he remembers and recalls his early life and his student involvement in the events leading up to 4 June. And he is aware of what is going on about him; the pre-Tiananmen memories alternate with subsequent events as his mother is captivated by Falun Gong and, at the end, their apartment block is demolished as the Olympic Games approach. At over 500 pages it is unduly long but the narration of what went on in the Square and on the university campus is well told. The plot is imaginative and much of the content is richly informative. |
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Title: Bound With Love |
Author: Audrey Salters |
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Publisher: Agequod publications 2008 |
Price: £12.50 |
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Ronald Still and his wife Gwyneth were relatively young Baptist medical missionaries in Shanghai in the 1930s who found themselves first under Japanese occupation and then interned for three years. Yet the prevailing tone of their letters home is positive and life-affirming. The reader shares the uncertainties and is involved in the dilemmas the writers had to cope with. The actual letters are interspersed with sections of narrative which give explanatory information about the personal, social and historical context. One reader has written: 'The people and the places and events came alive. Not only was I deeply moved as I read it, I also very much enjoyed it.' |
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Title: What Does China Think? |
Author: Mark Leonard |
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Publisher: London Harper Collins 2008 |
Price:£8.99 |
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Mark Leonard is Executive Director of the European Council of Foreign Relations, and his book was recently recommended as the background reading for a UNA seminar led by a Birmingham University lecturer. During and since a year at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, he has developed an in-depth study of the ways China, in its own peculiar way, is becoming a major influence in world affairs. Through conversation with contemporary Chinese thinkers, he presents the actual personalities, ideas and points of view which lie behind the economic, political and military relationships which are usually focussed on. It is very clearly presented and, beside the word-portraits throughout the book, there is an interesting section on the dramatis personae involved. Again and again, I was brought up short and made to think ... |
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Title: Reconstructing Christianity in China |
Author: Philip L. Wickeri |
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Publisher: Orbis Books 2007 |
Price: $50.00 |
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Not a quick read, but fascinating, important and extraordinarily well researched, with full glossaries, Bibliographies in Mandarin and English, etc. An indispensable book, especially for all libraries concerned with China. Takes readers carefully through the very different stages of Bishop K. H. Ting's life, from growing up in the International Settlement in Shanghai and doing his university studies mostly in English there, through a post-World War five years of international work and studies, then the early years of Communist rule with the formation of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the concentration of theological studies into the Nanjing Seminary, the 'wasted years' of the 'Cultural Revolution', and then the rebirth of Christianity in China, now a Chinese reality but needing great care and devotion in its leaders, up to the period after retirement in which Bishop Ting has devoted much of his energy into 'reconstructing' the outlook of Christians in China towards the whole sweep of God's love for all people and the totality of life on this planet. Magnificent, and by the only foreigner to have been ordained into the ministry of the Christian (as Protestants are called in Mandarin) Church in China since the rebirth, who first met Bishop Ting in 1979 ! |
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Title: A Year in Tibet |
Author: Sun Shuyun |
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Publisher: London Harper Press 2008 |
Price: £20.00 |
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Many FCC members will remember 'Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud' in which Sun Shuyun retraced the steps of the famous traveller who went searching for the roots of Buddhism in India. Now an experienced film-maker, and based in the UK, she was able to spend the year from July 2006 to July 2007 in a small village in Tibet, not far from the town of Gyantse. There she becomes aware of the riches of spirituality and religious devotion, not least through the work of the recognised Shaman for the village, Tseten Rikzin. Her account of it all is admirably readable and fascinating, though she is not without awareness alike of the pressures from the Chinese rulers of Tibet and of the enormous difficulties that the people of Tibet have to cope with, not least in regard to their health. Particularly relevant for us at a time when Tibet is appearing in so many headlines. |
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Title: From Tortoise Hill - A Story of China |
Author: Mary Sheaff |
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Publisher: Orphans Press 2007 |
Price: £7.95 |
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One of FCC's veteran members, Mary Sheaff celebrated her 80th birthday with a sponsored walk on behalf of the Amity Foundation (see FCC Newsletter Autumn 2004), since when she devoted the energy of her last years to writing up the story of her family's work in Hubei and Hunan Provinces between 1882 and 1949. Her grandmother, also Mary, went out to China as a single missionary and married there a Methodist minister, Gilbert Warren, so respected that on the day of his funeral in 1927 in Changsha all unrest in the city was halted. But her book is far more than a work of filial piety. Painstakingly researched in the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, it sets the family history against the background of turbulent times and pays due attention not only to the missionaries but also to their Chinese colleagues. |
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Title: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers |
Author:Yiyun Li |
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Publisher: Fourth Estate 2006 |
Price: £7.99 |
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10 short stories written by a Chinese emigre to the USA, depicting the lives of people in modern China. Life is difficult in each tale. Some situations are known to us in Britain, but elicit different responses to those we might experience or make. After 2 visits to China, I felt that I could accept the possibility of these lives, while feeling also very uncomfortable at the events that unfold. When we visit, what do we not see ? And when visitors come to Britain, what do they not see ? This book gives much food for thought. |
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