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The Concubine Of Shanghai
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Book Synopsis The Concubine of Shanghai by : Hong Ying
Download or read book The Concubine of Shanghai written by Hong Ying and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China, 1907. Sixteen-year-old orphan Cassia is sold by her aunt to a brothel. There, she works as a lowly maid for Madame Emerald until a powerful and dangerous client plucks her from obscurity. Master Chang is the boss of the fearsome Shanghai Triad and he always gets what he wants. Despite her unbound feet and breasts, Cassia swiftly becomes Chang's favourite mistress. He showers her with luxuries as he embarks on her sexual awakening. But Chang's world is violent and precarious, and those such as Cassia who depend on him are bound to his fate . . .
Book Synopsis A Concubine For The Family by : Amy S. Kwei
Download or read book A Concubine For The Family written by Amy S. Kwei and published by Tatspublishing. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine a wife giving her husband a younger woman as a birthday present! A Concubine for the Family is a fictionalized account based on a true-life event: my Chinese grandmother's selfless gift to my grandfather to ensure a male heir for the family. It is also a story of feminine solidarity and heroism. Full of vivid descriptions, the book tells of dramatic events in an opium den, the traditions of raising silkworms as pets, acupuncture, medicines and techniques used in healing, foot binding, and behavior protocols between husbands and wives, masters and servants, children and parents, as well as the plight of a family fleeing war. It is also the heart-rending saga of a “book-fragrant” family and their harrowing experiences from 1937 until the fall of Hong Kong in 1941. Reviewing the book, the best-selling author Lisa See was moved to write: “You did a terrific job . . . I really enjoyed the story.” And the Kirkus Review wrote: “Purple Jade has broader concerns: There is the unsettling influence of American and European ‘West Ocean Devils,’ internal strife between the Nationalists and Communists, and an impending Japanese invasion . . . the author details Chinese traditions and the fascinating but evanescent world as only someone steeped in the old ways could. An adept stylist and storyteller, the author weaves with simplicity this tale of upper-class China in upheaval . . . An engaging family saga by a talented storyteller.” Using Tang poetry, colloquialisms, terms of endearment, and other vernacular, the books give the reader an immediate and deep understanding of Chinese culture and how it differs from our own. This compelling, heartfelt story of feminine and family solidarity is lovingly drawn. It will find emotional and intellectual resonance with most families in Diaspora.
Book Synopsis Empress Dowager Cixi by : Jung Chang
Download or read book Empress Dowager Cixi written by Jung Chang and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beloved, internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans, and co-author of the bestselling Mao: The Unknown Story, the dramatic, epic biography of the unusual woman who ruled China for 50 years, from concubine to Empress, overturning centuries of traditions and formalities to bring China into the modern world. A woman, an Empress of immense wealth who was largely a prisoner within the compound walls of her palaces, a mother, a ruthless enemy, and a brilliant strategist: Chang makes a compelling case that Cixi was one of the most formidable and enlightened rulers of any nation. Cixi led an intense and singular life. Chosen at the age of 12 to be a concubine by the Emperor Xianfeng, she gave birth to his only male heir who at four was designated Emperor when his father died in 1861. In a brilliant move, the young woman enlisted the help of the Emperor's widow and the two women orchestrated a coup that ousted the regents and made Cixi sole Regent. Untrained and untaught, the two studied history and politics together, ruling the huge nation from behind a curtain. When her boy died, Cixi designated a young nephew as Emperor, continuing her reign till her death in 1908. Chang gives us a complex, riveting portrait of Cixi through a reign as long as that of her fellow Empress, Victoria, whom she longed to meet: her ruthlessness in fighting off rivals; her curiosity to learn; her reliance on Westerners who she placed in key positions; and her sensitivity and desire to preserve the distinctiveness of China's past while overturning traditions (she, as Chang reveals--not Mao, as he claimed--banned footbinding) and exposing its culture to western ideas and technology.
Download or read book Wild Swans written by Jung Chang and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Download or read book Concubines in Court written by Lisa Tran and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book analyzes marriage and family reform in twentieth-century China. Lisa Tran’s examination of changes in the perception of concubinage explores the subtle, yet very meaningful, shifts in the construction of monogamy in contemporary China. Equally important is her use of court cases to assess how these shifts affected legal and social practice. Tran argues that this dramatic story has often been overlooked, leading to the mistaken conclusion that concubinage remained largely unchanged or quietly disappeared in “modern” China. Customarily viewed as a minor wife because her “husband” was already married, a concubine found her legal status in question under a political order that came to be based on the principles of monogamy and equality. Yet although the custom of concubinage came under attack in the early twentieth century, the image of the concubine stirred public sympathy. How did lawmakers attack the practice without jeopardizing the interests of concubines? Conversely, how did jurists protect the interests of women without appearing to sanction concubinage? How law and society negotiated these conflicting interests dramatically altered existing views of monogamy and marriage and restructured gender and family relations. As the first in-depth study of the meaning and practice of monogamy and concubinage in modern China, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Chinese society and legal norms. In addition, by crossing the “1949 divide,” it compares the Guomindang’s designation of concubinage as adultery with the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of it as bigamy, and draws out the legal implications for the practice of concubinage as well as for women who were concubines. Poised at the intersection of Chinese history, women’s history, and legal history, this book makes a unique and significant contribution to the scholarship in all three fields.
Book Synopsis The Last Kings of Shanghai by : Jonathan Kaufman
Download or read book The Last Kings of Shanghai written by Jonathan Kaufman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
Download or read book Empress Orchid written by Anchee Min and published by HMH. This book was released on 2005-04-11 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating novel, similar to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha . . . A revisionist portrait of a beautiful and strong-willed woman” (Houston Chronicle). A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year From Anchee Min, a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China’s last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of the country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this “absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao,” readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min’s lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world (The New York Times). “Superb . . . [An] unforgettable heroine.” —People “A sexually charged, eye-opening portrayal of the Chinese empire . . . with heart-wrenching scenes of desperate failure and a sensuality that rises off its heated pages.” —Elle
Download or read book Shanghai written by David Rotenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his last breath, China’s First Emperor, Q’in She Huang, entrusts his followers with a sacred task. Scenes intricately carved into a narwhal tusk show the future of a city “at the Bend in the River,” and The Emperor’s chosen three—his favourite concubine, head Confucian, and personal bodyguard —must bring these prophecies to life by passing their traditions on for generations. Centuries later, the descendents of the Emperor’s chosen confidantes observe as Shanghai is invaded by opium traders and missionaries from Europe, America, and the Middle East. Of them all, two families—locked in a rivalry that will last for generations—will be central to the evolution of the city. As history marches on, locals and foreign interlopers clash and intertwine; their combined fates shaping what will become the centrepiece of the new China—Shanghai.
Book Synopsis Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society by : Rubie S. Watson
Download or read book Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society written by Rubie S. Watson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1991-04-02 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until now our understanding of marriage in China has been based primarily on observations made during the twentieth century. The research of ten eminent scholars presented here provides a new vision of marriage in Chinese history, exploring the complex interplay between marriage and the social, political, economic, and gender inequalities that have so characterized Chinese society.
Book Synopsis The Concubine's Daughter by : Pai Kit Fai
Download or read book The Concubine's Daughter written by Pai Kit Fai and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic, heart-wrenching story of a mother and daughter's journey to their destiny. Lotus Feet. He would give his daughter the dainty feet of a courtesan. This would enhance her beauty and her price, making her future shine like a new coin. He smiled to himself, pouring fresh tea. And it would stop her from running away... When the young concubine of an old farmer in rural China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or "Beautiful One," the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father's orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain. Li takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother's dreams of becoming a scholar—but her final triumph must be left to her daughter, Su Sing, "Little Star," in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.
Download or read book Blood Red Sunset written by Ma Bo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing first hand account of China's Cultural Revolution that joins the ranks of great memoirs such as Life and Death in Shanghai, Wild Swans and A Chinese Odyssey First banned in its native land, this earthy, unflinching memoir has become one of the biggest bestsellers in the history of China. In 1968, a fervent young Red Guard joined the army of hotheaded adolescents who trekked to Inner Mongolia to spread the Cultural Revolution. After gaining a reputation as a brutal abuser of the local herd owners and nomads, Ma Bo casually criticized a Party Leader. Denounced as an “active counterrevolutionary” and betrayed by his friends, the idealistic youth was brutally beaten and imprisoned. Charged with passion, never doctrinaire, Blood Red Sunset is a startlingly vivid and personal narrative that opens a window on the psyche of totalitarian excess that no other work of history can provide. This is a tale of ideology and disillusionment, a powerful work of political and literary importance. “A deceptively straightforward story carried forward by deep currents of insight.”—The Washington Post “A genuine, no-holds-barred, unadorned piece of writing…echoing the realities of contemporary China.”—Liu Binyan, The New York Times Book Review
Book Synopsis Transnational Chinese Cinemas by : Sheldon H. Lu
Download or read book Transnational Chinese Cinemas written by Sheldon H. Lu and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1997-10-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zhang Yimou's first film, Red Sorghum, took the Golden Bear Award in 1988 at the Berlin International Film Festival. Since then Chinese films have continued to arrest worldwide attention and capture major film awards, winning an international following that continues to grow. Transnational Chinese Cinemas spans nearly the entire length of twentieth-century Chinese film history. The volume traces the evolution of Chinese national cinema, and demonstrates that gender identity has been central to its formation. Femininity, masculinity and sexuality have been an integral part of the filmic discourses of modernity, nationhood, and history. This volume represents the most comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date study of China's major cinematic traditions. It is an indispensable source book for modern Chinese and Asian history, politics, literature, and culture.
Download or read book The Concubine written by Jade Lee and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2009-02-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Requirements for being a royal consort: 1) Exemplify purity. 2) Pass all demanding tests. 3) Gracefully withstand petty backstabbing. 4) Be chaste. Very chaste. Check to all! Chen Ji Yue is on her way to empress superstardom in nineteenth-century China. She only has to vanquish 300 rivals to bring her family great honor. Oh, and she may not find the deliciously sexy Sun Bo Tao—the emperor's best friend—at all delicious. Or sexy. Damn. Ji Yue is in big trouble. Because Bo Tao is definitely very sexy…. And Ji Yue is about to discover that chastity is overrated….
Book Synopsis The Suicide of Miss Xi by : Bryna Goodman
Download or read book The Suicide of Miss Xi written by Bryna Goodman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A suicide scandal in Shanghai reveals the social fault lines of democratic visions in China's troubled Republic in the early 1920s. On September 8, 1922, the body of Xi Shangzhen was found hanging in the Shanghai newspaper office where she worked. Although her death occurred outside of Chinese jurisdiction, her US-educated employer, Tang Jiezhi, was kidnapped by Chinese authorities and put on trial. In the unfolding scandal, novelists, filmmakers, suffragists, reformers, and even a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party seized upon the case as emblematic of deep social problems. Xi's family claimed that Tang had pressured her to be his concubine; his conviction instead for financial fraud only stirred further controversy. The creation of a republic ten years earlier had inspired a vision of popular sovereignty and citizenship premised upon gender equality and legal reform. After the quick suppression of the first Chinese parliament, commercial circles took up the banner of democracy in their pursuit of wealth. But, Bryna Goodman shows, the suicide of an educated "new woman" exposed the emptiness of republican democracy after a flash of speculative finance gripped the city. In the shadow of economic crisis, Tang's trial also exposed the frailty of legal mechanisms in a political landscape fragmented by warlords and enclaves of foreign colonial rule. The Suicide of Miss Xi opens a window onto how urban Chinese in the early twentieth century navigated China's early passage through democratic populism, in an ill-fated moment of possibility between empire and party dictatorship. Xi Shangzhen became a symbol of the failures of the Chinese Republic as well as the broken promises of citizen's rights, gender equality, and financial prosperity betokened by liberal democracy and capitalism.
Download or read book Red Lotus written by Pai Kit Fai and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yip Mann, an elderly spice farmer, should have known better than to purchase a fifteen-year-old cherry-girl as his concubine, especially one beautiful enough to be seen as Ch'ien Gum - comparable to a thousand pieces of gold. But surely he deserves such a plaything to give him the last of his sons. To Yip Mann's dismay, the wilful concubine dies bearing him a worthless girl-child. After her death he must make use of the girl as best he can: by binding her feet in the forbidden practice of the Golden Lotus, he can sell her for a higher price. But the daughter he names Li-Xia - Beautiful One - has the fighting spirit of her rebellious mother, escaping the crippling bandages: she knows her feet will be her freedom. And when they lead her into the path of a mysterious 'foreign devil', Li-Xia takes the first steps on a new and perilous journey . . .
Book Synopsis Concubines and Courtesans by : Ferdinand M. Bertholet
Download or read book Concubines and Courtesans written by Ferdinand M. Bertholet and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This opulently illustrated volume offers a wide-ranging examination of erotic artifacts from the end of the Ming Dynasty, around 1600, to the heyday of Shanghai in the 1920s.
Download or read book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians Amy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.
