China-foreigner relationships: it gets complicated when you’re sleeping with the enemy – Book Review of Pearl Buck’s Patriot
In a perfect world, being an international couple would be as glamorous as a James Bond movie. You would spend your days intermingling your world in different languages, swept away by the fascinating customs of your partner’s country, and have the benefit of dual citizenship and a jet-setting lifestyle. It would be nice, wouldn’t it? […]
Dragon Seed – a China story for tough economic times
Well, everyone, it’s the year of the Ox — fittingly, in these economic times, a year of getting back to basics, simplifying, and making progress through hard work and sweat. Perhaps then, days such as these, there is nothing more comforting than literature that not only understands us, but uplifts us with the resilience of […]
Buck’s East Wind: West Wind: The feminist side of the Good Earth, where foreign women married Chinese men, long before it was cool
I’m a huge fan of Pearl Buck. From the moment I opened the “House of Earth” trilogy — which includes “The Good Earth”, “Sons” and “A House Divided” — I was hooked, and devoured every word passionately. But yet, there was always one part of the book I found heartbreaking, perhaps for personal reasons. In […]