China 6 set..
The first book is "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" by Jung Chang published by Anchor Books. 528 pages. Through the lives of three different women - grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate survival under conditions of extreme harshness. In 1924, at the age of 15, the author's grandmother became the concubine of a powerful warlord, whom she was seldom to see during the ten years of their "marriage". Her daughter, born in 1931, experienced the horrors of Japanese occupation in Manchuria as a schoolgirl, and after their surrender joined the Communist-led underground fighting Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang. She rose to be a senior Communist official, but was imprisoned three times. Her husband, also a high official and one of the very first to join the Communists, was relentlessly persecuted, imprisoned and finally sent to a labor camp where, physically broken and disillusioned, he lost his sanity. The author herself grew up during the Cultural Revolution, at the time of the personality cult of Mao and the worst excesses of the Gang of Four. Illustrated with lots of historic photographs. Soft cover book with no remainder marks, no price stickers and not price clipped. Very solid. Brown stain on the bottom edge, stain does not extend to inside of book. Overall a very good+ to nearly new condition book. Pictorial cover. 9¾ " tall.
The second book is "China Coast Family" by John C Caldwell published by Henry Regnery Company, 1953. 228 pages. 4 photos. The son of a Methodist missionary who arrived in China in 1899 and worked 50 years in Fukien Province. Very Good to near fine copy in a good dust jacket. Appears to be a First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. Dustjacket chipped along edges. Dustjacket is not price clipped. 8" - 9" tall.
The third item is a wonderful book by Jonathan Spence. "The Death of Woman Wang" published by Penguin Books, 1979. New condition. Paperback. Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of Tan-cheng emerges here as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.
The fourth book is "Beyond the Narrow Gate: The Journey of Four Chinese Women From The Middle Kingdom To Middle America" by Leslie Chang published by E P Dutton, 1999 first edition first printing. Near fine to fine new condition in a nearly new dust jacket. No remainder marks and jacket has not been price clipped. No price stickers. Appears unread. Stated First Edition. Price inside dustcover: $24.95. Tight spine, bright pages. Synopsis In 1937, the year Leslie Chang's mother was born, the city of Nanking was destroyed by Japanese invaders with instructions from the Emperor to "kill all: destroy all; burn all." Eleven years later, when the Red Army marched into China, Han Man-li's family fled to Taiwan. It was there, at an elite girl's school in Taipei, that Han Man-li met Xiao Mei, Ling, and Ma-hua. They became close friends, sharing secrets, confidences, and the uncertainty of a country in turmoil. A few years later, they would leave their homeland, passing through the "narrow gate" of the First Girl's School on their way to America. Student visas and scholarships brought them to the United States, but for Han Man-li, Xiao Mei, Ling, and Ma-hua - now Mary, Dolores, Suzanne, and Margaret - their journey was just beginning. In cities as far apart as New York and Los Angeles, from the biology lab of a women's college to Wall Street to the gilded Chinese ghetto in California's Palos Verdes, Mary, Dolores, Suzanne, and Margaret made their choices and their compromises. That is part of the legacy they have passed on to their children. 288 pages.
The fifth book is "Treasures From The Shanghai Museum 6,000 Years of Chinese Art". 191 page catalogue of the exhibition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Field Museum of Natural History Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Smithsonian Institution Washington DC between May 4 1983 and November 30 1984. Excellent photo illustrations. First Edition. Measures 8.3" x 11". 191 pages. Selling for over $75.00 on many sites.
The sixth book is "Come Watch The Sun Go Home" by Chen Chen published by Marlowe and Company 1998. In the late 1940's, the Chen family gathered for a dusk-time ritual at their hillside home in Berkeley, California to "watch the sun go home" to their native China. Having fled persecution in Chungking during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-45) , the Chens settled briefly in Peking, then escaped to the U. S. During the intensifying civil war. Repatriated and classified as "national bourgeois", they were yet to endure the violence of the Cultural Revolution - separation, imprisonment, internal exile, and "re-education" in the "cadre schools" designed for ideological criminals. Chen Chen was labeled a counter-revolutionary, and after making disparaging remarks about Mao's wife, suffered beating, starvation and solitary confinement with her three-month-old baby. For the next seven years, she was barred from being a musician and writer and assigned to agricultural work. Come Watch the Sun Go Home powerfully evokes the viciousness and absurdity of a society in thrall to totalitarian hysteria and the manifold ironies awaiting Chen upon her "rehabilitation" and return to professional life. While visiting the United States she learned of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chen's condemnation of the regime was broadcast on national TV and she still had to return to China where her children were waiting for her. A fascinating book! 8" x 9". 322 pages. Small remainder mark on side edge otherwise brand new unread condition. Brand
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