THE SAME MOON by Junying Kirk

Title: The Same Moon by Junying Kirk
Published April 6, 2013
Genre: fiction

Chapter One: Forbidden Love

The young man who haunted me in my dreams was Xia Yu, the solemn looking boy who first caught my shy eyes when I was barely thirteen and has occupied a sacred corner in my heart ever since.

 “Do you know why my parents named me Xia Yu?” His voice was deep and intense, yet full of tenderness. (Junying Kirk. The Same Moon (Kindle Locations 160-163). 

page 56: 

“I want to give you something, from China... and I hope you like them,” I struggled on a nervous murmur, my hand reaching out with what I had picked out earlier. 

“Wow, this is beautiful,” his face shone in delight with my first gift, a beautifully painted calligraphic classic poem. (Junying Kirk. The Same Moon (Kindle Locations 5127-5129). 

Book description: 
"Pearl Zhang was born in Sichuan Province in China, and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. She was raised in a typically Chinese manner, went to school, got a job and got married, and her whole life path had been mapped out, or so it seemed. She then seized the opportunity to study in the United Kingdom – and stayed.  How did Pearl adjust to the Western way of life, and what did she have to do to overcome the barriers? Would she find happiness and fulfillment with her English suitor in Scotland, or would her heartache continue? She was in a new world, both foreign and exciting – albeit under the Same Moon.

This book, the first of Junying Kirk’s “Journey to the West” Trilogy, will take you on a journey full of surprises and discoveries, history and culture - from the East to the West - and from the Middle Kingdom to the United Kingdom." (publisher)

Junying Kirk's second and third books, in the trilogy are Trials of Life, which continues the story of Pearl in the United Kingdom, and Land of Hope, a novel of international intrigue.

Thanks to the author for a review copy of this book. 

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

The Sunday Salon: Bathing Women by Tie Ning

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!

I just love Sunday mornings, browsing blogs by book bloggers (alliteration unintended) who often post on this day.

I found an interesting novel on Literary Hoarders' website - a book about contemporary life in China by Tie Ning.

The book description grabbed my interest:  A new generation of young professionals in contemporary China. The Bathing Women follows the lives of four women—Tiao, a children’s book editor; Fan, her sister, who thinks escaping to America might solve her problems; Fei,a hedonistic and self-destructive young woman; and Youyou, a chef—from childhood during the Cultural Revolution to adulthood in the new market economy. This moving novel charts the journey of these women as they grapple with love, sibling rivalry, and, ultimately, redemption. (publisher)

Browsing along this morning, I found an article that readers might like but which authors won't: Out of Touch: E-Reading Isn't Reading by Andrew Piper in Slate Magazine, listed by Man of La Book.
The blog listed another controversial post on e-books, Fair Warning for Those Who Read E-Books, by Confessions of a Mystery Novelist. If you have mixed feelings about ebooks versus paper books, as I do, you will want to read these posts!

I confess though, that I read all 1,000 pages of Murakami's IQ84 on a Kindle and might not have finished the book otherwise. That is one heavy book to carry around!

What do you think about the no longer new e-book controversy? And what new books have you gotten or read or found recently?

Book Review: A Map of Paradise by Linda Ching Sledge

A Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth Century Hawaii by Linda Ching Sledge, author of Empire of Heaven.

Publisher's description: With its green cliffs and silvery waterfalls, Hawaii offers radiant hope to Rulan and Pao An - exiles from China, immigrants with the will to succeed despite hardship and prejudice and enemies from their homeland. But his proud couple's hardest struggle will be with their own child - Mulan, called Molly.

Born in Hawaii's sacred hills, Molly grows to despise the old Chinese ways. Locked in perpetual combat with her parents,she is drawn into a dangerous love affair with a glamorous but decadent poet, a protege of the (Hawaiian) king. And even as he family's fortunes rise, Molly's mother watches in sorrow, fearing that her child will realize too late that happiness lies far closer to home.

Beautifully told, A Map of Paradise offers the colorful sweep of history with the satisfaction of characters intimately revealed.

My comments: The Chinese immigrant Pao An worked in California before joining his wife Rulan and their daughter in Hawaii, called the Blessed Isles. There they built a life for themselves and formed a community with other immigrants. The core of the novel are the love stories of young Pao An and his wife Rulan, of their daughter Molly and the half-Hawaiian poet she lived with and loved, and of the quiet boy Lin Kong, whom Molly had grown up with and many times spurned as an adult.

This historical novel describes the arrival of the Chinese as laborers for the sugar plantations in Hawaii in the mid 1800s, and of their gradual integration into the island economy as farmers, traders, and businessmen. The novel tells of the exhaustive work in forming a Chinatown community out of the two warring groups of Chinese - the Punti and Hakka clans.

The book also details the history of the Hawaiian kingdom and the dying off of important members of its royal family in the latter part of the 19th century, giving way to increasing American and British influence and control of the islands.

Rating: I gave this novel five stars for its descriptive storytelling and its detailed historical content on the Hawaiian kingdom and the settling of immigrants there in the late 1800s.

A Map of Paradise was printed in 1997 by Bantam Books. I read this book as part of a reading challenge, which requires 10 books on China or by Chinese authors, now through Sept. 1, 2010: The China Challenge. I also submitted it for the Chill Baby, Chill! review challenge and the 100 + Reading Challenge.

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Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch, a novel by Dai Sijie

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Should Be Reading Choose two sentences from your current read, and add the author and title for readers.

Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie, 2005.

"Listen here, young lady," he says, his voice in the dark low and sincere, as befits the grandson of a pastor, "there's no need to be afraid. It's only me, the psychoanalyst you were talking to earlier." (ch. 1)(translated from the French by Ina Rilke)

Publisher's description: "Dai Sijie gives us a delightful new tale of East meets West, an adventure both wry and uplifting about a love of dreams and the dream of love, and the power of reading to sustain and inspire the spirit."

In this imaginative novel, Mr. Muo tries to free his girlfriend being held a political prisoner in China, but is told by the local magistrate there that he must find a virgin in exchange for clemency. The book follows Mr. Muo's adventures through China on his quest for the right girl.

Dai Sijie, a Chinese-born filmmaker and writer, has lived in France since 1984. He also wrote the best-selling novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.  I hope to submit this book to two challenges: The China Challenge and Lost in Translation Challenge.

Member of Amazon Associates

Book Review, Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin

In modern China, two people wait over seventeen years for each other to have a change of heart that would profoundly affect their lives.

From publisher's description of Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin:
"For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated... modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young - a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce....


... Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. "

My comments: Lin's anguish in wanting a divorce so he can marry the woman of his choice is balanced by the long-suffering patience of the wife he left behind, Shuyu. A very worthwhile novel about a clash of the new and the old in a new China that changed only in some aspects.

The book was first printed in 1999 by writer Ha Jin and was a National Book Award finalist. Ha Jin decided after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 to remain in the U.S. I pulled this book from my personal library to review for Jen's China Challenge over at Biblio File.

An award winning writer, Ha Jin is now a professor of English at Boston University. His other well known book is A Free Life.

Review: Tao Te Ching

Countless words
count less
than the silent balance
between yin and yang

For this reading challenge, I went to the translation by Ralph Alan Dale, Tao Te Ching: A New Translation and Commentary illustrated with photographs by John Cleare, published 2002, Barnes and Noble.

I thought book bloggers would appreciate the above lines from verse 5. From the Commentaries, page 172,

"Ying and yang, like heaven and earth, is a metaphor for all that exists.... Thus - Countless words (our exhortations) count less than the silent (existential) balance between yin and yang."

Amazon product description:

The Tao Te Ching is a great treasure house of wisdom. Written by Lao Tzu as early as the sixth century B.C. and composed of only 5,000 characters, it has become one of the classic works of spiritual enlightenment.

This is a wonderful book, though not the most recent edition, nicely illustrated and the translation is easier to understand than I thought it would be. The commentaries are also helpful to divine the meaning.

Here is another quote:

The wise
teach without telling,
allow without commanding,
have without possessing,
care without claiming.

(from Verse 2, Relativity)

My first read for the China Challenge.

Chinese Literature: Reading Challenge

Music listened to for the challenge:

1. Chinese Classical Music video online

2. Erhu - Spring Scenery South of the Yangtze River video

Book reviews completed for the challenge:

1. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

2.Waiting by Ha Jin

3. A Map of Paradise: A Novel of Nineteenth Century Hawaii by Linda Ching Sledge, Chinese migration and settlement in Hawaii.

4. I Ching: A New Interpretation for Modern Times by Sam Reifler

5.Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min, March 2010.

The China Challenge is hosted by Jen at Biblio File. I was persuaded by the excellent review of The Uninvited by Geling Yan, posted by Mel U of The Reading Life.

There are several levels of the challenge, from a pledge of just one book to planning a trip to China and learning some Mandarin! I chose Hiking the Great Wall:

Read 10 books about China
1 should be a work of translated fiction
1 should be nonfiction.
Here you can read 1 book (but only 1) about Chinese immigration. So, stories of Chinese people abroad, or nonfiction about overseas Chinese communities.

Anyone can join and you have until Sept. 2010 to complete the challenge.