Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin [Hardcover]

Hong Xiao (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 152 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr (May 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295962666
• ISBN-13: 978-0295962665
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,600,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars doesn't hang together, December 17, 2008

By 

Mara Zonderman (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin (Hardcover)

This short book is a memoir of about 2 years in the author's life, told in short vignettes. The style of writing and the translation are easy to read, but the story is hard to follow. The chapters are short and choppy and intervening events tend to be left out. For example, the first several chapters are all about how the author and her lover are so poor they can't afford food or wood to heat their apartment with. A few chapters later, however, they seem to have enough money to live without scrimping. It is quite unclear how this change in fortune came about. Similarly, in the latter chapters, a book is mentioned which is referred to as "our book." The book seems to be in the final stages of publication, but the reader has no idea what the book is about (although the contents seem to be subversive since they feel as though the Japanese police might show up to arrest them at any moment). All in all then, this is a sort of confusing read.

3.0 out of 5 stars Provides an interesting window to Harbin in the 1930s, May 19, 2007

By 

D. Goodpasture (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin (Hardcover)

What I liked best about this autobiographical novel was translator Howard Goldblatt's introduction and description of Xiao Hong's life.
She was born in 1911 to an abusive father who was also a ruthless landlord. He pulls her out of school at the age of 20 in order to force her into an arranged marriage. She refuses and is left on her own, not a good thing for a woman in China in the 1930s. Read Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon by Ross Terrill. In her struggle for independence novelist Xiao Hong ends up depending on various men for support and has a child out of wedlock, which was considered scandalous back then. She dies of a respiratory infection at the age of 30 or 31 in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation.

Market Street reads like a series of tenuous vignettes. Xiao Hong and her lover Langhua live in dire poverty in Harbin, a city that sometimes experiences temperatures of -50 degrees Fahrenheit. This book left a lot of unanswered questions. Xiao Hong is obviously very well-educated but mostly she stays cooped up in the apartment while Langhua goes out and desperately seeks work. At first I thought Xiao Hong was pregnant because there was some mention of a baby in the introduction. It turns out she's not pregnant she only has some minor illnesses. I know it was a tough time for women but, it seems to me that she also could have found something in the tutorial field. Langhua gets several tutoring jobs for well-to-do families: He works and gets paid like a slave.

Toward the last third of this book their rice cooker is inexplicably full and they have leisure time. How they went from near starvation and freezing to death to becoming middle class is not explained. Langhua begins writing plays but it's not all that lucrative. Then rumors start flying that they are on the hit list of the Japanese occupiers. The reader is never really informed as to the reason for this. There are vague hints that some of the plays could be considered anti-Japanese. I realize that it was WWII in an enemy occupied country and there doesn't really have to be a reason. What's so incongruous is that in spite of their fear for their lives they don't immediately flee Harbin for one of the unoccupied areas. Instead they set a time table to leave for Shanghai in several months. They need time to have the equivalent of a yard sale and say goodbye to all of their friends. Does this sound like people running for their lives?