- Paperback
- Publisher: Columbia University Press (2005)
- ASIN: B000OPG4H4
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Side of Eileen Chang,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Written on Water (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (Paperback)
I have to disagree with the two previous reviewers. These essays are simply wonderful -- sensuous, vivid, maybe trivial, but for a reason. Chang was writing in Shanghai during the time of the Japanese occupation, when censorship made it impossible to be political. Thus her focus on the everyday, the quotidian, the little pleasures and hardships of life. These essays, some of which are very personal, provide a wonderful backdrop to some of her fiction. Also, they present a picture of war-time Shanghai that does not quite match the image presented in history books. I loved every one of these essays and recommend this anthology to anybody interested in Eileen Chang, modern China, Shanghai or urban modernity.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Written on Water,
By Alice (SF, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Written on Water (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (Paperback)
I have read several books written by Eileen Chiang which I've enjoyed but this is not an easy book to understand. I believed it to be taken from her point of view on life in general. I will have to re-read it one day as I did not finish it.
1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Trivial rubbish,
By Dewdrop (Taipei Taiwan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Written on Water (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (Paperback)
I was absolutely disappointed by this book. I've read Eileen Chang's major novels and short stories and found her fiction extremely insightful. I expected similar quality from her essays and assumed that I would be getting wise quirky essays in the tradition of Linyu Tang.
Unfortunately these essays are nothing more than badly written commercial rubbish that she churned out for popular magazines. None of them show the slightest thought or insight, and they aren't even well written. In fact, writing trivial articles about the history of dress collars while Shanghai was under cruel Japanese occupation even seems morally questionable. There is a good introduction by the translator/editor, which provides some useful context and argues for the significance of these essays. And to the historian interested in daily life of the period, the contents might have some interest. In general, however, these minor writings are nothing more than commercial ephemera. The translation of this collection can only do harm to the reputation of one of modern China's great fiction writers.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
IT USED TO BE that when people celebrated Chinese New Year, they would paste red strips of paper on the wall with maxims like "Things are Looking Up" and "From the Mouths of Babes" written across them. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
equivocal contrast, fisher girl, apartment life Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Hong Kong, Jia Lian, New Life, Mother Earth, Three Kingdoms, Air-Raid Precaution, Brush Thing, Jia Zhen, Zhang Gan, Brush Bride, Fallen City, Lin Fengmian, Mona Lisa, Anton Chekhov, Chai Feng-ying, The Story of the Stone, Zhuge Liang New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
IT USED TO BE that when people celebrated Chinese New Year, they would paste red strips of paper on the wall with maxims like "Things are Looking Up" and "From the Mouths of Babes" written across them. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
equivocal contrast, fisher girl, apartment life Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Hong Kong, Jia Lian, New Life, Mother Earth, Three Kingdoms, Air-Raid Precaution, Brush Thing, Jia Zhen, Zhang Gan, Brush Bride, Fallen City, Lin Fengmian, Mona Lisa, Anton Chekhov, Chai Feng-ying, The Story of the Stone, Zhuge Liang New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 4
books:
5
books
cite this book:
- Heartbreak House (Penguin Classics) by George Bernard Shaw on page 148
- Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw on page 183
- Short Stories (World Classic Literature Series) (Russian Edition) by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov on page 175
- Point Counter Point (British Literature) by Aldous Huxley on page 86
- Women, War, Domesticity: Shanghai Literature and Popular Culture of the 1940s (China Studies) by Nicole Huang on 26 pages
- Writing Women in Modern China: The Revolutionary Years, 1936-1976 (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Amy Dooling in Front Matter
- Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Howard Goldblatt in Front Matter
- I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Zhu Zhu in Front Matter
- In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Hiratsuka Raicho in Back Matter
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