Rice

Su Tong

Translated by Howard Goldblatt

Scribner, 2000.

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Rice is a tale of hate. The author, Su Tong, searches deep into the human soul and what he discovers is not pleasant. Rice takes the ugliness of human nature to the extreme and beyond, and yet, despite horror upon horror, it’s a book that’s difficult to put down.

On a superficial level the novel is a family drama set in Shanghai in the early 1930’s just prior to the Japanese invasion. Rice is the story of a young rice farmer, Five Dragons, who flees from a flood ridden and famine stricken countryside to the brutal and decadent Shanghai of the 1930’s. His fortunes take a turn for the better when he finds work in the Feng family’s Great Swan Rice Emporium. Through a succession of intriguing events, Five Dragons becomes a member of the Feng family and heir to the emporium. From this moment the novel descends into an orgy of odium and vindictiveness, the like of which, is seldom depicted in writing.

The characters in the novel are impossible to like. Their fate is always linked to their own evil doings, thus leaving the reader with little sympathy when the inevitable comeuppance transpires. For in Rice, there is no redemption, there is no hero.

A novel that incorporates all the seven sins and could easily multiply them by three, Rice would make a fantastic TV series or even a film.

I would also highly recommend it for those wanting to know the darker side of 1930’s Shanghai from a Chinese perspective.

Su Tong is also the author of Raise the Red Lantern and Binu and the Great wall

Tags: Book Reviews by Adam
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Chongwu

ESPAÑOL (English Version below)

La ciudad amurallada de Chongwu bien merece una visita. Básicamente, la ciudad es una antigua aldea de pescadores rodeada casi por completo por su muralla original de la Dinastía Ming. El Mar del Sur de China como telón de fondo y la muralla hacen de Chongwu un paraje realmente impresionante. En su origen, la muralla se construyó para proteger la ciudad de las incursiones de los piratas japoneses, que asolaron las costas chinas durante siglos. Además, el famoso caudillo rebelde de la época Ming, Koxinga, tomó Chongwu como base para su lucha en pos de derrocar a la Dinastía manchú de los Qing.

En la actualidad, los visitantes entran en la ciudad por una suerte de parque temático, que consiste de esculturas de personajes históricos, o fantásticos, dispuestas a lo largo de la playa. Sin embargo, no hay que desanimarse por ello. En la playa hay agradables restaurantes al aire libre que ofrecen buen marisco y un buen sitio para relajarse y descansar, tanto antes como después de visitar Chongwu propiamente dicha.

El casco antiguo de Chongwu es un intrincado laberinto de estrechos callejones….. leer mas ir a: HolaChina: Your Gateway to China

Chongwu (English Version)

The walled city of Chongwu is worth a visit. Basically, it’s an old fishing village almost entirely surrounded by its original granite Ming wall. With the South China Sea as a backdrop, Chongwu makes for quite a dramatic location. The purpose of the wall was to protect the city from Japanese pirates who used to ravage the coast of China for hundreds of years. What’s more, the famous Ming rebel Koxinga used Chongwu as a base in his struggle to overthrow the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty.

Nowadays, visitors enter the old city through a tacky theme park of sculptures, representing historical figures, that line the beach. However, this should not put you off. There are some nice open-air restaurants on the beach that offer good seafood and a good place to cool off and have a rest, either before or after tackling Chongwu itself. The old city of Chongwu is a maze of tight alleyways…..

For more go to:HolaChina: Your Gateway to China

Tags: Fujian Province, Travel by Adam
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We didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived at Tunbao village, next to the larger town of Tianlong. We had heard that it was home to a special group of Han Chinese who still dressed in Ming clothes. Although we had wondered whether it was going to be some themed, Disney-style village to amuse Chinese tourists, we were actually pleasantly surprised.

The first thing we discovered came as a total shock: the women in Ming dress were the same ones we had seen haggling at Anshun market, or working the fields in nearby villages. We had previously mistaken them for Bouyi, but from our previous visit to Shitou Zhai we had learnt that they wear darker clothes, embroidered in the different way.

The ladies in Ming dynasty clothes were definitely authentic; there were not only old ladies, but many young girls too, who continued to sport these traditional garments. There seems to be an area of villages and towns around Anshun where this practice continues.

The Ming costume basically consists of long, calf- length blue tunics, black trousers, dark aprons and the embroidered cloth shoes that are common in this area of Guizhou. The tunics are usually bright blue, but can be turquoise, purple or pink as well. The ladies wear: For more go to: HolaChina: Your Gateway to China

Tags: Culture, Guizhou Province by Adam
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City of Jade / City of Anger

Hotan is remote. It is one of those end of the world places beyond which begins one of the world’s largest deserts, the Taklamakan, an enormous area of sand dunes and barren rocks forming some of the most hostile terrain on earth. Boiling in summer, freezing in winter, towns like Hotan hang precariously to the desert’s outer ring, hemmed in by the looming Kunlun Mountains that rise up to the Tibetan Plateau. Over the centuries, many other once thriving oasis towns like Hotan have succumbed to the advances of the Taklamakan, and their half hidden remains lie buried in the sand, a poignant testimony to the harshness of the environment.

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Tags: Culture, Great Markets, Uncategorized, Xinjiang Province by Adam
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Doufu Jianzhu or Doufu Zhengfu?

Doufu is the Chinese word for Tofu. It is sometimes used metaphorically to describe something that, like tofu, looks strong and hard on the outside, but is soft and weak on the inside. Following the huge earthquake in Sichuan and the subsequent collapse of so many shoddily built schools killing thousands of school children and students, the local press in China has been labelling the schools, Tofu buildings (doufuzha gongcheng). The actual meaning implies a complete botch job, combined with official graft.

With the expression doufuzha gongcheng flying all over the Chinese media, it now seems that the government has had enough of this open criticism and is reining in the local press, most likely because the truth hurts. In the people’s minds there is no doubt that official squeeze in collusion with business interests led to those poorly constructed state schools. The extent of the repercussions of local party corruption for the Chinese Communist Party as a whole will be known much further down the line. For now it is a case of damage limitation.

If you can read Chinese, here is an interesting link confirming what I have said above:南方周末 – 【学校之殇】建设部专家认定聚源中学是问题建筑——聚源中学倒塌悲剧调查

It now appears that the above article has been removed from the web. I wonder why????????????

Tags: technology by Adam
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