Hong Kong Noir
Published in the LARB China Blog on December 28, 2016
“When I lived in Hong Kong in the 1990s, my only interaction with the police occurred when I’d return from Shenzhen by foot. Once on the Hong Kong side of the Lo Wu Bridge, I always breathed a sigh of relief when I saw their crisp navy uniforms. The sight represented stability, order, and safety, things that were in short supply in Shenzhen and the parts of Hubei that I often visited as well on my forays to the mainland. Life in those places had a Wild West, free-for-all feel to them. There, as opposed to in rule-honoring Hong Kong, the trend often seemed to be that those with guanxi (personal connections) could work the system, while others were left to their own devices.” (Read more)
Introducing the Hong Kong Review of Books: A Q&A with Alfie Bown
Published in the LARB China Blog on July 27, 2016
“Earlier this year, two literary scholars, Alfie Bown and Kimberley Clarke, founded the Hong Kong Review of Books, a lively and varied addition to the online publishing scene. I recently emailed some questions to Bown, whose name should ring a bell with readers of the China Blog due to his recent contribution to it, to learn more about their joint endeavor.” (Read more)
Jason Y. Ng’s Street-Level View of Hong Kong’s Year of Umbrellas
Published in the LARB China Blog on June 15, 2016
“Before my visit to Hong Kong in mid-October 2014, I was worried. The Occupy Movement was two weeks old and I’d booked a room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, site of the Xinhua News Agency Headquarters and de facto PRC embassy before the 1997 Handover. It was a building rich in somber history, where mainland officials had worked during the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 and Tiananmen protests five years later. The Cosmopolitan is located in front of a large cemetery, and to get to the rest of Hong Kong you need to take a tram or bus. But with the Occupy Movement in nearby Causeway Bay and Admiralty, the trams weren’t running and the buses were re-routed. When I arrived, I noticed the irony of banners near the hotel celebrating the 65th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, which occurred just days after students in Hong Kong shut down major thoroughfares around government headquarters in protest. I had a more immediate concern, however, than politics: How would my husband and I get to my three book events without public transportation?” (Read more)
From Sichuan to Shanghai: A Q&A with Marketplace Correspondent and Street of Eternal Happiness Author Rob Schmitz
Published in the LARB China Blog on May 18, 2016
“Rob Schmitz has witnessed enormous changes in China since he first lived in rural Sichuan twenty years ago. For the last six years, he has been based in Shanghai serving as a correspondent for Marketplace, a radio program produced by American Public Media that enjoys 12 million listeners each week, receiving multiple awards for his stellar reporting. His first book, Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road, was just released yesterday. Set along the shady street where he and his family live in Shanghai’s former French Concession, his book is one of the best I’ve read about China’s sweeping social and economic transformations.” (Read more)
Bringing Empress Wu Back to Life (On the Page) – A Q&A with Weina Dai Randel
Published in the LARB China Blog on April 21, 2016
“Last year, Weina Dai Randel was virtually unknown. Now she’s causing a stir in literary scenes from the U.S. to China, thanks to the strong reviews venues such as Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal have given to her pair of books about Empress Wu: The Moon in the Palace (published in March) and The Empress of Bright Moon (just out this month).” (Read more)
The New Life in English of an Old Eileen Chang Novel
Published in the LARB China Blog on March 16, 2016
“Eileen Chang’s fiction mirrored her life. Shanghai comes alive in her pages, from the political turmoil in the 1930s and 40s to the nightlife and fashion of the times. But Chang – a.k.a. Zhang Ailing – is best known for her love stories beset by family interference, betrayal, and melancholy reunions. Born and raised in Shanghai, Chang was unusual in that she wrote in both English and Chinese, often translating her own work. She also translated other authors’ books, including Han Bangqing’s massive tome, The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai. This book and another classic, Dream of the Red Chamber, shaped her writing. But her life experiences in love and disappointment influenced her work more than anything.” (Read more)
Raising my half-Chinese son after divorce
Published in China Daily on September 25, 2015
“When I moved to Hong Kong at the age of twenty-three, I gravitated toward Mainland communities there, namely the one at the university where I attended graduate school. I had studied Mandarin at that point for about five years. I started teaching English to a Mainland graduate student named “Cai” that first semester. Although I didn’t know this custom at the time, people in China back in the mid-1990s dated with the intention of marrying.” (Read more)
At Home in the World – Interview with Leza Lowitz
Published in the June 2015 issue of Asian Jewish Life
“Asian Jewish Life: You have written over a dozen books on a wide range of topics, from young adult fiction to memoir to yoga poetry to travel guides, multicultural mothering anthologies, and many more. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? And how did you get your start in publishing?” (Read more)
Victor Sassoon’s Shanghai in Life and Literature
Published in the June 2015 issue of Asian Jewish Life
“Two new books published this year are set in Shanghai during World War II and touch upon the Jewish community there. In Tea on the Great Wall: An American Girl in War-Torn China (Earnshaw Books, 2015), Patricia Luce Chapman writes of her childhood in China. Born Patricia Potter, she lived in Shanghai with her parents, older brother Johnny, and a handful of servants.” (Read more)
How I Got My Literary Agent: Susan Blumberg-Kason
Published in Writer’s Digest on October 31, 2014
“Six years ago I started querying agents for Good Chinese Wife, a memoir about my tumultuous first marriage to a man from central China. A writer friend advised me to complete fifty polished pages of my memoir and a nonfiction book proposal before querying agents. That was all I would need, he said, because that’s how agents sold nonfiction.” (Read more)
True Story: My Memoir Pissed Off A Male Book Reviewer
Published in The Frisky on July 12, 2014
“When I started writing my memoir, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair With China Gone Wrong, I began networking with authors who wrote books set in Asia. I imagined developing solid friendships with a group of supportive authors. There’s a Chinese saying, huxiang bangzhu. It means ‘mutually helping one another.’ That’s what I pictured.” (Read more)
