Travel writing, a Van Gogh Grandma and the 70s

Although it may not be the best title for a travel book, Ka-fai Ma’s Good Place To Die certainly stands out from the others in the travel-writing genre. Ma attempted to capture his spontaneous thoughts and ideas as they occurred on his travels (before they vanished from his memory altogether, as he says).  A Hongkongnese scholar and columnist, Ma admits to being a “underqualified” traveler (as he’s afraid of dark places, the cold and crowds), but offers some interesting insights nonetheless from his trips across Asia and Europe. Among the things his thoughts dwell on: roads often traveled, finding beauty in teeny-tiny details, gorgeous landscapes and conversations he had with a local motel landlady – all these things allow him to forget that “life is elsewhere” and freeze each moment in time.

The rapid fluctuations of Shanghai’s fortunes made the city a legend in its own time, and a perfect subject for acclaimed Belgian comic book artist Hergé, who used it as a setting for his fifth Tintin adventure, The Blue Lotus. Published in 1936, the story is set five years earlier, when Western powers, the Japanese and various Chinese factions wrestled for control over the flourishing city. Ever the intrepid reporter and indefatigable do-gooder, Tintin comes to Shanghai on the tail of his previous adventure, Cigars of the Pharaoh, intent on putting an end to a nefarious opium smuggling ring. Along the way he must contend with Japanese villains and conceited American businessmen to find the cure for Rajaijah juice, the poison of madness.

Great books: Water Margin (Outlaws of the Marsh)

Can literary fiction challenge the established order? Can a simple story, a work of pure fantasy, threaten an entire regime? The Qing Dynasty certainly thought so; they so feared this book that they banned it in 1754. In fact, Hu Ding, the imperial court’s chief censor, didn’t just want Shuihu Zhuan (Water Margin) banned, he wanted it obliterated, removed from all existence, so much so that he begged his Manchu masters to issue a severer prohibition “to have the book blocks of the Shuihu Zhuan destroyed.”

Years after her death, the famous ‘lost’ Eileen Chang book is released

Before she died in 1995, the famed Shanghainese author (best known today for Lust, Caution, thanks to Ang Lee) ordered that her final work be burned. Now, 14 years later, the executor of her estate, Stephen Soong, has insisted on publishing Xiao Tuan Yuan (Little Reunion).

Rachel Dewoskin, author of the best-selling China memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing, is coming to Glamour Bar this Sunday (July 19) to read from her just-released debut novel, Repeat After Me. We sat down with the former foreign babe to get her thoughts on being inspired by China, novel writing, and the line between fact and fiction.

How did you feel about the success of your memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing? Did it surprise you?

I think anyone who writes a book is surprised when it arrives at the doorstep as an actual, physical product people can pick up and read. And delighted. I'm grateful for the generous way people have responded to Foreign Babes in Beijing and for the conversation it's allowed me to have with people all over the place. I take the intensity and friendliness of the response to Foreign Babes to mean that the world remains enormously interested in China. And that a lot of us would love to see more books on China by women - both Chinese and expatriate.