[AGL] the mystery of China

[Frances Morey]

Thanks, Michael, I'll look for *The Porcelain Thief.*
Best,
Frances

On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 10:44 AM Michael Eisenstadt <eisenstadt0 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> If you want to get a sense of what China is like nowadays I recommand Huan
> Hsu's *The Porcelain Thief.* I have to confess that I've read it 3 times.
> The author Huan Hsu is an American-born Chinese, what the Chinese call an
> ABC. As a child he resented not being named Keith or Louis. His mother told
> him he was free to change his name when he reached 18. His parents were
> college professors. Nor did he learn Chinese at home. The book recounts his
> stay in China as a young man interested in finding out if any of the
> porcelain his wealthy grandfather buried in his land just before the
> Japanese arrived in 1937 might be recovered. The author has an odd
> background, his grandmother and aunts and uncles, all devout Christians,
> fled China for Taiwan when the Commies took over. He gets a job with his
> uncle whom the government has allowed to start a large hi-tech business. He
> undertakes to learn to speak Chinese and discovers that a bit of Chinese
> had rubbed off on him when he was a child. He interviews his aged
> grandmother who doesn't want to talk about the porcelain of her childhood.
> She is more interested in whether he has been going to church. Nor does he
> have the language yet to fully understand her. He moves in with his
> American cousin who has been working at their uncle's factory. Hsu's take
> on making one's way in contemporary China rings true and in my mind is the
> go to book for getting a sense of what it means to live there.
>
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