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Not to hijack this thread, but I wondered the same thing so i googled it. An interview with the director last summer 8/10:
RF: And did the daugther, Qin, watch the film? LF: Qin didn’t watch the film. RF: How is she doing now? LF: I met her last month. She left her job in Shenzhen after we finishing filming. She went to another province, Hubai province. She stayed in a smaller city to work in a hotel. But now she quit her job. She seems pretty happy now living independently in the city. She told me she has a boyfriend now. Although she has very little education. That’s worrisome. But I think she’s a smart girl, she knows how to make her way. RF: How old is she now? LF: She’s 20. Big girl. RF: Is she talking to her parents? LF: She told me that she called during the spring festival. Other than that, they don’t talk. She did [go] back to see her brother. LF: How is he doing? RF: The brother got into a really good high school this past summer. He got into the best high school in his town. The mother quit her job to go back and take care of him. The rest is really interesting to read: http://rooftopfilms.com/blog/2010/08...lixin-fan.html |
Thanks amyb.
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Echoing the thanks to Amy for posting the update. I am so glad a few of you watched that film. Incredible!
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Bookmarking and adding some old classics that I have thoroughly enjoyed:
"Freedom at Midnight" by Collins and Lapierre http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-at-Mid...dp/8125931643/ "The Soong Dynasty" by Sterling Seagrave http://www.amazon.com/Soong-Dynasty-...dp/0060913185/ "Stilwell and The American Experience in China" by Barabar Tuchman http://www.amazon.com/Stilwell-Ameri...dp/0802138527/ In the latter is the classic story which I'll briefly relate to the best of my fading memory. An American officer, who speaks fluent Chinese (Mandarin or dialect, don't remember) gets out of his car and approaches two peasant farmers. He asks "Is this the road to Chengdu?". They stare at him blankly. He repeats the question, slowly. Blank stares. He shrugs his shoulders and starts walking away. One of the farmers turns to the other and says "It sounded like that foreigner was asking if this was the road to Chengdu!" Tuchman's telling would of course be much better. |
I greatly appreciate this thread as I plan my first foray to Asia (China in September). I feel like a stranger in a strange land not being on the Europe forum! I'm having a harder time finding literature in particular that has been translated to English, unlike my reading list for Russia last year.
Apologies if these duplicate previous recommendations; this is my "to be read" list so far: The Man Who Loved China - Winchester http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Loved-...=37VHARJL34PR6 A Comrade Lost and Found - Wong http://www.amazon.com/Comrade-Lost-F...=37VHARJL34PR6 Postcards from Tomorrow Square - Fallows http://www.amazon.com/Postcards-Tomo...=37VHARJL34PR6 China Witness Voices from a Silent Generation - Xinran http://www.amazon.com/China-Witness-...=37VHARJL34PR6 Factory Girls From Village to City in a Changing China - Chang http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Girls-...=37VHARJL34PR6 Last Days of Old Beijing - Meyer http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Old-...=37VHARJL34PR6 China: It's History and Culture - Morton http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071412794 China Road - A Journey into the Future of a Rising Superpower http://www.amazon.com/China-Road-Jou...1407347&sr=1-1 If there's anything glaring that I must read, please, feel free to offer up suggestions. In addition to watching Last Train Home this weekend, I also watched The Road Home, which I thought was just a beautiful, simple story. But I'm a sucker like that... |
Linking these older threads with the current one:
http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...ecommended.cfm http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...el-to-asia.cfm |
Just a word of appreciation for this thread. I am currently reading RADIO SHANGRI-LA (Craig's recommendation), with Kathie's recommended BADLANDS moved to the top of the pile, and I am planning to see eks-recommended THE LAST TRAIN HOME as soon as possible. Please keep the titles coming.
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And thank you for the links to earlier reading threads. I greatly appreciate it!
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Once having arrived in Vietnam early in March with a new Kindle, I went in search of novels for purchase. Surprisingly, the New York Times list of "100 Notable Books" for 2010 includes three works of fiction about Vietnam, each one about the war. Because of the strong impression made by the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, I bought and read all three during our 27 days in Vietnam. I should say that I haven't been a fan of movies of the Vietnam War, having seen only a few of the many available, but after the museum visit I wanted to read some novels about it.
THE LOTUS EATERS by Tatjana Soli features the experiences of a young woman photojournalist named Helen. I selected it first because of the strong impact of the photos at the museum. Inherently interesting, and showing the pull Vietnam exerts on the main characters, this one has many virtues but with some of the flaws of a first novel. The author tries to do too much, for one thing. Helen's affairs, first with a seasoned photojournalist who acts as a mentor, and then with a Vietnamese man (Linh), sets up some of the alternatives she struggles with. THE GIRL BY THE ROAD AT NIGHT by David Rabe is more compact and more focused. And Rabe is an a expert in Vietnamese literature and mythology and drama. His experience as a writer makes this the most beautifully written of the three. The subject here is the relationship of an American GI with a Vietnamese prostitute. Their relationship develops into something personal, though fraught with tragic cross-cultural misunderstandings--a theme that links it with THE LOTUS EATERS. MATTERHORN is a mammoth, sprawling epic decades in the making. It describes a few months in the life of a member of the US infantry with all of the challenges, hardships, reversals, brutality, and growth attending war in the jungle. The stupidity of commanding officers, the racial tensions between GIs, the increasing alienation from a previous life--the incommensurability of being in combat in that war with anything "normal" comes through. Interestingly, in Hue I met in a restaurant one night a former military man who had been an American advisor in Vietnam as long ago as 1963. He has since made 30 trips back, bringing vets with him, and now volunteering to assist teachers on English in Vietnam schools. When I mentioned, with a bit of uncertainty, having just finished reading MATTERHORN (he had lived those experiences himself, after all), he responded appreciatively. He was as gripped by it as I was and said it was all accurate. That endorsement gave me confidence in my own reaction to the book. This novel is graphic but hard to put down. The writing is flawed at points, but that's easily overlooked. MATTERHORN is the equivalent of a page-turner in Kindle-ese. There it is, as the GIs in MATTERHORN say. Three novels with a similar subject but each different from the others and each very much worth reading. |
Another word of appreciation for the film recommended above, THE LAST TRAIN HOME, which shows the fractured families and fractured dreams that the great migration to China's southern factories has created.
This technique of showing the dramatic impact of larger social movements on individuals and their families -- particularly those who are less powerful, less well represented, less inclined to have a voice -- is deeply moving. This film reminded me so very much of UP THE YANGTZE, directed by Yung Chang, and now I learn from the interview link thoughtfully posted by amyb above that director Fan Lixin actually served as an associate producer/sound recorder/translator on that earlier film. If you liked THE LAST TRAIN HOME and you haven't yet seen UP THE YANGTZE, please do. |
Just noticed that I neglected to give the author of MATTERHORN in my post just above. It's Karl Marlantes, a veteran of marine combat.
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New novel on Vietnam with a brief review in today's NYTimes:
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/08...-camilla-gibb/ |
A Toronto woman we met at a hotel restaurant in Hoi An had just read, and was raving about, THE BEAUTY OF HUMANITY MOVEMENT. Thanks for this review.
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Thanks to this thread, I too just watched Last Train Home ( it's on instant play on netflix). Interesting and moving.
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Fellow Readers with Travel Obsessions:
I enjoyed reading RADIO SHANGRI-LA but more for the opportunity to get to know author Lisa Napoli than for the chance to discover much about Bhutan. I respect her intrepid seeking spirit, but I wish that she had both mulled her experiences over longer and spent more time working with an editor. For me, the book succeeds as a cross between a spiritual autobiography and a valentine to her adopted second country. It just doesn't give quite as much vicarious experience of Bhutan as this reader would have liked. It is a great promotion for the concept of Gross National Happiness though. Anyone? Also on the subject of vicarious travel to less probable destinations, I am glad to have read TONY WHEELER'S BAD LANDS: A TOURIST ON THE AXIS OF EVIL although I don't think that it rises to the level of 'drop what you are doing and read it now.' The premise of the book is highly engaging and I mostly get a kick out of Wheeler's sense of humor, but don't expect this thin quilt of cultural lore and personal musings to stimulate deep thought. You learn a little bit about each of the countries showcased -- Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea & Saudi Arabia -- but traveling with Wheeler at that pace leads to an inevitable "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" level of insight." Yes, yes, I know that the point is to quash the idea of an axis of evil and champion a more nuanced notion of good and evil at home and abroad. To that a resounding "Bravo"! Wheeler's "Evil Meter TM" analysis and "Other Bad Lands -- the Extended List" do show evidence of an admirable willingness to embrace complexity. They just don't break any new ground. Anyone looking for more romps through rogue (and otherwise less accessible) countries might also enjoy Elinor Burkett's SO MANY ENEMIES, SO LITTLE TIME: AN AMERICAN WOMAN IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. |
History buffs can rummage through piles of books about the US experience in Vietnam. For balance, Valley of Death, newly released in hard cover, examines the battles that kicked the French out of the country in the 1950s. It's by Ted Morgan, a Pulitzer-prizewinner.
North Americans know little about the Second World War in Asia other than the American campaigns against Japan.Two books by British authors detail (and how) the horrors of that war in the British colonies: Burma, Malaya, Singapore, the eastern side of India, Hong Kong in passing and the postwar attempt to return Indonesia to Dutch rule. The scope of the bloodshed is appalling and overlooked. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper called their books Forgotten Armies (the Japanese campaigns) and Forgotten Wars (the aftermath for the British Empire.) They're both in paperback, and both are long and complicated -- but today those lands are still complicated and of increasing importance. |
I just read a really entertaining novel set in Vietnam, called 'Hanoi Jane' by Elka Ray - it's chick lit, so is light reading, but was entertaining and full of fun details about Vietnam. I've also been following the author's blog at elkaray.com. I lived in Hanoi for two years and this book reminded me of that amazing experience.
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Well, I have to disagree with the esteemed ekscunchy. I am in the middle of Ian Frazier's book right now, and rather wish I hadn't bother to start it. Aside from a few days on the largely barren tip of Russia on the Bering Strait, it took 170 pages for him to get started on actually visiting Siberia. Most of that was flatly recounted history, most of which I already knew. Now he is finally traveling, he doesn't seem to be seeing much more than I did on the train.
He also seem to be lacking curiosity. Encountering just one Englishman in his trip across Siberia, he writes down his name and never checks to find out that he's a guidebook writer - in fact I have the first edition of Lonely Planet's Trans-Siberian, which he co-authored, on my shelves. I think I'd be better off forgetting the remaining 200 pages and looking for Thubron's "In Siberia" instead. |
ttt
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