Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China

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In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

Book Description

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.

Jung Chang describes the life of her grandmother, a warlord's concubine; her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents' experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving -- and ultimately uplifting -- detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining and educational.......2007-10-08

I read this book in preparation for a trip to China. The book follows the lives of 3 women (daughter, mother, grandmother) in China. Chang does an outstanding job teaching the reader about China's history and politics while at the same time giving us the women's stories. You will learn a lot about China during WWII, Japanese occupation, Communist revolution, Mao's great leap forward and the cultural revolution.

On the downside, the author does not do a particularly nice job in helping the reader understand the characters. You don't get into their brains. This is a minor criticism and I still highly recommend this book if you are at all interested in learning about China in the last 100 years. You will learn a lot without having to read a boring textbook.

Amazing insight into 20th century China and Mao inparticular.......2007-09-19

It is incredible to read this true story about 20th century China. So little is really known about China to those of us in the West. It is hard to believe that so many "intellectuals" here in the West used to, and even still, have so much admiration for Mao when there is truly only evil behind this man. There is a lot of history in this book but really it is the personal story of the author and her family. A must read for us all!

Wild China.......2007-09-15

"Mrs Shau slapped my father hard. The crowd barked at him indignantly, although a few tried to hide their giggles. Then they pulled out his books and threw them into huge jute sacks they had brought with them.

"When all the bags were full, they carried them downstairs, telling my father they were going to burn them... the next day after a denunciation meetings against him. They ordered him to watch the bonfire 'to be taught a lesson.' In the meantime, they said, he must burn the rest of his collection.

"When I came home that afternoon, I found my father in the kitchen. He had lit a fire in the big cement sink, and was hurling his books into the flames.

"This was the first time in my life I had seen him weeping. It was agonized, broken, and wild, the weeping of a man who was not used to shedding tears. Every now and then, in fits of violent sobs, he stamped his feet on the floor and banged his head against the wall.

"My father had spent every spare penny on his books. They were his life. After the bonfire, I could tell that something had happened to his mind."

(Wild Swans, Jung Chang, p.439)

Me, I might've lost mine completely.

After being near-perfectly obedient to a Party whose values you put above your family, to be accused of anti-Party-ism, judged for the very tasks you were instructed to unquestioningly and unconditionally, publicly humiliated and beaten (even made to kneel on glass) and forced to burn the very items you've spent a lifetime collecting and loving...why, I would've been long-gone crazy.

But then these Chinese Communists are dedicated to their work and politics (independently of the cash factor, which wasn't much in Mao's China in the 1950s' to 60s') in a manner quite unheard of today.

I mean, how many of us believe our local politicians are in it primarily because of their "commitment to the unity, harmony and welfare of the country" (to ask is to scoff). Not for Jung Chang's dad, one of the many victims of the Cultural Revolution.

Chang is kinda like Josephus, who escaped a burning Jerusalem (whilst she a 'burning' China) to become a historical-political writer.

Josephus' authorial intentions were of course far more motivated by their allegiance to his benefactor, Vesapian. His was a history of the Jews, but also a thinly veiled exaltation of Rome. Chang's agenda, on the other hand, is an outright expose of the delusions, the cruelty, the very insanity of life and government in China from the start of the 20th century.

From foot-binding to scheming mistresses to escaping third-wives(!); from miscarriages due to long treks (because wives are discouraged to ride in their husbands' vehicles lest 'bourgeosie privilege' is suspected) to the terror of city sieges; from communal self-delusion about a glut (which was really a famine!) to hungry peasants kidnapping babies for food; from profiting from the black-market in banned books (supposedly to be burnt but conveniently set aside for secret trade, especially the erotic ones like Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir) to the Little Red Book 'loyalty dance' (how? Gyrate, wave the book, sing Mao's quotes) - Chang spills everything one would want (and maybe not want) to know about life before and under Mao, structured and timelined by the lives of her grandmother, mother and her own.

The language is simple and clear and not at all 'profound', twisty or avant-garde-ish. Not unlike something you might read in an exercise book from a good Asian secondary school.

Therefore, you sorta know it's the content alone that won Wild Swans the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award. The book is proof you don't need kewl-sounding language to make a serious impact on the literary stage.

Read 'em and (you will) weep.

Wild Swans.......2007-09-01

Well written memoir that reviews the history of China immediately before, during and after the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, and also the early days of the Communist government. The good and the bad of Mao's rule is vividly portrayed.

Learned, laughed and cried........2007-08-31

It took me over a year to finish reading for it is a large, amazing book and I wanted to make sure that I was very alert when reading. Ms. Chang has a terrific writing style that makes you feel you are right there. Each chapter contributed to my knowledge of China as viewed through three women's eyes. It is the type of book you can finish a chapter and then go back to later for she has organized chapters to complete a period in time. Kathy Condon

Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China

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How to make reading a pleasure!
Beijing and Prairie grasses
Another book reflecting the "dark side"?
An excellent book about my homeland
Great Choice!

Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China
Ian Johnson
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375719199
Release Date: 2005-03-08

Book Description

In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage: a peasant legal clerk who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers, a young architect who defended the rights of dispossessed homeowners, and a bereaved woman who tried to find out why her elderly mother had been beaten to death in police custody. Representing the first cracks in the otherwise seamless façade of Communist Party control, these small acts of resistance demonstrate the unconquerable power of the human conscience and prophesy an increasingly open political future for China.

Customer Reviews:

How to make reading a pleasure!.......2006-11-06

I'm glad I found this book. These three stories are very well written and, hence, smooth reading. Each includes information about the "big picture" (historical background, explanation about what's happening in the rest of the country, etc.), as well as the little details, such as clothing styles. These stories are about what to me are normal or understandable ebbs and flows of real human endeavors (involving politics, greed, stubbornness, altruism, learning to deal with the system, and so forth), making China much less the usual mysterious caricature.

Beijing and Prairie grasses.......2006-09-07

Books on China can often grow stale and out of date only a handful of years after they are written, given the pace of change in the Middle Kingdom. With this in mind I was slightly hesitant to pick up Johnson's book, even though it was a mere two years old! However, the poignant topics and character-development in each of these three stories ensures that Wild Grass will remain relevant up through the coming Olympics and beyond.

Although he won the Pulitzer for his reportage on Falun Gong, my favorite segment of the book was the section dealing with the destruction of Beijing...especially the ancient walled neighborhoods known as hutongs. These centuries-old dwelling, so difinitive of Chinese culture, and the city of Beijing, could easily have been upgraded and preserved as viable living spaces for Chinese citizens; however, nonexistent planning and massive corruption has destroyed all but a small percentage of these communities, and a way of life.

Johnson' narrative of this travesty reminded me of the overall destruction of the prairie grasses of the American Midwest, now "preserved" in nearly insignificant scattered acreages sprinkled across the landscape...a fraction of one percent of what once was. With the loss of the hutongs, Beijing has similarly lost it's identity.

I highly recommend Wild Grass for anyone interested in reading about this nation in a more focused, human level, rather than the numerous, awe inspired accounts that seem to concentrate China's staggering economies of scale.

Another book reflecting the "dark side"?.......2005-01-08

I have not read this book yet and I do not intend to after reading almost all the reviews on Amazon. One major reason is that it is jsut another book that depicts the dark side of the country. Don't we feel that we've already had too many of them? No matter how well they are written and how informative they are, no readers will be able to get an accurate picture of the country when only the dark side is presented. In China, especially big cities, there are so many successful stories that worth mentioning. Yet, not a single book I know of cares about it. Maybe it is just a marketing strategy to satisfy ordinary readers' curiosity. Certainly It is another feel-better book. "How lucky we are! We can enjoy all the democracy we have here in US while people from other countries have to suffer. Oh, okay. Maybe we can help them a bit, just like we did in somewhere else, to return our so-treasured democracy to them." Now as a Chinese, I will tell you the truth: People there do not care, they are enjoying their lives too much to care. They have learnt that you have to be indifferent to be able to enjoy. That is to be indifferent to all the unfortunes happening around them and to be indifferent from all the sympathies that foreigners have towards them.

An excellent book about my homeland.......2004-09-11

I've lived in China since 1999, and I often read stories about
China in the Western media that I simply don't believe. Others
report on abuses that do occur here without giving a reader any
understanding of why. So, China remains "inscrutable." (I'm
rolling my eyes...)

China is a complex subject. How can a Westerner who has never
been here know what's happening? China is so far away and
shrouded in a bit of mystery, some due to the sheer length of
its history and some due to the power of the Party. In my
case, I don't speak Chinese, so getting past the public face is
impossible.

Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for
his reporting on China. He speaks the language. And, he's one
heck of a fine journalist. In WILD GRASS, he recounts the
stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens who find themselves
fighting the repression of the system, risking imprisonment
and even death.

Johnson understands "the big picture," and after reading this
book, so will you. A nation is not just a single entity. It's
made of people. All nations, not just the one you live in. So
what are the people in China like? Read this book, and you'll
feel like you've met some of them. A peasant lawyer, a young
architectural student, a bereaved daughter. Poor farmers in
Yulin and Party officials in Beijing.

Johnson also brings the scenery to life, makes the unfamiliar
familiar, and captures many little details and episodes and
ironies. A compelling subject in the hands of a masterful
author.

China is experiencing unprecented economic development. What
effect will this ultimately have on its social and political
system? I don't agree with all of the author's conclusions --
it surprises me how much I agree with the Party -- but it
doesn't matter. That's part of the beauty of this book. To
bandy about phrases like "evil empire" is the simplistic
idiocy that will (I hope) eventually doom morons like Dubya.
Can we please move past that and try to genuinely understand?

There can be no doubt that what Johnson reports in this book
is factually accurate. If you want to learn about China, this
is a good place to start. And then, form your own conclusions.
There's plenty of room for you to do that here. Which, in the
end, is what journalism is all about.

I'm quite glad that I read this book. This is literature, same
as George Orwell, who I also don't always agree with. And
agreement does not matter. Spurring a reader to think is what
matters. Johnson can do that with the best of them.

Great Choice!.......2004-08-24

If you're looking for an inside look into China, this is your book! It's not often that one thinks of a non-fiction book as a "page turner," yet I found myself speeding through the book, disappointed when I came to the last page. Cheering for the many underdogs depicted, Mr. Johnson's light and lively writing style helps to paint a clear picture of the social inequities found in modern day China. I particularly enjoyed the second story about the demolition of the old hutongs to make way for new construction. Johnson's prose paints a vivid picture of the beauty that is now forever lost and the fight the long-time residents have sadly lost.

I've travelled to China twice and never felt as connected to the people as I do now. China seems to be struggling with its identity, working on cleaning up its image as the 2008 Olympics approach. Wild Grass is an invaluable depiction of the fight that is carried on daily by ordinary people simply trying to live what we accept to be a normal life.

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Nice but not great
Friendship and the Cultural Revolution
Min tells a great story
Sad reality of the cultural revolution
Lives disrupted... sad ... sad .... sad...

Wild Ginger: A Novel
Anchee Min
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0618068864

Book Description

The beautiful, iron-willed Wild Ginger is only in elementary school when we first meet her, but already she has been singled out by the Red Guards for her "foreign-colored eyes." Her classmate Maple is also a target of persecution. It is through the quieter, more skeptical Maple, a less than ardent Maoist whose father is languishing in prison for a minor crime, that we see this story to its tragic end.
The Red Guards have branded Wild Ginger's deceased father a traitor and eventually drive her mother to a gruesome suicide, but she fervently embraces Maoism to save her spirit. She rises quickly through the ranks and is held up as a national model for Maoism. Wild Ginger now has everything, even a young man who vies for her heart. But Mao's prohibition on romantic love places her in an untenable position. Into this sexually charged situation steps Maple, creating an uneasy triangle that Min has portrayed with keen pychological insight and her characteristic gift for lyrical eroticism.
In Anchee Min's previous three books she returned again and again to the devastating experience of the Cultural Revolution, which defined her youth. Here, in this slim but powerful novel, she gives us a moving story that goes closer to the core of that experience than anything she has written before, and brilliantly delineates the pychological and sexual perversion of those times. Ultimately, WILD GINGER has the clean lines of a parable, the poignancy of a coming-of-age novel, the sexiness of a French blue movie, and the sadness of a truly tragic love story.

Customer Reviews:

Nice but not great.......2007-08-31

I read Empress Orchid and loved it. That led me to the other books by this author. This was much lighter in content, but interesting. The characters were vivid and memorable. It was a good book, but not to the standard of Empress Orchard.

Friendship and the Cultural Revolution.......2007-05-19

Anchee Min's WILD GINGER is an intimate look at the friendship between two contrasting young girls growing amidst the drastic changes taking place in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution.

A story of friendship whose chains were destroyed by partisan beliefs, Maple and Wild Ginger wrestle between the principles of Maoism and the natural urges that bind them to the even more painful process of growing up. Disturbing and heartbreaking, the narrative may tend to wallow in predictable sentimentalism. But by the sheer power of the sociopolitical circumstances that test the love of these two girls for each other ... and the young man who came in between them, Anchee Min provides an insight into the China often discussed in history books but with greater pain from the eyes of the youngsters who lived through its most crucial period of cultural evolution.

Min tells a great story.......2007-05-02

All of Anchee Min's stories are delightfully well told. This book is no exception. I fell in love with Wild Ginger.

Sad reality of the cultural revolution.......2006-05-25

Fast, easy page-turner (I read it in one day) that gives interesting insight into what it may have been like growing up during the Cultural Revolution. Although it is insightful and terribly sad at times, it was way too underdeveloped and never reached its full potential. I wish the writer had gone much more in depth with the charachters and their anguish, love, fear,lives,passions and ambitions.

This was the first book I have read by this author and am curious about her other novels, only because of her positive reviews. However, this book wasn't a "must-read" at all- I would recommend it only if you have an interest in Maoist China and the Cultural Revolution, or a few spare hours to read an entire book.

Lives disrupted... sad ... sad .... sad..........2006-04-04

This book makes you think about the millions of young people who had their lives taken away from them. To be hungry and impoverished is horrible enough, but to have your youth, energy and love stolen is another. To grow up in the Cultural Revolution is to have lost all of everything.

Some of the personal narratives of this period, Wild Swan comes to mind, tell of the deprivations and the humiliation, the power of the gang, but omit the experience of coming of age.

Maybe this is all too personal a thing to have had stolen for a memoir, or maybe the experience was totally stolen, and maybe the these stories will come to us only in fiction.

Wild Ginger never had a chance for life. She channeled her discipline, did not allow herself to feel and out Mao-ed the Maoists. Everyone who ever cared about her suffered for her few moments of self esteem.

The Cultural Revolution was a low grade civil war, where the angriest manipulators were given license to act out... and act out they did. This novel tells of the damage to people who lost such large pieces of their lives that they can never rebuild them.

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An invaluable contribution to Chinese History and International Studies
A Great Book
slanted and rumored

Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang
Christian Tyler
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813535336

Book Description

"The world is only too aware of what the Chinese are up to in Tibet. But few know of the sufferings of neighboring Xinjiang. Now, at last, its subjugated people have found a champion in Christian Tyler. His revelations will not go down well in Beijing."—Peter Hopkirk, author of The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

"Following in the footsteps of Peter Fleming, Tyler paints a vivid portrait of Xinjiang and reminds us of another of the immense problems facing China's new leadership. A fascinating book."—Chris Patten, former governor of Hong Kong

Closed to the world for half a century, like a black hole in the Asian landmass, the wilderness of Xinjiang in northwest China is returning to the light. The picture it presents is both fascinating and disturbing.

Despite a savage landscape and climate, Xinjiang has a rich past: sand-buried cities, painted cave shrines, rare creatures, and wonderfully preserved mummies of European appearance. Their descendants, the Uighurs, still farm the tranquil oases that ring the dreaded Taklamakan, the world's second largest sand desert, and the Kazakh and Kirghiz herdsmen still roam the mountains. The region's history, however, has been punctuated by violence, usually provoked by ambitious outsiders—nomad chieftains from the north, Muslim emirs from Central Asia, Russian generals, or warlords from inner China.

The Chinese regard the far west as a barbarian land. Only in the 1760s did they subdue it, and even then their rule was repeatedly broken. Compared with the Russians' conquest of Siberia, or the Americans' trek west, China's colonization of Xinjiang has been late and difficult. The Communists have done most to develop it, as a penal colony, as a buffer against invasion, and as a supplier of raw materials and living space for an overpopulated country. But what China sees as its property, the Uighurs regard as theft by an alien occupier. Tension has led to violence and savage reprisals.

This portrait of Xinjiang should be essential reading for travelers and for anyone interested in today's China and the fate of minority peoples.

Customer Reviews:

An invaluable contribution to Chinese History and International Studies.......2005-08-14

The home of sand-buried cities, painted cave shrines, rare animals, and wonderfully preserved mummies of a distinctive European appearance, the wilderness of Xinjiang in northwest China is marked by a savage landscape and volatile climate where the Uighurs still farm tranquil oases that ring the world's second largest sand desert (Taklamakan) and the native herdsmen sill roam the wild mountains. This is a region that has been hallmarked by violence ranging from the incursions by nomad chieftains from the north, Muslim emirs from Central Asia, Russian generals, and warlords from inner China. Wild West China: The Taming Of Xinjiang by journalist Christian Tyler is the story of how the Communists have developed this one time untamed wilderness through the development of a penal colony, as a buffer against invasion, and as a suppler of raw materials and living space. But Chinese development is seen by the native Uighurs as the unwelcome work of an alien occupier which has led to continued violence and savage reprisals. An invaluable contribution to Chinese History and International Studies, Wild West China is especially commended to academia and university library reference collections.

A Great Book.......2005-02-07

Books on Uighurs are so rare. Let's thank Christian Tyler for giving us this fascinating book.

slanted and rumored.......2004-11-26

Amnesty inspired. Full of baseless rumors that cannot be documented. Very anti Han, and racist.

Tibet's Hidden Wilderness: Wildlife and Nomads of the Chang Tang Reserve

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Tibet's Hidden Wilderness: Wildlife and Nomads of the Chang Tang Reserve
George B. Schaller
Manufacturer: Harry N Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Wildlife of the Tibetan Steppe

ASIN: 0810938936

The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China

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The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China
Erik Mueggler
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0520226313

Book Description

In Erik Mueggler's powerful and imaginative ethnography, a rural minority community in the mountains of Southwest China struggles to find its place at the end of a century of violence and at the margins of a nation-state. Here, people describe the present age, beginning with the Great Leap Famine of 1958-1960 and continuing through the 1990s, as "the age of wild ghosts." Their stories of this age converge on a dream of community--a bad dream, embodied in the life, death, and reawakening of a single institution: a rotating headman-ship system that expired violently under the Maoist regime. Displaying a sensitive understanding of both Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman language spoken in this region, Mueggler explores memories of this institution, including the rituals and poetics that once surrounded it and the bitter conflicts that now haunt it.To exorcise "wild ghosts," he shows, is nothing less than to imagine the state and its power, to trace the responsibility for violence to its morally ambiguous origins, and to enunciate calls for justice and articulate longings for reconciliation.

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An entertaining, but narrow view of Outer Mongolia
Mongolia not just about tents
Not for those of us who love to travel
mongolia warts and all
Disappointing

Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia
Jill Lawless
Manufacturer: Ecw Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Mongolia | Asia | Travel | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1550224344

Book Description

Jill Lawless arrived in Mongolia in the late 1990s to find a country waking from centuries of isolation, at once rediscovering its heritage as a nomadic and Buddhist society and simultaneously discovering the western world. The result is a land of fascinating, bewildering contrasts: a vast country where nomadic herders graze their sheep and yaks on the steppe, it also has one of the world’s highest literacy levels and a burgeoning high-tech scene. While trendy teenagers rollerblade amid the Soviet apartment blocks of Ulaanbaatar and dance to the latest pop music in nightclubs, and the rich drive Mercedes and surf the Internet, more than half the population still lives in felt tents, scratching out a living in one of the world’s harshest landscapes. This is a funny and revealing portrait of a beautiful, troubled country.

Customer Reviews:

An entertaining, but narrow view of Outer Mongolia.......2006-07-10

This book loosely opens a debate about globalisation and uses some of the information gathered from Jills time in Mongolia to back this up, with historical references and general information about the country.

The implied suggestion is that nothing much happens in Mongolia outside UB with the book focussing mainly on things going on in and around UB, which I think distorts the picture of Mongolia as UB is actually pretty much like any other city. I believe that this book could have been written about a lot of places in the world from the viewpoint of a city dweller.

The thing that I believe makes Mongolia so interesting (and probably unique) is why the population movement is actually away from the city and back to the land. It's this fact that gets most people travelling there - to see and experience how Mongolians live and how they follow their traditions out in the steppes - can the nomadic lifestyle really be better than the western way of life?

It is understandable that the bias is towards UB as Jill spent most of her time there, but yes for the people who want to know about what happens outside UB it's a shame that more time was not spent gaining or relating some real insights into Mongolian lives outside the city.

On the plus side, I'd say the book is a good read and quite entertaining and to be fair to the author that's probably all she had in mind when writing it - however the book does offer a narrow picture of one aspect of Mongolian life (living in UB) that is experienced by a minority of the country's population, as the majority (over 70% of the population) live outside UB (factual sources: CIA factbook & world gazetteer [both 2006]).

Consequently that means this book is hardly a definitive or accurate guide to Mongolia, so I'd suggest you read around the subject if you ever plan to go there.

Thats just my opinion though - I'd happily recommend that you get a copy of the book and make your own mind up.

Mongolia not just about tents.......2006-07-05

What makes this book so interesting is that it doesn't fall into the cliched sterotypes of Mongolia most loved by foreignors. Mongolia in the 1990s underwent dramatic and painful social, political and economic changes. Those changes have ebbed from the collapse of the country's economy in the early 1990s (and the initial abandonment of the cities for the nomadic way of life), to the later collapse of the rural economy and the drift back towards the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. To make the claim that the capital doesn't reflect the 'real Mongolia' is not only arrogant, it is wrong. It is like saying Beijing doesn't relfect the 'real China'.

The fact remains that the majority of the country's population lives in the capital. People have moved to the capital for the same reasons people gravitate to cities around the world: they seek opportunity and a chance to improve their lives. Wildeast engages with the ups and downs of this world; the shattered dreams and the wild fantasies: and it does use humour to do this. The country sits at the centre of the debates around globalisation and modernisation. It asks us to question what is development and who does it benefit.

Its author edited the country's only independent English language newspaper - a newspaper whose majority staff are Mongolian. Few foreignors have seen Mongolia up close like this, or shared the confidences of its people.

Ulaanbaatar has much to offer the visitor who opens their eyes. They will see a vibrant democratic political scene, nightlife teeming with young people and pop bands, an expanding restaurant scene, and a burgeoning business community. It is also a capital with shocking poverty surrounded by slums, and a nomadic way of life in crisis.

It is the work of a journalist, but it is also the work of a writer who as a result of her role as a journalist, had unusual access to all aspects of Mongolian society, not just hanging out with herders on the steppe.

I found the book to be a great read and it stands out in the crowded world of travel writing. It does not purport to be a guidebook (for that I would recommend Lonely Planet), but it does shine a light on all the facets of Mongolian life that most visitors to the country would otherwise find hard to penetrate in their short visit.

Not for those of us who love to travel.......2005-09-30

I prefer to read a travel book that provides helpful information on destinations without too much personal bias. To my disappointment, I find plenty in this book that shows the author's close-mindedness and the lack of respect for local hospitality and culture. One example, when the author describes the Mongolian hospitality and the cheese that they offered him, his comments in the book were "...Who first discovered that you could make from milk a dried curd with the consistency of rock and the smell of vomit - and then eat it?". I wouldn't mind realistic descriptions of the places and things, but I find the author's attitude less appealing.

mongolia warts and all.......2004-11-14

I found Wild East to be an eye-opener. I had a naive impression that everyone in Mongolia lived in tents on the steppe. I was surprised to find out that it is a country with a vibrant city life. I also didn't realise there is a lively free press, pop bands, and even night clubs. I get the sense that many westerners view a place like Mongolia through rose coloured glasses (the noble herdsman under the blue sky). That life seems very hard and it is no surprise that many people aspire to move to the city and get their hands on modern consumer goods.

I really enjoyed this book and it has given me the desire to go visit Mongolia and see for myself this fascinating country. I highly recommend Wild East.

Disappointing.......2004-04-11

This was a disappointing book due to the poor quality of the writing and the lack of deep analysis. However, there is not much available on Mongolia. This does provide some history and glimpses of life in the remote country and is worth a read until better books are published.

Pandas in the Wild: SAving an Endangered Species

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Pandas in the Wild: SAving an Endangered Species

Manufacturer: Aperture
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0893819972
Release Date: 2005-06-15

Book Description

"Of course the panda is not safe. Nor will it ever be. It will always be threatened by something, attracting adversity as readily as adoration. We know what the panda needs: a forest with bamboo, a den for its young, and freedom from persecution."--George B. Schaller

Giant Pandas in the Wild: Saving an Endangered Species takes an insider's view of one of the most alluring--and until recently, one of the least understood--animals on the endangered species list. Through stunning photographs never before published in a book, readers enter a world of magical landscapes in a remote, mountainous area that is home to China's remaining 1,100 wild pandas.

Lü Zhi, who began her research in 1985, made the panda's habitat her second home, and in the process, gained the trust of more than twenty of these animals. Her observations and photographs of nearly every aspect of the panda's daily life dispel the myths about these creatures that have accumulated in the public's mind. From intimate pictures of a mother raising her infant cub to photographs of these magnificent animals throughout the seasons and over the years, the author presents the fascinating world she shared with her subjects.

Giant Pandas in the Wild offers not only an in-depth study of the animal's natural history but also a story of the dedication required to save the panda from almost certain extinction.

Wang Shiwei and "Wild Lilies": Rectification and Purges in the Chinese Communist Party 1942-1944 : Dai Qing

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Wang Shiwei and "Wild Lilies": Rectification and Purges in the Chinese Communist Party 1942-1944 : Dai Qing
Dai Qing , David E. Apter , Chin-Shou Sung , and Ching Tai
Manufacturer: M.E. Sharpe
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Wild China
John MacKinnon
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0262133296

Book Description

with photographs by Nigel Hicks

China is a country of incredible diversity. Its widely varied habitats support a wealth of animals, birds, and plants that make this country biologically one of the richest on our planet. Illustrated with over 400 superb color photographs, Wild China surveys these treasures. It explores reserves where the elusive Giant Panda is now protected, alpine meadows that are a botanist's wonderland of floral species, wetlands that are home to a million birds, turtle islands, and tigers' stalking grounds.

Following a scene-setting introduction, chapters focus on each of the country's major ecological regions in turn, from the peaks of Qomolangma (Mount Everest) to the world's second-lowest point in the Turpan Basin, from tropical rain forests in the south to the permafrost of Manchuria and the cold dry desert of the northwest, from vast grasslands and alpine meadows to the teeming yellow waters of the Yangtze River.

A human population of over one billion people has put enormous pressure on this natural wealth. The need for economic development is balanced, however, by the Chinese people's long-standing love and appreciation of natural beauty. China has already established over 500 nature reserves, including some of the largest in the world, and these are highlighted in Wild China.

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