#tinyeyesreads

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚] No.4 -- Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper 

“The Chinese Eat Everything” – the prologue title stuck out as I turned to the first page of the book. Ugh, it’s gonna be another book selling exoticism, I thought. The author Fuchsia Dunlop starts her story with the experience of eating century eggs: “They leered up at me like the eyeballs of some nightmarish monster, dark and threatening. Their albumens were a filthy translucent brown, their yolks an oozy black, ringed with a layer of greenish, moldy grey.” Even though I was a bit turned off by the title, I was somehow attracted by the vivid way she describes her experience. As I read through the chapters, Fuchsia takes me back to her early life in Sichuan as a researcher, her life in Hongkong full of cultural contrasts, as well as her experience as a chef in a Chinese cooking school. As she went deeper into the life in China, her relationship with Chinese culture also evolved. It’s the honesty in this evolution that completely changed my initial judgement of the title. I found truth in her perspective and humour in her words. Her observation as a foreigner opens up other angles for me to understand Chinese culture. Her feeling of the increasingly blurring line between cultural identities resonate with my personal experience living abroad.  “It is not an easy thing for a traveler to go completely native in her tastes. What we eat is an essential part of who we are and how we define ourselves.” “I thought I knew China, but as always I had underestimated vastness and diversity.” 

I have to say that she is way more adventurous in the world of food than I am. If you are interested in food culture, this book may be a fun read for you. As usual, I put the link of the English version in my link bio. Hope you enjoy. Link amazon: https://amzn.to/2A9wPDC Image copyright : 上海译文出版社 W. W. Norton & Company

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚] No.8 — The Chinese in Britain: A history of visitors and settlers First, happy World Book Day! 🐛 Today I want to introduce a book that I’m currently reading—“The Chinese in Britain” by Barclay Price. The book paints a picture of the lives of the Chinese travellers and settlers in Britain, from the first recorded visitor in 1687 through to the twentieth century, drawing on accounts by visiting Chinese, newspaper articles, memoirs, royal diaries and other contemporary sources. This book doesn’t focus the grand historical events or the encounter of the British Empire and the Chinese Empire. In contrast, it stays at a human scale, telling stories of common Chinese people with real names and different professions: seamen, missionaries , students, merchants, performers… some arrived by official commission, others by taking the wrong ship, as mentioned in this story: “They are to be admired. They arrived here, by mistake, eleven years ago. They wanted to go to London, Ontario, Canada, to make a living. However, the tickets that were bought for them were incorrect, and neither knew that there were two Londons in the world…not knowing whether to laugh or cry, they realized they had arrived in a different part of the world, with no friends and with very little money. A few days later, they made their way to Oxford, and opened a laundry establishment. They worked hard and had become very well known for the best laundry service.Almost all the students in Oxford send their laundry to them.” It’s also very interesting to see how Chinese participated in the British society and how they were are viewed in different times of history. #tinyeyesreads #booksgram #worldbookday #bookshelf #eastmeetswest #tinyeyescomics https://www.instagram.com/p/BwmUIV1h5s2/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1uh6toap2mhw5

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚] No.7 — Reading the World: confessions of a literary explorer My education in literature is definitely one of the most important experience that have shaped my values today. When I was doing my literature degree in the U.S., I had the chance to read literature from English writers, African American writers, Native American writers, women writers...All of them provided me with a different lens, showing me a different way to see and interpret this world. The book I’m talking about today is actually a book about reading books. The author Ann Morgan realized the lack of diversity on her bookshelf, and decided to challenge herself to read books from the globe’s 196 independent countries. It was not an easy journey. « Many languages have next to nothing translated into English, there are tiny; tucked-away places where very little is written down at all; some governments don’t like to let works of art leak out to corrupt westerners. » Morgan didn’t limit herself to one type of literature. Her booklist covers a wide range of genre: classic, folk tales, commercial triumphs, short stories, memories, biographies, narrative poems etc. Pay attention though, the book is not so much about the reading experience itself. It covers subjects about the publishing history and how she came to choose the countries she included in her list of one hundred and ninety six books etc. Frankly speaking, I was expecting much more content on the reading part, but I still find this project very inspiring and meaningful, introducing possibilities for plural perspectives. (You can see the complete booklist on her blog.) Image copyright: Vintage Publishing #tinyeyesreads #bookshelf #literature #instabook#bookgram #tinyeyescomics https://www.instagram.com/p/BvOvP3OB9ip/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=teep48cqgkc4

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚] No.6 — From the Soil: Foundations of Chinese Society (《乡土中国》) It’s difficult to explain to other people about our own culture, since we are so used to it and we rarely think about why we do certain things or think in certain way. The book I’m introducing to you today has helped me understand my own culture so much better (and in so many ways) than I could ever do by myself. The author Fei Xiaotong was a pioneering Chinese researcher and professor of sociology and anthropology. This small book published 70 years ago The book is a compilation of the author's lecture notes and a series of essays that are still widely read and quoted by scholars. Even though China has greatly developed and urbanized since then, the ideas discussed in the book still have a lot of relevance to the society we live in today and help people understood how the Chinese society has formed and evolved. In this book, Fei explains the special characteristics of rural society and the differential mode of association which he calls  “差序格局” (chaxugeju), using the metaphor of ripples to explain interpersonal and social relationships in the Chinese society(very interesting read). What I like about the book is the simplicity of his language and the clarity of his ideas. “This is a book written by a Chinese for a Chinese audience about the distinctiveness of Chinese society. Because it presents an insider’s view of a non-Western world, it is an unusual book for Westerners to read. But every at the time of its first publication in 1948, it was an unusual book for Chinese to read as well.” Image copyright: University of California Press， 生活·读书·新知三联书店 #tinyeyesreads #bookshelf #chineseculture #sociology #tinyeyescomics #bookgram https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt8kdeih3ym/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=elzfljx6y2f9

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I want to introduce to you a book perfect for this time of social distancing— « Voyage Around My Room ». In 1790, Xavier de Maistre was 27 years old, and a soldier in the army of the Sardinian Kingdom, which covered swathes of modern-day Northern Italy and Southern France. An impetuous young soldier, he was placed under house-arrest in Turin for fighting an illegal duel; there is no record of what happened to the other guy. It was during the 42 days of his confinement here that he wrote the manuscript that would become " Voyage autour de ma chambre". (Also translated as "A Journey Round my Room") Since I just started reading this book, I can’t give you my opinions yet, but the idea of rediscovering a familiar place with fresh eyes appeals a lot to me (Many of us are going to have to stay in the same apartment for a while!) Alain De Botton wrote this review that makes a good teaser for the book: “De Maistre pioneered a mode of travel that was to make his name: room travel. Dressed in pink-and-blue pajamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen.” Bon voyage! 🤓 Also, if you have any book suggestions, feel free to share them with us in the comments. #tinyeyesreads #socialdistancing #voyagearoundmyroom #tinyeyescomics (at My Room) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9wmDU8KkEz/?igshid=n5sz8mq4dajs

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚 ] No.3

I am not a science-fiction fan, but I found “The Three-Body Problem” very hard to put down. I wanted to summarize it into a few sentences, but I failed because of its immense scope and mind-blowing vision. Former U.S. President Barack Obama put it this way, "the scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty".

“Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.” This intro from amazon may sound like any other ET story you’ve known, but the actual story is way more complex and imaginative than those words: civilizations, humanity, anthropology, sociology, psychology, morality, history, future…it pushes you to think from a perspective on a universal scale and stretch the limit of your imagination. It challenges your mind by making you feel as if you understand what’s going on and then destroy your expectation in one second.

“The Three-Body Problem” is a series of three books. The author of the book Cixin Liu (刘慈欣) received 2015 Hugo Award for best novel and recently, the Arthur C. Clark Award for Imagination. It has been translated into many languages including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Turkish, Hungarian, Polish, and Thai. I hope you’ll be able to find the language that you prefer. I also put the link of the first book (English version) for you to discover yourself.

http://amzn.to/2TaJKwZ

Amazon.com: The Three-Body Problem (9780765382030): Cixin Liu, Ken Liu: Books

Image copyright：重庆出版社，Tor Books

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[Tiny Eyes Reads 📚 ] No.2

Many say that language is the key of understanding a culture. Different from alphabetical letters, a Chinese character is essentially a drawing that contains meaning. As the only pictogram language still used in mundane life, Chinese has lived and evolved through thousands of years.

The book I’m going to share with you today talks about Chinese characters. But be careful, it’s not an academic book about grammar or how to write the strokes in the right order. Instead, it takes us back to the life scenarios where those characters were born: mountains, rivers, houses, fields, roads...so that we can see the connections between a character and an object.

The author Cecilia Lindqvist is a Swedish Sinologist who came to China to study in the 1950s. Fascinated by Chinese language, she started exploring the roots of these living symbols and introduced to her Swedish students an unorthodox way to learn Chinese. “In this unparalleled and deeply researched book, Cecilia Lindqvist tells the story of these characters and shows how their shapes and concepts have permeated all of Chinese thought, architecture, art, and culture.”

The book is available in Chinese (《汉字王国》) and English “China: Empire of Living Symbols”. There’s also a special edition for children. (It has been translated into other languages too, but unfortunately I don’t know their names. Please share with us if you know other versions.)

Image copyright：生活·读书·新知三联书店, Da Capo Press

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[Tiny Eyes Reads📚] No.1

The first book I want to introduce to you is a personal story between a couple, Pingru and Meitang. The story is a narrated by Pingru, after his wife Meitang passed away, “following the couple through the decades, in both poverty and good fortune—looking for work, opening a restaurant, moving cities, mending shoes, raising their children, and being separated for seventeen years by the government when Pingru is sent to a labor camp.” There are no big words in his writing. There are no heroic moments in their life. Everything sounds so ordinary that you can easily walk into their life. Yet through these ordinary moments one finds extraordinary love— tender, profound and poetic. The beautiful illustrations in the book are drawn by Pingru, in a pure and almost childish style.

The other thing I love about this book is how their personal stories weave into the larger history of China. We witness how two common people navigate their little boat through the violent tides of the national movement, and how they try to hold their hands tightly against huge waves beyond their control: politics, illness, and time.

The book is available in Chinese（《平如美棠》), English(“Our Story”) , French(« Notre Histoire ») and Spanish (LA HISTORIA DE PINGRU Y MEITANG). You can find them on Amazon. Hope you enjoy! :) Image copyright: 广西师范大学出版社