Ethnic China Living Books
Since I started with the page more than 10 years ago I have been posting some book reviews and news. Now that information is going to be expanded with the small summaries that I make (sometimes) for myself after reading a book or an article, or some of the notes that I take after the readings. In some interesting books that I have not been able to read or of which I do not keep any notes, I may put the text provided by the publisher.
I think all readers will be able to distinguish when it is a personal opinion, when it is an excerpt from the work, and when it is material provided by the publisher.
I have organized the material in the following sections. If you think something is missing, please write to me at the address below.
– Art
– Buddhism
– Classics of Chinese culture
– Daoism or Taoism
– Ethnic groups
– Folklore
– Gender, women and matriarchy
– History
– Idiom and language
– Journeys and travels
– Literature and poetry
– Myths, tales and legends
– Novels
– Orientalisms. Novels set in China.
– Philosophy
– Qi Gong, taiji and health techniques.
– Religion
– Society
– Tibet
– Zoom on politics and current affairs
LAST POSTS ABOUT BOOKS ON CHINA
To Serve the People, a satire by Yan Lianke
To Serve the People, a satire by Yan Lianke In Brief: A biting satire in which the small longings of each person are exposed as the inevitable substratum on which great ideals, such as "serving the people" are built. The censorship of a Chinese work is a powerful...
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua One of the best Chinese novels of the 20th century. Without the apparent search for big ideas, it seduces the reader by its simplicity, and ends up entangling him in its plot. Chronicle of a blood seller, in reality, it is only...
The Grand Canal and the Great Wall
The Grand Canal and the Great Wall In Brief: A brief review showing some of the similarities between the two iconic works of Chinese history and culture, their goals, and their differences. As well as how they both ended up shaping this country. I have always been...
Hong Ying- An Art of Love without art and without love
Hong Ying- An Art of Love without art and without love In Brief: A scandalous novel that fails to shock, and an art of love that is conspicuous by its absence. Already from the beginning, we know that this is a love story without a future because the novel begins with...
Xin Ran – Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet
Xin Ran - Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet In Brief: A work full of exoticism that describes some interesting customs of the Tibetan nomads, but fails to convey emotions to the reader. Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet is a novel set in the late 1950s. A...
Mao Dun – Rainbow, a beautiful metaphor about a woman and China
Mao Dun - Rainbow, a beautiful metaphor about a woman and China In short: This officially unfinished novel by the writer Mao Dun takes on a life of its own to become a model of the vital development of each person and at the same time of the social effervescence that...
Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms-A must read
Mao Dun's Spring Silkworms-A must read In short: A set of stories of exacerbated realism by one of the finest pens of 20th century Chinese literature, which no one should miss in order to understand both the literature and the life and history of contemporary China....
Midnight by Mao Dun – a failed novel
Midnight by Mao Dun - a failed novel Before reading "Midnight", the masterpiece of Mao Dun, the most powerful Chinese writer in the twentieth century, reading the presentations of the Chinese edition, one wonders why such a great literary treasure is not better known...
Life of Milarepa, the hermit poet
Life of Milarepa, the hermit poet. MiIarepa is one of the most beloved religious leaders of Tibet. His story, full of unique facts, has been told again and again over the centuries, and if the publishers did not warn that this is the autobiography written by the holy...
Chinese characters
Caractères chinois – le livre
Caractères chinois - le livre Ce livre est consacré à révéler à l'étudiant occidental le "mystère" des caractères chinois, rendre leur apprentissage simple, fournir les clés pour entrevoir le sens et la prononciation des caractères inconnus. Pour ce faire, nous allons...
Ethnic groups
Sexual aspects of Gu venom
Gu illness resulted from a contamination by gu poison, which a recent analyst has characterized as “an alien evil spirit which entered [the] body and developed into worms or some similar animal that gnawed away at the intestines or genitalia.” This poison was thought...
Chinese culture
An ambitious project to rewrite history
An ambitious project to rewrite history. It is what we see in Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene, The Nomadic Leviathan. A Critique of the Sinocentric Paradigm. Brill. Leiden. 2023. Now free to download in the publisher’s webpage. This book is a critique of a theoretical paradigm...