[AGL] the mystery of China

[Michael Eisenstadt]

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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