Tag: LA Review of Books
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LA Review of Books: Driving Toward the Chinese Dream
How to get me to pick up a book about golf: make it about golf in China. At the LA Review of Books main page, I have a review of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, an excellent new book by Dan Washburn (who used to work down the hall from me at…
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LA Review of Books: China’s Forgotten World War II
I wound up doing a sort of sequel to my China’s Forgotten WWI post for the LA Review of Books China Blog, this one looking at—no surprise here—China’s forgotten WWII. The new post is a Q&A with Oxford historian Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945. I’ve used this book a…
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Writing, New and Old
No blogging here recently because I am in full-on DISSERTATION MODE as I careen down the home stretch. Ten days to go before I have to deliver the finished product to my committee—I’ll make it (I hope!), but working full-bore on the final chapter and editing the ones I’ve already written hasn’t left me with…
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LA Review of Books: City of Reinvention
I took a short break from the LA Review of Books China Blog this spring, as I had conferences to attend and a dissertation to write, but I’m back now and returning to my schedule of posting there once every month or so. My latest post, a review of Amy Tan’s recent novel The Valley…
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LA Review of Books: Ping-Pong Powerhouses and Table Tennis Tales
I think this will be my final post related to last month’s literary festivals. I saw journalist Nicholas Griffin speak at the Capital M Litfest in Beijing about his new book, Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game that Changed the World, and not long after managed to get my hands on a copy.…
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LA Review of Books: Missing the Harmony Express
I’ve been in the United States for the past month, and during that time I’ve spent a lot of mental energy comparing China and the U.S. In terms of air quality, ease of accessing information online, and presence of Wawa convenience stores, Philadelphia definitely beats Shanghai. But in other areas, China has the edge, and…
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LA Review of Books: Hong Kong, Beyond the Neon Lights
I deliberately didn’t write much here about what I did during my Hong Kong trip in the middle of October, because I knew I wanted to save that material for my next LA Review of Books China Blog post. That’s now online, so here’s the story of my experiences walking two heritage trails in the…
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LA Review of Books: Troubled Waters
The LA Review of Books blog has a spiffy new layout, and they’ve also promoted me to co-editor of the China Blog. My latest post is now up at the site—a discussion of new writing on the Empress Dowager Cixi, who has long been blamed for all of China’s troubles in the late nineteenth and…
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LA Review of Books: “Life Goes On”
At the main LA Review of Books website you can now read my review of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls: Life Goes On, an often sensationalist novel about the lives of young women working in the factory towns of southern China: Sheng’s book, translated by Shelly Bryant, is a raunchy and provocative account of the lives…
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LA Review of Books: “Material Girls”
My monthly column at the LA Review of Books China Blog just went live; this month, I review Tiny Times, the hit movie of the summer here. It is, to put it briefly, a terrible film: Tiny Times (Xiao shidai), a Chinese summer blockbuster based on a book of the same name, ranks as far…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 