Reading While Visiting China

As you remember, our group travels by bus with a local driver and guide which we were forever grateful to have. However, like I said previously, going places in China is/was challenging, adventurous and a little stressful because of the amount of vehicles, cars, buses and tons of bicycles that always seems to go where we were heading! Thus, we had "plenty" of time to catch up on reading few good books pertaining to China...of course! This is what I read during my trip.

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See. A beautiful book. This is the story of a Chinese girl named Lily who is about 7 or 8 years old and who is paired with a "laotong" ( in ancient China young girl were paired with older women to share a life long relationship for support). SnowFlower, the laotong sends Lily a silk fan written with a poem in nu shu. This was a secret and unique language that the women of the time period developed to "escape" the harsh control of their husbands and men of their houshold. This type of communication eluded all of the opposite sex! It was conceived to help the women through isolation ( once promise to marry, young girls would be captive in their own house until marriage, and then again by their husbands. After 8 or 9 year old, girls were never allowed to be outside their respective homes.) With this companion,they shared dreams, stories, and things that happen in their own household, gossiping about their husbands, talking about foot binding, loneliness and more. Throughout their lifetime the 2 will become more than friends, sharing a strong bond which helped them cope with their strict environment.
  

• The Man who Loved china, by Simon Winchester. An extraordinary book about the life of Joseph Needham, a professor and scientist at the prestigious university of Cambridge, whose lifelong goal was to demonstrate that Chinese were responsible for a multitude of invention which were along the way attributed to others. His love of China started when a female Chinese student came to England; she became his lover for life. In 1937, after arriving in China, Needham started to explore the ancient empire of China. he met countless people along the way, learned Chinese perfectly, sided with the people of China, had great friendships with people of power like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. During his stay in China, he removed boat-loads of documents proving that indeed China was the first to discover printing, explosives, the compass and even toilet paper! Back in England, he began writing a book; which later amounted to 17 gigantic volumes called "Science and Civilisation in China". Joeph Needham spent a lifetime talking, writing about the people of China and their enormous talent ...his love for China was endless.