It is not her first book, but it is her autobiography. She grew up in a poor area of China, but got a scholarship to a college in Beijing, and then a scholarship to study in England. It looks like she self taught herself English, and she acknowledges the great amount of help she had editing the book.
We thought it was a memorable book, describing life under the communist regime, and her impressions of the foreign country that she came to. Would we read another of hers? No.
Interesting that amongst us some found the first part easy and the second part harder to read, and some were the other way around.
She was not a likeable character, but was this due to her unloved upbringing that she was unable to let herself have good relationships?
She couldn't seem to see the beauty in any of the countryside that she saw, but I can't blame her for that in the part of Wales that she saw.
There was lots of discussion around aspects of the differences in language, and how difficult English must be for people coming from a totally different way of language.
It was commented that she has since become a visiting lecturer at a university in Berlin, and also there was an article and/or a podcast in the guardian/Radio 4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolu_Guo
Marks averaged at 6.
I have got about two thirds of the way through and will finish it today as it’s due to rain heavily.
I
have read quite a few of these Chinese autobiographies including ‘white
swans’ and so nothing really surprises me about the sheer wastefulness
of life and resources that was the cultural revolution. She only escaped
the worst exigencies of the poverty brought on by this by sheer
tenacity and hard work, becoming one of 11 successful applicants out of 7
thousand trying for her course. And the support of her father - to
try twice against such odds when they could barely afford the trip.
What
a joyless loveless childhood - and yet it happens to so many billions
of people, how we take our family life and standards of living for
granted in the West!
It was interesting to note
that when Chris and I made our first incursion into China in 1985 this
was well before she had gained relative freedom in Beijing.
We
hired a driver and guide in Hong Kong and drove up to, then, Canton.
Our guide had not been allowed to learn or speak English until recently
and had learnt secretly from the radio. He had been a doctor of Chinese
medicine but earned much more as a tourist guide.
We
drove more than a hundred miles with me desperate for the loo because
the guide didn’t know how to arrange this - no public toilets and open
fields which he couldn’t allow me to use!
We
shared a last meal after 3 days and the driver and guide were bowled
over because we let them have the chicken feet all to themselves.
One
bit of the book resonated with me, I still shudder when I remember how
the guide gave me his handkerchief to mop myself after eating
watermelon. It was far from clean.
Alison
Post script.
Just finished it and
it strikes me that throughout the book she has never been happy How
sad; seeing things through her eyes, the uglier, poorer, side of
Britain, the weather, struggling with the language etc. But I can’t help
feeling that a bit of optimism wouldn’t have gone amiss.
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