Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer--and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University--her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock and roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.Red China Blues begins as Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism that began to sour as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism and led to her eventual repatriation to the West. Returning to China in the late eighties as a journalist, she covered both the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown and the tumultuous era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping. In a wry, absorbing, and often surreal narrative, she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an un-happy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong creates an extraordinary portrait of the world's most populous nation. In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, Wong reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies--of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacies of her ancestral homeland.

RED CHINA BLUES-P361635/8Z

History

Jan Wong

Asia

Doubleday/Anchor Books

Jan Wong's China: Reports From A Not-So-Foreign Correspondent

331 pages of excellent text. Jan Wong was the Beijing foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994. She recounts her time there in this book about love, work, and life, and her dramatic return visit to China in 1999. First Edition.

Doubleday Canada, Limited

Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jan Wong looks back on her body of work as a foreign correspondent in China in the late '80s and early '90s. Despite the fact that China continues to transform itself, Wong discovers that nothing really changes, and what she wrote then about love, work and living still holds, as do the conflicts over who rules, who survives, and who gets the bigger slice of Peking Duck. With wry humour and behind-the-scenes detail, Wong incorporates a selection of her articles published in The Globe and Mail into a richly narrated journalistic adventure. Jan Wong's first book, Red China Blues, was named one of Time magazine's top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China.

Prompt delivery and an excellent customer service.

Lunch With

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Anchor Books

A uniquely personal portrait of Beijing that intertwines two extraordinary women's journeys, one from disgrace to respectability, and the other from remorse to redemption.

Beijing Confidential

HarperCollins Publishers (Aust

Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.\nOn their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing first-hand how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the villagers teach them without fuss or fanfare how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they home-cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who comprise one of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting -- and occasionally clashing -- over their mutual love of cooking.\nA memoir about family, an exploration of the globalization of food cultures, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, Apron Strings is complex, unpredictable, and unexpectedly hilarious.

Apron Strings: Navigating Food and Family in France, Italy, and China

Travel

Travel Writing

Goose Lane Editions

During the Cultural Revolution, Jan Wong studied in Beijing and reported a fellow student to the authorities. In 2005, she returned to China to find out what happened to the woman she betrayed. "Chinese Whispers" tells her remarkable story. In 1972, Jan Wong became one of only two Westerners admitted to Beijing University at the height of the Cultural Revolution. One day, a student, Yin Luoyi, sought Jan's assistance in going to the United States. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist from Montreal, was that most dangerous combination in the young - ignorant, innocent and idealistic - and she reported Yin to the authorities. Wong knew nothing of what ensued. Indeed, she completely forgot about her brief encounter with the young stranger until many years later. Now, thirty-three years on, Wong returns to Beijing to search for the woman who has haunted her conscience. She hopes to apologise, perhaps somehow to make amends. At the very least, she wants to find out whether Yin has survived. Preoccupied by the past, fascinated by China's present and future, Jan Wong searches out old friends, foes and comrades in this half-familiar city, finally uncovering the truth about the woman she wronged. "Chinese Whispers" tells a unique and unforgettable story of communism and capitalism, of guilt and atonement, of remembering and forgetting.

Chinese Whispers

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Chinese Whispers: A Journey into Betrayal

Atlantic Books, Limited

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jan Wong. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Jan Wong

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jan Wong. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

RED CHINA BLUES-P361635/8Z

Jan Wong's China: Reports From A Not-So-Foreign Correspondent

Jan Wong's China: Reports From A Not-So-Foreign Correspondent

Lunch With

Beijing Confidential

Apron Strings: Navigating Food and Family in France, Italy, and China

Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers: A Journey into Betrayal