Bøker av Shouhua Qi

"Turncoats" and "Diabolic Brainwashing" are among the headlines that met the 21 young American GIs who refused repatriation when the armistice was signed to end the Korean War (1950-53) and chose to go to Red China. Hollywood films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) didn't help ease the frenzy over the perceived Communist diabolism either. For a long time no one knows what life behind the "Bamboo Curtain" was really like for those "21 Turncoats" who had turned their backs on their motherland. Twin-Sun River tells the story of Pfc Simon Mackenzie who chooses to disappear in the heartland of China to chase his "Walden" or "Peach Orchard Outside the World" dream soon after the armistice was effected. There, in a small mountain village, Simon's decision is tested over and again as he struggles to survive a big flood, the Great Leap Forward, the Famine, and finally, the Cultural Revolution and as he becomes enmeshed in the life of a Chinese family and their beautiful "widowed" daughter-in-law. Parallel to Simon's journey is that of Jie Ding, a humanities professor who traverses the changing landscape of China during the summer of 2001 to accomplish an impossible mission while trying to exorcise his own demons: his marital problems and the haunting memories of the Cultural Revolution. The two journeys "crisscross" and finally converge on the Twin-Sun River glimmering under the early fall sky.

The 14 stories collected in this book are about people caught in the unsettling dramas of Chinese society accelerating at a blistering pace in the decades after the Cultural Revolution, as can be evidenced by the titles of the stories: "The Evidence," "The Tenants," "Old Batteries," "Love Me, Love My Dog," "Buddha's Feet," "How Was Your Dance Today?", "Big Mama," "The Long March, Sort of," "The Girl in Blue Jeans," "Red Guard Fantasies".... Love Me, Love My Dog and Other Stories is based on an earlier edition titled Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories (Long River Press, 2007), which has won praises from acclaimed fiction writers such as Gloria Frym, author of Distance No Object and Homeless at Home: "Qi's stories of post-Cultural Revolution China gloriously join the lineage of Chekhov. With unadorned prose and utmost compassion... Red Guard Fantasies offers glimpses of How to Be Chinese now that instructions from the Little Red Book no longer apply." Daniel Asa Rose, author of Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust: "By turns tender and chilling, these elegant and deeply knowing tales linger in the mind."Witty, poignant, absurd, and shocking, Love Me, Love My Dog stories offer a telling depiction of the myriad world of jaded entrepreneurs, overzealous cops, karaoke fanatics, dog lovers (and haters), liberated coeds, and frustrated urbanites who move in and out of China's colorful neon-lit cites and dusty rural villages, transitioning from one world to the other.

By December 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army had advanced into the heartland of China and reached toward their inevitable climax: Nanjing, China's capital and glorious ancient city nestled at the base of the Purple Mountain, was besieged. The government had fled, leaving several hundred thousand civilians and soldiers behind, among them a twelve-year-old girl. To face the unthinkable. An unprecedented historical novel, Purple Mountain presents a riveting, profoundly intimate portrait of Nanjing and its people during the first six days after its fall to the Japanese army. Within the city walls are men and women, young and old, soldiers and civilians, Chinese and a dozen foreigners, all caught up in the whirling, turbulent fires of history. The story, inspired by real historical events and people, probes deeply into the souls of victims and perpetrators of war atrocities, and hails its unassuming heroes and heroines. It is a powerful allegory against the folly of war and the horrors of genocide. This WindsAsClouds edition is based on When the Purple Mountain Burns: A Novel published by the Long River Press (2005). Two Chinese editions (one in simplified Chinese and one in classic Chinese) were published in Shanghai and Hong Kong respectively in 2005. A screenplay Qi wrote on the same story has been optioned for production.

Becoming Monkey King: The Untold Story, a fantasy/mystery/adventure, the perilous epic Journey to the West told for the first time in Monkey's own witty, whimsical, and (self)righteous voice. To be released by Shang Press soon publisher. Stay tuned.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Tennessee Williams in China, from rejection and/or misgivings to cautious curiosity and to full-throated acceptance, in the context of profound changes in China's socioeconomic and cultural life and mores since the end of the Cultural Revolution. It fills a conspicuous gap in scholarship in the reception of one of the greatest American playwrights and joins book-length studies of Chinese reception of Shakespeare, Ibsen, O'Neill, Brecht, and other important Western playwrights whose works have been eagerly embraced and appropriated and have had catalytic impact on modern Chinese cultural life.