The Winter Station - Jody Shields

This was another book that struck my eye while at the bookstore, but it wasn't one that intrigued me quite enough to shell out the jacket price for it.  Luckily, that is what the public library is for.

This is a book about a plague--pneumonic plague, particularly, one that ravaged the city of Harbin (known as Kharbin the book, due to its Russian perspective) in the early twentieth century.  It's a city in China but one that is essentially ruled by Russia, but I have some reservations about this...more on that later.  The main character is "the Baron," the medical examiner for the city, who I personally could not stand.  Though he's supposed to be working with a team of doctors, all of them trying to prevent the plague from spreading, he has a much "holier than thou" perspective, pretending he knows better than everyone else involved even though no one seems to know what they're doing, himself included.

This was not a book I ended up liking very much.  The Baron was a huge turn-off to me.  While Shields presents him as having more respect for the Chinese residents of the city than anyone else, his bend towards Chinese medicine doesn't actually benefit anyone and might actually make things worse.  He's just as closed off to new opinions as his peers, though he's fine with his close-mindedness because of course he is right.  (He's not.)  And then, when things get mad, instead of buckling down and forging onward, he essentially throws a fit, leaves the main the hospital, and starts wandering the streets looking for random people to help.  He becomes increasingly paranoid about being infected with the plague himself, which, while understandable, didn't really make him any more likable because reading about his obsession over and over again didn't contribute at all to the story.

This is also a book that doesn't have a climax or conclusion, but rather instead just peters out as the Baron runs around with ever decreasing agency and purpose.  It has no sense of closure.  It's very strange.  There's a quote on the cover that this a book about Russia (IT'S NOT RUSSIA IT'S CHINA, STOP COLONIALISM) that reads as if it were written by a Russian; I don't have a huge base in Russian literature, but I would agree with that assessment...however, in this particular case, I don't think this is a huge boon to the story.  Instead, it reads as cold, something that suits the setting and story, but which doesn't really make for an emotional or riveting read.  There's a lot of drinking vodka and practicing calligraphy and mourning the fate of society, or whatever, and not a lot of stuff actually taking place, not even on a character-development front.  It is a book that is not driven by plot nor character, and instead drifts along without purpose.

And finally, let's address historical accuracy.  Shields based her narrative off a real person who wrote a memoir, which was published in German.  I don't have access to this memoir.  However, wanting to know more about this plague, I started Googling, and...well, it seems like the Baron is an awful choice for hero because he was pretty much, uhm, wrong, and all of the people made out to be villain in this were actually more heroes in the actual course of events.  Even if their initiatives weren't always successful, they were at least trying, unlike the Baron, who sneers at everyone else but doesn't ultimately do anything of his own to end the plague.

Ultimately, this was a disappointing book, one that had a vastly colonialist bend, and was not an interesting read at all.  I'm kind of sorry I sunk so much time into this, hoping it would get better when it never did.

2 stars out of 5--mostly for an interesting setting and time period and not for the characters or the story itself.

Women of the Silk - Gail Tsukiyama

I remember my stepsister reading Women of the Silk when she was in middle school or early high school and loving it, and while I creeped on her bookshelf many times, this was never a book that I actually picked up.  Having read The Samurai's Garden within the past few years, however, this seemed like a good book to read when I came across it in a used bookstore.

The story follows Pei from her girlhood to young adulthood in rural China, where she first lives with her family on a farm for mulberry leaves and fish ponds, and then--for most of the book--inside a silk factory, where her father takes her when the family encounters financial difficulties.  As Pei grows older, she clings to relationships she's built in the factory and her dormitory-style home outside of it as surrogates for her birth family and comes to terms with an independence that most women in this time period in China were not able to gain for themselves.

The writing in this book is very simplistic, and while sometimes I felt like the style fit the narrative, at other times it felt like Tsukiyama was info-dumping, just pouring out information about side characters because she wanted them to be more important than they ultimately were to Pei's own narrative.  Pei herself was a strong-minded character but one who was still adrift, which worked well for the story.  What I was never entirely sure of was her exact relationship with Lin; sometimes it seemed completely platonic, then Tsukiyama would throw in something about desire, and then it would go back to being platonic, so it was a bit baffling in that way.

The setting was perfect for this place and time period; starting during the Great Depression and going forward into World War II, Pei is relatively sheltered from global events, but we as readers can still see the world's wider influence bearing down upon the silk factory and the girls who work there.  The slow encroachment of the Japanese, the conflicts involving communists, all of it kind of swirls around Pei without touching her, until it finally slams into the silk factory.  It was a good method of setting the story, but there was one problem with it: because none of this ever really touches Pei, I never felt like she actually matured as a character.  At the end of the book, she felt just as young as she did at the beginning of the book, almost two decades before.

Overall, though, this was a lovely book.  It appears there's a sequel, though this hasn't been formally slotted into a series, and I might check that out at some point if I can get it from the library, though it's not something I feel a need to rush out and buy.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a book that I first encountered in the pages of another, Anna and the French Kiss (where Anna and her classmates read it as part of their literature class' study of works in translation), which made it a perfect candidate for my 2017 reading challenge, which has a category for a book mentioned in another book.  Even better, I already had a copy that I'd picked up a used book store in New Jersey out of some form of Anna-related nostalgia.

The basic story here is two young men, still in their teenage years, who are exiled from their city homes and parents in Chengdu, China, to be re-educated in the country, in a town on a mountain called the Phoenix of the Sky.  While there, they encounter two subjects of note: the Little Seamstress, the daughter of the mountain's renowned tailor who the protagonist's friend Luo immediately falls in love with and dreams of educating; and a secret stash of Western literature in Chinese translation owned by a fellow subject of re-education, which become an instant intrigue to our protagonists.

This is a short book and the story itself is rather simple, and a bit nostalgic.  I don't know much about Dai Sijie--my edition is even devoid of the typical "about the author" section--but a quick glance through the Wikipedia article about him shows that a lot of this book was taken from his own life experience.  It definitely shows.  Sijie himself was sent for re-education, something he did voluntarily since he could have been excused from it (according to Wiki) which might explain the nostalgic tone that permeates the book.  Despite the grueling labor that the protagonists engage in, the narrator seems to overall enjoy his time on the Phoenix mountain, controlling time through the little rooster clock the two brought with them, working in the fields, traveling to the main town in the area to see films in order to relate them to the village--really, everything except the coal mines.  And of course, the connection with the Little Seamstress brings light into the whole place, as well.

The end of the book was rather unexpected to me, as well.  While Luo's relationship with the Seamstress (who never gets a name--really?) immediately raised my eyebrow and my suspicions, I still didn't expect Dai to go down that road, though it definitely added a somber note to what was overall a lighthearted book.  And I appreciated the way that he took the Seamstress' development.  While Luo had always been in the city and simply saw the books as a way of reconnecting, and the Seamstress as a sort of pet project and not a person in and of herself, the Seamstress saw the books as a way of escape and an indication of what might lay beyond the mountain.  While I was a bit surprised by the ending, it was a pleasant sort of surprise, because I thought that it fit.

One thing that I didn't like was the three little chapters about two-thirds of the way through the book.  While most of the book is from the point of view of one narrator (who I don't believe was ever named), there are three chapters that abruptly switch viewpoints to "the miller," Luo, and the Little Seamstress.  They interrupt the flow of the story and aren't strictly necessary; I feel like the information here was either conveyed elsewhere, could have been inferred, or could have been worked in within the main narrative without disrupting the flow or giving the narrator more knowledge than he should have rightly possessed.  While there was some lovely description and probably some symbolism that went over my head in these chapters (the key chain? the snake? I'm sure these were symbolic but I don't know quite what of) they just didn't fit the flow of the story as a whole, and I was left rather wondering at their purpose as I proceeded on to the end.

Overall, I liked this, more than I thought I would considering that I had misconceptions about what the story was about when I started--I definitely just made up some story in my head, there's no sense as to where I got this alternative plot from--but those chapters just didn't make sense to me.

4 stars out of 5.

Eve of a Hundred Midnights - Bill Lascher

I recently realized I haven't read a lot of nonfiction this year.  This is actually kind of strange for me because I really like nonfiction, and Eve of a Hundred Midnights is a great example of why.

This is the true story of two news correspondents during WWII.  The first, and main one, is Mel Jacoby, who was a relative of the author's.  Mel worked for his college newspaper and went to China on a study abroad during his junior year, at which point he absolutely fell in love with the country.  After his graduation, he found his way back, working as a reporter for a propaganda station in China's wartime capital.  He continued to move around in various reporting capacities, coming and going from different points in Asia for several years.  Eventually, he convinced a girl, Annalee, who had also worked at the college newspaper, and who he had connected with during a stop back in the United States, to also move to China in a news capacity.  But as the war intensified, Mel ended up stationed in the Philippines, and Annalee ended up joining him there and the two got married.  And then the United States suddenly joined the war, and the two found themselves stuck in the islands, with the Japanese army--who were likely to kill Mel if they caught him--growing ever closer.

This book has a lengthy subtitle, "The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents and Their Epic Escape Across the Pacific."  Well, that's part of the story.  It's not all of it, and it's really not even most of it.  The actual escape across the Pacific takes up a relatively small part of the book, and it's probably actually one of the most uneventful portions.  It must have been nerve-wracking at the time, I'm sure, but in retrospect, with more than a half a century between us and the story, it wasn't nearly as exciting as reading about dodging falling bombs in China.  The book also isn't really the story of two star-crossed lovers.  First off, star-crossed implies there was something keeping them from each other, and there wasn't.  Second, Annalee is NOT very prominent in this book.  The focus is definitely on Mel, which is understandable, given the author's relation to him, but it's a bit misleading to make it out like Annalee was more of a player than she was.

Most of the book is really about Mel and how he ended up in Manila prior to the US retreat and Japanese army's arrival.  It's a very interesting story, about living in a war capital, navigating the different censors and political bodies, and seeing war grow ever closer, all the while trying to report the news in a way that no one back home was actually doing.  I really enjoyed this, because it was a perspective that we don't usually get.  Lascher includes a hefty reference section in the back, and it's a pretty good bet that Mel and Annalee actually did think and feel as he portrays them, because he quotes their letters and cables extensively.  Lascher is a very engaging writer, and makes Mel and Annalee's story into just that: a story.  I think he does wax poetic a couple of times; the epilogue is a great example of this.  It's very purple and completely unnecessary to the content of the book.  Overall, though, this was a really great book that offered a fairly unique perspective into a part of the war, and the lead-up to it, that we don't typically get to see.  Very interesting.  I just found myself wishing that the part of the story that was actually advertised had been a little more prominent and gripping!

4 stars out of 5.

The Undertaking of Lily Chen - Danica Novgorodoff

This book isn't what I was expecting.  I was expecting some sort of magical realism, I think, with lots of ghosts and specters and cool shit like that, and some really complex moral dilemmas, and some intense character development, and I just didn't get that.  Maybe it's because I'm just not a graphic novel person.  I try and I try and I try to enjoy them, but I really just don't get as complex of a story out of a graphic novel as I do out of a prose novel.  Anyway, let's get down to it.

I liked the art in this.  It's a pretty unique style in regards to how the people are drawn, but the scenery is what really got to me.  There are some absolutely stunning full-page scenery pictures in here that I would love to be able to purchase as full-size posters.  The story had really great potential.  It revolves around a man named Deshi, whose brother Wei dies in an accident.  Deshi's parents want him to find a dead girl to serve as a "corpse bride" for Wei so he won't be alone in the afterlife.  Deshi sets out to complete his mission, but it turns out dead young women are few and far between in his neck of the woods.  In fact, the only young woman to be found at all is Lily Chen, and she is still very much alive...

But no matter how much potential the story had, I think it just fell flat.  I didn't get a ton of character development out of this, and some of the stuff, from the romance to the ending, just seemed to come out of nowhere.  This book is also Lord of the Rings-esque, and not in a good way; there is a lot of walking, without anything else much happening for much of the book.

Overall, I was disappointed.  I think I might have loved this if it had been written as a prose book, but as a graphic novel it just didn't capture me the way I thought it would.

2 stars out of 5.

The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang

There's a saying that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.  There's also a saying that those who do study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.  Being a history major at a university that is very politically-focused, this is frequently made blatantly clear to me.  My politically-minded classmates wander about arguing foreign and domestic policy, spatting about how we should deal with Syria, or Egypt, or whatever crisis is in the news that day.  My historically-minded classmates and I wander about going, "But isn't it like when...?"  But it doesn't matter.  No matter how similar a situation is to the past, there will always be differences, and those differences will always stall action.  So, when dive into this book, let's keep a few things in mind, shall we?

-Iris Chang was not, by trade, a historian.  She was a journalist.  This means a few things.  Journalists, by nature of their work, can be very, very skilled at research, finding stories, and putting them together.  They're typically not so great at contextualizing those stories.  I'll talk more about this later.

-Chang was also the Chinese-American daughter of two Chinese immigrants who fled China during WWII with their families.

-Guilt is a slippery animal, and can't always be placed where we would like it.

-History is never one-sided, and in modern times, it is not written exclusively by the victors.

That all said, some people will not like what I have to say here, but I still feel a responsibility to say it in the interests of being as neutral as possible.

Okay, so, this is a good book for people who are not familiar with the Rape of Nanking and its place in WWII, but want to learn about it.  It's a narrative history, but not a terribly scholarly one; while there are notes included at the end of the book, there are no footnotes or endnote numbers directing you to those notes, and there's no way of knowing whether or not you'll be able to track down a reference for the piece of information that interested you.  This probably comes from Chang's journalistic, rather than historic, background.  That's not a bad thing.  "Popular history" books are all the rage these days, and I don't see anything wrong with that; they get people interested in history.  We just have to keep in mind that they're not as scholarly as some other books, and consequently don't usually analyze events as closely as they could.  For those wanting a quick overview of an event, this is fine.  For those hoping for a complete understanding, however, it can be problematic.  Chang's book is immensely readable, and I went through it in about two days.  It gives a quick history of what Chang apparently sees as the Japanese culture that led to the Rape, and then covers the lead-up to the Rape, the Rape itself, and the aftermath, as well as telling what foreign individuals did and what the rest of the world knew about the events as they were happening.  It's a good overview.  In the epilogue, though, it gets a bit preachy.  Chang talks about how Japan needs to sever ties with its past, acknowledge that the Rape was wrong, and embrace a new future.  She talks about that a lot.  And while she's not wrong, necessarily, she leaves out a lot of considerations.

First, as I mentioned above, we need to consider Chang's background.  She's Chinese-American and was raised in the Midwest of the USA, in the midst of an extremely individualistic culture.  Eastern cultures, such as China, Japan, and India, tend to be much more collectivistic than western ones.  That's not bad; it's just different.  It means their values are placed on the good of of the many, instead of the good of the few.  It's apparently worked for them for thousands of years, so I don't see a need to judge that.  What I do think we need to consider, though, is how something like the Rape of Nanking might be viewed in different cultures.  I'm not Japanese; I've never been to Japan.  I certainly can't speak for them.  However, as someone with a background in history, I have to say that when the Japanese say they saw what they did as necessary...well, they might not be lying, like Chang claims they are.  In hindsight, it's easy to see how horribly awry Japan's plans went.  But in the heat of the moment, it's also very easy to see how the Japanese army, massively outnumbered in most cases in Nanking, could have seen the situation as "them or us," and chosen, as most of us would, "us."  Chang mentions on repeated occasions that the Nanking natives, even unarmed, could have easily overwhelmed the Japanese through sheer numbers alone.  As horrible as the Japanese actions in Nanking were, and as reprehensible as they are from an outside perspective over half a century later, it's easy to see where, at the time, those actions might have seemed necessary for self-preservation.  (And let me clarify--I'm talking mostly about the killing, here.  The rampant raping and torture can't really be excused, but Chang does offer a pretty good psychological analysis for why this might have happened in the epilogue, so I'll let that speak for itself.)

Second, lets consider the aspect of guilt.  Who is guilty for the Rape of Nanking?  There are some easy to answers to that, and some not-so-easy ones.  It's hard to tell who knew what, who ordered what, who did what, especially when many documents have been destroyed and many victims refuse to speak.  There is definitely guilt to be laid out, those most of the people deserving of it are probably, by this point in time, dead.  Then there is the idea of collective guilt: that the youth of today's Japan are somehow responsible for the Rape of Nanking because they deny its reality and refuse to make reparations to the victims.  There's a whopping problem with this analysis, and that's that you can't hold Japan's youth responsible for denying the existence of something they don't know about.  I'm not sure how much has changed since Chang's book came out--it was published in 1997--but in the epilogue she talks at length about how the events of the Rape of Nanking have been censored from school curriculum, deleted from books, and shunned in the public sphere.  How are you supposed to correct something you don't know about?  Some people claim to have seen Bigfoot and to have evidence of his existence, but that doesn't mean I believe them.  While the Rape of Nanking isn't Bigfoot, and we know that objectively, it might be hard to comprehend in an environment where it has been treated as Bigfoot for decades.

My other main problem with this is that, well, Chang is American.  We Americans find it very easy to cast judgment against other peoples and refuse to do the same to ourselves.  Chang criticizes Japan for enshrining some of the people who are responsible for the Rape of Nanking and practically worshipping them.  I'm not going to get into the worshipping thing; that's a culture issue.  But the enshrinement of war criminals I'm not afraid to tackle.  Chang criticizes the emperor of Japan for knowing about the Rape and doing nothing about it--perhaps even approving of it.  Fine.  But if we're going to go down that path, we have to keep in mind that that's not just a Japanese trait.  In Washington DC, the Vietnam memorial contains the names of soldiers known to have committed atrocities in Asia, such as cutting off the ears of victims for trophies.  The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, is preserved as a national treasure at the National Air and Space Museum's annex.  We condemn Iranians for flooding to the street chanting against the USA, but when Osama bin Laden was killed, thousands flooded the National Mall, White House, and 9/11 Memorial Site chanting "USA, USA" in a way that is unnervingly similar--we were, after all, celebrating someone's death.  I am not saying that enshrining war criminals is worthy of praise.  But I am saying that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and if you're going to write about history, even an isolated event such as the Rape of Nanking, you still have to consider its place--and your conclusions--in a larger context.

Chang's book is a good introduction to the Rape of Nanking, but it is weak in the historiographical elements and modern context that are vital to actually understanding historical events in their entirety.  I enjoyed reading it, but I am a bit worried about the message that it could leave someone who read only this book and considered it the "all you need to know about the Rape of Nanking" book.  That message seems to be that the Chinese are all that is good, the Japanese are all that is bad, and the current generation needs to pay for the sins of their forefathers in order to move forward to a better world.  But if we're hoping to move forward to a better world, wouldn't holding grudges not be the way to go?  Honestly, the Japanese government as a whole probably should make some sort of apology or reparation to remaining survivors or the families of victims of the Rape of Nanking--but I don't think we should make the leap that this would magically solve the problem, and to some degree that seems to be what Chang implies.

3 stars out of 5.