I really enjoyed Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living when I read it a few years ago -- I often bounce off books that have been translated from other languages into English (my failing, not theirs) so I am always glad to find Chinese authors writing in English. It's a massive book so it'd be a bother to cart around, but I found it great for holiday reading -- it's non-fiction, just sort of general essays on anything and everything, so good for putting down and picking up whenever. Check out the excerpt on the Amazon page and see if you like his style. I should warn you that he's incredibly face-palmy on women -- there's one chapter on all how women need to have babies or they will be STUNTED for LIFE -- and it was published in 1937, so there might be race-related dodginess especially on the Japanese, but apart from that I found him a very pleasant holiday companion.
There's also Chiang Yee, Chinese dude writing in English at around the same period (I think he and Lin Yutang actually knew each other). Chiang Yee's most well-known for his Silent Traveller books, a series of travelogues which are, again, leisurely essays in a similar style to Lin's, with accompanying poems and art. Chiang Yee is less face-palmy on women, from the two books I've read -- in one he explicitly says he supports women's rights. He is also kind of snarky about the Japanese, but to be fair they were invading his hometown at the time.
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Date: 2009-10-27 05:14 am (UTC)I really enjoyed Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living when I read it a few years ago -- I often bounce off books that have been translated from other languages into English (my failing, not theirs) so I am always glad to find Chinese authors writing in English. It's a massive book so it'd be a bother to cart around, but I found it great for holiday reading -- it's non-fiction, just sort of general essays on anything and everything, so good for putting down and picking up whenever. Check out the excerpt on the Amazon page and see if you like his style. I should warn you that he's incredibly face-palmy on women -- there's one chapter on all how women need to have babies or they will be STUNTED for LIFE -- and it was published in 1937, so there might be race-related dodginess especially on the Japanese, but apart from that I found him a very pleasant holiday companion.
There's also Chiang Yee, Chinese dude writing in English at around the same period (I think he and Lin Yutang actually knew each other). Chiang Yee's most well-known for his Silent Traveller books, a series of travelogues which are, again, leisurely essays in a similar style to Lin's, with accompanying poems and art. Chiang Yee is less face-palmy on women, from the two books I've read -- in one he explicitly says he supports women's rights. He is also kind of snarky about the Japanese, but to be fair they were invading his hometown at the time.