nwasianweekly.com
August 9, 2003

A Quick look at books

by Ann Marie Stillion & Carol Vu

Treasury of Chinese Love Poems, translated and edited by Qiu Xiaolong, published by Hippocrene Books, 2003.

If you are looking for something insanely sexy and passionate to read, few would argue against this steamy collection of poems. Eighty poems are gleaned from more than 2,000 years of overwrought longing for love and understanding.

Within its cover, which has the colorful bindery of a cookbook or a textbook, is the “The River Merchant’s Wife,” first brought to the West by Ezra Pound’s translation. Qiu calls it “Changgan Song” and notes the author Li Bai (701-762). In “You and I,” the poet, Guan Daosheng, who wrote it around 1250, writes, “You and I are so crazy about each other, as hot as the potter’s fire, Out of the same chunk of clay, shape a you, shape a me. … So I have you in my body, and you’ll have me forever in yours, too.”

The publisher specializes in bilingual love poems. This lightly illustrated book has Chinese and English versions of the works alongside each other. And if by some chance you are a scholar of love or poetry rather than a devotee of the practice of love, there’s a brief introduction to the structure of Chinese love poems and an essay about their origins from an academic point of view.

The Laws of Evening, by Mary Yukari Waters, published by Scribner, 2003.

The time is post-war Japan, and Waters conjures the continent of Asia across which the long hand of the West has passed. Wars, migration and racial divide are seen through the personal and emotional. A lonely wife watches passing prisoners and is left to discover for herself how their lives are intertwined.

Waters’ stories are detailed without being fussy or forced. Her stories possess a resonant depth of longing and insight; her characters inhabit the world uneasily. There seems to be something ominous in the every day, as in the story “Circling the Hondo,” which begins: “Several days before her sixty-fifth birthday, Mrs. Kimura officially relinquished her position as lady of the house.” The author’s poetic language inhabits each moment of her stories with a fine and thorough touch.

This debut collection of stories is by a young author who has already gathered some of the most prestigious awards in literature, including The Best American Short Stories 2002, The Pushcart Book of Short Stories and Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story. Part-Japanese and part-Irish American, Waters moved to the United States when she was 9 years old.

Goldfish and Chrysanthemums, by Andrea Cheng, illustrated by Michelle Chang, published by Lee and Low Books, 2003.

Young Nancy learns that her grandmother’s pond in China is being torn down to make space for an apartment building. As her grandmother sadly resigns to this fact, Nancy is sent to play at the nearby summer fair. The young Chinese American girl decides to play a carnival game in order to win some goldfish for her grandmother. She hopes the goldfish will remind her grandmother of the beautiful fishpond she admired years ago. When she returns home triumphantly with the goldfish, Nancy hatches a plan to help her grandmother feel even better.

Young readers will enjoy this simple yet satisfying tale about a girl’s quest to cheer up her grandmother. It also nicely highlights the importance of intergenerational relationships and cultural preservation. Chinese words are scattered throughout the story, including “Ni Ni” (Grandma) and “Ba Ba” (Dad).

The illustrations are reminiscent of Chinese watercolors. This is Chang’s first time illustrating a picture book, but her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker and Time.

The author previously wrote Grandfather Counts, which was named one of “50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know” by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. She was inspired to write Goldfish and Chrysanthemums after hearing her husband’s mother talk about her family’s garden in China.