Book Report: Six Chapters of a Floating Life

Amy Tan’s short story “A Pair of Tickets,” has June May crossing an ocean to visit her family that she has never met, where she connects with her Chinese heritage in a way she was never able to before. On her trip, she discovers the depth and importance of her culture through her family members. The main character, June May, is a woman of Chinese heritage, from San Francisco, California. Growing up in the United States, in a very American environment, June May feels as though she never truly understood what it meant to be Chinese. As she soon learns, however, June May realizes that through her own family she can connect with the heritage that bonds them all together.

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on

Shen Fu was a Chinese writer and art dealer who lived during the Qing Dynasty. He had a very strong love for his wife Chen Yun and she is the inspiration for his book “Six Records of a Floating Life”, which vividly describes their life and love together. Shen Fu discusses the happiness that he found in marriage to his cousin Yun, in his first chapter, “Joys of the Wedding Chamber”. He then goes into detail, and is even reminiscent, about enjoying the little things and his experiences with them in the second part of his book, “Pleasure of Leisure”. Next Shen Fu talks about the adversities that he and Yun have to experience, in their sometimes-trying

The main character of the novel, Wang Lung, was a poor young peasant who lived with his father. He worked everyday in the fields harvesting goods and he enjoyed

“They wept together, for the things they now knew.”(104) The last sentence of the first story in Interpreter of Maladies, reveals the cruelty of the elapsed romance in a marriage. In the two collections, A Temporary Matter and The Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates that a marriage can be either uplifting or discouraging depends on the mindset held by the couple and the strength of human bonding. Lahiri emphasizes the significance of mindset and human bondings through the ending of the two stories. The endings of the two stories are polar opposite : In A Temporary Matter, Shukumar and Shobha weeps for the termination of their relationship; The Third and Final Continent, by contrast, the protagonist(MIT) enjoys a fairytale-like

The piece describes what she envisioned her time in China would be like; visions of small talk and drinking tea danced in her head (Schmitt 125). This is a bit admirable to a more reserved person because it shows how outgoing she is when diving into a new culture. However, the reality of a language barrier and day to day behavior settled in. A series of uncomfortable exchanges illustrate the challenge of being accepted into a new culture. Described in the essay are people standing around in bath robes and under garments and popping in and out of rooms like some sort of clown

Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are

The novel is expressed as Equality 7-2521’s diary. All of his thoughts and feelings are shown in his writing, and

However, as their early relationship continued, Shen Fu found that Yün was able to analyze and debate literature and poetry with him. (Fu: 31) Shen Fu soon realized that Yün was as capable as he was, but held back by their society. He recounts a time

In the novel A Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt, the readers are taken through a journey of one woman through her life’s highs and lows. Through the eyes of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, readers can truly understand the life of a working woman during this time period. Although life may not have been easy at times, Ning Lao shows the determination and passion she had for her family and for their lives to be better. The life of a working woman is never an easy life but adding in the social rules and opium addiction that effected each part of Ning Lao’s life made it much more difficult.

The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When

“It was not easy to live in Shanghai” (Anyi 137). This line, echoed throughout Wang Anyi 's short piece “The Destination” is the glowing heartbeat of the story. A refrain filled with both longing and sadness, it hints at the many struggles faced by thousands upon thousands trying to get by in the city of Shanghai. One of these lost souls, the protagonist, Chen Xin, was one of the many youths taken from his family and sent to live the in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Ten years after the fact, Chen Xin views the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution internally and externally as he processes the changes that both he, and his hometown have over-gone in the past ten years. Devastatingly, he comes to the conclusion that there is no going back to the time of his childhood, and his fond memories of Shanghai exist solely in memory. This is in large part is due to the changes brought on by the Cultural Revolution. These effects of the Cultural Revolution are a central theme to the story; with repercussions seen on a cultural level, as well as a personal one.

In this time in China, the role that women and men had were very different from each other. Women were expected to be quite, obedient, and respectful. While men were the provider, the intellectual and the decision maker in the family. In Shen Fu and his wife, Yun marriage it started out like the typical relationship in eightieth century China, each one fulfilling the roles that society had in place for them. But as they became to know each other more, Shen Fu saw Yun real personality and wanted someone to experience life, so he started to encourage her to be herself and told her she didn’t have to live up to this gender stereotypes for women. They both were always

Described as utopian in nature, the Chinese culture is often in pursuit for the perfect individual, a harmonious and structured society where the citizens as a whole create the ideal culture. In a collection of short stories entitled The Bridegroom, author Ha Jin documents this aspect of reality in homeland China. Primarily for the purposes of instruction and satirical verse, Ha Jin, shows how people are trying to find themselves in a society that focuses on the ‘whole’ of the country rather than the individual. He is able to interconnect this theme of individualism through four major stories in the book while presenting ‘Chineseness’ or satire of fictional verse as a way to focus on the changes throughout China

To make the book easy to understand, I would give its summary first. There are fourteen chapters corresponds to the same number of letters the author sent to a young