Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
This was rec'd recently on 50books_poc (and my comments are posted there also) and I enjoyed it greatly. It's about a young Chinese woman, Zhuang, whose parents send her to London for a year to study English. It's in first person, addressed to the British man she met and lived with during most of the year, and the narrative reflects her developing fluency in English.
Like loneraven on 50books_poc, I did keep wondering why she loved her nameless male lover. And there were a few points during her travels where I was wincing in anticipation of situations turning bad. But overall I admired Zhuang thoroughly: her emerging awareness of her own strengths, her constant insights into the cultural differences facing her.
Here's one bit I liked, an example of the dozens of subtle threads running through this. On her first night in England Zhuang has trouble sleeping and turns the light back on to study:
I study little red dictionary. English words made from only twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese.
On one level I just snickered at the comment about laziness. On another level, it's somewhat of a misinterpretation of the two writing systems; English has few letters but many words. But on a third level, it turns out to be a very accurate impression on Zhuang's part, or at least one she keeps finding more evidence for. She is constantly surprised by the amount of time people have to sit about in cafes reading the newspaper, for example, and at other points describes the emphasis in her own culture on devoting every minute of the day to productive efforts.
The fact that her English lover is never named was far more interesting than the man himself. Zhuang spends a lot of time reflecting on the importance Western cultures give to individuality and self-identity, and seems to absorb a good deal of it in her own thinking. The ending of novel is quite ambiguous, though, so I'm not sure the author was saying whether this was a good change for Zhuang: just that it happened.
Like loneraven on 50books_poc, I did keep wondering why she loved her nameless male lover. And there were a few points during her travels where I was wincing in anticipation of situations turning bad. But overall I admired Zhuang thoroughly: her emerging awareness of her own strengths, her constant insights into the cultural differences facing her.
Here's one bit I liked, an example of the dozens of subtle threads running through this. On her first night in England Zhuang has trouble sleeping and turns the light back on to study:
I study little red dictionary. English words made from only twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese.
On one level I just snickered at the comment about laziness. On another level, it's somewhat of a misinterpretation of the two writing systems; English has few letters but many words. But on a third level, it turns out to be a very accurate impression on Zhuang's part, or at least one she keeps finding more evidence for. She is constantly surprised by the amount of time people have to sit about in cafes reading the newspaper, for example, and at other points describes the emphasis in her own culture on devoting every minute of the day to productive efforts.
The fact that her English lover is never named was far more interesting than the man himself. Zhuang spends a lot of time reflecting on the importance Western cultures give to individuality and self-identity, and seems to absorb a good deal of it in her own thinking. The ending of novel is quite ambiguous, though, so I'm not sure the author was saying whether this was a good change for Zhuang: just that it happened.