Showing results by narrator "James Chen" in All Categories

Mo Yan, China’s most critically acclaimed author, has changed the face of his country’s contemporary literature with such daring and masterly novels as Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, and The Republic of Wine. In this collection of eight astonishing stories - the title story of which has been adapted to film by the award-winning director of Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou - Mo Yan shows why he is also China’s leading writer of short fiction.

A harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions. After the CPR is built in 1885, Yang Hok, a former coolie, treks along the railway to return his half-Chinese/half-Native son to the boy's mother, where he confronts the conflicts arising from road-building among the Chinese and Native peoples.

Sisters Lu and Min have always known their places as the princesses of the Empire of the First Flame: assertive Lu will be named her father's heir and become the dynasty's first female ruler while timid Min will lead a quiet life in Lu's shadow. Until their father names their male cousin Set his heir instead, sending ripples through the realm and throwing both girls' lives into utter chaos. Determined to reclaim her birthright, Lu has no choice but to go on the run, leaving Min to face the volatile court alone.

Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of 40, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close, all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture. But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P.

Tom Lee’s life changes forever the day he meets a talking tiger named Mr. Hu and discovers that he has magical powers and great responsibilities that he never imagined. Despite his doubts and fears, Tom joins Mr. Hu’s ragtag band of creatures in their fight to keep an ancient talisman out of the hands of the worst possible enemy. 

A washed up T.V. reporter stumbles onto a corruption scandal in Western China. Pursued through the desert by a psychotic spin-doctor and a world-weary cop, he discovers the real China: illegal metal mines, a fashion-crazed gang of girl bikers, a whole commune of Tiananmen Square survivors and the up-market sleaze-joints of Beijing. En route, he clashes with a stellar cast of people - traffickers, prostitutes and T.V. execs. But then the unquiet dead begin to intervene: ghosts from his own past and the past of Chinese Communism; the "spirits that hover three feet above our heads" of Chinese folklore.

Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company’s sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he’s nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup’s user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret - and wondering whether her death really was an accident. 

What happens when a thirty-something, newly divorced man discovers courage and adventure, thanks to a karaoke contest? In Adventures of the Karaoke King, Harold Taw introduces us to Guy Watanabe, a man marginally aware of his Asian background and decidedly unaware of how poorly he has planned for his future. In this riotous, often thoughtful, and always entertaining novel, readers are taken on a memorable journey that crosses America, Asia, and back, with the last leg spent in a shipping container.

The Chinese Economic miracle is happening despite, not because of, China's 900 million peasants. They are missing from the portraits of booming Shanghai, or Beijing. Many of China's underclass live under a feudalistic system unchanged since the 15th century. Wu Chuntao and Chen Guidi undertook a three-year survey of what had happened to the peasants in one of the poorest provinces, Anhui, asking the question: have the peasants been betrayed by the revolution undertaken in their name by Mao and his successors?

It's 1983. Scott Savitt, one of the first American exchange students in Beijing, picks up his guitar and begins strumming Blackbird. He's soon surrounded by Chinese students who know every word to every Beatles song he plays. The city's first nightclubs open; rock 'n' roll promises democracy. Becoming foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times then United Press International, Scott finds himself drawn into China's political heart.

Chinese Yankee by Ruthanne Lum McCunn tells the true story of Hong Kong born Thomas Sylvanus (Ah Yee Way), an orphan brought to America for schooling in the mid-1850s, but enslaved in Baltimore. Only sixteen at the outbreak of war, Thomas ran north, joined the Freedom Army, and was blinded in the first major campaign. He failed to fully recover his sight and, deemed incapable of performing the duties of a soldier, was discharged.

Logan Solomon is a Southern gentleman who has lived in Beijing far too long. Aside from the shady business deals, surveillance jobs, and the often decadent lifestyle of the jaded foreigner, he has also managed to alienate his wife Li Na while associating himself with very rough characters - some who might not even be human. Following a seemingly chance encounter aboard a train, a chain of events is set in motion that will change Logan's destiny forever, and leave a trail of dead in the wake.

Inspired by three figures who lived at pivotal moments in Chinese American history, and drawing on his own mixed-race experience, Peter Ho Davies plunges us into what it is like to feel and be treated like a foreigner in the country you call home. Ranging from the mouth of the Pearl River to the land of golden opportunity, this remarkable audiobook spans 150 years to tell a tale of familial bonds denied, of tenacity and pride, of prejudice and the universal need to belong.

The 1992 Los Angeles Riots: six days of looting, arson, assault, and murder. America's second largest city in chaos. In All Involved Ryan Gattis weaves a heart-stopping narrative from the perspectives of characters whose stories of the riots were never told. In six sections, each covering a single day, we follow the intersecting lives of 17 people: gang members, firefighters, nurses, law enforcement officers, and graffiti artists, every one changed for ever.

The Cave Man follows Ja Feng once he is released from his solitary confinement, as he is forced to integrate with fellow prisoners who view his skeletal figure and erratic screaming fits as freakish, and his heartbreaking attempts to assimilate into Chinese culture, to reestablish familial bonds and to seek out an ordinary human experience.